Covered: Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff, Volume 2: 1970-1973

I haven't posted much at this blog in recent days, but for a very good reason: I've been fully focused on finishing the "Maximum Wall" version of Pink Floyd's "The Wall." It's still some days away from completion, but the end is very much in sight. Fabio from Rio has helped greatly in adding a visual aspect to an accompanying booklet that has now grown to over 150 pages! I'm hoping the final product will blow your socks off.

Luckily, I had a bunch of albums mostly ready to be posted in preparation for my vacation, and I still have some of those to post. So here's another one. Let's continue with the "Covered" albums by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, usually just called "Gamble and Huff." Here's the second volume out of four.

By 1970, Gamble and Huff had enough of a track record of writing and producing soul music hits that they were ready to start their own record company. So they created Philadelphia International. It was backed by CBS Records, and distributed by them. This new company was up and running by 1971. Soon, they were having even more hits, and bigger hits too.

At the same time Gamble and Huff and Philadelphia International were on the rise, Motown Records was self destructing. I've described this in other write-ups. But, in short, it seems label owner Berry Gordy grew tired of the music business and wanted to become a multimedia company, with much more focus on T.V. and movies. So he moved the company from Detroit to Los Angeles, and lost most of the musical talent along the way. (And yet, for all that, Motown only had a couple of movie successes.) Thus, Philadelphia was able to largely replace Detroit as the place to be for soul music in the early 1970s.

Furthermore, as time went on, Gamble and Huff began to develop an increasingly distinctive style.  Here's how it is described in their Wikipedia entry: "Gamble and Huff's Philadelphia soul sound evolved from the simpler arrangements of the late-1960s into a style featuring lush strings, thumping basslines, and sliding hi-hat rhythms - elements that soon became the distinguishing characteristics of a new style of music called disco."

Some hits here were massive. For instance, "Me and Mrs. Jones," "Love Train," and "TSOP [The Sound of Philadelphia]" weren't just Number Ones on the U.S. soul singles charts, they were Number Ones on the U.S pop charts as well! Furthermore, they had many more hits than this. I just selected the cream of the crop, so these albums would have wider appeal.

All through this time period, the Gamble and Huff songwriting partnership was going strong. The vast majority of the songs here were written by the two of them, and with nobody else. However, occasionally there were additional songwriters. For instance, "Drowning in the Sea of Love" was also written by Joe Simon, and a songwriter named Cary Gilbert helped write "Me and Mrs. Jones." 

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Get Me Back on Time, Engine Number 9, Part 1 (Wilson Pickett)
02 Drowning in the Sea of Love (Joe Simon)
03 I'll Do Anything [He Wants Me To] (Doris Troy)
04 Back Stabbers (O'Jays)
05 Me and Mrs. Jones (Billy Paul)
06 One Night Affair (Jerry Butler)
07 When the World's at Peace (O'Jays)
08 If You Don't Know Me by Now (Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes)
09 Power of Love (Joe Simon)
10 Love Train (O'Jays)
11 Am I Black Enough for You (Billy Paul)
12 I'll Always Love My Mama (Intruders)
13 Break Up to Make Up (Stylistics)
14 The Love I Lost, Part 1 (Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes)
15 Put Your Hands Together (O'Jays)
16 TSOP [The Sound of Philadelphia] (MFSB with the Three Degrees)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EjhUcS2T

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qf93VFHAlUX1weE/file

The cover image is from 1973. I moved the two people closer using Photoshop. Also, the original picture was in black and white. But I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. That's Huff on the left and Gamble on the right.

The Carpenters - Singles Uncovered, Volume 2: 1972-1976 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

The day before yesterday, I posted "Volune 1" in this series of Carpenters albums made by guest poster Mike Solof. This is the second volume, and the third volume will be coming very soon. 

As mentioned in the write-up for "Volume 1," this blog has already posted some different attempts to strip the Carpenters' music of excessive production and get it back to basics, especially Karen Carpenter's voice. But Mike has taken a different approach. He used his editing skills to get rid of most of the strings and excessive backing vocals, but still keep guitar, bass, and drums, as well as the lead vocals.

Also, note that while this is called "Singles Uncovered," that's not strictly true. Most single A-sides from this time are included. But there are some that Mike didn't like so he left them off. And I think they're also are some non-singles that he did like that he included.

This album is one hour long.

01 It's Going to Take Some Time (Carpenters)
02 Goodbye to Love (Carpenters)
03 Road Ode (Carpenters)
04 I Won't Last a Day without You (Carpenters)
05 Top of the World (Carpenters)
06 Sing (Carpenters)
07 This Masquerade (Carpenters)
08 Yesterday Once More (Carpenters)
09 Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (Carpenters)
10 Please, Mr. Postman (Carpenters)
11 Only Yesterday (Carpenters)
12 Happy (Carpenters)
13 Solitaire (Carpenters)
14 Love Me for What I Am (Carpenters)
15 Tryin' to Get That Feeling Again (Carpenters)
16 There's a Kind of Hush (Carpenters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MY3dHuzL 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2TR4KryTZswXVd9/file

The cover image was chosen by Mike. I don't know the details.

