Eagles (1973) Doolin Dalton‏

 It's been a week since we lost the great Glenn Frey, the mastermind behind the Eagles sound who juggled lead vocals, lead guitar and song writing duties on their hit multi platinum albums. I chose this gem from his creative peak, the early 70s when he effectively fronted the Eagles, a hot young country rock band that was far less traditional than their competitors mixing heavy doses of Pop, Rock and Soul with mild country flavourings. Though 1973's Desperado album was a commercial failure for the band that started on the back of a hit single, it featured some of Frey's best work. Doolin Dalton a Henley/Frey/Souther/Browne collaboration begins with Frey's old west harmonica setting the scene atmospherically on a cinematic scale. The vivid landscape already created due to the downbeat mix of acoustic and electric guitars played with a strong wistful echo.
  While Don Henley handles most of the lead vocals as a joint narrator with Frey, it's Glenn's dramatic asides that give the song an electricity. His deep, rugged declarations of "Lay down your law books there no damn good!" or "Well the towns lay out across the dusty plains". But it is that last bridge section where sonically the song spotlights Frey strumming his lone acoustic guitar like a camp fire storyteller spinning a yarn. His voice crisp, defiant and yet with a sweet sensitivity. His powerhouse moment is the real highlight, the climactic crux of the song before the fading denouement and it keeps you engaged in the edge of your seat. Glenn's arrangement is wonderful because the little details make this song, notice how at the end after Henley's closing verse both lead singers then exchange a humming pattern similar to their tag team vocal work during the composition.

Overall this along with Desperado is based around the Post modern criticism of Old West savagery  and is delivered in a monumental arrangement that proved they would always be bigger than Poco and the Byrds simply because they wrote bigger sounding tunes. It's a triumph for Frey's vocals and arrangement and final proof of his genius; a man who had to chose between his 'back' and his 'brains' and used both.