''Son of Schmilsson'' is the eighth album by American singer

Harry Nilsson Harry Edward Nilsson III (June 15, 1941 – January 15, 1994), sometimes credited as Nilsson, was an American singer-songwriter who reached the peak of his success in the early 1970s. His work is characterized by pioneering vocal overdub experi ...

, released in 1972 by

RCA Records RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (its former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic R ...

Background

Nilsson was being pressured to produce a follow-up album similar to his 1971 breakthrough, ''

Nilsson Schmilsson ''Nilsson Schmilsson'' is the seventh studio album by American singer Harry Nilsson, released by RCA Records on November 11, 1971. It was Nilsson's most commercially successful work, producing three of his best-known songs. Among these was the n ...

'', but instead, he created a more eccentric work. The album was produced by

Richard Perry Richard Van Perry (June 18, 1942 – December 24, 2024) was an American record producer. He began his musical career as a performer while attending Poly Prep, his high school in Brooklyn. After graduating from college he rose through the late ...

and features musical contributions from former

Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...

Ringo Starr Sir Richard Starkey (born 7 July 1940), known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, songwriter and actor who achieved international fame as the drummer for the Beatles. Starr occasionally sang lead vocals with the group, us ...

and

George Harrison George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Culture ...

. Other musicians on the recording include

Nicky Hopkins Nicholas Christian Hopkins (24 February 1944 – 6 September 1994) was an English pianist and organist. He performed on many popular and enduring British and American rock music recordings from the 1960s to the 1990s, including on songs recorde ...

Klaus Voormann Klaus Otto Wilhelm Voormann (born 29 April 1938) is a German graphic artist, artist, musician, and record producer. Voormann was the bassist for Manfred Mann from 1966 to 1969, and performed as a session musician on a host of recordings, includ ...

Bobby Keys Robert Henry Keys (December 18, 1943 – December 2, 2014) was an American saxophonist who performed as a member of several horn sections of the 1970s. He appears on albums by the Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Harry Nilsson, Delaney ...

and

Peter Frampton Peter Kenneth Frampton (born 22 April 1950) is an English-American guitarist, singer, and songwriter who rose to prominence as a member of the rock bands the Herd and Humble Pie. Later in his career, Frampton found significant success as a s ...

. Among the album's tracks are " You're Breakin' My Heart" and the US hit " Spaceman". Most of the sessions were extensively filmed, at the request of Nilsson. The footage was to be used for a planned documentary, titled ''Did Somebody Drop His Mouse?'', but the film was never released. The album cover features a photograph of Nilsson (dressed as a

Dracula ''Dracula'' is an 1897 Gothic fiction, Gothic horror fiction, horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. The narrative is Epistolary novel, related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens ...

-like vampire) taken by Michael Putland at George Harrison’s home Friar Park. The album was remastered and released on CD with two bonus tracks in 2000 and with five bonus tracks in 2006.

Track listing

All tracks written by

except where noted. ;Side one (LP) # "Take 54" – 4:22 # "Remember (Christmas)"– 4:07 # "Joy" – 3:42 # "Turn on Your Radio" – 2:42 # " You're Breakin' My Heart" – 3:10 ;Side two (LP) #

" Spaceman" – 3:33 # "The Lottery Song" – 2:24 # " At My Front Door" ( Ewart G. Abner, John C. Moore) – 2:46 # "Ambush" – 5:35 # "I'd Rather Be Dead" (Nilsson,

) – 3:20 # "The Most Beautiful World in the World" – 3:33 ;Bonus tracks (2000 reissue)

"Joy" (demo version: guitar) – 1:57
"Joy" (demo version: piano) – 0:55

;Bonus tracks (2006 reissue)

"What's Your Sign?" (Alternate version) – 3:08
"Take 54" (Alternate take) – 3:39
"Campo de Encino" (
Jimmy Webb Jimmy Layne Webb (born August 15, 1946) is an American songwriter, composer, and singer. He achieved success at an early age, winning the Grammy Award for Song of the Year at the age of 21. During his career, he established himself as one of Am ...
) – 4:54
"Daybreak" (Single version) – 3:06
" It Had to Be You" (Jam session) – 2:34 (
Hidden track In the field of recorded music, a hidden track (sometimes called a ghost track, secret track or unlisted track) is a song or a piece of audio that has been placed on a CD, audio cassette, LP record, or other recorded medium, in such a way as t ...
)

Charts

Personnel

* Harry Nilsson –

vocals Singing is the art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define sing ...

electric piano An electric piano is a musical instrument that has a piano-style musical keyboard, where sound is produced by means of mechanical hammers striking metal strings or reeds or wire tines, which leads to vibrations which are then converted into ele ...

