Loggins, Kenny

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Kenny Loggins

Singer, songwriter

Kenny Loggins has made a name for himself in several areas of the music industry: first as a songwriter, then as a partner to Jim Messina in the duo Loggins and Messina, and finally as a solo artist. His first involvement with music was in a parochial school in Alhambra, California, where he learned to play the guitar. He joined afolkgroup while in college, but by the late 1960s he had gravitated to rock.

Loggins spent time in two groups, Gator Creek and Second Helping, which were under contract to Mercury and Viva records, respectively, but neither gained much notice. In 1969, Loggins left Viva to work for one hundred dollars a week as a songwriter for ABC Wingate, the publishing division of ABC records. Some of his most notable work there was recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Their album Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy contained four of Loggins’s songs, including the very popular “House at Pooh Corner.”

In 1971, Loggins was offered an artist’s contract with Columbia Records, and Jim Messina was chosen to be his producer. Messina had formerly played bass for Buffalo Springfield and lead guitar for Poco, but had grown tired of touring and planned to concentrate his energies on studio work and production. To produce Loggins’s solo album, Messina recruited ex-Sunshine Company rhythm players Larry Sims and Merel Bregante, keyboardist Mike Ornartian, and hornmen Al Garth and Jon Clark.

During the recording sessions, Messina realized that Loggins’s musical style and his own were very complementary, and he ended up playing on the record as well as producing it. The completed album, Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin’ In, climbed the charts slowly but steadily. Thanks to “Vahevala,” an FM hit with a Caribbean feel, and “Danny’s Song,” which became popular after Anne Murray covered it, Sittin In’ eventually went gold.

Encouraged by their popularity, Loggins and Messina began touring with all the members of their studio band except Ornartian. “The Kenny Loggins Band with Jim Messina,” as they were billed, was received so enthusiastically by audiences that they soon cut another album, entitled Loggins and Messina.One of its country-rock songs, “Your Mama Don’t Dance,” became a major hit, and the album quickly went gold. Loggins and Messina cut five more albums during the 1970s and, although some music critics felt that they lacked the intensity of the first two albums, nearly all sold over a million copies. The exception was So Fine, which featured reworkings of classic songs of the 1950s. Fans didn’t appreciate the departure from good-time country-rock,

For the Record…

Full name, Kenneth Loggins; born January 7, 1948, in Everett, Washington; son of a traveling salesman. Member of rock groups Gator Creek and Second Helping during the late 1960s; songwriter for ABC Wingate, 1969–71; performed with Jim Messina as Loggins and Messina, 1971–66; solo artist, 1976—.

Addresses: Record Company —CBS Inc., 51 West Fifty-second Street, New York, NY 10019.

and the duo returned to their usual sound on their 1976 offering, Native Sons.In November 1976, Loggins and Messina announced that they would no longer be performing together. Despite the success of their partnership, they had maintained separate contracts and had never expected to make so many albums together.

Jim Messina returned almost exclusively to production work, and Loggins finally became the solo performer he’d set out to be earlier in the decade. His first solo album, Celebrate Me Home, was an extension of the country-tinged pop-rock sound of Loggins and Messina. Its follow-up, Nightwatch, was a platinum seller, as was 1979’s Keep the Fire.Despite becoming an album-oriented rock superstar in his own right, Loggins has continued to write for other performers. In recent years he has also devoted considerable time to writing songs for movie sound tracks, including “Footloose,” from the film of the same title, “I’m Alright,” from Caddyshack, “Danger Zone,” from Top Gun, and “Meet Me Half Way,” from Over the Top.