A Tramp Shining by Richard Harris

A Tramp Shining, released on Dunhill in 1968, is the unlikely pop debut of Richard Harris, the Irish actor who had just played King Arthur in the film of Camelot and sung several numbers on its soundtrack. This was his first solo album, and it belongs as much to Jimmy Webb as to Harris: Webb wrote the songs, arranged them and produced the whole thing, pouring on lush orchestral arrangements and grand, swooning melodies.

Harris sings it all like a man delivering a soliloquy, all gravel and grandeur, and the centerpiece is "MacArthur Park", a sprawling, melodramatic epic that went to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and to number one in Canada and Australia. The album went on to a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year in 1969, a remarkable result for a movie star's first go at making records.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.