Michael was born in Nottingham in 1947. He played in various bands around the Nottingham pubs and clubs in the mid sixties and recorded solo tracks for broadcast on the new Radio Nottingham in the late sixties. He played in various showbands playing the northern club circuit to make a living and then after moving to London eventually landed a record deal with CBS. He recorded an album and two singles of folk in 1970 and 1971 before moving to York records to continue his recording career. He had a website between 2012 and 2018 where I found the following three statements (copyright to Michael) which give some further detail as well as all the images excepting the discography images.

home page
Here you will find a collection of new songs that I have written from the past and present years. I feel like the simple act of trying to improve is so valuable, and this applies to just about everything I do in my life.
As a singer songwriter I’m constantly thinking about the process of writing music and ways to do things better, pretty much the same as everything I do.
‘I do a lot of thinking about thinking.’
For me music is not just about exploration and expression it’s also about rising to a challenge, I like to experiment with so many different idioms of music and challenge myself with new idea’s.
‘I do a lot of thinking about thinking.’

About

An endless passion for music……

In my early days I started my career playing in a Rock ’n’ Roll band in Nottingham gigging around the local pubs and clubs. I also started concentrating on writing songs and always performed one or two of them in front of a live audience with whatever band I was playing with at the time. For me, writing songs is my passion in life, there is nothing like the challenge of starting with a few simple chords, a blank piece of paper and then trying to create something from nothing.

While I still lived in Nottingham, I submitted some of my songs to a program producer at our local radio station, ‘Radio Nottingham’. They liked them and began playing my songs quite regularly on different shows; I became a regular feature every few weeks.

In the meantime, I had to make some money to survive, this wasn’t easy but I managed to get a job with a local show band touring the northern clubs where the work was at the time. This gave me a great opportunity to work with different acts from all over the country, some big names included Tony Christie, Arthur Aski, Paul Daniels and Frank Carson a well known comedian on the club circuit. I learnt so much in those years working alongside other artists, seeing how they perform to an audience, I believe, made me a better musician and entertainer.

Although I really enjoyed what I was doing at that time, it was always at the back of my mind that I wanted to go to London and try my luck with my songs; it wasn’t until a life changing incident finally persuaded me to move to the big city.

It was quite a journey trudging around publishing and recording companies with my songs but I eventually got a recording deal with ‘CBS Records’ for one year, then a two year contract with ‘York Records’ which belonged to ‘Yorkshire Television’; I was on a roll!! Freddie Starr recorded two of my songs and Stéphane Grappelli, the world famous jazz violinist also recorded one of my songs called ‘Blue River’ played as an instrumental, which is now very popular on YouTube.

At this point I had found myself a manager who persuaded me to take up a solo career as a singer/songwriter. Suddenly, I was working with Mike Reed, Tommy Cooper and touring with Alan Prince, George Fame and Thin Lizzy to name but a few. I also played a gig with Tina Turner at one of the UK’s biggest rock venues. I was in the recording studios in London making albums and playing with top session players, I travelled abroad playing in Germany, Spain and Iceland and I appeared on various television programs up and down the country. I’m still writing songs that are in my view better than ever!

Biography

I always remember from an early age listening to classical music and recording pop music from the radio and I knew that one day I was going to be involved in writing my own songs.I started my musical career playing guitar in pubs working in a four piece blues band with other guys who were much older than me.

Even then my interests were in writing my own songs and being involved in musical arrangement and the recording process. It was while I was with this band that I met a guy who used to work in a London recording studio who said if I could teach him something’s on the guitar he would do the same for me in his own recording studio. so for many years we became good friends and he taught me so much about recording production techniques and what you could achieve with very little equipment still stays with me to this day.

Later I formed my own band singing and playing instrumentals and occasionally throwing in one of my own songs. After several members left and different musicians coming and going I decided to leave and start playing in show bands, which were very popular at the time especially in the northern clubs. This went on for a few years till one day the band I was travelling to a gig with had a vehicle accident on the motorway which put me in hospital for two months. This gave me time to reflect on what I had always wanted to do, In a matter of weeks I decided it was time to move to London and try my luck with my songs which had always been at the back of my mind even in my early days.

