Covered: Denny Randell & Sandy Linzer: 1964-1998

Here's another songwriting duo highlighted for my "Covered" series: Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you have never heard of them. I hadn't either, until recently. But while they didn't write any massive hits, they have enough hits for a solid album.

Randell and Linzer were both born in 1941. They were introduced to each other in 1963, and immediately began co-writing songs. The first song here, "Dawn (Go Away)," was written by Linzer with Bob Gaudio, a member of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and an impressive songwriter in his own right. I've already posted a "Covered" album for the Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio songwriting team. 

Randell and Linzer wrote a lot of songs for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, sometimes with Gaudio. I've included three such songs here (and a Franki Valli solo one). But "Working My Way Back to You" was also a hit for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons in 1966. I included the 1979 version by the Spinners instead because that was a much bigger hit. In fact, it was the biggest hit this songwriting team ever had, reaching Number One in Britain and Number Two in the U.S. 

In a similar way, "Can't Get Enough of You Baby" was a small hit for Question Mark and the Mysterians in 1967, but not enough to make the U.S. Top Forty. I included the 1998 version by Smash Mouth instead, since that was a bigger hit, making the Top Forty chart.

Probably another success was the song "I Believe in You and Me." (Linzer wrote it with someone else.) Whitney Houston had a Top Five hit in the U.S. with it in 1996. But, frankly, I find Houston's typically histrionic over-singing hard to take. It turns out the song was first released by the Four Tops in 1982. So I've included that version instead. It wasn't a hit, but the singing is much better.

I've been posting a lot of "Covered" albums featuring songwriters who got started in the early or mid-1960s. Nearly all of them stopped having hits by the end of the 1970s, due to changing musical trends (except for later covers of their earlier songs). But Randell and Linzer were a rarity in that they kept writing more hits through the end of the 1980s. The last original hit here is "Talk It Over" by Grayson Hugh in 1989.

However, their songwriting partnership petered out at the end of the 1970s. The vast majority of the songs up to and including "Native New Yorker" in 1977 were written by both of them. But the songs that come after that were written by one of them or the other, usually with other songwriting partners (except for tracks 12 and 17, which I mentioned above are not the original hit versions). 

Both Randell and Linzer also worked in other aspects of the music business, for instance producing albums, and promoting and developing the musical careers of some acts. Both of them are still alive, and about 85 years old, as I write this in 2026.

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 Dawn [Go Away] (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
02 A Lover's Concerto (Toys)
03 Let's Hang On (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
04 Attack (Toys)
05 Opus 17 [Don't You Worry 'bout Me] (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
06 I'll Be Back Up on My Feet (Monkees)
07 Penny Arcade (Cyrkle)
08 Breakin' Down the Walls of Heartache (Johnny Johnson & the Bandwagon)
09 You Can Do Magic (Limmie & Family Cookin’)
10 Swearin' to God (Frankie Valli)
11 Native New Yorker (Odyssey)
12 Working My Way Back to You - Forgive Me Girl (Spinners)
13 Use It Up and Wear It Out (Odyssey)
14 I Believe in You and Me (Four Tops)
15 Fresh (Kool & the Gang)
16 Talk It Over (Grayson Hugh)
17 Can't Get Enough of You Baby (Smash Mouth)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xSguvDEM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/revo89NczNfZKK9/file

I guess it's pretty obvious that the cover is two photos put together in Photoshop, but I couldn't find any images of the two of them in the same frame. That's Sandy Linzer on the left, with the suit and tie, in 1977. I don't know the date of the Denny Randell photo on the right, but it's probably from the 1960s. 

Covered: Geoff Stephens: 1964-2002

I recently posted a couple of "Covered" albums dealing with British professional songwriters from the 1960s and 1970s (as I write this in May 2026). As I said elsewhere, there was a circle of a dozen or more who often collaborated with each other, and wrote lots of pop hits. Here's another one from that group, Geoff Stephens.

Many of the other songwriters in this group that I've been discussing came up with the British Invasion, the musical trend that started around 1963. But Stephens was slightly older - he was 29 years old in 1963- and his music career began before that. He served in the military for a couple of years and held a series of odd jobs before getting serious about songwriting. His first song was covered by a musical act in 1961. 

His first hit was "Tell Me When" in 1964, co-written by Les Reed, another songwriter in that group. I've already posted the hit version by the Applejacks in the "Covered" album for Barry Mason and Les Reed. So I went with a different version here. Later that same year, he had an even bigger hit with a song he wrote all by himself, "The Crying Game." The version by Dave Berry went all the way to the Top Five in Britain, although it wasn't a hit. (Boy George eventually had a hit in the U.S. with it in 1992.) It had an unusual melody, showing surprising musical sophistication for a pop hit 1964.

He had an even bigger hit in 1966 with "Winchester Cathedral," performed by the New Vaudeville Band. It actually was recorded by session musicians. The lead vocalist was John Carter, another songwriter I've profiled with a "Covered" album." Stephens had a fondness for vaudeville/ music hall music from the 1920s and earlier, and wrote the song in that vein. It was such a massive success - hitting Number One in the U.S. and some other countries, and selling three million copies worldwide - that it started a mini-vaudeville trend for the next couple of years. Few British artists could resist performing at least one or two songs in that style, for some reason.

Sometimes, Stephens was the sole songwriter, as was the case with "Winchester Cathedral." But more often, he wrote with other members of that unnamed British professional songwriter group. For instance, "There's a Kind of Hush" was written with Les Reed, "Sorry Suzanne" was written with Tony Macaulay, "My Sentimental Friend" was written with John Carter, "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast" was written with Peter Callander, and so on. As you can see, Stephens didn't favor just one songwriting partner. In fact, he had many more, including Roger Greenaway, Barry Mason, Don Black, and Mitch Murray. All of those other people have their own "Covered" albums, or their albums are coming.

Stephens had many more hits through most of the 1970s, until about 1978. In fact, one of his biggest hits was one of his last, since "Silver Lady" by David Soul went to Number One in Britain in 1977. (That one was co-written with Tony Macaulay, by the way.) But musical styles changed drastically in the late 1970s, with the rise of disco, punk, and new wave. So his hits stopped at that time, as was the case with most of the other songwriters in that group he'd been working with since the mid-1960s. 

Starting in the early 1980s, he mostly switched to writing songs for musicals. In doing so, he still collaborated with people from that same group, writing different musicals with Don Black, Les Reed, and Peter Callander. He died in 2020 at the age of 86.

Here's his Wikipedia page:

Geoff Stephens - Wikipedia 

Because Stephens often wrote with other songwriters who have their own "Covered" albums, sometimes I've resorted to using non-hit versions, so the same versions don't appear on two different albums. So, for instance, I have "Sorry Suzanne" here by the Glass Bottle, instead of the hit version by the Hollies. "Smile a Little Smile for Me" is an outliner, because I chose a late cover for the same reason. The hit version was in 1970. Without that one, this album would end in 1980. 

This album is one hour long. 

01 Tell Me When (Jaybirds)
02 The Crying Game (Dave Berry)
03 Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James (Manfred Mann)
04 Winchester Cathedral (New Vaudeville Band)
05 My World Fell Down (Ivy League)
06 There's a Kind of Hush (Herman's Hermits)
07 Boy (Lulu)
08 Sunshine Girl (Herman's Hermits)
09 Lights of Cincinnati (Scott Walker)
10 My Sentimental Friend (Herman's Hermits)
11 Sorry Suzanne (Glass Bottle)
12 Knock, Knock, Who's There (Mary Hopkin)
13 Daughter of Darkness (Tom Jones)
14 Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast (Wayne Newton)
15 You Won't Find Another Fool like Me (New Seekers)
16 Doctor's Orders (Carol Douglas)
17 Silver Lady (David Soul)
18 It's Like We Never Said Goodbye (Crystal Gayle)
19 Like Sister and Brother (Frank Hooker & Positive People)
20 Smile a Little Smile for Me (Chris von Sneidern)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bm3YSnFy

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/pEoVVFc3lzQ7Bfp/file

I don't know anything about the cover image except that it's "circa 1970." The original was in black and white. I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Bonus Volume: Foriegn Language Versions, 1964-1967 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's the finale for guest poster Mike Solof's collection of all the songs Dionne Warwick sang that were written by Hal David and/or Burt Bacharach. This is a bonus volume. That's because, while Mike was putting his collection together, he noticed that Warwick sang a number of Bacharach-David songs in foreign languages. There weren't a lot, but it's enough for a short album. 

