After his one-album stint at Asylum Records with Luxury You Can Afford
in 1978, Joe Cocker was without a record label until 1981, when he signed
to Island Records. Island head Chris Blackwell took him to the Compass
Point studios in the Bahamas, where he recorded a 12" single, "Sweet
Little Woman"/"Look What You've Done," released in May
1981, then continued working on a full-length album. When that album,
Sheffield Steel, appeared a year later, listeners could be forgiven for
imagining, during the instrumental portions, that they were hearing not
a Joe Cocker disc, but rather a Robert Palmer record. The instrumentalists
were the Compass Point All-Stars, led by drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist
Robbie Shakespeare, and including keyboard player Wally Badarou and guitarist
Barry Reynolds, and they maintained a steady tropical groove on most tracks
that strongly recalled their work on Palmer's series of albums. Typically,
however, Cocker made his own a group of high-quality songs from major
songwriters. Bob Dylan's "Seven Days" was an obscure tune only
previously heard in a 1979 recording by Ron Wood. Cocker succeeded with
Randy Newman's "Marie" as he would again four years later with
the songwriter's "You Can Leave Your Hat On" by singing it without
any of the irony Newman's version contained. Cocker got a jump on what
would be the title track to Steve Winwood's next album, "Talking
Back to the Night," and he approached Jimmy Webb's "Just Like
Always" with delicacy. The result was an effective album, if, once
again, a one-off effort since Cocker, his career rejuvenated by the success
of the movie theme "Up Where We Belong," quickly decamped for
Capitol.
(by William Ruhlmann, All
Music Guide)
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