US Gypsy and related from 1970 to 1979

Here's another band I was unfamiliar with until recently, though it's not all-out progressive, there are touches here and there, particularly as you move forward in the decade (oddly enough). They are similar to the similarly named Austrian Gipsy Love band which had Peter Wolf in it that I posted here.  Actually they are similar to any number of accessible, radio-friendly, blues-rock-based 'rock bands' from the early 70s with quite a few original ideas or thoughts and not the greatest skill at songwriting, really.  But they did put out 4 LPs in the first half of the seventies.

From Discogs:

1970s American progressive rock band from Minnesota, keyboardist James Walsh continued the band in various incarnations as The James Walsh Gypsy Band and Calvin James.

I take it the main songwriter in the early albums was guitarist Enrico Rosenbaum.  The majority of those early songs are hard rock blues with wonderful harmony vocals, similar to British Foghat, for example.  Here and there it seems James Walsh contributed some songs, noticeable for his distinctive vocals and the keyboards-based writing.  I found the track called The Vision from the first album to be remarkably ahead of its time in terms of extended progressiveness considering the release year:

Then, in the late 70s, James Walsh rechristened the band in the manner mentioned above & put out a wonderful LP called (ST) James Walsh Gypsy Band in 1978 which pushed the 70s-style smoothly arranged singer-songwriter far beyond the AM norm into some more progressive territory.  For example the track called My Star:

Whilst the song called Lookin' Up I See for me is such pure seventies pop bliss it just breaks my heart to hear it:

Subsequently a second album from him was released to CD (recently) with some more just magical pop-style 70s hits, very little progressive, but enough interesting hooks and ideas to keep us busy. There is a song about the Caves of Altamira regarding the cro magnon paintings, that made me fall off the chair with its surprising lyrics (surely the only song ever written about cro magnon painting!).  On the other hand, for a guy as old as me, the song called Lie To Me (so it doesn't hurt as much) is an experience I remember well though I really don't want to:

The description of this last album is as follows:

Preservation Records is proud to present one of the finest blue-eyed soul masterpieces for the first time on vinyl.  Recorded in the legendary Muscle Shoals studios in 1979. This is the album that was recorded right after James Walsh’ self-titled ’78 album on RCA. Unfortunately, it was shelved but Preservation is now releasing it in collaboration with James and his team.  Killer soulful tracks with the cream of session musicians from Muscle Shoals, Tower of Power Horns and Bee-Gees Strings.

For once, in my opinion, the promotional blurb does not exaggerate the contents.

I don't feel it's appropriate to deny the artist the beauty of this lost release from 1979 being finally reissued, so I'll do very limited time for this last.

Uploads split into 3 packages. Sorry about the sizes, but it's too tedious to do each album separately for the two spaces (i.e. zippy and send).