Everything here is from 1964 to 1967. She sang three songs in French, then two songs in German, and finally four songs in Italian. All were released as singles in those countries. So this is an interesting curiosity, especially if you speak any of those languages.

This album is 28 minutes long. 

01 Un Toit ne Suffit Pas [A House Is Not a Home] [French Version] (Dionne Warwick)
02 Reach Out for Me [French Version] (Dionne Warwick)
03 How Many Days of Sadness [French Version] (Dionne Warwick)
04 You'll Never Get to Heaven [If You Break My Heart] [German Version] (Dionne Warwick)
05 Walk On By [German Version] (Dionne Warwick)
06 A House Is Not a Home [Italian Version] (Dionne Warwick)
07 The Windows of the World [Italian Version] (Dionne Warwick)
08 Walk Little Dolly [Italian Version] (Dionne Warwick)
09 Walk On By [Italian Version] (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bD6LzqHD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Mcve2ptBTCaZJi9/file

The cover photo was taken near the Nice Jazz Festival in Nice, France, on July 11, 1987. Since this is a foreign language version album, we wanted a photo of her in one of the foreign countries here, though unfortunately you totally can't tell that from the photo.

Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Volume 3: 1966-1967 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here’s another Dionne Warwick album in Mike Solof’s series of all the songs she sang written by Hal David and/or Burt Bacharach. I’ll keep my comments short. But I’ll note I think the three of them were peaking around this time until the end of the 1960s, with songwriting, production, and singing.

This album is 39 minutes long.

035 I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself (Dionne Warwick)
036 Go with Love (Dionne Warwick)
037 Message to Michael (Dionne Warwick)
038 Trains and Boats and Planes (Dionne Warwick)
039 Here, Where There Is Love [Alternate Version] (Dionne Warwick)
040 What the World Needs Now Is Love (Dionne Warwick)
041 Alfie (Dionne Warwick)
042 The Windows of the World (Dionne Warwick)
043 Another Night (Dionne Warwick)
044 The Beginning of Loneliness (Dionne Warwick)
045 Walk Little Dolly (Dionne Warwick)
046 I Say a Little Prayer [Alternate Version] (Dionne Warwick)
047 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oLsc5LBu

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NEh31dMotYhnVFJ/file

The cover photo was taken backstage during an engagement at the Copacabana nightclub in New York City, on May 2, 1967.

The Carpenters - Full Acappella, Volume 1: 1966-1976 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Back in 2018, I posted an album by the Carpenters called "Near Acappella." It featured versions of their best songs done with very minimal instrumental backing, usually just vocals, bass, and drums. Lately, I've been collaborating with Fabio from Rio on some albums. He shares my appreciation for the vocals of Karen Carpenter. I don't know what it is, but there was something very special and unique about her singing. So Fabio wanted to make a "Full Acappella" album, and he did most of the heavy lifting to make it happen. It turns out we had enough material for two albums. Here's the first one.

The rest of this write-up here was written by Fabio:

Inspired by Paul's "Near Acappella" Carpenters collection from some years ago, I decided to check if there were "full acappella" versions of Carpenters songs available, since in recent years audio tools (with or without AI) have gotten better separating vocals from instrumentals. It turns out there are indeed a lot of acappella versions of Carpenters songs out there, so I selected the best ones I could find. At first, the album I made from the acappella versions I found made for a relatively short album. So Paul suggested "two or three more tracks." But I got excited with my "new toy" (the MVSEP online tool that makes it possible to segregate all kinds of tracks from a multitrack source) and ended up creating an additional dozen tracks myself, while also finding some more. That ended up being too much for a single disc. So, as per another suggestion by Paul, this became a "twofer", or two volume collection. These albums may be considered twin siblings of the earlier "Near Acappella" collection.

I got about half of the tracks from YouTube channels or Facebook fan groups, and the remaining were done with MVSEP. I used Audacity software to exclude instrumental breaks, intros, and outros, as well as cleaning up the occasional odd instrument (a drum roll, a sax riff), in order to keep this new collection truly "full acappella." All those that have "[Edit]" in their titles had some additional cleaning done by Paul or me (other than what was already done by whoever shared the acappella tracks originally).

We (myself and Paul) discussed a bit about pros and cons of including harmony vocals (by Richard and/or backing singers, or even occasionally a full choir, like in "Sing" and "Goodnight"). Paul was inclined to keep only Karen's leading vocals. But I argued that a full album with just Karen's voice, regardless of how beautiful it is, could sound a bit monotonous, while the harmony vocals help to provide additional color and variety. So, in the end, we decided to keep them.

---

There's more to Fabio's comments, including explanations of the sources of all the songs. Check out the Word file included in the download zip for that. However, here's one final comment from him, about the bonus track: 

While mining for tracks, I found two already done acappella versions of "We've Only Just Begun": one with only Karen's lead vocal track, and another with lead vocals and harmony vocals. Both are good - the "lead singing only" is more intimate and a bit melancholic, while the "lead vocals with harmonies" is quite exquisite. So, I suggested to Paul that we could keep them both, one at the official track list and another as a bonus track for Volume 1.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 I'll Be Yours [Edit] (Karen Carpenter)
02 Goodnight (Carpenters)
03 We've Only Just Begun (Carpenters)
04 Maybe It's You [Edit] (Carpenters)
05 [They Long to Be] Close to You [Edit] (Carpenters)
06 Baby It's You (Carpenters)
07 Rainy Days and Mondays [Edit] (Carpenters)
08 [A Place to] Hideaway (Carpenters)
09 Sometimes (Carpenters)
10 A Song for You (Carpenters)
11 Goodbye to Love [Edit] (Carpenters)
12 Sing [Edit] (Carpenters)
13 From the Heart Comes the Soul (Carpenters)
14 Aurora (Carpenters)
15 Only Yesterday [Edit] (Carpenters)
16 Solitaire [Edit] (Carpenters)
17 Love Me for What I Am [Edit] (Carpenters)
18 Eventide (Carpenters)
19 Good Friends Are for Keeps (Carpenters)
20 Ordinary Fool [Edit] (Carpenters)

We've Only Just Begun [Harmony Vocals Version] [Edit] (Carpenters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/En3Makbp

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/2L3B4h5poc7r7wm/file

I don't know anything about the cover image except it's Karen Carpenter "circa 1970." The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. 

Various Artists - NME Poll Winners' Concert, Empire Pool, London, Britain, 5-1-1966

I've already posted the NME Poll Winners' Concerts from 1964 and 1965. Here's the only other one known to be exist in the public sphere, the 1966 one.

This is arguably one of the greatest concerts of all time, just in terms of sheer star power. The last three acts were the Who, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles, for crying out loud! That was probably the one and only time those three acts appeared on stage in a row like that.

Unfortunately though... we're missing most of the good stuff, including all of those three performances! So sorry. And worse, of the remaining concert, we are missing half of that too. This concert was at least two hours long. So, to broadcast it on TV, it was split it two, and the two parts were shown on TV a week apart. It's pretty clear to me that only the second part survives, because all of the first part is missing. 

Here are all the musical acts that played in the first part: the Overlanders, Small Faces, the Spencer Davis Group, Roy Orbison, the Walker Brothers, the Yardbirds, the Seekers, the Alan Price Set, the Shadows, and Cliff Richard. If you add all those acts together, plus the ones we do have below (Sounds Incorporated, the Fortunes, Herman's Hermits, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, the Yardbirds, Crispian St. Peters, Alan Price Set, and Dusty Springfield), plus the three acts finishing the second set (the Who, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles), it's hard to argue this was the greatest collection of rock music talent ever on one stage in the 1960s. It's such a shame we don't have all of it!

Of course, the greatest loss is not getting to hear the Beatles' set. This would turn out to be the very last concert the Beatles performed in Britain, excepting the unannounced performance on top of Abbey Roads Studios in 1969. We do know the songs they played though: "I Feel Fine," "If I Needed Someone," "Day Tripper," "Nowhere Man," and "I'm Down."

To further frustrate you, these NME concerts continued until 1971. I couldn't find many details about the concerts after 1966. However, we know a bit more about the 1967 and 1968 concerts, because setlist.fm gives a list of the performers for each of those years.  

Here's a list of the known performers for the 1967 concert (in alphabetical order): Alan Price Set, Cat Stevens, Cliff Richard, Cream, Dusty Springfield, Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band, Lulu, Small Faces, the Beach Boys, the Dubliners, the Move, the Spencer Davis Group, the Troggs. 

