Heavy Cruiser - s/t 1972 / "Lucky Dog" 1973

From Neil Merryweather.com: "In a nutshell... Neil took the members from Mama Lion into a studio to demo some songs. They recorded half a dozen songs and a few days later, Mama Lion wound up in New York City to play Central Park with Billy Preston. The engineer in L.A. made an acetate of Neil's songs and sent it to Neil in care of Famous Music. The band went to a meet n greet at Famous Music and Neil played the acetate at the party. The head of A&R loved it and bought the music from Artie Ripp.

Neil called the project "Heavy Cruiser." When Mama Lion got back to L.A., Neil took the band back into the studio and they recorded a few more tracks to complete the "Heavy Cruiser" record. Artie Ripp stopped the band from putting their names on the record because he didn't want it to interfere with his main act Mama Lion.

The same thing happened when Neil did more of his songs with the band and produced a second Heavy Cruiser record called "Lucky Dog" - band members names were left off the cover.

Heavy Cruiser is;

Neil Merryweather - vocals, bass, acoustic guitar

James Newton Howard - organ, piano

Coffi Hall - drums/percussion

Alan Hertz - guitar