The Carpenters - Singles Uncovered, Volume 1: 1969-1972 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Hi Everybody,

This is Mike Solof, a frequent guest poster at this blog, and temporary introduction writer. Paul just texted me and asked if I would write a brief intro to my latest project for him, since he is gallavanting around Spain on vacation right now. I told him I would be happy to give it a whirl. So here, just like Paul would, is my whirl (written as if in Paul's voice):

Over the years, I have featured a lot of variations on Carpenters songs for this blog. Today, we continue that tradition once again. In the past, I have featured full acapella, and near acappella versions, piano recitals, and BBC sessions (some done by another guest poster, Fabio from Rio). Obviously there is just something about Karen’s voice and her harmonies with her brother Richard that we just can’t seem to get enough of around here. So when Mike approached me to do yet another take on their music, it was a no brainer. His versions follow the same path he takes with his Uncovered Beatles series. In those, he created new versions of songs you know and love by ripping apart the the commercial versions using modern audio editing technology, and eliminating the excessive and unneeded additions which in this case was all the orchestral backings, as well as the overuse of choral singers in their later years. This leaves the basic tracks, which usually include Karen’s and Richard’s vocals, accompanied by bass, drums, piano,  and guitar. Mike occasionally left in other instruments as well to fill out the extra quiet spots. He calls this "Pure Carpenters," and I tend to agree.

So here is Volume One, which covers the years 1969-1972. two more volumes will follow.

I did convince him he would have to change his picture for the cover though. What you see, presented here, is a shot he found online of Karen and Richard mixing their first album. His original version, had a beautiful picture of just two random carpenters working on a house. That’s his sense of humor, so ask him for that version if you’d like a copy. He’s strange in that way, but he hopes you enjoy this new project as much as he enjoyed putting it together.

---

Thanks, Mike. This is the real Paul writing again. Everything up above is true except for the part about the  original cover art featuring to actual carpenters working on a house instead of the two members of the Carpenters. Mike really wanted to use that, but I fought him tooth and nail on it. However, you can see it below if you're curious. You can also see it in the PDF file that he included in the download zip.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Ticket to Ride (Carpenters)
02 Your Wonderful Parade (Carpenters)
03 Don't Be Afraid (Carpenters)
04 All of My Life (Carpenters)
05 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Carpenters)
06 I Kept on Loving You (Carpenters)
07 We've Only Just Begun (Carpenters)
08 Mr. Guder (Carpenters)
09 Maybe It's You [Piano Version] (Carpenters)
10 Merry Christmas Darling (Carpenters)
11 For All We Know (Carpenters)
12 Rainy Days and Mondays (Carpenters)
13 Saturday (Carpenters)
14 Superstar [Groupie] (Carpenters)
15 Let Me Be the One (Carpenters)
16 Drucilla Penny (Carpenters)
17 One Love (Carpenters)
18 Bless the Beasts and the Children (Carpenters)
19 Hurting Each Other (Carpenters)

Maybe It's You [Orchestra Version] (Carpenters) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/aiKnKZiF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/p7xLQDFG3Cz009H/file 

The cover image was chosen by Mike. I don't know the details. But they look pretty young. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Also, just for fun, Mike asked me to make this alternate cover, which is a, uh, much more literal take on the word "Carpenters."

Various Artists - Musical Salad, Volume 1 (1939-2025) (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

As part of this music blog's ongoing Brian Wilson Week, here's another tribute to one of the most original musical minds of the Twentieth Century. If we've got our dates right, this should be appearing on June 17th, which happens to be National Eat Your Vegetables Day in the United States.

The idea for this collection emerged during a late-night Discord conversation with Fabio from Rio, when preparing the "Covered: Brian Wilson" discs. While discussing Brian Wilson's wonderfully eccentric song "Vegetables", we started wondering whether anyone else had ever written songs about vegetables. What began as a joke I made quickly turned into a challenge taken up by Fabio. A few days later, he returned with a surprisingly long list of candidates, and before long we realized there might actually be enough material for an entire compilation – or two.

The result is "Musical Salad." It's a collection of songs inspired by vegetables, salads, and assorted garden-related culinary adventures. Some tracks are genuinely great, some are bizarre, some are funny (either deliberate or not), and a few somehow manage to be all three at once. Taken together, they form one of the strangest and most entertaining themed collections we've assembled so far.

Note that there are many many songs that have a vegetable or something vegetable related in the title. We decided that wasn't good enough. The song has to actually be discussing something vegetable-related in the lyrics.  Furthermore, it had to hold up musically as well. I know this concept may seem strange. But just as your parents probably told you when faced with eating an unfamiliar vegetable for the first time, "try it, you'll like it." I was skeptical at first, but I think these ended up being fun albums.

There is a second volume coming, hopefully tomorrow.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 Vegetables (Beach Boys)
02 Sam the Vegetable Man (Stuff Smith)
03 Cauliflower (Rattles)
04 The Onion Song (Marvin Gaye & Tammy Terrell)
05 Don't Touch Me Tomato (Phyllis Dillon)
06 Hot Potatoes (Kinks)
07 Eat Your Green Beans (Happy Campers)
08 Call Any Vegetable (Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention)
09 Potatoes, Tomatoes, Gravy and Peas (Terry Scott Taylor)
10 Carrot Juice Is Murder (Arrogant Worms)
11 Eggplant (Train)
12 Leaf and Lime (High Llamas)
13 [Don't Give Me That] Broccoli (Phenomenauts)
14 Vegetable Town (Barenaked Ladies)
15 The Boy Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn (Johan Heldenbergh & Veerle Baetens)
16 Lettuce and Croutons with Fresh Daily (ScienZe)
17 Red Peppers (Peppes)
18 Hang On Little Tomato (Pink Martini)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wnZK6i25

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/zj3KlY4Ns9gV2Jq/file

The cover image was made by Fabio, using AI. Furthermore, he went above and beyond and used an AI art generator to create a visual picture of each of the songs. I was skeptical of that at first as well, especially since I'm not a big fan of AI art, or really AI much of anything. But I have to admit these pictures that Fabio made for the songs turned out really well. In fact, they turned out so well that I told Fabio they make me fear for the future, because if AI can make one of these in a matter of seconds, I don't see how people will be able to stay employed as artists. But that's a discussion for another time and place perhaps. Here is a sample of one such picture. This one illustrates the song "Carrot Juice Is Murder." You can find an entire booklet that he made with these AI created pictures as well as descriptions of each song in the download zip file.