And here are the known performers for the 1968 concert (also in alphabetical order): Amen Corner, Cliff Richard, Don Partridge, Dusty Springfield, Love Affair, Lulu, Procol Harum, Scott Walker, Status Quo, the Association, the Herd, the Move, the Paper Dolls, and the Rolling Stones. 

Man, what incredible concerts those would be to hear! Unfortunately though, no known recordings of any of the concerts after 1966 exist. I strongly suspect they weren't broadcast on TV, but I don't know for sure. Let's hope that the remainder of the 1966 concert and all of the 1967 to 1971 concerts are sitting in some vault and will be released to the public one day. 

Now, let's get to why we don't have the recordings of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Apparently, there was a big argument backstage. The popular version is that both Mick Jagger of the Stones and John Lennon of the Beatles argued that they were the biggest band in the world, and thus demanded to go on last. However, it appears this wasn't true. In fact, most of the members of the Beatles and the Stones were friends with each other. 

I found what appears to be the more accurate story at The Paul McCartney Project website. It has an impressive webpage dedicated to this concert, with lots of photos and text. You can find that here:

https://www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/concert/1966-05-01/

That webpage includes an excerpt from a book that extensively quotes Maurice Kinn, who was the owner of NME at the time. Here's what Kinn claims happened: 

"Halfway through the Stones' set, the four Beatles arrived at the foot of the stairs to the stage, with their guitars in hand. I told them they were 25 minutes early, but Lennon insisted that they were going on. I said they couldn't and John shouted, 'Didn't you hear me the first time? We're going on now, or we're not going on at all.' In a rapidly convened huddle with Brian Epstein, I outlined my dilemma, that I had promised the Stones, in writing, that the Beatles should not follow them immediately onto the stage. I had arranged for the awards presentation to come between the two acts and explained to Brian that if the Beatles did not come on at the previously arranged time, I would be left with no option but to send MC Jimmy Savile on stage to explain to 10,000 NME readers that the Beatles were in the stadium but they weren’t going to play. I explained to him very clearly what would happen then. There would be a riot! Half of Wembley would be destroyed and Wembley and the NME would both sue Epstein. Brian conveyed this to the Beatles and John exploded! He gave me abuse like you've never heard before in all of your life. You could hear him all over the backstage area. He said, 'We'll never play for you again!' But he knew that he had no choice. Fifteen minutes later, the Beatles went on stage, collected their awards and played the show."

So it seems it's true there was an argument involving Lennon, but not Jagger. Jagger was performing on stage at the time and was probably totally oblivious about the conflict going on nearby. While I think Lennon is one of the greatest musicians of all time, he could be an asshole sometimes, and it looks like this was one of those times. Probably the Beatles were sick and tired of giving concerts by this time, and Lennon had lost all patience and just wanted to get this obligation over with.

Be that as it may, the Beatles didn't even allow the cameras to roll when they took the stage, due to the conflict mentioned above. I'm not sure how it came to be that the Who and the Rolling Stones also didn't allowing their performances to be broadcast either, but that's what happened. 

So anyway, while we can lament all the missing music, what we're left with is still pretty damn impressive. And we're lucky to have anything at all, since very few live recordings from 1966 survive. As for the sound quality, it's reasonably good, but not great. Consider this was probably recorded off a TV in 1966, so one has to lower one's standards a bit. I tried to improve it, but there wasn't much I could do, since I couldn't successfully separate the vocals from the instruments, or the instruments from each other. In the end, I just kept it the same. 

In case you're curious about who won the poll awards this year, there's a list at the NME website, which you can see here:

https://www.nme.com/nme-awards/awards-history/1966-606221

Also, note that I found a review for this concert from NME, thanks to the Paul McCartney Project website mentioned above. I included an image of it in the download file. It has comments about all the performances, including all the missing ones.

This album is one hour long. 

01 talk (Sounds Incorporated)
02 In the Hall of the Mountain King [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
03 Zorba's Dance [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
04 talk (Fortunes)
05 This Golden Ring (Fortunes)
06 You've Got Your Troubles (Fortunes)
07 talk (Herman's Hermits)
08 A Must to Avoid (Herman's Hermits)
09 You Won't Be Leaving (Herman's Hermits)
10 talk (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
11 You Make It Move (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
12 Hold Tight (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
13 talk (Yardbirds)
14 Train Kept A-Rollin' (Yardbirds)
15 Shapes of Things (Yardbirds)
16 talk (Crispian St. Peters)
17 Send Me Some Lovin' (Crispian St. Peters)
18 The Pied Piper (Crispian St. Peters)
19 talk (Alan Price Set)
20 Baby Workout (Alan Price Set)
21 I Put a Spell on You (Alan Price Set)
22 talk (Dusty Springfield)
23 In the Middle of Nowhere (Dusty Springfield)
24 You Don't Have to Say You Love Me (Dusty Springfield)
25 talk (Dusty Springfield)
26 Shake (Dusty Springfield)
27 talk (Beatles & emcee)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/L5VqhUHF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/GvbEFGJxuHwyVLp/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Sorry if it's misleading to have a photo of the Beatles but no actual Beatles music on the album. At least we do have the recording of the Beatles accepting their awards. This photo was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

The Rascals - Live on TV: 1966-1970

A few weeks ago (writing this in February 2026), I posted a concert that included a set by the Rascals (originally known as the Young Rascals). A frequent commenter here, Sax and Guitar, saw that and emailed me with an album he'd made of performances the Rascals did for various TV shows in the 1960s, and he suggested that I posted it. It turns out I'd already made an album like that that I'd just never gotten around to posting. (I have hundreds if not thousands of albums like that that I need to post. Sigh!) In fact, the songs on his version were basically exactly the same as mine, since we both went looking for the same things at YouTube. Thanks to his push, I decided to post my Rascals collection sooner rather than later, so here it is.

Before I say more, here's the concert I mentioned above, that includes a set by the Rascals: 

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2026/01/various-artists-khj-third-annual.html

That concert is a real treasure, because publicly available recordings of the Rascals performing live in the 1960s are rarer than hen's teeth. Besides that, all we seem to have from the 1960s are occasional TV appearances. Some TV shows had them lip-sync to records. But Sax and Guitar and I collected all the ones that were genuinely performed live.

All the performances here are unreleased. I used MVSEP to boost the vocals on songs where the vocals were low in the mix, which was most of them. Also, most of the songs had most or all of the applause at the ends cut off. So I edited the applause to bridge the songs together. Typically, the applause at the end of one song continues until the next song starts. 

Sax and Guitar wrote a nice little write-up meant to go with this album. It includes a short history of the band during this time period. I've included that as a Word file in the download zip.

Note that Sax and Guitar already has two other albums he's helping with, with hopefully more to come, knock on wood. Thanks to him for helping to get this album finished off. 

01 Good Lovin' (Rascals)
02 Mickey's Monkey - Love Lights [Turn On Your Lovelight] (Rascals)
03 I've Been Lonely Too Long - Come On Up (Rascals)
04 Since I Fell for You (Rascals)
05 A Girl like You (Rascals)
06 Groovin' (Rascals)
07 Do You Feel It (Rascals)
08 A Beautiful Morning (Rascals)
09 Carry Me Back (Rascals)
10 In the Midnight Hour (Tom Jones & the Rascals)
11 Glory, Glory (Rascals)
12 People Got to Be Free - Oh Happy Day (Rascals with Barbara McNair)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Ypr5L16V 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/P2jGus4SU9ctROL/file

The cover photo was selected by Sax and Guitar. I don't know the exact details about it, but I believe it's from 1967. I used Krea AI to improve the detail.

Dusty Springfield - Live in Concert: 1964-1966

Dusty Springfield was one of the most popular singers in Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s. For instance, in 1966, she won both the Melody Maker and N.M.E. polls for best female singer. But despite that popularity, there are shockingly few live recordings from her, even though she toured a fair amount. One official live album, "Live at the Royal Albert Hall," has been released. But, in my opinion, that was from the worst time in her career for a live album, 1979, at the height of the disco era and at a down era for her career. True, there are lots of recordings of TV and radio broadcasts, and I've compiled those as best I could. But in terms of actual concert recordings, there's almost nothing, especially from her 1960s and early 1970s peak era.

I decided to try to change there. When it comes to unreleased concert recordings, there also is very, very little. But I did find a few things from 1964 to 1966. Putting them together, it's just enough for a relatively short live album.

