On her newest album Bonnie Raitt, one of the most gifted contemporary pop interpreters, partially succeeds in coping with uncongenial production by Jerry Ragovoy. The uneven results illustrate an important record industry problem: How are artists to deal with a sophisticated production technology that dictates the creation of flawlessly manufactured commercial "product" and tends to disallow the idiosyncratic, spontaneous and simple? Increasingly, the outcome is a bland MOR slickness that depersonalizes an artist's vocal quality and undermines the character of a song.

Ragovoy's production, while it sets off Raitt's voice as a beautiful artifact, fails to exploit her great strength as a blues singer. Joni Mitchell's "That Song about the Midway" and James Taylor's "Rainy Day Man" emerge as high-quality schlock ballads, either perfect or perfectly boring. More successful are John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery" and Bill Payne's "Streetlights," both of which Raitt animates, despite their overly polished sound settings. Raitt fares best in the bluesier songs — Ragovoy's own "Ain't Nobody Home," Lou Courtney's "You Got To Be Ready for Love" and Allen Toussaint's cynical "What Is Success." The last, one of Raitt's finest recorded performances, is the only cut in which she tears loose and shows her ability as an R&B interpreter.

The apparent intention behind Streetlights is to broaden Raitt's commercial appeal, to make her a superstar a la Roberta Flack. I hope the plan succeeds, so that Raitt will have the option to record her next album in a garage, singing the blues against her own slide guitar and a small rhythm section, and still sell millions. One of the many pleasures of Bonnie Raitt's previous records, a pleasure that can be even more fully appreciated in live performance, is a shared sense of fun. While Raitt demonstrates impressive technical ability on Streetlights, she doesn't sound like she's having a good time.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."