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.

The Carpenters - Imaginary Piano Recital, Volume 1: 1970-1975 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's another Fabio from Rio guest post. It's the first of two volumes featuring the Carpenters. Basically, Fabio and I love Karen Carpenter's voice, but the production of Carpenters records usually left a lot to be desired. Too often, the songs were drenched with syrupy strings and other overproduction that detracted from the beauty of her voice, and the song, instead of adding to them. So we've tried to counter that in various ways. First, I posted a "Near Acappella" album that stripped the music just down to vocals, bass, and drums. Then, we posted two completely "Acappella" albums. Now, there's this. The idea is, an imaginary piano recital, with nothing but Karen Carpenter singing, and usually her brother Richard playing piano.

Fabio found all the songs for this. First, he found some other people on the Internet who already had used audio editing technology to strip official studio versions of songs down to just lead vocals and piano. But many songs he liked hadn't been given that treatment, or hadn't been stripped enough, so he did his own audio editing. So all the songs have been edited, heavily, but the ones with "[Edit]" in them specifically indicate the ones with Fabio's editing.

Fabio has a lot more to say on this. So check out his liner notes that are included in the download zip. 

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 [They Long to Be] Close to You [Edit] (Carpenters)
02 Maybe It's You [Edit] (Carpenters)
03 For All We Know (Carpenters)
04 One Love [Edit] (Carpenters)
05 Rainy Days and Mondays [BBC Version] [Edit] (Carpenters)
06 Superstar [Groupie] [Edit] (Carpenters)
07 A Song for You [Edit] (Carpenters)
08 I Won't Last a Day without You [Edit] (Carpenters)
09 I Can't Make Music [Edit] (Carpenters)
10 Sing [Edit] (Carpenters)
11 The End of the World [Edit] (Carpenters)
12 Top of the World [Edit] (Carpenters)
13 Yesterday Once More [Edit] (Carpenters)
14 Love Me for What I Am [Edit] (Carpenters)
15 Solitaire [Edit] (Carpenters)

Top of the World [Country Singalong Version] [Edit] (Carpenters) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Jd2UdXrz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/7Kd3757bXETVnXz/file

For the cover image, we wanted to show Karen singing and Richard playing piano. Luckily, we found two, just enough for our two volumes. I don't know the details of where or when this image was taken though, except that it's "circa 1971."

Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 11: April to May 1970

Sadly, this is the eleventh and final volume of my compilation of "Playboy After Dark" T.V. show episodes. There's a lot of excellent music here, but the show got cancelled after just two seasons.

This last volume mostly consists of performers from earlier episodes coming back. Perhaps Playboy head Hugh Hefner already known the show was going to be cancelled so he wanted to have a last hurrah with some of his favorite acts. I think Spanky Wilson and Sue Raney are the only ones who weren't repeat guests. The Cowsills performed another time, but lip-synced their performance then, so I didn't include that. But they played live here.

The first act here, Bill Medley, was half of the Righteous Brothers duo. He didn't have much success with his solo career in this era, but in 1987 he would have a Number One hit in the U.S. with "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" in a duet with Jennifer Warnes.

Like most of the volumes for the second season, there are some songs with "[Edit]" in their titles. As I explained in previous volumes, that's mostly from talking over the music during the last songs of each episode, especially thanks to a voice-over advertisement for the airline company T.W.A. 

There are a number of songs here that weren't put on record, similar to earlier volumes. That's especially true for the duets and other collaborations. For instance, I couldn't find any evidence of Billy Preston performing "It's Your Thing" on any record - a big hit for the Isley Brothers around this time - much less doing it with Joanne Vent, Bill Medley, and Blinky!  

I hope you enjoyed all the volumes in this series. And I hope now that I've done this, the music from this show will be appreciated by a wider audience. 

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 Hold On, I'm Coming (Bill Medley)
02 You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin' (Bill Medley & Sammy Davis, Jr.)
03 Here's That Rainy Day - My Funny Valentine (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
04 For Once in My Life (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
05 It's Your Thing [Edit] (Billy Preston, Joanne Vent, Bill Medley & Blinky)
06 Them Changes [Edit] (Buddy Miles)
07 Dreams (Buddy Miles)
08 Alfie (Spanky Wilson)
09 Bring Me Sunshine (Spanky Wilson)
10 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Lou Rawls)
11 All God's Children Got Soul (Lou Rawls)
12 Where Is Love (Cowsills)
13 Two by Two (Cowsills)
14 Games People Play (Sue Raney)
15 Whoever You Are, I Love You (Sue Raney)
16 Poor Boy [Edit] (Cowsills)
17 A Lot of Livin' to Do (Hal Frazier with Buddy Rich)
18 Workout [Instrumental] (Buddy Rich)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uvnZesz3

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/omCInq9OR6LQQ0h/file

The cover image shows Lou Rawls. It's a screenshot I took from one of the videos of the episodes presented here. 

Covered: Barry Mason & Les Reed: 1964-2002

Here's another album for my "Covered" series, highlighting the talents of singer-songwriters. This time, I'm tackling the songwriting team of Barry Mason and Les Reed.

I have to admit that I'm not terribly impressed by the songwriting of Barry Mason and Les Reed. But I'm posting this for two reasons. One, they wrote an undeniable number of big hit songs in the 1960s and 70s, so they shouldn't be forgotten. But also, they were part of a small group of professional songwriters working in Britain at the time, often writing songs with others, so they need to be included as part of that scene. At times, one or the other co-wrote songs with Geoff Stephens, Roger Greenaway, Roger Cook, Tony Macaulay, John Carter, Ken Lewis, Don Black, Mitch Murray, and Peter Callander. It's probable that you've heard of few to none of those songwriters. That was the case for me until I started making the "Covered" albums. But I'll bet you know a lot of their hit songs. I plan to post "Covered" albums for all of those other songwriters I just mentioned as well.

Both Mason and Reed were born in small towns in England in 1935. (Mason was born in Wigan and Reed was born in Woking.) Mason got started in profressional songwriting do to working as a producer. He later explained, "I met this boy called Tommy Bruce and I spent my last few pounds making a demo of him singing an old Fats Waller song, 'Ain't Misbehavin'' - and he had a hit. Suddenly, I was his manager, not knowing anything about the business. But the important thing was, I was in the business." 