The first section of this concert comes from a concert in Melbourne, Australia, in 1964. She was part of a package tour of Australia with Johnny O'Keefe, Gene Pitney, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. An hour long concert was filmed for Australian TV. Decades later, this has been released on DVD only, under the title "The Liverpool Sound." I was able to find most of that, but not quite all. I'm missing the first song, "I Only Want to Be with You." So, for that, I used a live performance of that song she did for the Ed Sullivan Show. This Australian concert makes up the first 13 minutes of this album, tracks one through eight. The last song, "When the Saints Go Marching In," was the finale, where each of the lead singers got to sing a verse.

The other two sections here come from annual N.M.E. concerts. "N.M.E." stands for "New Musical Express," one of the main music-centric publications in Britain in that era. They had a yearly poll winners concert that brought together the biggest names in music at the time. I've already posted the full 1965 concert, which you can get here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/01/various-artists-nme-poll-winners.html

I have all of what's available of the 1964 and 1966 concerts, and I'd like to post those soon. Springfield wasn't featured in the 1964 one. But I've included her 1965 and 1966 performances here. Tracks nine through 13 are from the 1965 concert, and tracks 14 to 18 are from the 1966 concert. All of these N.M.E. concerts remain unreleased. Springfield's short 1965 set is repeated on the N.M.E. concert I linked to above, but I think there's value in putting all her concert recordings from the era together here.

Luckily, there are no repeats of songs from these three sources. That's probably because they were about a year apart each, so she had different hits to promote each year. When it comes to sound quality, this isn't amazing, but it's about as good as you could expect for the era. Like the Australian concert, the N.M.E. concerts were broadcast on T.V., so that's why we have recordings that survive.

This album is 32 minutes long. 

001 I Only Want to Be with You (Dusty Springfield)
002 talk (Dusty Springfield)
003 Stay Awhile (Dusty Springfield)
004 The Love of a Boy (Dusty Springfield)
005 talk (Dusty Springfield)
006 Shake It Up (Dusty Springfield)
007 talk (Johnny O'Keefe, Gene Pitney, Brian Poole & Dusty Springfield)
008 When the Saints Go Marching In (Johnny O'Keefe, Gene Pitney, Brian Poole & Dusty Springfield)
009 talk (Dusty Springfield)
010 Dancing in the Street (Dusty Springfield)
011 talk (Dusty Springfield)
012 Mockingbird (Dusty Springfield)
013 I Can't Hear You [No More] (Dusty Springfield)
014 talk (Dusty Springfield)
015 In the Middle of Nowhere (Dusty Springfield)
016 You Don't Have to Say You Love Me (Dusty Springfield)
017 talk (Dusty Springfield)
018 Shake (Dusty Springfield)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PkcQGKmR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/xmJw8otVzVvSA3I/file

The cover photo is from 1965, but I don't know the details beyond that.

Covered: Shel Silverstein - Volume 1: 1963-1972

Here's the next songwriter in my Covered series: Shel Silverstein. To say Silverstein was a colorful character is putting it mildly. Among his many talents was songwriting. I've found enough good covers of his songs for two volumes. Here's the first one.

Silverstein was born in Chicago in 1930, and raised there. He went to college, then spent a few years in the U.S. army. After that, he started to get known for his cartoons published in magazines. He especially had many of his cartoons published in Playboy Magazine, from the 1950s into the 1970s. He developed another creative career as the author of children's books. He eventually sold 20 million books. His most acclaimed books include "The Giving Tree," "Where the Sidewalk Ends," and "A Light in the Attic." He also had success writing for plays, movies, and TV shows.

So he was a creative Renaissance Man. But out focus here is on his songwriting. He was a music performer too, and released many albums, with the first one coming out in 1959. But he had a gruff voice with limited range. Also, it seems he very rarely performed in public, probably because he had so many other creative projects going on to want to go on long tours. So he was much more successful having others cover his songs.

His songwriting career started fairly slowly. He only had a few successes for most of the 1960s. But that changed drastically in 1969, when Johnny Cash had a huge hit with "A Boy Called Sue." That was such an unusual song, with lots of comedy, that many other musical acts went looking for other songs he'd written. It turns out his biggest fans were the band Dr. Hook. Their debut album "Doctor Hook," released in 1972, consisted entirely of songs written by Silverstein. And their second album, "Sloppy Seconds," released later in 1972, also consisted entirely of his songs! Those albums gave Dr. Hook their first two big hits, "Sylvia's Mother" and "The Cover of the Rolling Stone."

That takes us to the end of 1972. I'll write more about him in the second and last volume.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Hey Nelly Nelly (Judy Collins)
02 In the Hills of Shiloh (Modern Folk Quartet)
03 25 Minutes to Go (Johnny Cash)
04 The Mermaid (Glen Yarbrough)
05 Boa Constrictor (Johnny Cash)
06 The Unicorn (Irish Rovers)
07 A Boy Named Sue (Johnny Cash)
08 Once More With Feeling (Jerry Lee Lewis)
09 One's on the Way (Loretta Lynn)
10 I Call That True Love (Dr. Hook)
11 The Taker (Kris Kristofferson)
12 Freakin' at the Freakers' Ball (Dr. Hook)
13 On Susan's Floor (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 Sylvia's Mother (Dr. Hook)
16 The Cover of Rolling Stone (Dr. Hook)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Vdghqyqe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/YfWSztH9v8E8ui0/file

The cover image is from 1972.

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band with Muddy Waters - The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA, 10-2-1966

Here's a really great concert by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. At the time, the band was firing on all cylinders with Paul Butterfield on harmonica and Mike Bloomfield playing lead guitar. (Bloomfield would leave for a solo career a year later.) But what really kicks this concert to the next level is that the blues legend Muddy Waters joined them to sing two songs for an encore.

Lucky for us, promoter Bill Graham was running the Fillmore venue at the time, and he often recorded the concerts there. So this is an excellent sounding soundboard, despite the fact that it's still unreleased.

The only problem with this recording was the song "East-West." This is a truly great instrumental, on the cutting edge of improvisational rock in 1966. Each time the band played it, it came out quite differently, so much so that there's an official release just consisting of different versions of this song. Unfortunately, most versions of this song that I've come across get cut off before the song finishes, probably because the song was so long that the tape would run out. That's the case here, with this 18-minute-long version. So I found a different version and added the last 15 seconds or so from that to this version, just long enough to give it a proper finish. That's why this one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

I believe Muddy Waters and his band was on the same bill as the Butterfield Blues Band. At the time, the Fillmore often added musical acts to concerts that weren't just the usual rock acts, to help give the audience a musical education. So that's why there was a cross over, with Muddy Waters joining in for a couple of songs.

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 Shake Your Money Maker (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
02 The Sky Is Crying (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
03 talk (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
04 Oh Pretty Woman (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
05 Help Me (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
06 Never Say No (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
07 talk (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
08 You're So Fine (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
09 talk (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
10 East-West [Instrumental] [Edit] (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
11 talk by Bill Graham (Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Muddy Waters)
12 Clouds in My Heart [Edit] (Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Muddy Waters)
13 talk (Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Muddy Waters)
14 I Got My Mojo Working (Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Muddy Waters)
15 Closing Theme [Instrumental] (Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Muddy Waters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KgY5ip8K

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/vg3LnwD0AJhMLnZ/file

The cover image shows Paul Butterfield playing harmonica on the left and Mike Bloomfield playing guitar on the right. It was taken in New York City, probably in 1966.

The Small Faces - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1966-1968

Here's the second out of three BBC albums I'm posting for the British band the Small Faces.

As I mentioned in my write-up for Volume 1, I posted two Small Faces BBC albums in 2021. But I am completely overhauling them, thanks to the music blog of Prof. Stoned. That person found a bunch of BBC performances that I had missed. So a big thanks to him.

Volume 1 was nearly exactly the same as what I'd posted previously, with almost all of the songs from the official album "The BBC Sessions." But Volume 2 is the opposite. Most of the performances are ones I'd previously missed, from unreleased sources. Only three songs, tracks 8, 9, and 10, are from the official album I just mentioned. 

Unfortunately, the likely reason most of these weren't included on the official album is because, in most cases, these are just live vocals sung over the studio versions. But there's so little live Small Faces music that has survived that I figure even these versions are worth hearing. There are five such songs, which have "[Live Vocals Only]" in their titles.

Everything here is from BBC sessions (except for the bonus tracks, which I'll get to in a minute). Check out the mp3 tags for more of the details. Three of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles, due to my wiping the BBC DJ talking over the music, using the MVSEP program. No songs here are repeated twice. But some of the songs are repeats of songs on either Volume 1 or Volume 3.