Covered: Brian Wilson, Volume 1: 1963-1978 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

June 11th marks the first anniversary of the passing of musical genius Brian Wilson (1942–2025), who would have turned 84 on June 20th had he still been with us. This seems like the perfect moment to post "Covered" albums devoted to this extraordinary songwriter. Since Brian is, of course, closely associated with the Beach Boys, the "Covered: Brian Wilson" collection also serves as an indirect tribute to the legendary vocal group, highlighting the enormous influence they have had on generations of musicians since the 1960s.

This collection is another collaboration with Fabio from Rio. He is a devoted Beach Boys fan and, in fact, his first guest post here was a tribute to Brian Wilson, written and published just days after Brian’s death one year ago. You can find it here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2025/06/various-artists-songs-in-key-of-brian.html

It is therefore no surprise that he embraced this project wholeheartedly and came up with hundreds of potential covers, which were eventually trimmed down to exactly 100 tracks spread across five volumes. These 100 recordings represent 98 different compositions, since we made minor exceptions to my usual policy of avoiding duplicate songs by including two versions each of "God Only Knows" and "Good Vibrations", which will appear in later volumes.

Most of the songs here were not hits in their cover versions or at least were not big hits. But there is one important exception: “Surf City” was a Number One hit in the US in 1963 for Jan and Dean. The song was written by Wilson and Jan Berry of Jan and Dean fame. However, even though a lot of these were not the big hits, they were intended to be, it shows that Wilson’s songs were being widely covered practically from the very beginning of his career with The Beach Boys in 1962.

Note that during The time period of this album, 1963 to 1978, Wilson wrote or cowrote dozens of hit songs for the Beach Boys. Fabio and I were careful to never use the Beach Boys versions or solo Brian Wilson versions, but only covers by other musical acts. It just so happens that many of the best covers of those hits from this time come later. So if you don’t see some of your favorite songs, just wait to see what we come up with for the later volumes.

Out of these 23 tracks here, only 12 were recorded by the Beach Boys around the time of their first release. The remaining 11 tracks were originally recorded by other artists, demonstrating that Brian's talent was not limited to his own group.

These are the non-Beach Boys tracks: 

01 Drag City (Jan & Dean)

02 He's a Doll (Honeys)

03 Surf City (Jan & Dean)

04 The One You Can't Have (Honeys)

06 The New Girl in School (Jan & Dean)

08 Guess I'm Dumb (Glen Campbell)

13 Time to Get Alone (Redwood)

17 Good Time (American Spring)

19 Sweet Mountain (American Spring)

20 Had to Phone Ya (American Spring)

23 Almost Summer (Celebration)

A few of those songs - tracks 13, 17, and 20 - were later done by the Beach Boys. And Celebration was a side project for Beach Boys singer Mike Love.

Particularly noteworthy are the Honeys / American Spring (a.k.a. Spring), which together are represented here by five songs. The Honeys were a pop group formed by sisters Marilyn Rovell (later Marilyn Wilson), Diane Rovell, and Barbara Rovell (the latter eventually replaced by their cousin, Ginger Blake). In many ways, they were a female counterpart to the Beach Boys. They were discovered by Gary Usher at a talent show in 1961. Usher eventually introduced them to Brian, who renamed the group and began dating Marilyn. The couple married in December 1964.

The Honeys dissolved in 1970 when Ginger left the group to pursue a solo career. Marilyn and Diane then formed Spring, and later added "American" to the band's name after encountering trademark issues with a British group of the same name that threatened legal action. American Spring released a single album in 1972, produced by Brian Wilson, and recorded several additional tracks in 1977–1978 for a second album that was never released. Some of these recordings would later appear on compilations and anthologies. "Had to Phone Ya," recorded before the Beach Boys' own version, is one such example. 

This album is one hour long.

01 Drag City (Jan & Dean)
02 He's a Doll (Honeys)
03 Surf City (Jan & Dean)
04 The One You Can't Have (Honeys)
05 You're So Good to Me (Fireballs)
06 The New Girl in School (Jan & Dean)
07 Don't Worry Baby (Ivy League)
08 Guess I'm Dumb (Glen Campbell)
09 Here Today (Bobby Vee)
10 I'm Waiting for the Day (Peanut)
11 Don't Talk [Put Your Head on My Shoulder] (Carmen McRae)
12 The Little Girl I Once Knew (Bystanders)
13 Time to Get Alone (Redwood)
14 Aren't You Glad (Peggy March)
15 Darlin' (Paper Dolls)
16 Friends (Chicks)
17 Good Time (American Spring)
18 Vegetables (Jan & Dean)
19 Sweet Mountain (American Spring)
20 Had to Phone Ya (American Spring)
21 Sail On Sailor (KGB)
22 Breakaway (Wildfire)
23 Almost Summer (Celebration)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ypFoz44W

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/DdA0Xae8n72zlKI/file

The cover image is from 1964.

Covered: George Harrison, Volume 2: 1972-1989

Here's the second volume out of six "Covered" albums celebrating the songwriting of George Harrison.

When this album starts, in 1972, Harrison was seemingly on top of the world. His 1970 solo album "All Things Must Pass" was a huge critical and commercial success, hitting Number One in the U.S., Britain, and many countries. It surprised many by outselling the solo albums of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. 

For the first half of the 1970s, Harrison maintained a very active musical career. In addition to putting out his own solo albums, he produced and/or played on albums by other musical acts. We can see that here, especially with his help for fellow ex-Beatle Ringo Starr. There are no less than five songs here performed by Starr. 

