Heart Of The Nightby Poco

By 1978 Poco had pretty much disbanded but Paul Cotton and Rusty Young chose to carry on as the Cotton-Young Band. By the time they put together a few tunes and recruited a couple other musicians, the label decided to make their album the next Poco album. Legacy was released in 1978 and finally brought them a couple hits.

Heart Of The Night is a Paul Cotton composition that opens with a simple little melody derived from a D chord, adds a 3-chord syncopated change for the chorus, wraps up with a bridge based on the same two chords as the verse, and adds colorful descriptions of the South as lyrics to create what may be considered their most famous song.

The original was altered (slowed down) to be 1/2 step lower than the key they played it in. They generally played it in the key of D when performing it live, which is what is shown in this lesson.