The bonus tracks are exactly the same as in the version of this album I posted in 2021. So I'll just repost the same paragraph I wrote about them back then: 

The three remaining bonus tracks aren't from the BBC, or any other radio or TV show, for that matter. It's just that I think they're really cool and I don't have a better place to put them in my music collection, so I've stuck them here. All three are alternate versions of Small Faces songs that are done in a solo acoustic style. Two are mixes with everything but the vocals and acoustic guitar removed. The other one, "The Autumn Stone," is an alternate take. That take was just made public a few weeks prior to my posting of this album, as a free CD that came with an issue of Mojo Magazine. It's meant to be a teaser for an expanded version of "The Autumn Stone" album that's in the works. 

This album is 34 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

01 Sha-La-La-La-Lee (Small Faces)
02 All or Nothing (Small Faces)
03 Here Comes the Nice [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)
04 Itchycoo Park [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)
05 Tin Soldier [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)
06 Lazy Sunday [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)
07 Get Ready [Instrumental Version] (Small Faces)
08 If I Were a Carpenter [Edit] (Small Faces)
09 Lazy Sunday [Edit] (Small Faces)
10 Every Little Bit Hurts [Edit] (Small Faces)
11 The Universal [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)

Red Balloon [Stripped Down Mix] (Small Faces)
Show Me the Way [Stripped Down Mix] (Small Faces)
The Autumn Stone [Jenny's Song] [Take 1] (Small Faces)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QTwFyNDK 

alternate:  

https://bestfile.io/en/YgpVr17pjxUnaAK/file

I don't know where or when the cover photo is from. But it almost certainly is from a TV show appearance. I found it interesting that it shows the band's lead singer Steve Marriott playing piano, as I didn't know he did that. And it looks like the band's drummer Kenny Jones is singing, along with bassist Ronnie Lane, which is also interesting.

The Small Faces - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1965-1966

Back in early 2021, I posted two BBC albums for the Small Faces. (Technically, they were just "Small Faces," but I can't help use the "the.") I have deleted those today, because I'm doing a complete overhaul, and turning two albums into three. Here's the first one.

This overhaul wouldn't have happened had it not been for Prof. Stoned and his music blog. I highly recommend you check it out, here:

Prof Stoned: Rare & Deleted 

He shares my interest in BBC recordings from the 1960s and early 1970s. An official BBC album has been released for this band, simply titled "The BBC Sessions." But Prof. Stoned has dug deep and found more and more that that album missed. Eventually, I noticed there was enough for this overhaul. So all the songs I'm adding for the first time are thanks to that blog.

As it so happens, the vast majority of the tracks on this first volume are from the official BBC album. The only exceptions are tracks 4 ("You Really Got a Hold on Me") and 14 ("My Mind's Eye"). Everything here is from BBC studio sessions, though the two unreleased tracks were performed before small audiences. (I've removed the crowd noise on those, using MVSEP.) As usual, you can look at the mp3 tags for each song for more details about where and when the songs were recorded.

If you look at the song list, you'll see several songs with "[Edit]" in their titles. That's due to the usual problem from that era of BBC DJs talking over the music. I always like removing that talking, using the UVR5 or MVSEP programs. But Prof. Stoned feels otherwise, so if you want hear the DJs, check out his Small Faces collection.

Since all but two songs are officially released, the sound quality is excellent. The sound quality is a bit rougher for those, but still acceptable. Also, one song here, "Jump Back," is also on the stray tracks album "Grow Your Own," because the only recording the band did of it is from one of their BBC sessions. 

This album is 37 minutes long.

01 Whatcha Gonna Do about It (Small Faces)
02 Jump Back (Small Faces)
03 Baby Don't You Do It [Don't Do It] (Small Faces)
04 You Really Got a Hold on Me [Edit] (Small Faces)
05 Shake [Edit] (Small Faces)
06 Sha-La-La-La-Lee (Small Faces)
07 You Need Love [You Need Loving] [Edit] (Small Faces)
08 Hey Girl (Small Faces)
09 E Too D [Edit] (Small Faces)
10 One Night Stand [Edit] (Small Faces)
11 You Better Believe It [Edit] (Small Faces)
12 Understanding (Small Faces)
13 All or Nothing (Small Faces)
14 My Mind's Eye (Small Faces)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/aWZsVwNH

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/2ogab1BGpkuo6n4/file

The cover art photo comes from an appearance on the "Two of a Kind" TV show in 1967.

The Small Faces - Live: 1966-1968

I recently got a request by a commenter to post updated links for all the Small Faces albums I've posted. (Sorry, I forget the commenter or where that request was.) I'd like to update all the upload.ee links eventually anyway, so I decided to do that. But that also reminded me that I have this album I made a long time ago and never got around to posting. It's a collection of stray live tracks.

So, first off, note that, as of today, I did post updated links to nearly all the existing Small Faces albums on this blog. The only exceptions are the two BBC ones. I want to make some fixes and additions to that, enough to create a third volume, so expect those to be reposted soon.

There never has been a widely officially released Small Faces live album, and even bootlegs are few and far between. However, note that I did post a great concert from 1966, which I've called "Live 1966." Here's the link, in case you missed it:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-small-faces-twenty-club-mouscron.html 

Aside from that one recording, plus some BBC stuff, we just have dribs and drabs, sometimes with poor sound quality. So this gathers the best of the rest. Most of it is non-BBC, except for the first four tracks, which all come from a 1996 session in front of a cheering audience, and were released on "The Decca Years" compilation. I put that here instead of on one of the BBC albums I've made mostly because most of the songs are ones that repeated on other BBC sessions around that time.

The next song, which may or may not be called "Baby Please Don't Go," is from a video I found on YouTube. It shows the band performing in a small club in 1966, and apparently was taken from some unknown British news program that was showing what the rock scene was like at the time. There were two snippets of other songs, but I didn't include them because they were well under half a minute each. And this song is incomplete and fades out, but I thought it was good enough to include anyway.

The next three songs, tracks 6, 7, and 8, are from the German TV show "Beat Beat Beat." The next year, it was renamed "Beat Club." The band made more appearances on that show in 1967 and 1968, but all of them were lip-synced, so I didn't include them. This appearance, though, was fully live. 

The next two songs, tracks 9 and 10, are from an appearance on "The Morrcambe & Wise Show" in 1967. Like the "Beat Beat Beat" songs, they're still unreleased.

The remaining songs, tracks 11 through 15, are from a concert in Newcastle, Britain, in November 1968, a few months before the band broke up. They all were first released on the "In Memoriam" album in 1969, shortly after the band broke up. There were more songs recorded from that show, but they were lost. They also had fake audience noise slathered over them. Decades later, they were released on the "Here Comes the Nice" box set without the fake audience noise, which is where I got them. 

But I discovered the lead vocals were very low relative to the instruments. So I fixed that using MVSEP. I think they sound much better now. Also, there were some spoken words, which I have put on track 15. They were so very low in the mix they were almost unheard by me. First I boosted the volume greatly, again using MVSEP. But I still couldn't understand what was being said, so I ran the comments through Adobe's Enhanced Speech program as well. Now, I can at least catch the gist of the comments.

That leaves just the bonus track, "Long Black Veil." This comes from a bootleg of a concert in Vienna, Austria, in January 1969. This was one of the band's very last concerts, as they broke up by the end of that month. Unfortunately, the bootleg is only about 20 minutes long, and the sound quality is poor. So I only included one song as a bonus track, because the others were done live elsewhere. Yet this is a song that has no other recording, official or otherwise.

This album is 42 minutes long, not including the bonus track. 

01 Sha La La La Lee (Small Faces)
02 Whatcha Gonna Do about It (Small Faces)
03 Comin' Home Baby [Instrumental] (Small Faces)
04 You Need Love [You Need Loving] (Small Faces)
05 Baby Please Don’t Go (Small Faces)
06 Hey Girl (Small Faces)
07 Whatcha Gonna Do about It (Small Faces)
08 Sha La La La Lee (Small Faces)
09 All or Nothing (Small Faces)
10 I Can't Make It (Small Faces)
11 Rollin' Over (Small Faces)
12 If I Were a Carpenter (Small Faces)
13 Every Little Bit Hurts (Small Faces)
14 All or Nothing (Small Faces)
15 talk (Small Faces)
16 Tin Soldier (Small Faces)

Long Black Veil (Small Faces)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/L54f8H1e 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/wDDsrSpynXm2I1W/file

The cover photo was taken at the ABC cinema, in the town of Romford, Britain, at some point in 1968. It shows Steve Marriott on the left (in a light blue shirt) and Ronnie Lane on the right (in a dark blue shirt).