However, Les Reed had the first big hit. "Tell Me When," written with Geoff Stephens, was a hit for the Applejacks in early 1964. Reed would go on to write many more songs with Stephens, though not as man as with Mason. Both of them worked with other songwriters from the start, and kept doing so. For instance, Mason co-wrote "She Just Satisfies" with Jimmy Page, future lead guitarist for Led Zeppelin. It was a failed solo single for Page in 1965.

I don't know how Mason and Reed met, but by 1964 they were writing songs together. Their first hit song together was "Here It Comes Again." The Fortunes took it to Number Four in Britain in 1965. After that, they began writing together more consistently, while still also working with other songwriters. In 1965, Reed had his first massive hit with "It's Not Unusual," which hit Number One in Britain and turned Tom Jones into a big star. It was co-written with Gordon Mills, a songwriter who also was Jones's manager. A year later, he had another banger with "There's a Kind of Hush," co-written with Geoff Stephens. Herman's Hermits had the big hit in 1966, but I chose to include a 1971 version by the Carpenters instead, since I put the Herman's Hermits version on a different "Covered" album. 

Their first really huge smash hit together was "The Last Waltz." Although Engelbert Humperdinck only had a Top Forty hit with it in the U.S., it Britain it went all the way to Number One in 1967. It stayed on top for five weeks, making it one of the best selling songs of the year.

I'm not a fan of "The Last Waltz." It's a sappy love song, oversung by Humperdinck, and overproduced, with lots of strings. I find it mystifying it dominated the charts for a portion of 1967, when that was one of the best years of hit music ever, in my opinion. I've included it because it's such a big hit, and so pivotal in their careers. But Mason and Reed began writing a lot of hit songs in that same style. I've elected to not include many of them, even when they were big hits, if I wasn't that impressed with them as songs.

Most of the songs here were co-written by Mason and Reed. I'll only mention the other exceptions. "Daughter of Darkness" was another one written by Mason and Stephens. "A Man without Love" was written by Mason with three other songwriters.n"Love Me Tonight" was written by Mason with two others. "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" was written by Mason and Tony Macaulay. I put the 1970 hit version by Edison Lighthouse and a "Covered" album for Macaulay, so I chose a interesting, non-hit version here. "There Goes My First Love" was written by Mason with Roger Greenaway.

Mason and Reed had most of their success in the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s, both together and with other songwriters. Their songwriting partnership faded away around the same time the hits slowed down. Reed moved into writing more for movie soundtracks and musical plays. Mason continued writing the occasional hit with other songwriters. He even co-wrote a Top 40 song as late as 2002, which is the last song here, "Tell Me Why." Reed died in 2019 at the age of 83. Mason died in 2021 at the age of 85.

Here's the Wikipedia link for Mason:

Barry Mason - Wikipedia

And here's the one for Reed:

Les Reed (songwriter) - Wikipedia  

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 Don't Turn Around (Merseybeats)
02 Tell Me When (Applejacks)
03 Here It Comes Again (Fortunes)
04 It's Not Unusual (Tom Jones)
05 Leave a Little Love (Lulu)
06 The Last Waltz (Engelbert Humperdinck)
07 Delilah (Tom Jones)
08 Kiss Me Goodbye (Petula Clark)
09 Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (Johnny Worth)
10 Love Me Tonight (Tom Jones)
11 A Man without Love (Engelbert Humperdinck)
12 Daughter of Darkness (Tom Jones)
13 There Goes My First Love (Drifters)
14 Good Love Can Never Die (Alvin Stardust)
15 There's a Kind of Hush (Carpenters)
16 Love Grows [Where My Rosemary Goes] (Freedy Johnston)
17 Tell Me Why (Declan Galbraith)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hVs6Rga9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0Qd4g12HWY8WrK4/file

The cover image shows Barry Mason on the left and Les Reed on the right. I took two different pictures and put them together, using Photoshop. The Mason one is from 1966 and the Reed one is from 1967. Both were originally in black and white, but I colorized them with the use of the Kolorize program.

Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 10: April 1970

Here's another volume of music I compiled from episodes of the "Playboy After Dark" TV show. This is the tenth. There's only one more after this.

There's a lot of variety on this album, with country, soul, jazz, and rock. Some highlights are B.B. King, Billy Preston, and Linda Ronstadt making her second appearance. 

A couple of songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. This is due to the usual problem with this series, of people talking over the music. (Especially the T.W.A. advertisements I keep mentioning.) So I fixed those in the usual way, with the help of the MVSEP program. 

By the way, Barbara McNair is a rare case of one of the performers for this show who also posed naked for Playboy Magazine. But it's not like she had to do that in order to get on the show. She'd had an established career starting in the late 1950s, as a singer and an actress for plays, T.V., and movies. She was signed to Motown Records from around 1966 to 1969. She even had her own T.V. show from 1969 to 1971, called "The Barbara McNair Show." 

Her career would take a hit in 1972, however, when she was arrested for heroin possession, because she signed for a package sent to her house containing heroin. However, charges against her were later dropped, and her husband was charged instead. It seems like her husband was a seriously bad dude. He was murdered in 1976. It was alleged he was involved in the Mafia, and was killed at the same time he was trying to put a hit out on someone else.

You can read her Wikipedia entry here:

Barbara McNair - Wikipedia 

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and ten minutes long. 

01 Nobody Knows (Dillards)
02 Hey Boys (Dillards)
03 My Shining Hour (Carmen McRae)
04 I Love You More than You'll Ever Know (Carmen McRae)
05 Bending the Strings [Instrumental] [Edit] (Dillards)
06 Stand by Your Man (Lola Falana)
07 It Takes a Little Longer (Sonny Charles)
08 Friendship Train (Sonny Charles)
09 Walk a Mile in My Shoes [Edit] (Sonny Charles & Lola Falana)
10 Until It's Time for You to Go (Barbara McNair)
11 Son of a Preacher Man (Barbara McNair)
12 So Excited (B. B. King)
13 The Thrill Is Gone (B. B. King)
14 Lovesick Blues (Linda Ronstadt)
15 Long, Long Time (Linda Ronstadt)
16 Sing, Sing, Sing (Country Joe & the Fish)
17 The 'Fish' Cheer - I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag (Country Joe & the Fish)
18 Everything's All Right (Billy Preston)
19 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
20 God Bless the Child (Blinky)
21 Let's Get Together (Joanne Vent & Muscatel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UK1WoH6B

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Ox0RbnXqeJIZP7N/file

The cover image of Linda Ronstadt is a screenshot I took from a video of one of these episodes. 

Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 9: February to March 1970

Here's another volume of music I compiled from episodes of the "Playboy After Dark" TV show. By this point, we're well into the second and final season of the show.

This volume starts with a medley of songs by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. It's a particularly interesting performance because it had stripped down instrumentation, with minimal drums. 

I especially psyched that this includes two songs by Evie Sands. I still am mystified that she never became a big star. She had a great voice and was ridiculously beautiful (just look at the cover image). She even played an impressive guitar solo on her appearance on the "Johnny Cash Show" around this time. But she was signed to a crappy record company in the 1960s, and repeatedly had hit singles stolen from her by other acts who would hear her songs, quickly record their own versions, and get proper promotion. I posted a "best of" a few years ago to help draw more attention to her underappreciated career, which you can find here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/11/evie-sands-best-of-evie-sands-1965-1974.html

There's almost no live recordings of her from this era, other than this one and the "Johnny Cash Show" appearance I mentioned above. It's especially nice to see her play a cover of "Light My Fire" here, because she never released any version of that one.

The Grass Roots performed on this show a year earlier. Unfortunately, that performance was lip-synced. But they played live for some reason on this, their second appearance. I believe they never released a version of the Motown classic "Dancing in the Street."

If anyone knows the name of the instrumental performed by Les McCann, please let me know so I can fix the title. 

It's nice this ends with a performance by jazz legend Sarah Vaughan. I'm pretty sure she never recorded "Didn't We," a song by Jimmy Webb, but only played it in concert around this time period. Similarly, R.B. Greaves, who is best known for his hit "Take a Letter Maria," never released "Danny Boy" on record.

Note that three songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. Those are more cases of talking over the music, especially advertisements for the airline company T.W.A. on the last song of each episode. I got rid of that in the usual way, with the help of the MVSEP program. 

This album is an hour and one minute long. 

01 Yesterlove (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
02 My Girl Has Gone (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
03 The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage - Tracks of My Tears (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
04 In My Time (Noel Harrison)
05 But You Know I Love You (Evie Sands)
06 Light My Fire [Edit] (Evie Sands)
07 Shame and Scandal in the Family (Lloyd Haynes)
08 She Believes in Me (John Stewart)
09 Shackles and Chains (John Stewart)
10 Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (Johnny Mathis)
11 Aquarius - Let the Sunshine In (Johnny Mathis)
12 The Lady and the Outlaw [Edit] (John Stewart)
13 Instrumental (Les McCann)
14 Compared to What (Les McCann)
15 Walkin' through the Country (Grass Roots)
16 Dancing in the Street (Grass Roots)
17 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (R. B. Greaves)
18 Danny Boy (R. B. Greaves)
19 Didn't We [Edit] (Sarah Vaughan)
20 There Will Never Be Another You (Sarah Vaughan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vYoiMQPc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/m0BqV3Yakpx0YUN/file

The cover is a screenshot of Evie Sands I took from a video of one of these episodes.

Covered: Randy Newman, Volume 1: 1963-1973

Whenever I think about the "Covered" series of albums I've made, I get frustrated, because I've got dozens that I've never gotten around to posting. I guess I enjoy the making of the albums more than the steps needed to post them. It feels like unfinished homework. But I'm going to make more of an effort to fix that, starting with a triple-header of Randy Newman.

Here's some highlights from his Wikipedia entry:  

"[Newman] is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, composer, and arranger. Born in Los Angeles to an extended family of Hollywood film composers, he is known for his Americana-inspired songs, non-rhotic Southern-accented singing style, and typically mordant or satirical lyrics. Since the 1990s, he has worked mainly in film scoring, most popularly for Disney and Pixar. ... Newman has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards (out of 22 nominations), three Emmys, seven Grammy Awards, as well as nominations for a BAFTA Award and seven Golden Globe Awards. His award-winning film work includes 'Ragtime' (1981), 'The Natural' (1984), 'Toy Story' (1995), 'A Bug's Life' (1998), 'Pleasantville' (1998), 'Monsters, Inc.' (2001), 'Cars' (2006), 'The Princess and the Frog' (2009), 'Toy Story 3' (2010), and 'Marriage Story' (2019). He was honored with the Recording Academy's Governors Award in 2003, a Disney Legend award in 2007, and inductions into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013."

As mentioned above, he was born in Los Angeles. But he also spent many of his childhood summers in New Orleans. That would prove to be important, because his songwriting would be heavily influenced by New Orleans styles. And also as mentioned above, he was part of an extended family of Hollywood film composers. His mother and father had regular jobs (as secretary and internist, respectively), but three of his uncles were film composers, and so were three cousins. 

He began writing songs professionally by the age of 17. He put out a single under his own name in 1962, but it flopped. So he decided to try writing songs for others for a while. He began having successes almost immediately. The first song here, "Hold Your Head High" by Jackie DeShannon, is from 1963. 

Also very early on, he began writing instrumental music for TV shows, starting with an episode of "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" in 1962. That talent would continue to grow, leading to him to eventually doing full movie soundtracks starting in 1971. More on that in a later volume though.

Alan Price helped boost Newman's songwriting career in 1967. For one thing, he had a hit with Newman's "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear." But also, he was so taken by Newman's songwriting that his 1967 album "A Price on His Head" had no less than seven songs by Newman. Harry Nilsson paid him an even bigger compliment by covering an entire album of his songs in 1970, "Nilsson Sings Newman."

Newman finally released his first album under his own name in 1968, "Randy Newman (Creates Something New Under the Sun)." It was a critical success, and it led to even more musical acts covering his songs, but it didn't sell well. It didn't even reach the top 200 U.S. albums chart. For the next ten years or so, he would continue to be a cult artist, meaning he was critically praised and beloved by a small group of fans, but didn't have much wider commercial success. 

Meanwhile, his songwriting continued to get better and better. It arguably peaked with his 1972 album "Sail Away," though he has maintained remarkably high consistency for his entire career. Rolling Stone Magazine has put that album on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. His 1974 album "Good Old Boys" would also make that list, though lower down it.

