Rusty Young (born Norman Russell Young; February 23, 1946) is an American guitarist, vocalist and songwriter best known as one of the frontmen in the seminal country rock and Americana band Poco. A virtuoso on pedal steel guitar, he is celebrated for the ability to get a Hammond B3 organ sound out of the instrument by playing it through a Leslie speaker cabinet and as an innovator of producing other rock sounds from the instrument. (More from Wikipedia)
When Last Time Around was being wound up, Stephen Stills and Neil Young had already exited Buffalo Springfield; and Richie Furay (guitar and vocals) and Jim Messina (bass guitar) were about the only ones left. For the final track laid down by Buffalo Springfield, Furay and Messina were joined by Rusty Young (pedal steel guitar); he was a rarity in that time period in being one of the few steel guitarists who felt comfortable playing rock music. The three stuck together; at Young's suggestion, they added Randy Meisner (bass guitar and vocals), who had been in a band called the Poor, and George Grantham (drums and vocals), who had been in a psychedelic folk/rock band called Boenzee Cryque with Rusty Young.
The band first began calling themselves Pogo, but Walt Kelly, the creator of the popular comic strip Pogo objected, so they switched to Poco.
Richie Furay stayed with Poco through their sixth album, Crazy Eyes (1973); the album made the Top 40, but with the lackluster sales of both albums and singles, even he was starting to get discouraged. Poco hung in there and hit something of a creative peak with Rose of Cimarron (1976); the title track, "Rose of Cimarron", written by Rusty Young was covered by Emmylou Harris and was the de facto title track on her album Cimarron. Though only Rusty Young remained among the founding members, their 1978 album Legend was the band's most successful, reaching #14 on the Billboard album charts and including two Top 20 singles, "Crazy Love" and "Heart of the Night".
(April 2014)
