The Doors-An American Prayer, Jim Morrison

The Doors-An American Prayer, Jim Morrison

Cover has normal wear and tear for the age. Cover is graded VG. Record is graded VG. FIRST PRESS!!

An American Prayer is the ninth and final studio album by the American rock band the Doors. Following the death of Jim Morrison and the band’s break-up, the surviving members of the Doors reconvened to set several of Morrison’s spoken word recordings to music. It was the only album by the Doors to be nominated for a Grammy Award in the “Spoken Word” category.

The Doors formed in 1965 and released six studio albums before singer/lyricist Jim Morrison’s death in July 1971. The surviving band members (keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore) recorded two additional albums as a trio, but broke up in 1973.

Morrison had originally recorded some of his poetry between 1969 and 1970, in either Elektra’s recording studios or Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California. These drafts were completed in two stints, first in the spring of 1969, and the other in December 1970. The first session included poems like “Bird of Prey”, “Under Waterfall” and “Orange County”, sang a cappella by Morrison with the latter featuring piano played by him. By January 1971, after the completion of these recordings, Morrison had developed some concepts for the album cover art, and was in correspondence with artist T. E. Breitenbach to design this cover in the form of a triptych. Prior to leaving for Paris in March 1971, Morrison had also approached composer Lalo Schifrin as a possible collaborator on the music to accompany the poetry, instead of the other members of the Doors.

In 1978, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore reunited to record the music for An American Prayer. On November 19, 1978, in the Los Angeles Times, Ray Manzarek explained, “We did this album to show the side of Jim which has been underrated all these years.” According to the book Break on Through, when recording the music, the three Doors members decided to choose a different musical style than Morrison’s original vision of orchestral music on the project. Other pieces of music and spoken word recorded by the Doors and Morrison were also used in the audio collage, such as dialogue from Morrison’s film HWY: An American Pastoral, snippets from jam sessions, and featuring sections from “The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)”. John Densmore devised an early use of synthesized drums for this take.