The Action - BBC Sessions (1966-1967)

One area of focus I've had for this blog is posting BBC studio sessions from the 1960s and 70s, even if it's from obscure musical acts. In fact, especially from obscure musical acts, if they were good. Here's BBC sessions from a band that definitely was good: the Action.

In the late 1960s, there were a lot of great British bands that should have had a lot of success, but the lucky breaks didn't go their way. The Action were one of those bands. The started out in the early 1960s like most British bands at the time, specializing in covers of American R&B music. They were very good at it, and developed a following and critical acclaim. But they failed to get the all important hit single.

Then, 1967, musical tastes drastically changed in Britain, from R&B covers to original psychedelic music. Not many bands had the talent to make that transition, but the Action did. They wrote enough songs for what should have been a classic album, to be called "Rolled Gold." But their record company had lost faith in them by that point, and wouldn't approve the recording and release of it. At least fairly fleshed out demos of those songs were released in the 1990s, suggesting what might have been. But after that failure, the band broke up, though most of the band went on to slightly more success for a few years under the name "Mighty Baby."

Here's their Wikipedia page, if you want to know more:

The Action - Wikipedia 

Up until mere days ago, I didn't know they had enough songs for a decent-length BBC album. But it turns out their BBC performances were compiled on a 2004 archival release called "Uptight and Outasight." These are the exact songs released on that album, since this is everything that could be found from the BBC by the band. 

However, this is different than that album, because I edited most of the songs. Four of the songs suffered the usual problem of the era of BBC DJs talking over the music. So I did my usual thing, using the MVSEP program to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music. Those songs are marked with "[Edit]" in their titles. Additionally, the vocals were low for most of the songs, so I boosted them relative to the instruments with the use of the UVR5 program. Finally, the first two songs aren't from BBC studio sessions at all, but were from an appearance on the "Ready, Steady, Go!" TV show in 1966. There was an audience, so I also used the MVSEP program to get rid of the cheering. I did the same to tracks 7 and 8, which were from a BBC radio show, "Pop North," that had a cheering audience too.

Even though this album is short, it shows the musical transition I described above. The first eight songs are from 1966 or early 1967, and are mainly R&B covers. By the last four songs are from a July 1967 session that already show the band transitioning to more of a psychedelic style. That includes a cover of "I See You," a band making a similar transition at the same time.

The Action performed for the BBC a few more times. Unfortunately, this is all that seems to have survived. Interestingly, some of the music here survived because Phil Collins (yes, that Phil Collins), who was a young teenager at the time, was a huge Action fan and recorded some of their music off the radio, then passed the recording to a record company decades later. 

This album is 30 minutes long. 

01 I'll Keep On Holding On (Action)
02 Land of a 1000 Dances - Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Action)
03 Mine Exclusively (Action)
05 Baby You Got It (Action)
06 Take Me in Your Arms [Rock Me a Little While] [Edit] (Action)
07 Going to a Go-Go (Action)
08 Never Ever (Action)
09 Love Is All [Edit] (Action)
10 I See You [Edit] (Action)
11 India [Instrumental] (Action)
12 Shadows and Reflections [Edit] (Action)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uS22byyX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Zy0oDKSv7MqMyJi/file 

The cover photo of the band was taken in March 1967. The band name at the top was taken from an album cover, and then stretched horizontally.

Jimi Hendrix & Various Artists - Jimi Hendrix as Session Musician, Volume 1: 1964-1966

Here's something a little different from me. It's a collection of songs where Jimi Hendrix was a supporting player rather than the main artist. I've never done a collection of "session musician" appearances like this before, because normally I don't think that's interesting enough to make an album. But Hendrix is one of the greatest musicians who ever lived, in my opinion, so even these sorts of performances are worthy of hearing, in my opinion.

Note that this is not complete by any means. I deliberately left off some songs I found with Hendrix playing guitar on them. That's because I only wanted to include songs where he made a notable impact, typically with a guitar solo. I found enough music for three volumes. For this first volume, I found all but three of the songs on the "West Coast Seattle Boy" Hendrix box set. The other three are tracks 9, 14, and 15. That box set does a good job collection his earlier session work. But the later two volumes mostly come from other sources.  

I could write pages about Hendrix's pre-fame history, and the tracks here. But if I do that, I probably would never get around to posting these volumes. So instead, I'll keep it short. Luckily, there's a good Rolling Stone article about his songs as a session musician before he became a star. I highly recommend you give this a read:

Jimi Hendrix: 10 Great Pre-Fame Tracks

I'll quote the intro to that article here:

"Before he was experienced, Jimi Hendrix was a hard-working sideman, playing studio session dates and backing bands across the so-called Chitlin' Circuit and beyond during the first half of the Sixties. After his discharge from the 101st Airborne Division following his brief spell as a paratrooper, the chance to dive headlong into rhythm and blues behind pros like Little Richard, King Curtis, and the Isley Brothers served as a valuable apprenticeship - though a decidedly unglamorous one. ... Despite the challenges, a letter Hendrix sent to his father during this period reveals his steely resolve to realize his destiny. 'I still have my guitar and amp and as long as I have that, no fool can keep me from living,' he writes. 'Although I don't eat every day, everything’s going all right for me. It could be worse than this, but I’m going to keep hustling and scuffling until I get things to happening, like they’re supposed to for me.' This baptism by fire forged the singular style that would make his name cultural shorthand for musical virtuosity." 

Hendrix actually began performing on the Chitlin' Circuit in late 1962, mostly in the South. At various points, he backed up lots of famous soul music stars, including Wilson Pickett, Slim Harpo, Sam Cooke, Ike & Tina Turner, and Jackie Wilson. However, this album begins in 1964, because that's the first time he managed to be included on released records.

In June 1966, Hendrix finally felt confident to form his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Performing in small clubs, he quickly made an impression. From there, he got an opportunity to move to Britain and do some recording. He left the U.S. in September 1966. Success quickly followed, with his first hit single, "Hey Joe," released near the end of the year. So that's where this volume ends, at the end of 1966.

Most everything here are failed, obscure singles. However, "Mercy, Mercy" was a significant hit. (It's interesting to note that Hendrix sometimes played that song in 1967, after he became famous.) I deliberately avoided live recordings as much as possible. If you're interested in that, I've posted an album gathering songs Hendrix sang when he was a part of Curtis Knight and the Squires in late 1965. Here's a link to that one:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/03/jimi-hendrix-with-curtis-knight-squires.html 

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Testify (Isley Brothers)
02 Mercy, Mercy (Don Covay)
03 Can't Stay Away (Don Covay)
04 Have You Ever Been Disappointed (Isley Brothers)
05 I Don't Know What You Got But It's Got Me (Little Richard)
06 My Diary (Rosa Lee Brooks)
07 Utee (Rose Lee Brooks)
08 The Little Old Groove Maker (Jimmy Norman)
09 I'm a Fool for You, Baby (Curtis Knight with Jimi Hendrix)
10 Dancing All Around the World (Little Richard)
11 Help Me [Get the Feeling], Part 1 (Ray Sharpe)
12 I'm So Glad (Frank Howard & the Commanders)
13 [My Girl] She's a Fox (Icemen [Lonnie Youngblood & Jimi Hendrix])
14 Soul Food [That's A What I Like] (Lonnie Youngblood with Jimi Hendrix)
15 Wipe the Sweat [Instrumental Version] (Lonnie Youngblood & Jimi Hendrix)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/msRGNEov

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/Cp32kOQTpNlMFtL/file

The cover photo shows Curtis Knight and the Squires from 1966 or thereabouts. Can you tell on your own which one is Hendrix? He's the one on the left, with the toothy smile. This picture was in black and white, but I colorized with the help of the Kolorize program. 

Covered: Teddy Randazzo & Bobby Weinstein: 1960-2024

Here's another album in my "Covered" series. This time, the focus is on the songwriting team of Teddy Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein. Chances are you haven't heard of them. But I'd also bet that you're very familiar with some of their songs, such as "Goin' Out of My Head," "It's Gonna Take a Miracle," "Pretty Blue Eyes," and "Hurt So Bad."

Randazzo was born in New York City in 1935, and Weinstein was born there four years later. (I've noticed an unusual number of talented songwriters from this era were born in New York City, with many of them being Jewish. In this case, Randazzo was ethnically Italian and Weinstein was Jewish.) Both of them got involved with rock and roll bands. Randazzo had more success, being a member of the Three Chuckles. They had a Top Twenty hit in 1954, and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show several times. In 1957, they began writing songs together. Their first big success was "Pretty Blue Eyes," which was a Top Ten hit for Steve Lawrence in 1960.

