The Sentimental Journey Of RINGO

Original released on LP Apple PCS 7101

(UK 1970, March 27)

This is technically the first pop solo album by a Beatle. John and George had done some experimental albums and Paul had done a classical soundtrack, so Ringo can say he was the first Beatle to release a traditional solo album. I am in the minority of the loving this album. No really. I love this album. It's one of my favorite pieces of music (Beatle or non-Beatle) period! It's a concept album of Tin Pan Alley era songs. Ringo ever so sweetly told the press that he did it to please his parents. Guess he was still a wholesome mop-top after all. Foreshadowing Ringo's later habits of having numerous celebrities on his albums and tours, this album has a different producer for each track. His future favorite Richard Perry is on here, as well as Paul McCartney, Quincy Jones, Maurice Gibb, George Martin and others. I am a sucker for period pieces and Ringo's comes out really well. Rod Stewart in recent years has made a fortune doing a series of concept albums like this. I suppose it's just another thing on a long list of stuff the Beatles did first. (in RateYourMusic)

Cut as the Beatles were disintegrating and released shortly before the group's final album, "Let It Be", Ringo Starr's debut solo album was a collection of pre-rock standards dating from the 1920s to the '50s, sung over orchestral tracks arranged by everyone from fellow Beatle Paul McCartney and Bee Gee Maurice Gibb to jazz veterans Quincy Jones and Oliver Nelson. Starr brought a good-natured, nearly humorous tone to his vocals, perhaps because he wasn't trying to compete with the classic pop stylists most identified with these songs, but only to express his nostalgic affection for the material. Coming more than a decade before the fad for standards albums by rock-era pop stars like Linda Ronstadt, the album was taken not as a career move, but as a highly eccentric and expensive novelty of a kind only Beatles could afford to indulge. In retrospect, it remains harmlessly charming, if unexceptional. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)