"Back Off Boogaloo" follows the pattern of "Octopus's Garden" and "It Don't Come Easy" on the previous volume, in that it was solely credited to Starr when in fact it was co-written by Harrison. It was a big hit in 1972, especially in Britain, where it made it all the way to Number Two in the singles chart. But while those two songs I just mentioned are still credited only to Starr, in 2017, the official credits for "Back Off Boogaloo" changed to be a co-write with Harrison.

The same pattern continued for Starr's next big hit, "Photograph," which went all the way to Number One in 1973 in the U.S., Canada, and other countries. But this one was the first one to be officially credited to Starr and Harrison from the very beginning. Like all the other Starr songs mentioned above, it seems Starr started it, but needed a lot of help from Harrison to finish it off. Starr later said he was good at writing a verse or two, and a chorus, but then he often would get stuck. He also said of Harrison helping his songwriting in this era, "I only know three chords and he'd stick four more in, and they'd all think I was a genius."

But Harrison also wrote or co-wrote songs for others during this time period: "The Holdup" by David Bromberg, "So Sad (No Love of His Own)" by Alvin Lee and Mylon Lefevre, "Far East Man" by Ron Wood, and "I'll Still Love You (When Every Song Is Sung)" by Cilla Black. In all those cases, the cover versions included here came first. For "So Sad" and "Far East Man," Harrison released his own versions a year or two later.

Here's a fun fact about the version of "Something" by James Brown. That great song has been covered around 1,000 times, making it one of the most covered songs of all time. But Harrison said that Brown's version was his favorite out of all the covers he'd heard. In an interview many years later, he said, "There are a lot of really good versions of 'Something.' But the one that is just a killer, and nobody even knows about it except for a few friends of mine, is the James Brown version of it. He put it out as the flip side to a revamped version of 'Think.' And you gotta play it, it's just unbelievable." He even sent Brown a postcard complimenting him on it and suggesting that it should be released as an A-side instead.

Unfortunately, in the mid-1970s, Harrison lost a lot of the passion he'd had for his music career up until then. Here's a quote taken from a Wikipedia article: "Writing for Rolling Stone in 2002, Mikal Gilmore commented that 'the crises [Harrison] faced in the mid-1970s changed him,' and that depression was a key factor. Depression permeated many of the songs that Harrison wrote during this period, an issue that was not helped by his continued heavy drinking and cocaine use." As a result, he mostly stopped writing songs for others, and put out fewer albums himself. This trend deepened in the 1980s, when he only put out three studio albums, compared to six in the 1970s (with one of them being a double album).

As a result, Harrison's music didn't get the same attention in the 1980s, so there weren't as many covers. That's especially the case since he did very little to promote his career. The only concert tour he took in the 1970s and 1980s was in 1974. Only the last three songs here are from the 1980s. One of those, by the way, "Run So Far," was written for a 1989 album by Eric Clapton. However, Harrison's own version would be released in 2002.

This album is one hour long. 

01 Back Off Boogaloo (Ringo Starr)
02 What Is Life (Olivia Newton-John)
03 The Holdup (David Bromberg)
04 Photograph (Ringo Starr)
05 Something (James Brown)
06 Don't Let Me Wait Too Long (Rotten to the Core)
07 You and Me [Babe] (Ringo Starr)
08 I'd Have You Anytime (Ralfi Pagan)
09 So Sad [No Love of His Own] (Alvin Lee & Mylon Lefevre)
10 Sunshine Life for Me [Sail Away Raymond] (Ringo Starr)
11 Far East Man (Ron Wood)
12 I'll Still Love You [When Every Song Is Sung] (Cilla Black)
13 Dark Horse (Thomas Harris)
14 Wrack My Brain (Ringo Starr)
15 Cloud Nine (Gary B.B. Coleman)
16 Run So Far (Eric Clapton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PETt92E9 

alternate: 

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

The cover image is from the 1970s, but I don't know the exact year. 

Various Artists - Covered: Dennis Lambert & Brian Potter: 1965-1985

A week or two ago (as I write this in mid-May 2026), a commenter named Rich had the excellent suggestion that I should make a "Covered" album for the songwriting team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. So thank you, Rich. They fit the format of the "Covered" series perfectly, because they had no careers as performers, but they wrote a lot of hits for others.

Lambert and Potter are a rare case of a successful trans-Atlantic songwriting partnership. Lambert was born in 1947 and raised in New York City. Potter was born in 1939 and raised in the Essex countryside of England. Lambert joined a record company in 1965, working in A&R, production, and songwriting. I'm not sure what Potter did at first (with him being almost ten years older than Lambert), but in 1965 he already had a big songwriting success, helping to write "What'cha Gonna Do about It," the first British hit for the Small Faces. Meanwhile, Lambert had a decent success in 1965 as well, co-writing "Do the Freddie," a hit for Freddie and the Dreamers.

Lambert and Potter met when Lambert was in London in 1969. The two of them decided to write songs together. They both moved to Los Angeles and began working with a record company there. One of their first songs they wrote together was "One Tin Solder." It made the Top Forty in the U.S. for the band the Original Caste. Then it would get higher on the charts in 1971 for the band Coven. Their first really big success together though was "Don't Pull Your Love," which was a Top Five U.S. hit in 1971 for Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds.

From that point on, they had many more hits all through the 1970s. I've only included the ones I like best here. There were others that were Top Forty hits. Their songwriting continued until about 1980. I don't know much about Potter's career, but it seemed he stopped writing songs around that time, because I don't find any more songwriting credits for him after 1980. 