Randazzo had the good looks of a potential star, and kept a solo career going for several more years, but didn't have any big hits. However, he and Weinstein found more and more success as songwriters. Their biggest success of all was probably "Goin' Out of My Head." Little Anthony and the Imperials first had a Top Ten hit with it in 1964. But it's endured strongly, with over 400 cover versions, some of them hits as well. It's now in the top 50 of the most recorded and best selling songs of all time. Randazzo and Weinstein wrote many more songs for Little Anthony and the Imperials, even arranging and producing entire albums for them. Another big hit for that band was "Hurt So Bad," which was written by Randazzo, Weinstein, and Bobby Hart of the Boyce and Hart songwriting team. (I've already posted a "Covered" album for them, which includes a Linda Ronstadt version of that song.)

Most of the hits by Randazzo and Weinstein were in the 1960s. "It's Gonna Take a Miracle" was first a hit for the Royalettes in 1965. However, I've included a 1982 version by Deniece Williams because that was a bigger hit, reaching the Top Ten. It seems the songwriting partnership faded in the 1970s. Randazzo continued writing some hits in that decade, particularly for the soul groups the Manhattans and the Stylistics. However, I've only included one, "A Million to One" by the Manhattans in 1971.

Randazzo moved to Hawaii and had some limited success as a producer and songwriter there. He died in 2003 at the age of 68. Weinstein became a music executive, eventually becoming the president of the National Academy of Popular Music. He died in 2022 at the age of 82.  

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Randazzo:

Teddy Randazzo - Wikipedia 

And here's the entry for Weinstein:

Bobby Weinstein - Wikipedia 

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Pretty Blue Eyes (Steve Lawrence)
02 Let the Sunshine In (Dee Dee Sharp)
03 Goin' Out of My Head (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
04 I'm on the Outside [Looking In] (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
05 Can't Stop Running Away (Ian & the Zodiacs)
06 Hurt So Bad (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
07 Trick or Treat (Teddy Randazzo & All 6)
08 Don't Tie Me Down (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
09 Buttercup Days (Kane Triplets)
10 Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March (Box Tops)
11 I'm Hypnotized (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
12 Yesterday Has Gone (Cupid's Inspiration)
13 Rain in My Heart (Frank Sinatra)
14 A Million to One (Manhattans)
15 It's Gonna Take a Miracle (Deniece Williams)
16 Where's the Love (Vivian Buczek)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/AeftLAgu

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/user/files/EM9pT1qmY7eaGeM/file

Photos of Teddy Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein are extremely rare. Luckily, I found one of them hugging each other. It's from when they were older. That's Randazzo on the left and Weinstein on the right.

Covered: Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein & Richard Gottehrer: 1962-1982

Here's a rather unusual entry in my "Covered" series highlighting talented songwriters who were widely covered by others. This one focuses on the songwriting and production team of Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer. You probably don't know their names, but I'll bet you know a bunch of their songs.

Bob Feldman and Jerry Goldstein were friends and neighbors growing up in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1950s. They began writing songs together, and released a single as "Bob and Jerry." In 1962, they met Richard Gottehrer, and he joined their songwriting team. Then the hits started coming. Their first really big smash was "My Boyfriend's Back" by the Angels, which made it all the way to Number One in the U.S. in 1963. The song was started by Feldman, after he overheard a girl talking to a boy she was rebuffing.

The three of them had their greatest success in the mid-1960s. As they were all young and musically talented, they decided to form their own rock band, which they called the Strangeloves. Although, weirdly, they claimed that they were three brothers from a sheep farm from Australia. Perhaps they thought being seen as Jewish kids from Brooklyn wasn't cool. In 1965, they had a Top Ten hit in the U.S. under the Strangeloves name with "I Want Candy," a song the three of them wrote with Bert Berns. (I've posted two Covered albums featuring him.) However, instead of including that version here, I've included the 1982 version by Bow Wow Wow, which was a Top Ten hit in Britain. They had two other Top 40 U.S. hits in 1965 as the Strangeloves: "Cara-Lin" and "Night Time." I've included the Strangeloves version of "Night Time," but I chose a version the Sorrows did of "Cara-Lin."

In addition to songwriting, the three of them also found success as producers. One of their biggest successes came early, with "Hang On Sloopy." They didn't have a hand in writing it (though Bert Berns did). But they were getting a big reaction performing it live in concerts. They wanted to release it as their next single, but their song "I Want Candy" was still rising in the charts. So they took the version they'd already recorded in the studio and had a then-unknown singer from another band, Rick Derringer, sing lead on it. That version, credited to the McCoys, hit Number One in the U.S.

This songwriting team was really good at the garage rock song that was all the rage in 1965 and 1966. When popular trends moved to psychedelic music in 1967, their success went way down. The Strangeloves faded away in 1968. The three of them gradually drifted apart. Each of them found success as producers. In 1966, Gottehrer co-founded Sire Records. It was a very successful independent record company for many years. In 1978, it essentially got swallowed up by Warner Brothers Records, though it still exists as a branch of that mega-company. Gottehrer went on to produce albums by the Go-Go's', Dr. Feelgood, Richard Hell, the Bongos, Marshall Crenshaw, Joan Armatrading, Link Wray, and many more.

As a songwriter, Goldstein was the only one of the three who continued to have big success into the 1970s. He became the producer for the band War from their very first album in 1970. He co-wrote most of their biggest hits while continuing to produce them, including "All Day Music," "Low Rider," and "Why Can't We Be Friends." In fact, he was so closely tied to the band War that in a 1990s lawsuit he won the right to the band name, forcing virtually all of the original members to record as the Lowrider Band instead. 

Feldman died in 2023 at the age of 83. Goldstein and Gottehrer are still alive as I write this in 2025.

Here are their Wikipedia pages, if you want to know more:

Bob Feldman - Wikipedia 

Jerry Goldstein (producer) - Wikipedia 

Richard Gottehrer - Wikipedia

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 What Time Is It (Jive Five)
02 My Boyfriend's Back (Angels)
03 I'm on Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis)
04 The Drifter (Ray Pollard)
05 Cara-Lin (Sorrows)
06 Sorrow (Merseys [Merseybeats])
07 Night Time (Strangeloves)
08 Say Those Magic Words (Birds)
09 Beat the Clock (McCoys)
10 Come On Down to My Boat (Every Mother's Son)
11 It's Nice to Be with You (Monkees)
12 All Day Music (War)
13 Low Rider (War)
14 Why Can't We Be Friends (War)
15 Summer (War)
16 I Want Candy (Bow Wow Wow)
17 You Got the Power (War)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SYsxwH2r

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/yznTM351UNw7hYf/file

Feldman, Goldstein, and Gottehrer were the members of the band the Strangeloves in the mid-1960s. The cover photo is taken from a promotional photo of the band. They put out a lot of photos wearing these zebra-striped vests. From left to right: Richard Gottehrer, Bob Feldman, and Jerry Goldstein.

James Brown - Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA, 9-16-1966

Here's a James Brown concert from 1966.

I usually don't post much live music from Brown, because there's been a large number of official live albums released already. However, it's very rare to have a recording from this far back with this pristine sound quality, even though it's a bootleg. Also, I don't think there have been any official live releases from 1966. And this recording seems to have stayed surprisingly obscure, so hopefully this post will help spread it around.

At the time of this release, Brown's most recent single hit was "Money Won't Change You." That's probably why it was emphasized, getting played once at the start and then again at the end. " It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World" was also emphasized, making up most of a 14-minute-long medley, as that was a big hit earlier in the year.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 talk by emcee (James Brown)
02 The King [Instrumental] (James Brown)
03 Money Won't Change You (James Brown)
04 Try Me (James Brown)
05 Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (James Brown)
06 Prisoner of Love (James Brown)
07 Maybe the Last Time (James Brown)
08 I Got You [I Feel Good] (James Brown)
09 talk (James Brown)
10 It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World - Lost Someone (James Brown)
11 When a Man Loves a Woman - It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World [Reprise] (James Brown)
12 Please, Please, Please (James Brown)
13 Money Won't Change You [Reprise] (James Brown)
14 talk by emcee (James Brown)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oR9hd5be

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/9aejtTgDWUBJ6mu/file

The cover photo shows Brown on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1966. I used the Krea AI program to improve the image quality. For the name at the top, I used a concert poster from the 1960s.

Covered: Jackie DeShannon: 1961-2017

Here's another entry in my Covered series highlighting the careers of great songwriters. This time, it's Jackie DeShannon.

