Over the next year Terje Fjelde has agreed to listen to nothing but David Foster on his iPod. He’s loaded the thing with over 1,200 songs produced, arranged, composed, and/or played by David Foster. A deal with the devil? He keeps wondering.

Today’s entry is dedicated to the first record ever produced by David Foster — a milestone! Rude Awakening by Bruce Miller was released in 1975. Apart from that, I really don’t know very much about it, so this will probably be a short entry.

I’ll compensate by including a fair share of mp3s, though.

This is a country-rock album with a few poppy moments, and certainly not what you would expect from a David Foster production. But hey, he worked with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Cate Brothers and Johnny Cash in 1975, too, so he had half a foot in that genre as well. It’s produced by Foster and Gaye Delorme, a Canadian guitar virtuoso. He plays guitar on all tracks, and Foster provides all keyboards (mainly Fender Rhodes, acoustic piano and some really nice Clavinet parts).

The record is a rarity. A Google search provides about 50 hits, of which maybe 10 are relevant — and 3 of those links to stuff written by yours truly. It has never been released on CD, which is a bit puzzling to me, considering it’s Foster’s debut as a producer. You can usually find a Japanese reissue for just about every recording involving David Foster and/or his buddy Jay Graydon in the 1970s. Not so in this case.

I wish I could tell you something about Bruce Miller, but after releasing this one album he seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. I think he’s Canadian. My vinyl LP was released on A&M Canada, and some of the recording sessions were done in Edmonton. One web page claims that he went on to become a successful country songwriter in Nashville, but I suspect they may have mixed him up with a different Bruce Miller. (There are a lot of Bruce Millers on the web, even the guy who wrote the Frasier theme. Maybe that’s him? Nah.) (more…)