Guitarists Richie Furay and Jim Messina, former members of Buffalo Springfield, were joined by multi-instrumentalist Rusty Young, bassist Randy Meisner and drummer George Grantham.

Meisner quit the band while they were recording their first album, Pickin' Up the Pieces, though his bass and backing vocal parts were kept in the final mix.

To date, the band has released 19 studio albums, the most successful of which was 1978's Legend, which featured the Billboard Hot 100 #17 and Adult Contemporary #1 hit "Crazy Love".

One of Furay's solo efforts was the country-influenced ballad "Kind Woman", which he recorded with the help of producer/engineer/bassist Jim Messina and pedal steel guitarist Rusty Young.

At the recommendation of Peter Cetera of Chicago, Messina selected guitarist/singer Paul Cotton, a one-time member of the Illinois Speed Press, to replace him.

The band and its management were dissatisfied with Cropper's production and hired Canadian Jack Richardson, who'd had big success with The Guess Who and oversaw the next three albums, beginning with A Good Feelin' to Know (1972).

As a result, Furay became increasingly discouraged with Poco's prospects, especially since ex-bandmates Stills, Young, Meisner and Messina were so successful with their respective groups.

In an April 26, 1973 Rolling Stone magazine interview with Cameron Crowe, he vented that Poco was still a second-billed act and had not increased its audience.

38 but Furay departed at its release and joined with JD Souther and Chris Hillman to create the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band on Asylum Records.

Head Over Heels was their first ABC release, featuring Schmit's acoustic "Keep On Tryin" which became the group's most successful single to date, charting at No.

Al Garth (ex-Loggins and Messina), who guested on Head Over Heels and Rose of Cimarron, was added to the group's 1976 touring line up on sax and violin, but was gone by the end of that year.

In the summer of 1976, the group was on the bill with the Stills-Young Band teaming but was left high and dry when Neil Young pulled out of the tour, which was then canceled.

[1] The appearance of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen playing synthesizer on two of the album's tracks marked a move away from the country rock sound the band had primarily been known for.

As a result, a fully produced live album recorded at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles in July 1977 was shelved by ABC.

After languishing in storage for many years, the album was eventually released by John Thaler and Futuredge Music in partnership with Universal Special Projects as The Last Roundup in 2004.

They selected the Britons Steve Chapman (drums) and Charlie Harrison (bass, backing vocals; formerly of Judas Jump), both of whom had played together with Leo Sayer and Al Stewart, to round out their new quartet.

Legend (1978), the Cotton-Young album with cover art by graphic artist (and later comedy actor) Phil Hartman, subsequently became the group's most commercially successful LP, containing two Top 20 hits, "Crazy Love" written and sung by Rusty Young (which also had a seven-week run at Number 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart in early 1979, the biggest hit on the AC chart that year) and Cotton's "Heart of the Night".

With the momentum built up from Legend's success, Poco were invited by the Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) collective to play during their concerts at Madison Square Garden in September 1979.

During the first half of the 1980s, the group released five more albums: Under the Gun (1980), Blue And Gray (1981), Cowboys & Englishmen (1982) on MCA and, moving over to Atlantic Records, Ghost Town (1982) and Inamorata (1984).

And after a few scattered live dates for the group in 1986 and 1987, Paul Cotton pursued a solo career and did not perform with Poco again until 1992, while Young played in Vince Gill's band.

[1] The group (having added a keyboardist, Dave Vanacore) toured in early 1990 opening for Marx and appeared at Farm Aid IV on April 7, 1990, at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Despite Legacy's gold status and the two hit singles, the band did not make much money on their 1990 tour, one of the problems being their booking into military bases that turned out to be mostly empty, as the troops were all deployed for the Desert Shield operation in the Persian Gulf.

In the meantime, Rusty Young was the sole owner of the Poco name by early 1992 and, though they had not officially disbanded, the band seemed to be quietly fading away.

Despite this, Young once again teamed with Cotton, brought in new members Richard Neville (vocals, bass) and Tim Smith (drums) and toured through the end of the decade, although on a very limited schedule.

Poco again became more active as a touring unit after they signed with Nashville manager Rick Alter and brought back Grantham and Sundrud in June 2000, reuniting the group's 1985 line-up.

For their gig the following night at Barnstable County Fair in East Falmouth, MA, Poco brought in local drummer Chuck Woodhams, then called Young's Nashville neighbor, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio drummer George Lawrence (who had earlier stood in for Tim Smith at some Poco concerts in June 1999) to sub on drums for Grantham for the rest of 2004.

Bareback at Big Sky (2005) and The Wildwood Sessions (2006) captured live acoustic versions of songs both new and familiar from their 40-plus year career.

Selling on iTunes, the band's website and through a distributor in Europe, Young, Sundrud and Webb penned all the songs on the self-produced album.

Three and a half months after Rusty Young's April 2021 death, his former partner in the band, Paul Cotton, died at his summer home in Eugene, Oregon, at age 78 on August 1, 2021.

[8] Fans and surviving band members have released the tribute album My Friend: A Tribute To Rusty Young, in March 2022 and there was a reunion/tribute "Poconut" concert on October 8, 2022, in Steelville, Missouri, near Young's home, where the surviving members of the band's final lineup, Jack Sundrud, Tom Hampton and Rick Lonow, were joined by original drummer George Grantham, who guested on harmony vocals, and Michael Kelsh.