DeShannon is more famous as a performer than a songwriter. But she's in a rather strange position, because she had some big hits as a performer that she didn't write, especially "What the World Needs Now Is Love," and some big hits as a songwriter for other musical acts, especially "When You Walk in the Room" and "Betty Davis Eyes." The one big hit she both wrote and had the hit performance was "Put a Little Love in Your Heart."

DeShannon was born in rural Kentucky to parents who were farmers but also very musically inclined. So her music career began remarkably early. She was singing songs on local radio stations by the time she was six years old, and hosting her own radio show and making occasional local TV appearances by the time she was eleven! She signed her first record contract at the age of 16, and began putting out singles, but without much success at first. 

At the time, successful female songwriters were very few and far between. But in 1960 she had enough success to get connected to another female songwriter, Sharon Sheeley. Together, they co-wrote DeShannon's first hit song, "Dum Dum" by Brenda Lee. They also wrote some other hit songs over the next couple of years, like "Heart in Hand" and "Breakaway."

In 1963, she co-wrote the song "Needles and Pins" with Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono. She didn't get songwriting credit on it, but she claims she was a full participant in its creation. I believe her. It was common for aspiring musicians to get screwed out of songwriting credits in those days (and probably still today), and I'll bet that went double for women. At any rate, her version of the song was the first one released. It barely made the U.S. singles charts, but went all the way to Number One in Canada. Instead, the Searchers had a Number One hit with it some months later. That suggested there was a problem with her record company, not with her version. Later in 1963, she wrote "When You Walk in the Room" by herself. Again, her version went nowhere and the Searchers had a bit hit with it.

In 1965, she finally had a big hit as a performer, with "What the World Needs Now Is Love," written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. From that point on, she almost had two music careers at once. She put out many albums and singles, often with her singing cover songs. At the same time though, she wrote successful songs for other musical acts that she usually never released herself. Examples would be "Come and Stay with Me," a hit she wrote for Marianne Faithfull, and "Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe," which she wrote for the Byrds. 

She wrote hundreds of songs in many musical genres, and made professional sounding demos of them to give to other musicians. Decades later, several albums of these demos have been released. I think if she would have focused on putting on these songs she wrote herself, she would have had a much more successful performing career. It seems to me though that her record company was more interested in her songwriting, so they didn't encourage that.

In 1969, she had another huge hit with "Put a Little Love in Your Heart," which she co-wrote. It reached the Top Five in the U.S. singles chart. After that, musical trends were changing. There was much more of a focus on singers writing their own songs. For instance, Carole King made the transition from writing hits for others to performing her own hit songs. DeShannon made a similar transition, putting out many albums in the 1970s which mostly consisted of her own songs. Again though, in my opinion, her record companies badly bungled her career. Archival releases decades later show dozens of really good songs she wrote and recorded that weren't released at the time. 

Her performing career slowly wound down. In 1978, she stopped putting out albums. She would only release two more much later, in 2000 and 2011. She also never really toured much. She probably didn't need to, with all the money she made from songwriting. In 1974, one of her albums contained a song she co-wrote, "Betty Davis Eyes." It didn't get any attention at the time, and wasn't released as a single. But in 1981, Kim Carnes had a massive hit with it. It went to Number One in the U.S., and was the best selling song of the year.

For this album, I've concentrated entirely on cover versions, with not even a single song performed by DeShannon. I've already posted a couple of albums by her at this blog, and I'll probably post more in the future, so this isn't the place for more of that. Most of these are the original versions, often the hit versions. But I made some exceptions, especially when I had to choose versions other than the DeShannon ones, for instance with "Put a Little Love in Your Heart." 

Here's her Wikipedia page if you want to know more:

Jackie DeShannon - Wikipedia 

An interesting fact I just saw on that page is that the Led Zeppelin song "Tangerine" was actually written by Jimmy Page about DeShannon. The two of them dated around 1965 when Page was a session guitarist. 

This album is 49 minutes long.  

01 Dum Dum (Brenda Lee)
02 Woe Is Me (Helen Shapiro)
03 Heart in Hand (Brenda Lee)
04 I Shook the World (Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans)
05 Needles and Pins (Searchers)
06 Breakaway (Irma Thomas)
07 When You Walk in the Room (Searchers)
08 Come and Stay with Me (Marianne Faithfull)
09 Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe (Byrds)
10 With You in Mind (Marianne Faithfull)
11 Put a Little Love in Your Heart (Dorothy Morrison)
12 Bad Water (Doris Duke)
13 Boat to Sail (Carpenters)
14 Santa Fe (Van Morrison)
15 Bette Davis Eyes (Kim Carnes)
16 Splendor in the Grass (Ladybug Transistor)
17 He Did It (Samantha Fish)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/e2eqJ5kb

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/Nf8kBkKT8PbNtQ1/file

The cover photo is from 1967. 

Covered: Don Covay: 1961-1994

Here's another lesser known songwriter celebrated in my Covered series. This time, it's Don Covay.

Covay was born in South Carolina in 1936, but spent the latter half of his childhood in Washington, D.C. In 1957, he started out as a chauffeur and opening act for Little Richard. He had dreams of being a famous soul singer, but for years he drifted from record label to record label with poor sales.

His first success came into 1961, writing the song "Pony Time." He own version only reached the lower part of the singles charts. But then Chubby Checker covered it later that year and it went all the way to Number One. That established a pattern: while he kept his own solo career going for decades, other singers usually had much more success with his songs. 

In the mid-1965, he was signed to Atlantic Records and associated labels. Atlantic had a relationship with Stax Records, so Covay was able to co-write songs with Steve Cropper and other soul music greats there, like David Porter and Booker T. Jones. For instance, "See-Saw" and "Sookie Sookie" were co-written with Cropper. (I have different versions of both of those songs in my Covered albums for Cropper.) 

Probably Covay's most celebrated song is "Chain of Fools." Aretha Franklin had a big hit with it in 1967, but he'd actually written it about 15 years earlier after seeing a chain gang of prisoners working by the side of a road. Rolling Stone Magazine put it on their list of the top 500 songs of all time. 

He was the instigator being the brief soul supergroup "Soul Clan," consisting of himself, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Ben E. King & Arthur Conley. He wrote the band's one hit single. However, that was just a one-off. After that, his career declined for a few years. But he had a minor revival with a few hits in the early 1970s. I've included one of those as the only song here credited just to him, "I Was Checkin' Out, She Was Checkin' In."

But musical tastes were quickly changing in the late 1970s, with the rise of disco, punk, and new wave. After a few years of declining sales, Covay quit the music business altogether. But he had some later revivals. For instance, in 2000, he put out his first new album in over 20 years, "Adlib," filled with famous guest star appearances. He died of a stroke in 2015 at the age of 78.

I tried when I could to use the original hit versions. But some of these were never hits, just songs that I thought were worthy of inclusion. And I did occasionally avoid the hit versions for various reasons. For instance, I only wanted one song mainly sung by Covay, so I used the Rolling Stones version of "Mercy, Mercy" when in fact Covay had a hit with it in 1964.  

Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Don Covay - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long. 

01 Letter Full of Tears (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 There's a Party Goin' On (Wanda Jackson)
03 Pony Time (Chubby Checker)
04 Long Tall Shorty (Kinks)
05 Mercy, Mercy (Rolling Stones)
06 Don't Drive Me Away (Ben E. King)
07 Tonight's the Night (Solomon Burke)
08 I Don't Know What You've Got but It's Got Me (Little Richard)
09 Three Time Loser (Wilson Pickett)
10 Love Bug (Lena Horne)
11 Chain of Fools (Aretha Franklin)
12 See Saw (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
13 Soul Meeting (Soul Clan [Don Covay, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Ben E. King & Arthur Conley])
14 I'm Gonna Take What He's Got (Etta James)
15 Demonstration (Otis Redding)
16 Sookie Sookie (Tina Britt)
17 She Said Yeah (Joe Tex)
18 This Old Town [People in This Town] (Staple Singers)
19 The Usual Place (J. Geils Band)
20 I Was Checkin' Out, She Was Checkin' In (Don Covay)
21 Watch the One Who Brings You the News (Millie Jackson)
22 Thunder (Jimmy Witherspoon)
23 Back to the Streets (Soul Summit)
24 It's Better to Have [And Not Need] (Huey Lewis & the News)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Bte4uSCp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/PiuCVec2exVUilI/file

I don't know any details about the cover image, but it looks to date from the early 1960s. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it using the Kolorize program.