ALBUMS: Catch Bull at Four (1972); Teaser and the Firecat (1971)
MVC RATING: Bull: 4.0/$$$; Teaser 4.0/$$$$
It wasn’t until Cat Stevens accumulated a bunch of songs that I grew to appreciate him. WIth one exception — ‘Wild World.’ That song hooked me from the beginning.
‘Father and Son’ not far behind.
Both songs are on Tea for Tillerman. an album I don’t have. The radio was where I picked up on that song. The truth is, even though I have two of Cat Stevens biggest selling albums, I didn’t listen to them much because the hits were all over the radio, and I never spent the time to explore the songs that weren’t so famous.
Catch Bull at Four, for example has no hits and is a good album. Surprisingly, Catch Bull was one of his biggest hit albums. But Teaser was the breakthrough album for Stevens. It had Peace Train and the gorgeous ‘Morning has Broken,’ a song found in many Christian church hymnals. (Although he popularized the song, Stevens did not write Morning has Broken.)
When I did try out the albums I found some to be erratic. Several songs, I thought, were meandering and oblique (House of the Freezing Steel, for example.) It wasn’t until I got a greatest hits collection on CD that included all in one place “Wild World,” “Peace Train,” Father and Son,” “The First Cut is the Deepest,” “Morning has Broken,” and ‘Moonshadow,’ among others — that I paid attention. His voice and unusual vocal style grew on me.
In the late 1990s after several life-changing events, including nearly dying of tuberculosis, Stevens changed his name to Yusuf Islam and converted to Islam. For years he wouldn’t play his old music or even any secular music. As Yusuf he eventually came back to playing his old songs about 2006 — as well as new ones. I have listened to the Roadsinger one of his first Yusuf secular albums. and though he’s singing in his old familiar voice, the songs are more spiritual and it doesn’t have any potential classic singles on it like his older albums — but certainly worth exploring if you are a big Cat Stevens/Yusuf fan.