Al Green - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 9-10-1974

It's very strange to me how little of Al Green's live material has been released. He's had a career about as long as James Brown's. There are at least 32 official James Brown live albums. Whereas there is only one official Al Green live album, and that one is marred by the fact that it was recorded at the height of the disco era. So there's nothing from him in his 1970s prime. Yet he performed very exciting concerts, often going well beyond just slavishly reproducing the studio versions.

I've tried to fix this by posting a 1973 concert he did for a TV show. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/07/al-green-soul-wnet-studios-new-york.html

And now, I'm posting this one. Although it's only from one year later, Green had so many hits during that time that the song list is very different, with only three songs featured on both.

The bulk of this album comes from an appearance he made on "The Midnight Special," a popular US musical TV show in the 1970s. But I've augmented that with two songs he did for the "Soul Train" TV show in 1975. Those are at the end. 

When I first posted this album in 2020, it had various problems, like songs getting cut off well before they ended. In 2025, I found a much better source, and completely redid the album from scratch. His episode was a special one, in that nearly the entire hour and a half long show was reserved just for his music. The only exception was two songs by Joe Cocker, which actually were tapes from 1969. I've removed those. Also, there were a couple of long monologues, like an interview, except without anyone asking questions. Those obviously were recorded separately from the concert, due to the lack of any crowd response. So I cut those out. But I've put them together and included it as the bonus track called "monologue," for anyone who is interested.  

Between this concert and the other Al Green one I've posted, just about all of his big 1970s hits are included. A year or two after this, he began getting much more religious with his music. A few years after that, he left the music industry altogether for a while to be a preacher. He's generally done a mix of religious and secular music ever since. So if you're not into his religious material, these two 1970s concerts are the only live recordings I know with good sound quality.

This album is an hour and one minute long.

UPDATE: On October 23, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. As mentioned above, I did a complete overhaul, which resulted in a bunch of extra songs, and improved sound quality for everything. Along the way, I got rid of a couple of "Soul Train" tracks. I'll see if I can attach them to some other Al Green album in the future. He also hosted a 1973 Midnight Special episode, so I might post that one, eventually. 

01 Sweet Sixteen (Al Green)
02 Tired of Being Alone (Al Green)
03 talk (Al Green)
04 Sha La La [Make Me Happy] (Al Green)
05 Here I Am [Come and Take Me] (Al Green)
06 talk (Al Green)
07 Funny How Time Slips Away (Al Green)
08 How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - For the Good Times (Al Green)
09 Let's Get Married (Al Green)
10 I'm Still in Love with You (Al Green)
11 Let's Stay Together (Al Green)
12 Love and Happiness (Al Green)
13 L-O-V-E [Love] (Al Green)
14 Take Me to the River (Al Green)

monologue (Al Green)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HrweWtKZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/HNnBEblcyS4KXd5/file

At first, I thought this concert took place on October 4, 1974. But then I found a photo of him from September 10, 1974, said to be in Los Angeles (with Burbank a suburb of that), where he was wearing the exact same outfit. Furthermore, the background even appears to be the same. (You can find the whole show on YouTube.) So I figure the concert was recorded on September 10th and then broadcast later, as was the typical procedure in those days.

Note that when I updated this album in 2025, I also updated the cover image. It's the same image, but I used an AI feature in Photoshop to fill in his visible shoulder and upper arm.