Larry Nelson was a pseudonym for Larry Knechtel, the multi-instrumentalist (keyboards, guitar, harmonica) most often remembered these days as a member of Bread and for playing the piano introduction to Simon and Garfunkel's 1970 hit A Bridge Over Troubled Water.
But his list of credits was far more extensive than that. The artists with whom Knechtel played included Elvis Presley, The Byrds, Duane Eddy, Neil Diamond and countless others.
With all that activity in the studio, he released very few albums of his own. There was The "In" Harmonica and Boss Baroque (credited to the Carmel Strings featuring Larry Knechtel), both recorded for World Pacific in 1965-66. Later in his career there were two new age albums -- Mountain Moods (1989) and Urban Gypsy (1990), released as part of MCA's Masters Series.
On The "In" Harmonica the band included such Los Angeles session stalwarts as Billy Preston (piano and organ), Al Casey (guitar), Jerry Cole (bass guitar) and Hal Blaine (drums). The album consists mainly of covers of folk-rock tunes of the day, including You Were on My Mind, written by Canadian folk singer Sylvia Tyson and recorded with her husband in the duo of Ian and Sylvia. The hit version, however, was by a U.S. group, The We Five. Listen to and download Larry "Nelson's" version below.
You Were on My Mind
The "In" Harmonica has never been released on CD and is not available as a (legal) download. Prices for used copies of the LP are all over the map -- anywhere from $5 to over $100. Most prices tend to be towards the higher end of the scale.
In the video below, Knechtel, who died in 2009, plays A Bridge Over Troubled Water with Vince Gill in 2007 at the Musicians Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Nashville for the group of L.A. session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew. The video was posted on YouTube with permission of the Musicians Hall of Fame.
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