The title track became a minor chart entry, and the album reached the Top 40. (He would resurface in 1976 in the band American Flyer.) Instead, the sextet of Call, Connor, Goshorn, Hinds, Powell, and Reilly made Pure Prairie League's third album, Two Lane Highway, joined by the country stars Chet Atkins, Emmylou Harris, and Johnny Gimble. Of course, the song had been written and sung by Fuller, who was no longer in the band. "Amie" charted in March 1975 and became a Top 40 hit. Bustin' Out entered the charts in February 1975, nearly two-and-a-half years after its release, and rose into the Top 40, eventually going gold. In late 1974, Pure Prairie League's touring began to pay off as radio stations started playing "Amie," a song from Bustin' Out, leading RCA to issue the song as a single, reissue the album, and re-sign the band. (He was later pardoned by President Ford.) This forced him to leave the group, and he was replaced by Larry Goshorn. During this period, Fuller encountered legal difficulties over his claim of conscientious objector status to avoid the draft, eventually serving two years in a hospital instead. But they added a second friend of Hinds', bassist Michael Reilly, and continued to play around the Midwest. Though later considered a landmark in country-rock, Bustin' Out initially suffered disappointing sales upon release in September 1972, and RCA dropped the group. Among the other session musicians on the album was David Bowie associate Mick Ronson, who played guitar and arranged the strings. Lanham, Caughlan, and Call left, and remaining members Fuller and Powell brought back Hinds, who in turn recruited a friend, keyboard player Michael Connor, to play on the second album, Bustin' Out, and subsequently become a full-fledged bandmember. Pure Prairie League did not sell well enough to reach the charts, and the group fragmented. Luke would turn up on all the band's subsequent album covers, giving them a distinctive visual conception. Adding steel guitar player John David Call, the group went into the studio and recorded its self-titled debut album, which was released in March 1972 with a cover depicting a Western character named Luke, an illustration drawn by famed American painter/illustrator Norman Rockwell that had first appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1927. By that time, McGrail had left and been replaced by Jim Caughlan, though Billy Hinds had also drummed with the band for a time. Pure Prairie League built up a following in Ohio, playing around Cincinnati for a year before earning a record contract with RCA Victor. Pure Prairie League was formed in Columbus, Ohio, in 1969 by singer/songwriter/guitarist Craig Fuller, bass player Jim Lanham, and drummer Tom McGrail, who named the band after a women's temperance group in the 1939 Errol Flynn movie Dodge City. That hit status also led to a rediscovery of the merits of the rest of Bustin' Out, which is acknowledged to be one of the artistic high points in country-rock history.Despite significant personnel changes, Pure Prairie League maintained itself as a successful country-rock band during the 1970s and early '80s, releasing ten albums and enjoying hits including "Amie" and "Let Me Love You Tonight" with different configurations of the group. The revival of interest in Pure Prairie League led RCA to re-sign the group, alas without Craig Fuller. RCA re-released "Amie" as a single more than two years after the album came out, and it was a Top 30 hit. Nevertheless, the influence of Bustin' Out was profound, and one song in particular became a staple for bar bands everywhere. Despite the extraordinary beauty and intelligence of the music on this album, it was not immediately successful, and the already troubled band broke up after it was released. Both lyrical and musical themes carry over from song to song - "Falling in and Out of Love" and "Amie" are really two halves of one suite, and there are echoes of that suite throughout the rest of the album. These tunes are presented with grace and unusual taste, the country guitars and vocal harmonies backed with astonishingly sympathetic string arrangements by Mick Ronson. The songs are meditative portraits of relationships that aren't running smoothly but are still alive, and they sound autobiographical rather than something contrived to sell records. The songwriting team of Craig Fuller and George Powell was one of the finest in the business, and on Bustin' Out they made an album that is unequaled in country-rock.
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