However, Lambert kept going well into the 1980s, writing with others. He didn't have that many hits, but he had a couple of really big ones. He co-wrote "Nightshift" with a member of the Commodores, and the Commodores had a Top Five hit with it in both the U.S. and Britain in 1985. 

He also helped write "We Built This City." That song was originally written by Martin Page and Bernie Taupin (the latter being the main co-writer for Elton John). But their version was lacking something. So Lambert and a producer named Peter Wolf drastically changed it. (That's a different Peter Wolf than the one in the J. Geils Band, by the way.) The result was a smash, going all the way to Number One in the U.S. for Starship in 1985. Personally, I don't think it's a bad song, but it's hated by a lot of people, making several worst songs of all time lists by critics.

Since then, Lambert and Potter presumably both eventually retired. But both of them are still alive as I write this in 2026. 

Here's the Wikipedia page for Lambert:

Dennis Lambert - Wikipedia

And here's the one for Potter:

Brian Potter (musician) - Wikipedia  

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 What'cha Gonna Do about It (Small Faces)
02 Do the Freddie (Freddie & the Dreamers)
03 Delighted to See You (Honeybus)
04 One Tin Soldier (Original Caste)
05 Don't Pull Your Love (Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds)
06 Keeper of the Castle (Four Tops)
07 The Runway (Grass Roots)
08 Ain’t No Woman [Like the One I’ve Got] (Four Tops)
09 Love Music (Sergio Mendes)
10 Are You Man Enough (Four Tops)
11 Country Boy [You Got Your Feet in L.A.] (Glen Campbell)
12 One Chain [Don’t Make No Prison] (Four Tops)
13 It Only Takes a Minute (Tavares)
14 Open Invitation (Santana)
15 Don't Look Any Further (Dennis Edwards & Siedah Garrett)
16 We Built This City (Starship)
17 Nightshift (Commodores)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rrnJPb9s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/oLZomJN7xtUUHiG/file

The cover image was the cover photo for an issue of Songwriter Magazine in 1977. That's Dennis Lambert on the left and Brian Potter (with the blue shirt) on the right.

Various Artists - Covered: Roquel 'Billy' Davis: 1957-2008

I was going through my "Covered" album collection to fix some broken links, and I saw that I haven't posted this one yet, even though I thought I did. So here it is now, better late than never. This highlights the songwriting of Roquel "Billy" Davis.

Chances are, you haven't heard of Davis. But he was involved in writing a lot of good soul hits. He was born in 1932 in Detroit. He got to know Berry Gordy in the 1950s, a few years before Gordy founded Motown Records. He got involved in writing some big hits with Gordy, and sometimes others, especially Gordy's sister Gwen, who was Davis's girlfriend at the time. Since I already posted a "Covered" album for Berry Gordy, I used the big hit versions for many of those. For instance, "Reet Petite" was a big hit for Jackie Wilson in 1957, "Lonely Teardrops" was an even bigger hit for Wilson in 1958, and "I'll Be Satisfied," was another Wilson hit in 1959, but I've used alternate versions for all of those.

Note that I'm not including "You Got What It Takes," although it was a big hit that has been credited to Davis, Gordy, and others. That's because I think there's an airtight case that it was actually written entirely by Bobby Parker, since the first version of it came out by Parker with him listed as the sole songwriter. Gordy simply stole it later, and falsely changed the songwriting credits.

Anyway, around 1960, Gordy got heavily involved with his new record company, Motown Records. Davis didn't become a part of that, so his songwriting partnership with Gordy faded away. Their last song together that I've included is "All I Could Do Was Cry," which was a hit for Etta James in 1960. Since I used that version elsewhere, I've chosen a 2008 version by Beyonce.

Davis continued to write hits without Gordy for most of the 1960s. He usually worked with Chess Records, even taking charge of many A&R and production duties for that record company. "Seven Day Fool" was a rare case of Davis getting the sole credit for a song. More typically, he wrote with others, but he didn't have any consistent co-writers. In fact, most of the songs after "Seven Day Fool" were written with a different co-writer.

Davis had a sudden career change in 1968. He used his success as a songwriter and producer to get a job at one of the top advertising agencies in New York City. His primary client was Coca-Cola, and he was responsible for many successful ad campaigns for that company. But unfortunately, this meant that his songwriting pretty much stopped, except for writing ad jingles.

But his work with Coca-Cola would lead to his biggest songwriting success of all. I've told this story in the write-up for the "Covered" album for Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, but I'll retell it here from Davis's point of view. Cook and Greenaway had already written a song called "True Love and Apple Pie." But it was released by an obscure artist and went nowhere. Then Cook happened to get stuck waiting in an airport in Ireland for many hours. Also stuck in the same airport was Davis, now working for Coca-Cola, and another Coca-Cola executive, Bill Backer. Backer came up with the line "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" while they waited for their plane. Later, back in New York City, Cook, Greenaway and Davis reworked "True Love and Apple Pie" into "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," which became one of the biggest hits of the decade, as well as a massively successful ad campaign for Coca-Cola.

"Country Sunshine" is also a song Davis first wrote for a Coca-Cola ad. But it was so catchy that it was fleshed out and became a country hit for Dottie West in 1973. That seems to be the last new song Davis was involved in that made the charts, although some of his earlier songs were hits in new versions, sometimes several times over.

Davis died in 2004 at the age of 72. By the way, he's also responsible for "it's the real thing," "things go better with Coke," "have a Coke and a smile," all for Coca-Cola, "If you've got the time, we've got the beer," for Miller Beer, and many, many other advertisements.

