Give It Up [Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered]

Bonnie Raitt | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 5, 2002)
• Original Release Date: 1972
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Label: Rhino
• ASIN: B00005YW4S
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,568 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #44 in Music > Rock > Singer-Songwriters
  • #95 in Music > Rock > Country Rock

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

This 1972 collection set the bar it took years for Raitt to clear again. Moving easily between sensitive singer-songwriter and bawdy blues-mama roles, the blazing redhead proved she was a talent to watch on several fronts. Raitt demonstrated a keen instinct for finding suitable material, adopting Jackson Browne's "Under the Falling Sky" and Eric Kaz's "Love Has No Pride" as if she'd penned them herself. The honeyed vocals and slashing slide guitar heard on Give It Up identified Raitt instantly to anyone who encountered this album. Unfortunately, it would be nearly two decades before many did catch on to her appeal. --Steve Stolder

Product Description

Her classic sophomore album from 1972 that influenced generations of women in rock. Features 'Love Me Like A Man', 'Under The Sky Falling' & 'Love Has No Pride'. Rhino/Warner Bros. digitally remastered.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Give It Up"? Hardly ... she was just getting going here!, March 5, 2003

By 

Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Give It Up (Audio CD)

I didn't get to see Bonnie Raitt live until she was a big enough star to fill large concert halls, but whenever I'm trying to imagine what it must have been like to attend one of her appearances in the Cambridge, MA blues clubs where she started out way back when in the early 1970s, this is one of the albums I listen to. "Give It Up," released 1972, was Bonnie Raitt's second album, and it brims with the liveliness of the 22 year-old singer who only recently had nicked a college degree in African studies for a full-fledged career as a musician. Yet, all those live appearances before she landed her record deal had already given her an incredible amount of self-confidence: This was not an insecure, directionless young thing who had barely outgrown her teenage years; nor, for that matter, a high-powered starlet whose career was taking off with rocket speed only to fizzle soon thereafter, as quickly as it had begun. No: this was a young woman who knew exactly where she wanted to go, both musically and lyrically; and all the trademark characteristics of the artist her fans would grow to admire over the course of the following 30 years were already in place, most notably her breathtaking skills as a guitar player, her vocal skills, running the gamut from sassy to sad, and that feeling for the blues which, even at the very beginning of her career, had already gained her the respect of the entire Delta blues elite from John Lee Hooker to Sippie Wallace.

"Give It Up" is a low-key recording with an almost improvised "live in the studio" feeling, and the one impression that stands out more than any other while listening to it is the obvious fun which all participants must have had during its production. Bonnie Raitt was joined for the occasion by multi-talent Freebo, a fixture on all of her early albums as well as at her live appearances, keyboardist Mark Jordan and saxophone player John Payne, both renowned for their collaborations with Van Morrison (on his "Tupelo Honey" and "Astral Weeks" albums, respectively), guitarists T.J. Tindall and John Hall (the latter known for his work with Taj Mahal and Janis Joplin), songwriter Eric Kaz, whose "Love Has No Pride" provides a melancholy conclusion to the album, and a largely Woodstock-based group of equally talented musicians. The photos reproduced on thirteen of the twenty pages of the booklet which accompanies the album amply illustrate the sheer joy involved in the project, and the easygoing companionship shared by its participants.

The album opens with one of Bonnie Raitt's biggest hits to date, the feisty "Give It Up or Let Me Go," written by Raitt herself and featuring Freebo on tuba and John Payne on soprano sax - one of Raitt's many "attitude" songs and, as she wrote almost 20 years later in the liner notes of her "Bonnie Raitt Collection," "you can bet it was just as much fun to be there as it sounds." Two more of Raitt's own creations are contained on the album, in the second track, the contemplative "Nothing Seems to Matter," and the ninth song, the upbeat "You Told Me, Baby." Further standouts are Raitt's adaptation of Chris Smither's "Love Me Like a Man," with lyrics that make it clear that equality in a partnership is ultimately a matter of self-respect and "one of the best modern blues songs ever written," as Bonnie Raitt commented in the liner notes of her "Collection;" "Under the Falling Sky," featuring Paul Butterfield on harp, Raitt's first true rock song and also the first of several Jackson Browne-penned pieces she would record over the course of her career; "You Got to Know How," featuring John Payne on clarinet and one of Bonnie Raitt's many tributes to her mentor Sippie Wallace; and the closing tune, Eric Kaz's "Love Has No Pride," another one of Raitt's earliest signature songs and intensely personal, because at the time of that song's recording she herself had just been abandoned by a lover and, as she later recalled, more or less then "spent a year of gigs trying to sing him back."

"Give It Up" is one of those sophomore efforts which are actually superior to the respective singer's first release; and as is so often the case in those instances, it is a clear indication that this would turn out to be an artist to reckon with for a long time to come. Yet, even though this proved to be the first high water mark in Bonnie Raitt's career, not everybody would probably have dared to prophesize all those years ago that the perky redhead from Southern California who had recorded this album would rise to be one of rock and blues music's longest shining stars. But just in case you forget where it all began for the multiple Grammy Award winner of so many years later, go back and listen to this album and to Bonnie Raitt's self-titled debut, and let their youthful, upbeat charm work on you. And man, don't you ever dare mess around behind my back, 'cause ... "if you want me to love you, you've got to give it up or let me go"!

Also recommended:
Road Tested
The Bonnie Raitt Collection
Fundamental

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Benchmark for Bonnie (Sounds like a Ronald Reagan movie!), March 21, 2001

By 

W. Ward (Mayville, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Give It Up (Audio CD)

This is the album that made me the musician that I am today; confused, directionless, and moody. Seriously, when this record came out, it introduced countless young folks to musical genres to which they'd never been exposed; from the dixieland-esque opener, Give it Up or Let Me Go, to the torchy, If you Gotta Make a Fool, to the rockin', Under the Falling Sky, she somehow wove style after style together with her bluesy thread. (and the 'over-arrangement' the Singapore reviewer heard is what most people call the best groove on the record) It is one of my top three favorite recordings ever. Nouveau Bonnie fans may find it primitive, but if you are a true aficionado, you know it is the reason she's been around for so long.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget the awards, this is Bonnie's best album, July 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Give It Up (Audio CD)

This album and all of Bonnie Raitt's first three albums were her best work, period. Her first disappointing album was her fourth, Streetlights, and although I was happy to see her get the long overdue recognition at the grammies, I just can't connect with most of the music she's been doing during her "successful" years. In her first three albums, she struck the right balance between blues, bawdiness, sincerity, and fun. Best of all there was no trace of the maudlin quality that crept into some of her later songs, nor was there the plain raunchiness that she's selling today with "Gnawin' on it." If your reaction to Bonnie singing "I Can't Make you Love Me" is the same as mine "Oh, get over it," you might like her early work better, it's just great blues, great music, without the self-involvement and the self-pity.