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6 April 2016

Sweet Chariot - Wish I Were A Child/ Heavenly Road



Label: MCA
Year of Release: 1969

Another John Carter penned song on the blog so soon after the last? Well, why not. Both singles are very obscure efforts and both act as a testament to the fact that you can trace his talent not just in his hit productions, but in a lot of tracks which also fell by the wayside.

"Wish I Were A Child" has a much more serious, almost country rock flavour to it than most of his output, and is possibly indicative of Carter's desire to produce work which was slightly different to his poppier singles (though only he would be able to confirm this). It has a yearning, adult flavour to it that party crackers like "A Little Bit Of Soul" don't have. Perhaps that's why it failed to crack the charts, and remains almost completely unheard - there wasn't much of an outlet for songs like this one in the UK at the time.

The B-side "Heavenly Road" goes down the old gospel road and is even more unexpected. 

Sweet Chariot seem to be another studio-based outlet created for the realisation of one of John Carter's songs, rather than a 'proper' touring group. It's not unlikely that Carter contributed to the performance on the record in some way himself. 

Apologies for the slightly scuffed nature of both sides of this record.


7 comments:

Simon Mclean said...

That's definitely John Carter himself doing the lead vocals.

There was a Manchester-based band called Sweet Chariot at around the same time, but this doesn't appear to be anything to do with them.

Anonymous said...


This is the only single of Sweet Chariot ( with John Carter vocals), the other band with the same name is a Manchester based band, they also release one single

Sweet Chariot ( UK)

45:
1 When I'm A Kid/Mozart 73 (Columbia DB 8999) 1973


This trio from Manchester recorded their 45 at Abbey Road

Many thanks

All the best Albert

Arthur Nibble said...

So both acts called Sweet Chariot released a single related to childhood? Spooky!

Arthur Nibble said...

Update - the 'non-John Carter' Sweet Chariot appear to have released three singles, one of them in support of Manchester City FC.

23 Daves said...

Thanks for all the extra information, everyone!

Graham said...

I was hoping to do a sound comparison and confirm if it is indeed Carter singing on this and one or two of the other singles he seems to have been involved in as more than just the songwriter, but I can't seem to get the download to work.

23 Daves said...

Hi Graham that should be fixed now.