Canadian Gino Vanelli in 7 from the beginning 1973 to 1981

A note on the page for his first, brief album Crazy Life (1973) (less than half an hour of music):

After a stint in New York City, Vannelli and his brother Joe went to Los Angeles in a financially distraught and desperate state to wait outside trumpeter Herb Alpert's locked gate for an audition. Alpert was Vannelli's last hope prior to heading back to Montreal the next day. Alpert liked what he heard and two days later signed Vannelli with A&M Records, releasing his first album in 1973. Vannelli's brother, Joe, served as arranger and keyboardist for most of his recording career. At a time when polyphonic synthesizers were non-existent, Joe overdubbed multiple parts to create a texture of sound that was progressive for the early 1970s. It is not widely known, but Vannelli played drums on the entire Crazy Life album. In fact, Gino and Joe performed all of the instruments except for flute and marimba.

You can see from the album covers that right from the beginning he instituted the decollete album cover which carried through all the way into the late seventies and "Saturday Night Fever" days when it was adopted by the mainstream for a brief unlucky period.  This nor his ridiculously good looking face should not detract from the fact that the music is incredibly interesting with influences from the great Stevie W. and also George Duke in the keyboard arrangements and progressive fusionary noodling with tons of thick (thicc as the kids say?) synthesizer patterns.  He did become super-famous by the end too with some AM radio hits, which also shouldn't be a distraction (like his hairy chest and powerfully Samson-like hair.)  His collaboration with brother Joe continued right through to the end of the LP days, and I wonder if today they are ready to kill each other, since such a thing is sure to be destroyed by the music industry. 

Actually he went on to make albums all the way through the eighties, the nineties, the 'aughts' or the millenial years (referencing those people we love to make fun of) all the way until a CD that came out 2 years ago.  I'm not going to even bother checking those out, because I'm only concerned with the progressive material that came out especially in the mid-70s albums like Sunup (1975), and Gemini (1976).

The two Vanellis together are very accomplished musicians and I'll confess even Gino's singing, although so poppy by the end, is extraordinary, with the range an impressive few octaves and the skill at soul singing blues notes and pentatonic scales undeniable, kind of like a Canuck Mariah Carey.  They took a bit to get started, the first album in addition to being too brief is too juvenilia-like to be of interest, echoing the old restaurant joke that not only was the food terrible, the portions of it were too small.  In these early albums you can detect a lot of Stevie Wonder influence especially with the electric organ wah-wah sound accentuated with synthesizers and the DIY qualities of the brothers playing a lot of extra instruments not necessarily as successfully/independently as one would like (e.g. the drumming).  I guess the first great song for us, from our progressive perspective, is the title track of the second album called Powerful People:

It's the kind of song that has to grow on you a little, plus, you have to look past the lyrics, unfortunately, which are a little bit trite, to get the passion of the songwriting (the arrangements I mean).   The middle passage features two instrumentals, one classical, the second a walking bass line with jazz improvisations on top.  So not at all the usual kind of pop song.  You could also argue it's a little bit mixed up, though that can be a good thing, being an adjectival description of some Genesis too.

Then you have the title track of Storm at Sunup, which really hits it out of the ballpark, nailing the soul (George Duke)-fusion-progressive synths bit perfectly in addition to showing off his immense vocal range:

Then on Gist of the Gemini (1975) the song called Omens of Love which was stolen by famed Argentinian Luis Alberto Spinetta (Jade) for his record called Only Love Can Sustain (1980) kills me, not only due to its lush romanticism which is like the heaviest emotional resonance I can imagine musically, but it just mystifies me that any human being can be so gifted as to write music that is so full of beauty and depth of feeling:

Here it's the chord changes that amplify his emotion with the always unusual resolutions from what are ordinary enough at 1st sight (the usual Stairway to Heaven descending chromatic minor key pattern, and in 'the usual' A minor to boot). I would go so far as to say this approaches the depth of progressive of the great C. Nieman, the Polish genius we all know so well.  As I understand it the A minor (lacking the third or 'c' note at first) pattern resolves into B major, truly a shocking transition, moving via B7 to E minor for the space of a chorus, which somehow goes back to the original A.  It's the mix of the melody with the chords that makes it successful, the two together perfectly complementing each other along with above-average lyrics (especially for these guys).

I'm going to sidetrack here to mention that Spinetta's Love album is for me his greatest masterpiece, really unheralded and underappreciated especially since it's like a concept album.  

Still more surprising is the instrumental suite "Prelude to War" which follows shortly after and to me reminds of the Warship Suite from Swiss artist Busser posted here long ago.  Incredible to come upon this in the middle of all the progressive soul/fusion vocalizing.  Not clear to me which war they're referring to here, in 1976.

But it gets even more surprising, by the next album (Pauper in Paradise, 1977) the title track features a full-blown progressive classical composition like Chicago in their early days, for example in Chicago (1970)'s Mourning Suite, or Harmonium's fifth season epic instrumental followed by some nice electric keyboard noodling around, again, cross between ELP and George Duke:

Sadly the remainder of this one turned out to be quite ordinary pop.  

But these albums as a whole are full of surprises for sure.  It goes without saying that by Brother to Brother (1978) we have almost completely lost the progressive element, though bits of it still remain for example in original chord changes.  So we are left with some really gorgeous fusion and progressive soul-fusion and even some out-right prog in some tracks from the mid-seventies albums, Sunup, Gemini, Pauper.