Newman's songwriting is extraordinary, but it's also idiosyncratic, with frequent heavy sarcasm. Some songs have general romantic themes that lend themselves to being covered a lot, for instance "I Think It's Going to Rain Today." There are over a 100 different cover versions of that one. But then consider a song like "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)." It's a sarcastic song about how God seemingly could care less about the human race, and even laughs at the calamities it throws at humanity. I think it's a great song, with deep meaning, but it's not exactly typical Top Forty subject material! So there are a lot of songs I would have wanted to include but didn't, because either there's no cover versions at all, or at least no worthy covers. And I've followed my usual rule for the "Covered" series of generally not including versions by Newman himself (although he'll show up with one song in a later volume, and in a duet in the other volume).

Note that some of the best songs written by Newman during this time period only show up in one of the later two volumes. So if you don't see a favorite, wait to see what's on those first. 

This album is 52 minutes long. 

01 Hold Your Head High (Jackie DeShannon)
02 Baby, Don't Look Down (Billy Storm)
03 I've Been Wrong Before (Cilla Black)
04 Nobody Needs Your Love (Gene Pitney)
05 Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear (Alan Price Set)
06 Snow (Claudine Longet)
07 Illinois (Everly Brothers)
08 I Think It's Going to Rain Today (Dusty Springfield)
09 Just One Smile (Blood Sweat & Tears)
10 Bet No One Ever Hurt This Bad (Linda Ronstadt)
11 Love Story (Peggy Lee)
12 Dayton, Ohio, 1903 (Wayne Fontana)
13 Mama Told Me [Not to Come] (Three Dog Night)
14 Cowboy (Nilsson)
15 The Beehive State (Doobie Brothers)
16 Living without You (Manfred Mann's Earth Band)
17 God's Song [That's Why I Love Mankind] (Etta James)
18 Guilty (Bonnie Raitt)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/i6jjx6vk

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/JKPIcpuJQBtagaN/file

The cover photo is from 1968.

Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 8: December 1969 to February 1970

Here's the seventh volume of the episodes I compiled of the "Playboy After Dark" TV show. It's the third volume of the show's second season.

I'll only mention some things about a couple of the performances. The rest should be evident just by listening. 

This episode features a previously unknown chapter of Lesley Gore's music career. She'd had a string of hits from 1963 to 1967, but her music went out of style. She continued to release some singles, but they all flopped. In 1972, she put out an album for the first time since 1967, "Someplace Else Now," that recast her in a singer-songwriter mode, similar to Carole King and her seminal 1971 album "Tapestry." In her Playboy TV appearance, she sang two songs that were moving into that mode. Neither of them were officially released by her anywhere, as far as I could tell. One of them, "Didn't We," is a Jimmy Webb song that was covered by many musical artists in this time period. 

Another bit of lost history are the two songs by Joanne Vent and Muscatel. Vent was an attractive White woman with a soulful, bluesy voice, who seemed to have potential for a big music career, a la Janis Joplin. She put out a solo album in 1969, called, "The Black and White of It Is Blues." Unfortunately, as one review I read put it, "Great voice, but not such a great album." At the time of this show, she was getting ready to release a second album with a new backing band, called Muscatel. I found a web link of someone selling a test pressing of it on eBay. But somehow that album never came out. The two songs she sang here suggest what her second album could have sounded like. She also was part of a duet in Volume 5, and shows up again in Volumes 10 and 11.

It's great that Fleetwood Mac is included here. But unfortunately, their performance was badly edited down. Their one song, "Rattlesnake Shake," is only two and a half minutes long. It's clear the performance was longer, since the song both fades in and fades out. They also did a second song, "Coming Your Way," but it only showed up for half a minute at the very end of that particular episode, under an overdubbed advertisement for T.W.A. Airlines. So I didn't bother to include that.

I've mentioned that each episode ended with talking over the music. But, by chance, that only impacted one song in this volume,  "The Category Stomp by John Hartford. That's why that one has "[Edit]" in its title.

This album is an hour and eight minutes long. 

01 Something (Dolores Hall)
02 Just Because of You (Dolores Hall)
03 A Simple Thing as Love (John Hartford)
04 Natural to Be Gone (John Hartford)
05 The Category Stomp [Edit] (John Hartford)
06 Let's Get Together (Jack Jones)
07 If You Want Me To (Chambers Brothers)
08 Love, Love, Love (Chambers Brothers)
09 Georgia on My Mind (James Brown)
10 Yesterday (Vicki Anderson)
11 By the Time I Get to Phoenix (James Brown)
12 God Bless the Child (Jack Jones)
13 The More I See You (Jack Jones)
14 Rattlesnake Shake (Fleetwood Mac)
15 Hello Young Lovers (Lesley Gore)
16 Didn't We (Lesley Gore)
17 High Sheriff of Calhoun Parrish (Tony Joe White)
18 Groupy Girl (Tony Joe White)
19 Slow Train (Joanne Vent & Muscatel)
20 Long Walk to D.C. (Joanne Vent & Muscatel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JdGHbzj8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/HAcJNqwRYyI9p09/file

The cover image shows Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac. It's a screenshot I took from one of these episodes.

Love - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 11-23-1970

Here's a concert of Arthur Lee and Love in 1970. It's actually two concerts, and early and late show. Track 10, with an emcee talking, is the start of the late show.

In my opinion, "Forever Changes" by Love is easily one of the top 100 albums of all time. Many music critics have said the same. Unfortunately though, Love didn't play live much when the concert came out in 1967, actually never leaving the Los Angeles area, and when the did, it seems nobody was there to record it. As far as I can tell, it's not until 1970 that there are concert bootlegs. So I tried to find the best one from that year in order to post it here.

In 2015, an official live box set was released, called "Coming Through to You: The Live Recordings 1970-2004." But three out of the four CDs are from the 1990s or 2000s. The first CD is all from 1970, but it's two or three songs each from five different concerts. I wanted to hear a single concert all the way through. This Fillmore West concert was the best sounding one I could find. There's no overlap with the official box set, although it includes three songs recorded at that venue a couple of days prior to this concert. 

This is a soundboard recording, but not the greatest in terms of sound quality. The main issue is the vocals were very low in the mix. That probably explains why this hasn't gotten around much on bootleg trading sites. But that's something that can be easily fixed these days, so I fixed it (using the UVR5 audio editing program). I also cleaned things up, like extra low volume of banter, and song titles being wrong. It's a much better listen now, in my opinion.

One song, "Find Somebody," has "[Edit]" in its title. It was split into two files, with a gap in between. However, I managed to patch it back together in a way that hopefully should make the split totally unnoticeable. 