Here's his Wikipedia page:

Billy Davis (songwriter) - Wikipedia 

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Jim Dandy Got Married (LaVern Baker)
02 To Be Loved (Malcolm Vaughan)
03 That's Why [I Love You So] (Jackie Wilson)
04 Seven Day Fool (Etta James)
05 Pushover (Etta James)
06 Reet Petite (Dinah Lee)
07 Two Sides to Every Story (Etta James)
08 Use What You Got (Sugar Pie DeSanto)
09 I Had a Talk with My Man (Mitty Collier)
10 We're Gonna Make It (Little Milton)
11 Recovery (Fontella Bass)
12 Who's Cheating Who (Little Milton)
13 I Can't Rest (Fontella Bass)
14 I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (Hillside Singers)
15 Country Sunshine (Dottie West)
16 Lonely Teardrops (John Fogerty)
17 I'll Be Satisfied (Shakin' Stevens)
18 All I Could Do Was Cry (Beyonce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rGtRVEWA 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/h0hrXz1oG7qsojq/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of an interview he gave many years after his songwriting career had ended. I don't know the exact year, however.

Pink Floyd - Allen Theater, Cleveland, OH, 4-24-1972

Wow! I try not to hype things up on this blog, since there's way too much of that on the Internet these days already. But if you're a Pink Floyd fan, you definitely need to give this a listen.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Pink Floyd made no attempts to record themselves in concert. So the relatively small number of excellent sounding recordings we have are due to lucky chance, like the times they were recorded by the BBC. One unfortunate gap due to this is there's no great live recording of the "Dark Side of the Moon" album from 1972 or 1973. (There is one from a 1974 BBC broadcast.) For a long time now, I've especially wanted to hear what that sounded like in 1972, because the band performed that album in concert for over a year before recording it, and there were a lot of changes along the way. So it's pretty damn shocking to me that, 54 years later, a recording of this quality showed up on the Internet in the last couple of weeks. (I write this in mid-May 2026.)

This is an audience recording. Normally, that's a step below a soundboard or radio broadcast, sometimes several steps below. But not in this case. In my opinion, this sounds as good or better than most soundboards from the era. Previously, most people felt that a concert recording from the Rainbow Theatre in London on February 20, 1972 was the best live recording that included an early version of Dark Side. However, there were some big flaws with that, including some big chunks of the quality recording that were missing and had to be filled in with a much inferior recording from another source. I think this sounds better all the way through, and there are no missing chunks or other flaws like that.

I've included a PDF file that explains the story of how this recording was made public so many decades after the show. So read that if you're interested. That story makes me wonder what other audio treasures are still sitting in people's houses, forgotten or hoarded.

I made one big change to this already fine recording. I ran all the songs through an MVSEP audio filter to get rid of ambient crowd noise. At the time of this concert, in early 1972, Pink Floyd was more of a cult band, with a decent sized devoted fan base. As a result, the crowd listened very attentively and respectfully. So there wasn't much crowd noise to begin with. But I got rid of all I could during the songs, while keeping the cheering at the ends of songs. There wasn't a lot of even that because the Dark Side portion of the concert was played like one big song medley, with few occasions for the audience to really cheer until the whole album was over. Plus, the music of that album was brand new to everyone, so one didn't have the usual phenomenon of big cheers when recognizable songs started.

Additionally, there was very little in the way of random "woo-hoo" noises and talking during this recording. I found a little bit of that on two tracks, and ran those two through an extra MVSEP filter to get rid of that. Oh, and I also got rid of some dead air between songs. In particular, there were a few minutes of the sound of the crowd while the band took a short intermission at the end of the Dark Side portion of the concert. I got rid of that entirely.

Note that two songs that were a part of Dark Side at this point were later totally changed, with only a vague concept staying the same. "The Travel Sequence" was replaced by "On the Run." And "The Mortality Sequence," also sometimes known as "Religion," was replaced by "The Great Gig in the Sky." 

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long.

01 Speak to Me [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
02 Breathe (Pink Floyd)
03 The Travel Sequence [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
04 Time - Breathe [Reprise] (Pink Floyd)
05 The Mortality Sequence [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
06 Money (Pink Floyd)
07 Us and Them (Pink Floyd)
08 Any Colour You Like [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
09 Brain Damage - Eclipse (Pink Floyd)
10 One of These Days [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
11 talk (Pink Floyd)
12 Careful with That Axe, Eugene [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
13 Echoes (Pink Floyd)
14 talk (Pink Floyd)
15 Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (Pink Floyd)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VvXP9ZkE

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/S9NNWY3jyprpp93/file

The cover image is the only photo that I was able to confirm actually was taken at this exact concert. It shows lead guitarist David Gilmour. 

Various Artists - Covered: Joan Baez, Volume 1: 1967-2016 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's another Fabio from Rio guest post. A couple of months ago (as I write this in May 2026), he really got into Joan Baez's music for the first time. In particular, he was struck by her songwriting talent, despite the fact that she's best known for covering songs written by others. So he put together five albums containing all of her original songs, which I recently posted. But he also made two "Covered" albums, showing off her songwriting in a different way. Some people don't like her singing. I have a friend like that, who finds it too high and shrill. So here you can enjoy her songs entirely through cover versions.

Probably the most unexpected cover here is the version of "Diamonds and Rust" by heavy metal band Judas Priest. Even more surprising, it went on to be quite popular, making their "best of" albums and inspiring more hard rocking cover versions. Here's what Baez had to say about it:

"I love that! I was so stunned when I first heard it. I thought it was wonderful. It's very rare for people to cover my songs. I think there are a couple of reasons. One is they're personal – they don't have a universal quality to them. And I think maybe it's because I've already sung them, and who wants to compete with that? But it's always flattering when somebody does." 

There's a lot more to be said about this album. But, as usual with Fabio guest posts, I'll leave that to the liner notes he wrote, which are included in the download zip. 

