Hugenot Refugee

What do you get if you take The Nice and replace Keith Emerson for Patrick Moraz? The answer is simple Refugee, an excellent Symphonic Prog band. The previous story is well known, Keith Emerson, the heart and soul of The Nice left the band to form the first Prog supergroup ELP, so in that instant The Nice ceased to exist. They managed to survive until 1973 with to inferior releases "Elegy" and "Autumn from Spring" which mainly consist of older material and reworks of older tracks including a ghost keyboardist who was already playing in another band. But Lee Jackson and Brian Davidson wanted to revive the band, so they searched for another keyboardist who could replace Keith and they found him. The Swiss born virtuoso Patrick Moraz left Mainhorse so they recruited him and the result was incredibly solid…

Drenched in red, with a plain black and white cover photo of the band, Refugee had the distinction of being produced by the late, great Jimmy Miller and his protégé, the late Joe Zagarino, engineer from Exile on Main Street. This was a most prolific time for the legendary producer, Refugee having been released around the time of Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones, two albums by the Knack's Doug Fieger after Miller discovered Fieger and his band, Sky, signing them to RCA (where this album found distribution), and perhaps the most important parallel for Savage Rose, a release date for Refugee close to that of Delaney & Bonnie on Tour With Eric Clapton, considered by many one of Jimmy Miller's most significant recordings…

Essential: A masterpiece of progressive rock music.
What an awesome album this is! When one reflects on the considerable popularity of ELP and Yes among progressive rock fans, it's really surprising how many people fail to make the correct extrapolations to arrive at this particular masterpiece …