I assume the people who made the live box set mentioned above looked for live material prior to 1970, and didn't find any. So this is probably as close as we're going to get, chronologically, to hearing Love in 1967. (Along with the 1970 disc of the official box set.) Mostly, the band was playing different songs. In fact, there are only two "Forever Changes" songs here ("Andmoreagain" and "Bummer in the Summer"). But Love was still making very good music at least through 1970. All the songs here are solid.

By the way, three of the songs repeat between the early and late shows: "Product of the Times," "Stand Out," and "Singing Cowboy." I decided to keep both versions in each case.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long. 

01 Product of the Times (Love)
02 talk (Love)
03 Stand Out (Love)
04 Keep On Shining (Love)
05 talk (Love)
06 Andmoreagain (Love)
07 Singing Cowboy (Love)
08 talk (Love)
09 Good Times (Love)
10 talk by emcee (Love)
11 Stand Out (Love)
12 Product of the Times (Love)
13 Bummer in the Summer (Love)
14 Find Somebody [Edit] (Love)
15 Signed D.C. (Love)
16 Slick Dick (Love)
17 Always See Your Face (Love)
18 talk (Love)
19 Singing Cowboy (Love)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sd7AozX2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/4gHN2BLXhxqNbPq/file

The cover image of band leader Arthur Lee is from a concert in Copenhagen, Denmark, in March 1970.

Joan Baez - Baez Sings Baez, Volume 1: 1967-1971 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's an album that was entirely made by guest poster Fabio from Rio. I just helped it along here and there, for instance making the cover art. Recently, Fabio really got into the music of Joan Baez, and devoured all 40 or so of her albums. He thought she was almost entirely about singing cover songs. But as he listened to those albums, he discovered many good songs that were written by her. So he came up with the idea of compiling all of her original songs, to show that she's had a lot of songwriting talent, as well as singing talent. He found about 70 songs, enough for five albums. This is the first one.

A well known Joan Baez compilation album has the title "Baez Sings Dylan," and consists just of her covers of Bob Dylan songs. Fabio came up with the idea of riffing on that, and calling this series "Baez Sings Baez." So that's what we're calling it. And the font type, color, size, and so on is a close match to the "Baez Sings Dylan" cover.

Fabio has a lot more to say about this. But, like guest poster Mike Solof does, he prefers to put his comments in a file that's included in the download zip. So please give that a read to learn a lot more. 

Everything here comes from officially released studio albums, so the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 North (Joan Baez)
02 Saigon Bride (Joan Baez)
03 A Song for David [David's Song] (Joan Baez)
04 Sweet Sir Galahad (Joan Baez)
05 Here's to You (Joan Baez)
06 Blessed Are... (Joan Baez)
07 Three Horses (Joan Baez)
08 Last, Lonely and Wretched (Joan Baez)
09 Outside the Nashville City Limits (Joan Baez)
10 When Time Is Stolen (Joan Baez)
11 Gabriel and Me (Joan Baez)
12 Milanese Waltz - Marie Flore (Joan Baez)
13 The Hitchhiker's Song (Joan Baez)
14 Fifteen Months (Joan Baez)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PMuEKXwc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/gZhw4tt48XqFdZv/file

I mentioned above how I made the cover art as an homage to the cover of the official album "Baez Sings Dylan." Fabio selected the photograph. All I know about it is that it dates to 1965.

Lulu - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1969-1971

If you think I've posted a "BBC Sessions, Volume 4" for Lulu, you're not wrong. I recently discovered a ton of Lulu's BBC material that I'd missed before. In fact, I found so much that previously I'd posted four volumes, but now I'll be posting a total of nine! The vast majority of the new stuff is from the 1970s, especially 1975, but there is some music from the late 1960s. There are so many changes that I got rid of the old "Volume 4" and I'm replacing it with this one. I'd guess about half of the songs on this revamped volume are new.

Note also that I radically overhauled "Volume 3." I added a bunch of songs to that, and moved some other songs from that one to this one. So if you're interested in this at all, I strongly suggest you download the revised version of that album. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/10/lulu-bbc-sessions-volume-3-1968-1972.html

The first song is the only one not actually from the BBC. It's a duet with Johnny Cash, from Cash's own TV show. Most of the next bunch of songs are from the BBC radio show "Top of the Pops." Specifically, tracks 2 through 11 (with the exception of "Boom Bang a Bang," which was from a BBC TV special), plus track 19. These come from a musical associate named Marley, who sent me a bunch of performances from the BBC radio show "Top of the Pops." So a big thanks to him.

I mentioned in the previous volume that Lulu had her own BBC TV show from 1968 to 1975. I haven't been able to find many songs from her TV show from this time period, but I did find a handful from 1970. Those make up tracks 12 through 17. Track 18 ("Saved") is from another BBC TV show.

All of the performances here are officially unreleased. One snag with the new "Top of the Pops" tracks is that most of them had BBC DJs talking over the music. But I was able to remove the talking and keep the underlying music thanks to the X-Minus audio editing program. Those are the ones with " [Edit]" in their titles. I also got rid of the crowd noise as best I could for the songs that had that, mostly the TV show-sourced ones.

This album is 48 minutes long. 

01 Games People Play (Lulu & Johnny Cash)
02 Oh Me, Oh My [I'm a Fool for You Baby] [Edit] (Lulu)
03 Sweep Around Your Own Back Door [Edit] (Lulu)
04 The Letter [Edit] (Lulu)
05 Boom Bang a Bang (Lulu)
06 Feelin' Alright [Edit] (Lulu)
07 Marley Purt Drive [Edit] (Lulu)
08 Mr. Bojangles [Edit] (Lulu)
09 Dirty Old Man [Edit] (Lulu)
10 Hum a Song [From Your Heart] [Edit] (Lulu)
11 Show Me [Edit] (Lulu)
12 Girl Talk (Lulu & Cass Elliot)
13 Sugar, Sugar (Lulu, Dudley Moore & Cass Elliot)
14 Keep the Customer Satisfied (Lulu)
15 Sweet Little Sixteen - Long Tall Sally - Blue Suede Shoes (Lulu)
16 Free the People (Dusty Springfield & Lulu)
17 Joy to the World (Dusty Springfield & Lulu)
18 Saved (Lulu)
19 Help [Edit] (Lulu)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iCGFCJJK 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/uYCahxSGauK9xJd/file

The cover art photo comes from a BBC TV show in 1971, but I don't know the details.

