James Lee Stanley

When I was coming up, most popular artists recorded a single and then, if they got lucky, the cut went on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand (www.dickclark.com) and the kids voted on it. If it got a respectable score, then they started playing it. If they played it enough, then it became a hit, and the artist would get to come on the show and be interviewed by Dick himself.

Invariably the artist would be asked about his plans and he would reply, “I am hoping to cut another single and if it’s successful I hope to get to do an album.”

That was the big dream for young pop artists back then: to do an album.

By the time that Sergeant Pepper came out, every artist was signed to do an album and every artist wanted to make an album better than Sergeant Pepper . That became the quest: to make the perfect album.

When that album came out, I was 21. Five years later, I got to make my first album and now I am recording my 23rd, I believe. Let’s see:

James Lee Stanley / James Lee Stanley, Too / Three’s the Charm / Midnight Radio / Racing the Moon / Eclipse / James Lee Stanley, Live at McCabes / Simpatico / Ripe Four Distraction / The Envoy / Even Cowgirls Get the Blues / Domino Harvest / Two Man Band / Freelance Human Being / Two Man Band Two / Once Again / Traces of the Old Road / A Beachwood Christmas / All Wood and Stones / Live- Backstage at the Coffee Gallery / The Eternal Contradiction / Live in Tehachapi Volumes I and II.

And in all that time and in all those recordings I have been trying to do the same thing: make the perfect album of songs.

Is it possible? I don’t know. I only know that with each recording, I go in with that intent and I work on it for usually two years and then put it out and realize sometime later that I shouldn’t have done this and I should have done that.

I also realize that things that I labored over and over to make right go by without a hitch, and also that things I let slide that bothered me, still bother me. Sometimes the deadlines make you accept things that you didn’t want to and you use the excuse that behind every genius is a guy who stops him from applying the finishing touch.

So here I am, working on the 24^th James Lee Stanley release, "Backstage at the Resurrection" and I am still on this quest to create the perfect album. And there are some perfect albums, though they aren’t the same albums for everybody. That’s what makes it possible for one to create the perfect album. It just has to be perfect for you.

I try to make recordings that I want to hear over and over again.  Do I succeed? That depends on what you use as the gauge, I guess.

If it’s mass acceptance and lots of money, then I guess I’ve failed. If it’s doing the very best you can at the time and continuing to grow then I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.

I don’t know, but I can tell you that I try each time to finally make the perfect album. I haven’t done it yet, but maybe this time...