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Voor liefhebbers van zeventiger jaren country rock. Met dank aan Makalu10

Matthews Southern Comfort
This UK band was formed by former Fairport Convention singer/guitarist Iain Matthews (b. Ian Matthew McDonald, 16 June 1946, Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England), and was named after his 1969 debut for MCA Records. Comprising Matthews, Mark Griffiths (guitar), Carl Barnwell (guitar), Gordon Huntley (pedal steel guitar), Andy Leigh (bass) and Ray Duffy (drums), the newly formed band signed to EMI Records. The unit’s country-tinged sound proved to be an excellent forum for Matthews’ songwriting talents. In the summer of 1970, their second album, Second Spring reached the UK Top 40 and was followed by a winter chart-topper, ‘Woodstock’. Joni Mitchell wrote the single as a tribute to the famous festival that she had been unable to attend. Already issued as a single in a hard rocking vein by Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young, it was a surprise UK number 1 for Matthews Southern Comfort. Unfortunately, success was followed by friction within the band and, two months later, Matthews announced his intention to pursue a solo career. One more album followed after which the band truncated their name to Southern Comfort. After two further albums, they disbanded in the summer of 1972. 

Plainsong
In Search of Amelia Earhart is the 1972 album by Plainsong, a band formed by country rock/folk rock musician Ian Matthews and Andy Roberts.

Ian Matthews played in four different incarnations within three years. He had left Fairport Convention for his own band, Matthews' Southern Comfort, put out two solo LPs for Vertigo Records, and then started the band Plainsong.

It is probably fair to say that In Search of Amelia Earhart is the pinnacle of Matthews' work in the 1970s. Working with producer Sandy Robertson (Hard Meat, Steeleye Span, Shirley Collins), Ian and bandmates, notably Andy Roberts who shared vocals on the album, created an atypical British folk album conceived around the idea of the legends surrounding Amelia Earhart and her supposed demise.

Matthews had read a book by Fred Goerner hypothesizing that Earhart and her flying companion Frederick Noonan had crashed around the Japanese held Marshall Island area and been taken prisoner by the Japanese on Saipan, in the Marianas, in 1937. Their plane had supposedly been outfitted with aerial cameras and had a bigger fuel tank than anyone outside of the US government knew. After being grilled by Japanese interrogators Earhart would perish of dysentery, and Noonan was beheaded by the Japanese.

Not all of the songs on the album are directly about Amelia Earhart. But the album carries that somber, mellow tone that so much great folk music of the early ’70s was in touch with. Many of the songs are about seeing and reaching for light, whether they be the light of day or the light of death. So in a way the album is more about the way people felt about, cared about and thought about Amelia Earhart and her death. That she is still considered a heroine of aviation and a distinctly American hero keeps the mystery of what happened to her in the greater cultural imagination.

Matthews’ Southern Comfort

   1970: Matthews' Southern Comfort
   1970: Second spring
   1970: Later that same year
   
Plainsong

   1972: In search of Amelia Earheart