The Pretty Things - Copenhagen Beat Festival, K.B. Hallen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 8-22-1970

I'm pretty psyched to present this album. One thing I like doing with this blog is trying to fill in musical gaps. For instance, the Pretty Things were a great band in the 1960s especially, and great live performers, but there are very few surviving live recordings worth listening to. So here's something to help fill in that gap.

I believe this recording comes from a European TV station that broadcast the entire Pretty Things set from the Copenhagen Beat Festival in 1970. You can find the entire video on YouTube in black and white. That makes this one of the earliest surviving musical recordings from the band. 

However, there were some sound quality issues, even though it was recorded by a professional film crew. One problem was that the lead vocals were low in the mix. I fixed that using the MVSEP program. For many of the songs, I went through line by line to bring up particularly quiet bits. I did the same with the banter between songs. But I took extra steps there. For instance, I ran all of those bits through Adobe's vocal enhancer program, and I got rid of extra reverb. Before, it was virtually impossible to understand most of the banter. Now, I can make out most of it.

Note that I've posted a BBC concert by this band from just a couple of months earlier that has a similar set list. But "similar" isn't the same. For instance, one nice surprise here is a cover of "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (although it's drastically different, and mostly instrumental, with only one verse the same as the original). This concert and the BBC one I just mentioned are the best two early concerts by this band that I've come across so far.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Blue Serge Blues (Pretty Things)
02 talk (Pretty Things)
03 She's a Lover (Pretty Things)
04 talk (Pretty Things)
05 In the Square - The Letter - Rain (Pretty Things)
06 talk (Pretty Things)
07 Sickle Clowns (Pretty Things)
08 talk (Pretty Things)
09 Old Man Going (Pretty Things)
10 Mona - Drum Solo (Pretty Things)
11 Ohio (Pretty Things)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EMB7dab3

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/9v4eaYVJNUA4XTC/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. I took it from a YouTube video of the concert. That was in black and white. But I used the Kolorize program to colorize it. That's lead singer Phil May in the black leather jacket, and Pete Tolson behind him.

Fairport Convention - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 8-31-1970

First off, I have to warn that this concert is not up to the usual song quality of this music blog. It sounds pretty good to me, but not excellent. It's from an audience boot, not a soundboard, and it shows. I'm posting this for two reasons. One, a commenter named Chris repeatedly asked me to improve and post this specific concert. Two, early Fairport Convention is great, and recordings like this need to be preserved, so I decided Chris's idea had merit. 

In the end, I was able to make a lot of sonic improvements. (If you think this sounds rough, you should have heard it before.) There was a lot of muck in this recording. I used a few different audio editing tricks to reduce that, but I couldn't get rid of that entirely. I made a particularly big impact on the banter between songs. Before, that was barely intelligible. Now, most of what they're saying can be understood.

Frankly, there are some other live recordings from 1970 with similar set lists that sound better. But if you're a big fan of the band, especially in their early years, you'll want this one too. Richard Thompson was still in the band. He and violinist Dave Swarbrick had some good instrumental "duels" on some of the songs.

The music here is unreleased. As mentioned above, the sound quality is decent, but not the best. 

This album is an hour and 21 minutes long. 

01 talk (Fairport Convention)
02 Walk Awhile (Fairport Convention)
03 talk (Fairport Convention)
04 Dirty Linen [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)
05 talk (Fairport Convention)
06 Staines Morris (Fairport Convention)
07 talk (Fairport Convention)
08 The Lark in the Morning [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)
09 talk (Fairport Convention)
10 Now Be Thankful (Fairport Convention)
11 talk (Fairport Convention)
12 Matty Groves (Fairport Convention)
13 talk (Fairport Convention)
14 The Banks of the Sweet Primroses (Fairport Convention)
15 talk (Fairport Convention)
16 Drums [Instrumental] (Fairport Convention)
17 Flatback Caper (Fairport Convention)
18 talk (Fairport Convention)
19 Sloth (Fairport Convention)
20 talk (Fairport Convention)
21 Instrumental (Fairport Convention)
22 talk (Fairport Convention)
23 Tam Lin (Fairport Convention)
24 talk (Fairport Convention)
25 Sir Patrick Spens (Fairport Convention)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/U7xVhxBB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/MWGun0fAX7SLESu/file

The cover image is from a Philadelphia Folk Festival on August 29, 1970. The original photo was in black and white. But I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Country Joe McDonald - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1970-1972

I left for a two-week vacation about two weeks ago. (I'm writing this in late March 2026.) Around the time I left, I heard that singer-songwriter Country Joe McDonald had died. Specifically, he died on March 7, 2026, at the age of 84, of complications from Parkinson's Disease. 

To be honest, I can't say I'm that familiar with his discography. But since he died, I wanted to see if there were any worthy albums I could post of his music. To my surprise, I found not one, not two, not three, but four albums of unreleased material he performed for the BBC, all of it from the 1970s. Here's the first one. It consists of BBC studio sessions. 

The first seven tracks come from an appearance on John Peel's radio show, "Top Gear," in 1970. Tracks 8 and 9 are from the "One in Ten" radio show "One in Ten" in 1971. The rest of the songs are from the "Old Grey Whistle Test" TV show. Tracks 10 through 14 are from a 1972 episode. Most of the songs were performed in solo acoustic mode.

All the music here is unreleased. The sound quality is generally excellent, especially since there was no audience noise. 

This album is 40 minutes long. 

01 Hold On, It's Coming (Country Joe McDonald)
02 Balancing on the Edge of Time (Country Joe McDonald)
03 talk (Country Joe McDonald)
04 It's So Nice to Have Love (Country Joe McDonald)
05 Maria (Country Joe McDonald)
06 talk (Country Joe McDonald)
07 Tell Me Where You're Bound (Country Joe McDonald)
08 talk (Country Joe McDonald)
09 Jean Desprez (Country Joe McDonald)
10 Tricky Dick (Country Joe McDonald)
11 talk (Country Joe McDonald)
12 Trapped Inside a Fantasy (Country Joe McDonald)
13 talk (Country Joe McDonald)
14 Coulene Anne (Country Joe McDonald)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/N124GwUt

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/LXstnTF0Kdc6Uyi/file

The cover image is from an appearance on an unnamed British TV show some time in 1972. 