(tracks 1, 5, 6, 9),

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked, its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

(4) *

–

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

(tracks 1–8, 11) *

–

bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...

(tracks 1, 3–6, 8, 11),

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to p ...

(1, 5), electric guitar (7) *

(credited as Richie Snare) –

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

(tracks 1, 6, 8, 9, 11) *

–

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electric Guitar amplifier, sound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickup (music technology), pickups ...

(tracks 3–5, 8, 9), acoustic guitar (6, 7) *

Chris Spedding Christopher John Spedding (born Peter Robinson, 17 June 1944) is an English guitarist and record producer. In a career spanning more than 50 years, Spedding is best known for his studio session work. By the early 1970s, he had become one of th ...

–

bouzouki The bouzouki (, also ; ; alt. pl. ''bouzoukia'', , from Greek , from Turkish ) is a musical instrument popular in West Asia (Syria, Iraq), Europe and Balkans (Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey). It is a member of the long-necked lute fam ...

(track 2), electric guitar (8, 9), acoustic guitar (6, 7) *

Milt Holland Milton Holland (born Milton Olshansky; February 7, 1917 – November 4, 2005) was an American drummer, percussionist, ethnomusicologist and writer in the Los Angeles music scene. He pioneered the use of African, South American, and Indian perc ...

–

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

(tracks 1, 7) * Jim Price –

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitche ...

(tracks 1, 5, 9),

trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...

(9), horn arrangement (9) *

–

(tracks 1, 5, 8, 9) * Lowell George – guitar (track 1) * Del Newman –

string String or strings may refer to: *String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...

arrangements (track 2, 11) * Pop Arts String Quartet - strings (track 2) * John Uribe –

(tracks 3, 6, 7), electric guitar (track 9) * Red Rhodes –

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a console steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings, enabling more varied and complex music to be played than with other steel guitar designs. Like all steel guitars, it can play ...

(track 3) *

Ray Cooper Raymond Cooper (born 19 September 1947) is an English musician who has worked as a session and road-tour percussionist. During his career, Cooper has worked and toured with numerous musically diverse bands and artists including Elton John (as ...

– percussion (tracks 3, 7, 11),

congas The conga, also known as tumbadora, is a tall, narrow, single-headed drum from Cuba. Congas are stave (wood), staved like barrels and classified into three types: quinto (drum), quinto (lead drum, highest), tres dos or tres golpes (middle), an ...

(8),

tambourine The tambourine is a musical instrument in the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zills". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, thoug ...

(9) * Kirby Johnson – horn arrangements (tracks 4, 11) * Richard Mackey – tuben/French horn (track 4) *

Vincent DeRosa Vincent Ned DeRosa (October 5, 1920 – July 18, 2022) was an American hornist who served as a studio musician for Hollywood soundtracks and other recordings from 1935 until his retirement in 2008. Because his career spanned over 70 years, duri ...

– tuben/French horn (track 4) * David Duke – tuben/French horn (track 4) *

(credited as George Harrysong) –

slide guitar Slide guitar is a technique for playing the guitar that is often used in blues music. It involves playing a guitar while holding a hard object (a slide) against the strings, creating the opportunity for glissando effects and deep vibratos that ...

(track 5) * Barry Morgan – drums (tracks 3, 5) * Paul Buckmaster – orchestral arrangement (track 6) * "Moxie" – bass harmonica (track 6)Armstrong, Curtis (February 2006). ''Son of Schmilsson'' remastered re-release liner notes
page 13
Quoting Paul Buckmaster. *

– percussion (tracks 6, 11), arrangements (11) * Senior Citizens of the

Stepney Stepney is an area in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the East End of London. Stepney is no longer officially defined, and is usually used to refer to a relatively small area. However, for much of its history the place name was applied to ...

Pinner Pinner is a suburb in the London Borough of Harrow, northwest London, England, northwest of Charing Cross, close to the border with Hillingdon, historically in the county of Middlesex. The population was 38,698 in 2021. Originally a mediaeval ...

Choir Club No. 6, London, England –

choir A choir ( ), also known as a chorale or chorus (from Latin ''chorus'', meaning 'a dance in a circle') is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform or in other words ...

(track 10) * The Henry Krein Quartet with Klaus Voormann – rhythm section (track 10) * Henry Krein –

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"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 (mou ...

(track 10) * Paul Keogh – guitar (track 11) * Les Thatcher – guitar (track 11) ;Technical * Ken Scott, Robin Geoffrey Cable, Phil McDonald - engineer * Michael Putland - cover photography

Charts

Album Single

Certifications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Son Of Schmilsson 1972 albums Harry Nilsson albums RCA Records albums Albums produced by Richard Perry Albums recorded at Trident Studios Albums recorded at Apple Studios Albums arranged by Paul Buckmaster