Eventually after a year I was able to move on and start to look around for work. It was then I happened to see an advert in the Musical Express for a trio wanting a singer/guitarist to do a summer season in a holiday camp on the east coast in the UK, so I applied and got the job. The two guys I was playing with lived in London and invited me to move down with them after the summer season had finished and try a few record and publishing company’s with my songs. I eventually signed a recording contract with CBS records and started recording my first Album, at that stage I decided to go it on my own and a second and third album was recorded with York records.

I did a few television appearances home and abroad and recorded a few live shows for Radio with some big name artistes such as: Blue Mink.Over a period of one year from working in a holiday camp I was gigging with Tommy cooper, Arthur Askey, Tony Christie, Mike Reed and later touring the county with Alan Price, George Fame, Thin Lizzy and a gig with Ike and Tina turner. Freddie Star also recorded two of my songs and Stephan Grapelli the world jazz violinist recorded a piece of my music called ‘Blue River,’ A well known TV personality at that time opened his show with one of my songs called ‘Trombone Man,’ I was on a roll!! I still hadn’t achieved the success I craved for, and a I said to myself I’ll give it till I’m thirty, if it doesn’t work out then I’ll just step away as though it never happened.

Discography – Albums

Patchwork – CBS – S 64230, 1970
Souvenirs – York – FYK 401, 1972
Fantasies – York – FYK 414, 1973

Discography – 7″ Singles

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The track Acorn Street is included on these two compilations:

Curiosity Shop Volume One – 2014
Come Join My Orchestra: The British Baroque Pop Sound 1967-73 – 2018

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A review on this blog page will give some pointers to Michaels sound.
http://left-and-to-the-back.blogspot.com/2016/02/michael-blount-beautiful-morning.html

Which I’ve copied out here:

Left and to the Back
Digging for nuggets from the dusty old storerooms of pop.

24 February 2016
Michael Blount – Beautiful Morning/ Feathered Cloud

Label: York
Year of Release: 1972

While very, very few of the records were actual bona-fide hits, the sixties and early seventies must have nonetheless felt like a time when it was perfectly possible for many British folk artists to score deals with major labels. Even minor acts like The Wedgwoods put out scores of singles across the two decades, and LPs besides… I doubt many of these people (if any) lived in wealthy circumstances, but folk certainly had way more mainstream television and radio exposure then than it does now. Nick Drake might not have been prime chat show interlude material, but a lot of the other artists were.

Michael Blount is a case in point. Mainstream enough to score a deal with York Records, connected to the business of regional TV company Yorkshire Television, both sides of this single are sweet enough for you to hear their mainstream appeal, but rustic enough not to completely betray their roots. “Beautiful Morning” in particular has a delicate lilt though could have perhaps sounded better without the chocolate box orchestral arrangement. Still though, it highlights the fact that Blount was capable of writing uplifting songs about rural Albion in a careful and intelligent way.

“Beautiful Morning” was also granted a release in the USA on Decca Records, where it also failed to make much of an impression.

He put out three LPs, one on CBS in 1970 (“Patchwork”) and the other two on York (“Souvenirs” and “Fantasies”) which have had a mixed response from fans of the genre. That weighty and lofty tome “Tapestry Of Delights” warns readers away, while other online sources recommend them – I personally would argue that the average listener’s tolerance for his work is going to depend on their taste for contemplative Fading Yellow styled acoustic pop. It’s not necessarily a bad thing in my view, but a lot of collectors tend to prefer to have more angst and experimentation in the grooves, which would account for some of the rather harsh overviews.

Blount is also apparently still active on the circuit, making him something of a rare individual so far as this blog is concerned.

(Confession time – I’ve also stolen the images for this blog entry from 45cat user The Toad, as I’m presently miles away from a usable scanner. If he or the mods at 45cat object, I’ll take them down and replace them with a scan from my own collection in a few days time. Not having access to the usual facilities felt like a poor reason for not updating the blog!)

Klepsie said…

To nitpick, the US “Beautiful Morning” was on London, not Decca.

http://www.45cat.com/record/nc406989us

Here is a link to his youtube channel