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 North (Tom Scott with the California Dreamers)
02 Saigon Bride (Gabor Szabo & the California Dreamers)
03 Sweet Sir Galahad (Gary & Randy Scruggs)
04 Song for David (Judy Collins)
05 Last Lonely and Wretched (Wild Rice)
06 Outside the Nashville City Limits (Mabel Joy)
07 Diamonds and Rust (Judas Priest)
08 For Sasha (Louise Tobestill)
09 All the Weary Mothers of the Earth (Annie Patterson)
10 Play Me Backwards (Sin Frontera)
11 Winds of the Old Days (Lori Blois)
12 Here's to You (Lisa Simmons)
13 Only Heaven Knows (Joanne Cooper)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/D4agojYd

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/NJ5kf1Y6ukB05fs/file

The cover image is from 1974.

Various Artists - 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/GVD6cdXe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/6MIhB6jKMNGt8K9/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 52 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

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/m4XXvPoN

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mvMqUYAmX1OEhxY/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 - 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/V6aqPKqW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qo8CJZ7pNQ5aBBM/file

The cover photo is from 1968.

Joan Baez - Baez Sings Baez, Volume 2: 1972-1975 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's another guest post by Fabio from Rio. Joan Baez is mostly known as a singer of songs written by others. But Fabio has put together five volumes of songs written or co-written by Baez, showing that she's actually a pretty talented songwriter. Here's the second volume.

I don't have much to say, because Fabio has written extensive notes, which are included in the download file. But I'll just point out that Baez proved herself to be a talented songwriter by writing the classic "Diamonds and Rust," which was a hit in 1975. And that song is included here.  

All the songs here come from official releases. So naturally the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 19 minutes long.

01 Prison Trilogy [Billy Rose] (Joan Baez)
02 Love Song to a Stranger (Joan Baez)
03 Myths (Joan Baez)
04 Weary Mothers [People Union 1] (Joan Baez)
05 To Bobby (Joan Baez)
06 Song of Bangladesh (Joan Baez)
07 Only Heaven Knows [Ah, the Sad Wind Blows] (Joan Baez)
08 A Young Gypsy (Joan Baez)
09 Rider, Pass By (Joan Baez)
10 Windrose (Joan Baez)
11 Where Are You Now, My Son (Joan Baez)
12 Where's My Apple Pie (Joan Baez)
13 Diamonds and Rust (Joan Baez)
14 Children and All That Jazz (Joan Baez)
15 Winds of the Old Days (Joan Baez)
16 Dida (Joan Baez with Joni Mitchell)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2RefJk56

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/d26OuaQsQb5loJ8/file

I don't know any details about the cover photo, except that it's from 1973. Fabio picked it.

Eric Andersen - Jabberwocky, Syracuse, NY, 9-15-1972

I've been posting a lot of 1970s concerts from the Ebbets Field venue in Colorado lately. I was disappointed not to be able to find an Eric Andersen concert recording from that venue, since I came across evidence that one of his shows there was recorded and broadcast (specifically, on October 4, 1974). Maybe it'll turn up someday. But I like Andersen's music, and I decided I'd try to find a similar substitute. I came up with this one, from the same time period.

Andersen put out his first album in 1965. He didn't have big commercial success, but he's had a long career as a respected singer-songwriter that continues until this day. (He's 83 years old as I write this in 2026.) Here's his Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more:

Eric Andersen - Wikipedia

Probably his most acclaimed album is "Blue River," released in 1972. So we're lucky this concert comes from his 1972 tour promoting that album. We're especially lucky to have this, because I looked fairly thoroughly, and this is by far the best bootleg from him from the 1970s (and I couldn't find anything at all from the 1960s). It's an excellent sounding soundboard that was given to someone by Andersen himself, according to the notes I found. He performed all of it in solo acoustic mode.

This is the early show. There was only a little bit of the introduction to the late show on the recording. Since there was no recording of an emcee introduction at the start of the early show, I moved the emcee introduction from the late show to the beginning. I also got rid of dead air between a lot of songs. There was a lot of uninteresting guitar tuning, and well as some silence. But I kept all the banter. 

By the way, as I was posting this, I noticed that this album, and the last album I just posted by Jerry Jeff Walker, both contain the song "More Often than Not," written by David Wiffen. Good song!  

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Eric Andersen)
02 talk (Eric Andersen)
03 Hello Sun (Eric Andersen)
04 talk (Eric Andersen)
05 Close the Door Lightly When You Go (Eric Andersen)
06 talk (Eric Andersen)
07 Why Don't You Love Me (Eric Andersen)
08 talk (Eric Andersen)
09 Lie with Me (Eric Andersen)
10 talk (Eric Andersen)
11 Blue River (Eric Andersen)
12 talk (Eric Andersen)
13 Daddy Frank [The Guitar Man] (Eric Andersen)
14 Is It Really Love at All (Eric Andersen)
15 Time Run like a Freight Train (Eric Andersen)
16 talk (Eric Andersen)
17 Thirsty Boots (Eric Andersen)
18 talk by emcee (Eric Andersen)
19 talk (Eric Andersen)
20 Mama Tried (Eric Andersen)
21 Florentine (Eric Andersen)
22 talk by emcee (Eric Andersen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3nJZ9bdk

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/cKvUwXMxxdo6tU7/file

The cover image is from a concert in Queens College, New York City, on May, 13, 1971. I used Photoshop to remove a big, distracting light fixture right above his head. I also used Krea AI to generally improve the details.