Dionne Warwick - Dionne, Burt and Hal: The Definitive Songbook, Volume 5: 1969-1970 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here’s another album of Dionne Warwick singing all the songs written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach. Once again, thanks to Mike Solof for putting these albums together.

Warwick, David, and Bacharach had a great thing going from about 1963 until 1970. They had hit after hit after hit. The end of this album marks the end of that golden era. The three of them would still collaborate together, but much more intermittently. There are two more volumes dealing with those later years.

This album is 53 minutes long.

061 I'll Never Fall in Love Again (Dionne Warwick)
062 Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (Dionne Warwick)
063 Dream Sweet Dreamer (Dionne Warwick)
064 Knowing When to Leave (Dionne Warwick)
065 Let Me Go to Him (Dionne Warwick)
066 Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets (Dionne Warwick)
067 Paper Mache (Dionne Warwick)
068 The Wine Is Young (Dionne Warwick)
069 Check Out Time (Dionne Warwick)
070 Make It Easy on Yourself (Dionne Warwick)
071 The Green Grass Starts to Grow (Dionne Warwick)
072 The Very First Person I Met [In California] (Dionne Warwick)
073 They Don't Give Medals to Yesterday's Heroes (Dionne Warwick)
074 Walk the Way You Talk (Dionne Warwick)
075 The Look of Love (Dionne Warwick)
076 Who Gets the Guy (Dionne Warwick)
077 Only Love Can Break a Heart (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nMDebKmr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4j7hPKMNNw5COdY/file

The cover photo shows her on the Engelbert Humperdinck TV Show some time in 1969. 

Covered: Neil Young, Volume 1: 1967-1989

I'm leaving for a vacation to the Amazonian region of Peru tomorrow. I'll be gone for nearly two weeks. But while I'm gone, I'm going to try to keep posting. I have two big music projects that I have all set up. So pretty much all I need to do is hit "publish" on my cell phone to post each album. We'll see how it works out. Given that I'm going to a pretty remote area, I might be out of Internet contact for days at a time. So cross your fingers. 

Anyway, this is one of the two projects: a "Covered" collection for one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Neil Young. This one was mostly done by musical friend Fabio from Rio. That includes writing really great liner notes. 

--- 

This is certainly one of the most daunting projects I've worked with Paul yet, and certainly the biggest and most demanding "Covered" collections at the "Albums That Should Exist" blog ever, at least at the time of writing these liner notes. 

I assume Neil Young needs no introduction. Everybody (or at least everybody who has not lived in an offline bunker for the last half century) knows that Neil is one of the most important rock artists of the last sixty years. He has been influencing generations of musicians since the 1960s, resulting in literally thousands of covers and tributes, officially and unofficially available on studio albums, tribute records, live performances, and YouTube uploads.

Our aim here was not to include every Neil Young composition (that would easily result in more than 25 volumes), but to present a good representation of his output, including not only the all-time hits but also deep cuts, some officially unreleased songs cherished by long-time fans (the so-called "Rusties"), and at least a few lesser-known but equally strong compositions from more recent years, since Neil has never stopped composing, performing and recording.

We would like this project to become "The Best Neil Young Cover Collection Ever" - not out of personal vanity, but as a tribute to the quality of the songs and artists featured. For that reason, we walked the proverbial extra mile in order to select what we believe are some of the best performances of each song. In some cases, this was quite difficult to determine and remains subject to endless debate, since certain songs have literally hundreds of different versions recorded by dozens of artists. Subjectivity inevitably played a part, since our personal tastes (mine and Paul's) may have resulted in some biased selections. However, we tried whenever possible to focus on performances that are widely recognized as among the best or most representative interpretations of a given song. At the same time, we also looked for unusual readings that might give a different or fresh spin to familiar melodies.

My initial selection comprised about 230 different songs, and I listened to more than a thousand performances (1,072 to be exact) in order to prepare the first short list, which was later shared with Paul. For some songs there were literally dozens of available covers, so our main challenge was deciding which one to include. For others, it was surprisingly difficult to find a strong version. In some cases - particularly with more obscure tunes - we had to resort to unofficial recordings, including some provided by the Rusties community, where both amateur and professional musicians share their interpretations.

Since my initial selection would result in too-long a collection even for die-hard fans standards, Paul made editorial cuts, excluding some songs (which I accepted with stoic dignity), but also requesting the inclusion of some of his personal favorites, which I happily complied. In the end, we settled on a 10-volume collection with about 150 tracks, with very little repetition (only two songs - "Heart of Gold" and "Cortez the Killer" - appear in more than one version, in different volumes). 

--- 

Note that Fabio wrote individual paragraphs about all the songs in this volume. To see that, please look at the Word file added to the download zip file. Thanks again to Fabio for his help putting these albums together.

I also want to add that these albums are ordered by the years the covers were recorded, not the years the songs were first recorded by Neil Young. So if you don't see songs you want included, please wait. There are no less than TEN albums! And for instance, some songs from this time period don't show up until the last one. 

This album is an hour and three minutes long.

01 Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It (Gallery Production)
02 Sugar Mountain (Joni Mitchell)
03 Everybody, I Love You (Happy Day)
04 Round and Round (Bernie Schwartz)
05 Southern Man (Merry Clayton)
06 Birds (Linda Ronstadt)
07 Ohio (Isley Brothers)
08 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Jackie DeShannon)
09 See the Sky about to Rain (Byrds)
10 New Mama (Stephen Stills)
11 Love Is a Rose (Linda Ronstadt)
12 Mr. Soul (Cher)
13 The Loner (Stephen Stills)
14 Lotta Love (Nicolette Larson)
15 Look Out for My Love (Linda Ronstadt)
16 Like a Hurricane (Roxy Music)
17 Are You Ready for the Country (Jason & the Scorchers)
17 Winterlong (Pixies)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oE16d9b7

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Y8RaicNK2j2Donc/file

The cover photo is from 1966 or 1967. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. I also used the Krea AI program to add detail.  

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. 

The Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds - The Flying Byrds Brothers, Whisky-A-Go-Go, Los Angeles, CA, 9-19-1970

If you're a fan of country rock, this is a very special concert. The Byrds helped invent country rock in 1968. But a couple of key members left and started a new band, the Flying Burrito Bros, that kept developing the country rock sound. The various band members remained friends, however. So when they happened to be on the same bill together, they decided to merge their bands together for most of one concert. So that makes this concert very unique and special. But, even better, it was recorded with soundboard quality, despite still being unreleased.

