''Let Your Hair Down'' is the seventeenth studio album by the
Steve Miller Band
The Steve Miller Band is an American rock music, rock band formed in 1966 in San Francisco, California. The band is led by Steve Miller (musician), Steve Miller on guitar and lead vocals. The group had a string of mid- to late-1970s hit singles t ...
, released on April 19, 2011.
''Let Your Hair Down'' was recorded alongside the group's previous album, ''
Bingo!'', which was released 10 months earlier. Like ''Bingo!'', this album is a collection of blues and
R&B covers, and as of 2022, it is the Steve Miller Band's most recent studio album.
Like ''Bingo'', the artwork was designed by
StormStudios, with a plethora of visual puns used in the pictures (the cover shows a man with no hair, but a ''hare'' sitting on his head, and a small ladder at the side).
Track listing
Personnel
*
Steve Miller –
lead guitar
Lead guitar (also known as solo guitar) is a musical part for a guitar in which the guitarist plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs and chords within a song structure. The lead is the featur ...
,
vocals
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...
*
Norton Buffalo
Phillip Jackson (September 28, 1951 – October 30, 2009), best known as Norton Buffalo, was an American singer-songwriter, country and blues harmonica player, record producer, bandleader and recording artist who was a versatile proponent of t ...
–
harmonica
The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...
, vocals
* Kenny Lee Lewis –
rhythm guitar
In music performances, rhythm guitar is a technique and role that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with other instruments from the rhythm section (e.g., drum kit, bass guitar ...
, vocals
* Joseph Wooten –
Hammond B-3
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding #Drawbars, drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs ...
,
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
,
keyboard
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
s, vocals
* Gordy Knudtson –
drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...
s
* Billy Peterson –
bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
, vocals
*
Sonny Charles
Sonny Charles (born Charles Hemphill, September 4, 1940)Joel Whitburn, ''The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits''. 7th edn, 2000 is an American soul singer born to a sharecropping family at Blytheville, Arkansas. At the age of 10. he moved with his pa ...
– vocals
;Additional personnel
*
Michael Carabello
Michael Carabello (born November 18, 1947) is an American musician, best known for playing percussion with Santana during that band's early years. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Career
Carabello was born in San Francisco and ...
–
conga
The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), and tumba or salidor (lowest). ...
s,
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
* Adrian Areas –
timbales
Timbales () or pailas are shallow single-headed drums with metal casing. They are shallower than single-headed tom-toms and usually tuned much higher, especially for their size.Orovio, Helio 1981. ''Diccionario de la música cubana: biográfico ...
, percussion
References
2011 albums
Steve Miller Band albums
Albums produced by Andy Johns
Albums with cover art by Storm Thorgerson
Covers albums
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