''She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina'' is the seventh

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records c ...

Buffy Sainte-Marie Buffy Sainte-Marie, (born Beverly Sainte-Marie, February 20, 1941) is an Indigenous Canadian-American (Piapot Cree Nation) singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. While working in these ar ...

, released in 1971. Her previous album '' Illuminations'' having sold so poorly as to lose Vanguard a considerable sum of money, the label placed considerable pressure on Sainte-Marie to come up with something that would sell in larger numbers. To this effect, ''She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina'' was recorded with guitar from Jesse Ed Davis,

Ry Cooder Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder (born March 15, 1947) is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, a ...

and

Neil Young Neil Percival Young (born November 12, 1945) is a Canadian-American singer and songwriter. After embarking on a music career in Winnipeg in the 1960s, Young moved to Los Angeles, joining Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Richie Fu ...

and assistance from the latter's backing band

Crazy Horse Crazy Horse ( lkt, Tȟašúŋke Witkó, italic=no, , ; 1840 – September 5, 1877) was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band in the 19th century. He took up arms against the United States federal government to fight against encroachment by w ...

. There was also a change in focus of the material: covers of contemporary songs, which she had almost never recorded before, accounted for five of the eleven songs. Vanguard boss

Maynard Solomon Maynard Elliott Solomon (January 5, 1930 – September 28, 2020) was an American music executive and musicologist, a co-founder of Vanguard Records as well as a music producer."Maynard Solomon" in '' Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians'', ...

, who had produced her first five albums and most of ''Illuminations'', surrendered production duties completely to Neil Young producer Jack Nitzsche, who was later to marry Sainte-Marie after she wrote "

Up Where We Belong "Up Where We Belong" is a song written by Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings that was recorded by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for the 1982 film ''An Officer and a Gentleman''. Warnes was recommended to sing a song from the ...

" with him in the early 1980s. This label-driven effort to achieve increased commercial success did briefly pay off when "Soldier Blue", the theme song from the 1970 movie of the same name reached number 7 in the

UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

and was a hit throughout Europe. It failed to chart in the States, however, and the album barely dented the ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large adverti ...

'' Top 200, which served to strain the relationship between Sainte-Marie and Vanguard and paved the way for their split in 1973 after '' Quiet Places''. Soldier Blue single received a silver disc award for 50,000 sales in Sweden.

Track listing

All songs composed by Buffy Sainte-Marie except where noted. # "Rollin' Mill Man" (

Gerry Goffin Gerald Goffin (February 11, 1939 – June 19, 2014) was an American lyricist. Collaborating initially with his first wife, Carole King, he co-wrote many international pop hits of the early and mid-1960s, including the US No.1 hits " Will You Lo ...

, Russ Titelman) – 2:18 # " Smack Water Jack" (Gerry Goffin,

Carole King Carole King Klein (born Carol Joan Klein; February 9, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, and musician who has been active since 1958, initially as one of the staff songwriters at 1650 Broadway and later as a solo artist. Regarded as one ...

) – 3:21 # "Sweet September Morning" – 2:53 # "She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina" – 2:17 # "Bells" – (

Leonard Cohen Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death, and romantic relationships. He was inducted in ...

) – 4:37 # " Helpless" (

) – 3:11 # "Moratorium" – 4:14 # "The Surfer" – (Buffy Sainte-Marie, Ariel Gonzales, Carlos Pardeiro) – 2:38 # " Song of the French Partisan" ( Anna Marly, Hy Zaret) – 3:16 # " Soldier Blue" – 3:21 # "Now You've Been Gone for a Long Time" – 2:53

Personnel

*Buffy Sainte-Marie – vocals * Jesse Ed Davis,

– guitar *

Jack Nitzsche Bernard Alfred "Jack" Nitzsche ( '; April 22, 1937 – August 25, 2000) was an American musician, arranger, songwriter, composer, and record producer. He first came to prominence in the early 1960s as the right-hand-man of producer Phil Spe ...

– piano * Merry Clayton – background vocals *Gayle Levant – harp *

Charts

References

{{Authority control 1971 albums Buffy Sainte-Marie albums Albums produced by Jack Nitzsche Vanguard Records albums