Mr. Wonderful is the second studio album by British blues rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 23 August 1968. In the US, the album was not released, though around half of the tracks appeared on English Rose. An expanded version of Mr. Wonderful was included in the box setThe Complete Blue Horizon Sessions.
Background
The album was broadly similar to their debut album, albeit with some changes to personnel and recording method. The album was recorded live in the studio with miked amplifiers and PA system, rather than plugged into the board.[3]
A horn section was introduced and Christine Perfect (later Christine McVie) of Chicken Shack was featured on keyboards. Mike Vernon, who served as the producer on the album, placed baffles and wooden partitions between the instruments to avoid audio spill.[4] Spencer granted the horn section leeway when determining what to play on his compositions, telling them to "just blow".[5] The album took a total of four days to record.[6] "Trying So Hard to Forget", the album's final song, was a duet between Green on guitar and Duster Bennett on harmonica.[5]
The band originally wanted the album to be titled A Good Length, which would have featured an "obvious phallic symbol" on the album's front cover according to Fleetwood, although this idea was rejected. Udder Sucker was the next proposed title, and Fleetwood travelled to his godmother's farm to take a photo underneath a cow for the cover art, but the record label also turned this idea down. Fleetwood instead posed naked on the cover of Mr. Wonderful.[6]
Reception
Compared to the huge success of the band's first album, Fleetwood Mac, the follow-up received rather muted critical reviews: AllMusic described it as "a disappointment". Four of the songs, "Dust My Broom", "Doctor Brown", "Need Your Love Tonight" and "Coming Home", all begin with an identical Elmore Jamesriff. "Evenin' Boogie" was the first instrumental released by Fleetwood Mac.
Sputnik Music describes the style as "vocally conservative, sticking to gruff mannerisms, and it often sounds like Green is drunkedly wandering through the music. The production adds further insult to injury, as it muffles his voice rather than amplifying it and makes the instruments sound murky."[7]
^ abFleetwood, Mick; Davis, Stephen (1990). Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures with Fleetwood Mac. New York: William Morrow and Company. pp. 60–62. ISBN0-688-06647-X.
^Pennanen, Timo (2006). Sisältää hitin – levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla vuodesta 1972 (in Finnish) (1st ed.). Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. p. 166. ISBN978-951-1-21053-5.