By 1969, the main leader of the Byrds was Roger McGuinn. The Flying Burrito Bros were jointly led by ex-Byrds members Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, but by the end of 1969, Parsons had left, making Hillman the temporary leader. (He in turn would leave in early 1972, passing the leadership to others.) McGuinn and Hillman went way back, both being founding members of the Byrds in 1964, and they remained on good terms. So when their bands were on the same bill one night at the Boston Tea Party club in Boston in February 1969, they merged bands together for about an hour and a half. Unfortunately, there are no known recordings of that show. 

But then, in September 1970, they shared the same bill at the Whisky-a-Go-Go club for three nights in a row, playing two shows a night. For the first two nights, and the first show of the third night, they just did their sets separately. I have included the Byrds set from the first show. (If there's a Flying Burrito Bros set, I don't have have it.) Then, for this performance, the late show on the third and final night, they had something special planned. The Flying Burrito Bros did their second set as usual. Then, when the headlining act, the Byrds, came on, the two bands merged. And they didn't just perform together for a couple of songs. No, they were together for a full hour! They mostly played Byrds songs, since Hillman was in the Byrds from 1964 until late 1968, so he no doubt remembered many of them well.

At one point between songs, McGuinn jokingly suggested the name "Flying Byrds Brothers" for the merging of the two bands. That sounded pretty good to me, so I added it to the title and the cover art. 

It could be there were more Flying Burrito Bros songs at the start that didn't make the recording. The version I found started with the last minute of "The Train Song." I cut that because there wasn't much left of that song at that point, just one line repeated over and over. So it's possible there were other songs prior to that one before someone started recording. I'm not aware of any complete set list so we could check.

Also, it's possible that the Byrds set from the early show is incomplete. There isn't a clear start to the first song, with an introduction of the band, so there could have been more there. And the last song, "This Wheel's on Fire," was cut off about 30 seconds before the song ended. I patched that up by adding in the end from a concert in Ames, Iowa, a month later. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title. But it also suggests there could have been more songs after that cut off.

This album is two hours and six minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 26, 2026, a few days after I first posted this, I was told about all the Byrds songs from the first set, so I added those in. This addition works out very nicely, because the Byrds clearly tried to play all different songs in the first set than in the second set. There's only one song played in both, "You Ain't Goin' There." It's telling that the leader of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn expressed surprise at the start of the song that the other band members wanted to play it again.

01 Lover of the Bayou (Byrds)
02 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Byrds)
03 talk (Byrds)
04 I Trust (Byrds)
05 My Back Pages (Byrds)
06 B.J. Blues - Baby What You Want Me to Do (Byrds)
07 Well Come Back Home (Byrds)
08 Truck Stop Girl (Byrds)
09 Take a Whiff [On Me] (Byrds)
10 It's All Right Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Byrds)
11 The Ballad of Easy Rider (Byrds)
12 Jesus Is Just Alright (Byrds)
13 This Wheel's on Fire [Edit] (Byrds)
14 Payday (Flying Burrito Bros)
15 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
16 Wake Up Little Suzie (Flying Burrito Bros)
17 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
18 Colorado (Flying Burrito Bros)
19 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
20 Break My Mind (Flying Burrito Bros)
21 talk (Flying Burrito Bros)
22 Trying to Reach My Goal (Flying Burrito Bros)
23 talk (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
24 Roll Over Beethoven (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
25 You Don't Miss Your Water (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
26 I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
27 Hickory Wind (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
28 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
29 The Bells of Rhymney (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
30 Close Up the Honky Tonks (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
31 Time Between (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
32 Mr. Spaceman (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
33 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
34 Mr. Tambourine Man (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
35 Eight Miles High (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
36 Wasn't Born to Follow (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
37 Chimes of Freedom (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
38 talk (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
39 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)
40 Hold It (Flying Burrito Bros & the Byrds)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eoQ4idQm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/AIqu9SRH7L4DmF5/file

There is a photo of the Flying Burrito Bros and the Byrds playing in concert together in 1969. But to call it "low quality" is putting it mildly. It's about as bad a photo as you can imagine, with the people looking little more than black blobs. So I didn't want to use that. Instead, I kind of created a fake picture. This is a real picture of McGuinn (left) and Hillman (right) on stage together when they were both members of the Byrds. It was taken at the Grand Old Opry in 1968. But at that time, McGuinn kept his hair very short, and he grew it out by 1970. So I found a photo of him in concert in early 1970 and pasted that over his head in the original photo. I hope this comes close to what they might have actually looked like at this concert.

Also, the original photo was quite low-res and in black and white. I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. And I used Krea AI to help with the detail.

Aretha Franklin - Festival de Jazz d'Antibes, Juan-les-Pins, France, 7-21-1970

Here's a really nice Aretha Franklin from 1970, right in the middle of her peak era of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

There are very few concert bootlegs of Franklin from this time period. This is probably the earliest one, other than a 1968 Stockholm concert that I've posted at this blog already. She also released a 1968 live album. There's more live material from 1971 and 1972. But this helps fill a gap between the 1968 recordings and the ones from 1971 and after.

This definitely has soundboard-level sound quality. I don't know if that's because it's from an FM radio broadcast, or TV broadcast, or other, but it sounds as good as official live albums from this time period.

Note that two of the songs, "Put on a Happy Face" and "A Brand New Me," were sung by her back up singers. I believe one of those singers was Carolyn Franklin, her sister, who also helped her write some songs. 

This album is 52 minutes long. 

01 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Aretha Franklin)
02 Respect (Aretha Franklin)
03 [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman (Aretha Franklin)
04 I Say a Little Prayer (Aretha Franklin)
05 talk (Aretha Franklin)
06 Eleanor Rigby (Aretha Franklin)
07 Since You've Been Gone [Sweet Sweet Baby] (Aretha Franklin)
08 Tighten Up [Instrumental Version] (Aretha Franklin)
09 Put on a Happy Face (Aretha Franklin)
10 A Brand New Me (Aretha Franklin)
11 Dr. Feelgood [Love Is a Serious Business] (Aretha Franklin)
12 You Send Me (Aretha Franklin)
13 Spirit in the Dark (Aretha Franklin) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JmvpkgXc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/rkl5PP8I67WKvJE/file

I got lucky with the cover photo, because it's from this exact concert. It's the only one that I found. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help 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.