''Night Owl'' is the third studio album by Scottish musician

Gerry Rafferty Gerald Rafferty (16 April 1947– 4 January 2011) was a Scottish singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He was a founding member of Stealers Wheel, whose biggest hit was " Stuck in the Middle with You" in 1973. His solo hits in th ...

. It was released a year after Rafferty's Platinum-selling album ''

City to City ''City to City'' is the second solo studio album by Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty, released on 20 January 1978 by United Artists Records. It was Rafferty's first solo release in six years—and first release of any kind since 1975� ...

''. While not quite performing as well as its predecessor, ''Night Owl'' still managed enough sales to achieve platinum status in Canada, gold in the United Kingdom, and gold status in the U.S. The title song reached No. 5 on the UK charts. The album made the UK Top 10. The album was recorded at

Chipping Norton Recording Studios Chipping Norton Recording Studios was a residential recording studio in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England, which operated from 1971 until October 1999. The studios were created by Mike and Richard Vernon as the in-house studio for Mike Ver ...

Chipping Norton Chipping Norton is a market town and civil parish in the Cotswold Hills in the West Oxfordshire district of Oxfordshire, England, about south-west of Banbury and north-west of Oxford. The 2011 Census recorded the civil parish population as ...

, England. "Take the Money and Run" appears on the 1980 release ''

Free Fall In Newtonian physics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. In the context of general relativity, where gravitation is reduced to a space-time curvature, a body in free fall has no force acting on i ...

'' as "Take the Money."

Re-releases

On 30 January 2007

Collectables Records Collectables is a reissue record label founded in 1980 by Jerry Greene. Jerry Greene formed Lost Nite and Crimson record labels. Soul Survivors gained the hit "Expressway to Your Heart" (1967) while on Crimson Records. History It maintains a ca ...

released ''City To City'' and ''Night Owl'' as a two-disc set.

Track listing

Personnel

* Gerry Rafferty – vocals, acoustic piano (2, 9)

Polymoog The Polymoog is a hybrid polyphony (instrument), polyphonic analog synthesizer that was manufactured by Moog Music from 1975 to 1980. The Polymoog was based on Frequency divider, divide-down oscillator technology similar to electronic organs an ...

(2), acoustic guitar (3–8, 10), string arrangements * Graham Preskett – acoustic piano (1, 4, 10), electric piano (2),

string synthesizer A string synthesizer or string machine is a specialized synthesizer designed specifically to make sounds similar to that of a string orchestra. Dedicated string synthesizers occupied a specific musical instrument niche between electronic organs ...

(2), keyboards (6, 7),

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...

s (6, 7),

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

(10), string arrangements, string scoring and conductor *

Pete Wingfield William Peter Wingfield (born 7 May 1948) is an English record producer, keyboard player, songwriter, singer and music journalist. Career Whilst at Sussex University Wingfield and three other students formed the group Jellybread. In 1969, he ...

–

organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

(1, 2, 3) *

Tommy Eyre Tommy Eyre (5 June 1949 – 23 May 2001) was an English session keyboardist from Sheffield, England, who appeared on records by Joe Cocker, John Martyn, Gary Moore, Michael Schenker, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Greg Lake, B.B. King, John ...

– acoustic piano (3), electric piano (5), synthesizers (5) * John Kirkpatrick –

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

(4, 6, 7) * Richard Brunton – electric guitar (1, 3, 6, 7),

lap steel guitar The lap steel guitar, also known as a Hawaiian guitar, is a type of steel guitar without pedals that is typically played with the instrument in a horizontal position across the performer's lap. Unlike the usual manner of playing a traditional ...

(1, 4, 10), acoustic guitar (3, 4, 7–10), guitar solo (7), guitars (10) * Hugh Burns – electric guitar (1, 4), rhythm guitar (1, 9), guitar solo (1, 9), guitars (2, 5) * Richard Thompson –mandolin (4), electric guitars (7, 8) *

Mo Foster Mo Foster (born Michael Ralph Foster, 22 December 1944) is an English multi-instrumentalist, record producer, composer, solo artist, author, and public speaker. Through a career spanning over half a century, Foster has toured, recorded, and perf ...

– bass (1, 2, 4, 6–10) * Gary Taylor – bass (3, 5) *

Liam Genockey Liam Genockey (born 12 August 1948) is an Irish musician, who is the drummer with British folk rock band Steeleye Span. Biography Genockey was born in Dublin, Ireland. During the 1960s he lived in Plymouth, Devon, U.K, playing in local semi-p ...

– drums *

Frank Ricotti Frank Ricotti (born 31 January 1949) is an English jazz vibraphonist and percussionist. Early life and education Ricotti was born in London, England. His father was a drummer. Bill Ashton, founder of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NY ...

– percussion (1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9) *

Raphael Ravenscroft Raphael Ravenscroft (4 June 1954 – 19 October 2014) was a British musician, composer and author. He is best known for playing the saxophone on Gerry Rafferty's song " Baker Street". Early life While his place of birth is disputed, the E ...

–

Lyricon The Lyricon is an electronic wind instrument, the first wind controller to be constructed. Invented by Bill Bernardi (and co-engineered by Roger Noble and with the late Lyricon performer Chuck GreenbergIngham (1998) p.184), filed for patent on ...

(2), saxophone (5, 6, 9, 10) *

Richard Harvey Richard Allen Harvey (born 25 September 1953) is an English composer and musician. Originally of the mediaevalist progressive rock group Gryphon, he is best known now for his film and television soundtracks. He is also known for his guitar co ...

–

penny whistle The tin whistle, also called the penny whistle, is a simple six-holed woodwind instrument. It is a type of fipple flute, putting it in the same class as the recorder, Native American flute, and other woodwind instruments that meet such criteria. ...

(6),

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...

(7),

recorder Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a news ...

s (7), synthesizers (8, 9) *

Gavyn Wright Gavyn Wright is a British violinist and orchestra leader with the London Session Orchestra and Penguin Cafe Orchestra. He is best known for his orchestral arrangements on pop productions (including Elton John, Simply Red, Bush, Mecano, Oasis, ...

– string leader *

Betsy Cook Betsy Cook is an American-born singer, songwriter and musician. Since the late 1970s, she has worked mainly in the United Kingdom and collaborated with various British artists such as Gerry Rafferty, Ray Jackson, Lindisfarne, George Michael, ...

– backing vocals (1, 3) *

Barbara Dickson Barbara Ruth Dickson (born 27 September 1947) is a Scottish singer and actress whose hits include 'I Know Him So Well', 'Answer Me' and 'January February'. Dickson has placed fifteen albums on the UK Albums Chart from 1977 to date, and had a n ...

– backing vocals (1, 3, 7) * Linda Thompson – backing vocals (1, 3)

Production

* Gerry Rafferty – producer * Hugh Murphy – producer * Barry Hammond – engineer (1, 2, 4, 6–10) * Nick Patrick – engineer (3, 5) *

John Patrick Byrne John Patrick Byrne (born 6 January 1940) is a Scottish playwright and artist. He wrote '' The Slab Boys Trilogy'', plays which explore working-class life in Scotland, and the TV dramas ''Tutti Frutti'' and ''Your Cheatin' Heart''. Byrne is al ...

– front cover painting * Robert Ellis – photography

Charts

Album Single

Certifications

References

External links

* Gerry Rafferty albums 1979 albums United Artists Records albums {{1970s-rock-album-stub