Lost Gold is our occasional series about weird, unusual and rare records that come into the shop.  Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel by clicking here to be the first to know about new installments.

Our first ever entry in this occasional series is a pretty cool LP that came into the shop a few weeks ago. It was part of a collection that once belonged to a KUSF DJ here in Santa Fe.

Ronnie White’s sound is very much mid 70’s country rock, but it’s a cut above the usual regional acts you hear.  Instrumentation includes the usual guitar/bass/steel guitar/fiddle/drums you’d expect but adds saxophone on a track or two as well as Arp synthesizer on a number of tracks.

Perhaps the most stunning Arp-dominated track on this album is this nugget which is pretty divorced from your standard country rock:

Interestingly, White plays the ARP on this track, while the rest of the synth playing on the disc is done by Walt Richmond, who went on to play on Rick Danko (of the Band)’s pretty awesome solo record from 1977 and later toured with Eric Clapton.

White’s lyrics are pretty interesting! Here’s another good one, this time about a woman who can’t quit the chips:

Then there’s this cool one, with the oddly misspelled “Rebbecca” for a title, with a killer call/response chorus…

Elsewhere, song titles like “Parking Lot” and “Tacos in the Sun” don’t so easily reveal their contents. The latter could almost recall Jimmy Buffett with its lyrics but it manages to remain wry and downer, just like almost all of this somewhat forelorn record.

There isn’t currently any information on the search engines that we can locate. It was released on “M and B Records” clearly a private press/vanity label, and is dated 1975.  We’ve found a few of the musicians, still residing in Tulsa, but Ronnie himself is a cypher. One potential candidate seems to have been from Miami, Oklahoma where he went to Northeastern Oklahoma College in the late 60’s, but seems also to have dropped back off the planet in the early 70’s, years before this album was recorded.

Any new information appreciated!

SHIMMY