Jonathan Edwards - A & R Studios, New York City, 3-1-1972

A few days ago, I posted a 1974 concert by singer-songwriter Tom Rush, where he was backed by the band Orphan. I mentioned that I had another concert by singer-songwriter Jonathan Edwards from a couple of years earlier, where he also was backed by the band Orphan. Here is that concert. After listening to it again, I didn't find any actual mention of Orhan as a band, so I didn't include them in the song credits and such. However, they probably were backing him up around this time, just the same. I just did a little research, and found that in 1972, Edwards and the band Orphan were so close that they actually all lived in the same house in Boston.

Edwards released his debut album, the cleverly titled "Jonathan Edwards," in 1971. It contained a surprise hit, "Sunshine (Go Away Today)," which would be his only big hit. This concert took place around the time he was recording his second solo album, "Honky Tonk Stardust Cowboy." One song on that album, "Paper Doll," is the exact performance recorded at this concert. Everything else here is unreleased.

The sound quality is excellent, because this was recorded for FM radio broadcast. The radio station WPLJ broadcast a lot of great radio shows at A & R Studios in New York City, in the early 1970s, including this one. Some of them have been officially released as live albums, from the likes of Elton John and the Allman Brothers Band. Perhaps in the future I'll try to collect and post more of them, but my hands are pretty full with posting other things right now. The broadcasts were sponsored by the 7-Up soft drink. If you listen carefully at Edwards' banter between songs, he made some clever jokey digs about 7-Up.

I've already posted an Edwards concert from 1972. But that one is from the end of 1972 and this one is from the beginning, and their set lists are fairly different. I think both are very good. Edwards is really underrated, in my opinion. His first two solo albums (mentioned above) are excellent. But unfortunately he couldn't maintain that level of quality and his popularity declined as the 1970s went on.  

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 Everybody Knows Her (Jonathan Edwards)
02 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
03 Dues Days Bar (Jonathan Edwards)
04 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
05 Sugar Babe (Jonathan Edwards)
06 Dreamer (Jonathan Edwards)
07 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
08 Morning Train (Jonathan Edwards)
09 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
10 Honky Tonk Stardust Cowboy (Jonathan Edwards)
11 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
12 Shanty (Jonathan Edwards)
13 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
14 Beautiful Day (Jonathan Edwards)
15 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
16 Don't Cry Blue (Jonathan Edwards)
17 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
18 Everything (Jonathan Edwards)
19 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
20 Sweet Upsy Daisy (Jonathan Edwards)
21 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
22 Sometimes (Jonathan Edwards)
23 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
24 Sunshine [Go Away Today] (Jonathan Edwards)
25 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
26 Train of Glory (Jonathan Edwards)
27 Paper Doll (Jonathan Edwards)
28 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
29 When the Road Has Called Up Yonder (Jonathan Edwards)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bEQPUCpd

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/8C4F0evtMQKkVQC/file

I had a very hard time finding any good photos of Edwards in concert from around this time. I found a YouTube video of him performing "Sunshine (Go Away Time) live on T.V. in 1973. So I took a screenshot of that performance. The video quality was pretty rough, but I improved the quality with the help of the Krea AI program. 

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-3-1972, Part 2: Jonathan Edwards, Long John Baldry & More

Here is the second part of the third (and last) day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. This is the last album from this festival. Like the other album I put together from this third day, this is a grab-bag, consisting of relatively short sets of four music acts: Jonathan Edwards, Long John Baldry, Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010, and Osibisa.

Jonathan Edwards is a singer-songwriter who had a hit with the song "Sunshine." It went all the way to Number Four in the U.S. singles chart in 1971. That makes him a one-hit wonder. But he was (and still is) a lot more than that. I especially like his first few albums, and I've posted a concert from him. We have six songs from him here, but they only make up about 18 minutes of this album. "Sometimes in the Morning" and "Train of Glory" are from the official live album from the festival. His other songs are from the same audience bootleg as most of the other songs I've posted from this festival.

The next three songs are from British blues singer Long John Baldry. I've posted a BBC sessions album from him, as well as music from a band he was in, Steampacket. He had his biggest success in 1967, when he put out a single, "Let the Heartaches Begin," that went all the way to Number One in Britain (though it barely made the U.S. singles chart). His career was still going fairly well at the time of this concert. He had a minor hit in 1971 with the song "Don't Try to Lay No Boogie Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll." Interesting fact: half of his 1971 album "It Ain't Easy" was produced by Elton John, and the other half was produced by Rod Stewart. "Bring My Baby Back" made it to the official live album from this festival, while the other song here is from the same audience boot mentioned elsewhere.

Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010 was a salsa band from Puerto Rico. Apparently, some of their lyrics were political, but the meaning was generally missed by the mostly English speaking audience. There were other lesser known bands like this one that performed at the festival, such as Banda del K-rajo, Bang, Elephant's Memory, Michael Overly, Rubber Band, Stonehenge, and Malo. But we don't happen to have any recordings from them, and we happen to have two songs from this band. Both are from the same audience boot mentioned above.

The last song was by the band Osibisa, who were the last musical act to perform at the festival. This song made it to the official live album. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about them: Osibisa is a Ghanaian-Caribbean Afro rock band founded in London in the late 1960s by four expatriate West African and three London-based Caribbean musicians. Osibisa was the most successful and longest lived of the African-heritage bands in London... and was largely responsible for the establishment of world music and Afro-rock as a marketable genre." They would have a couple of hits in Britain later in the 1970s.

Here's their Wikipedia entry:

Osibisa - Wikipedia 

So that's the last of the music I have from this festival. But before I finish my write-up of this last album, I want to explain a bit about some interesting events that happened as the festival finished. As I mentioned in a previous write-up, the main promoter of the festival was Alex Cooley, who had promoted some other major rock festivals. But he ran into a lot of trouble with this one, including the fact that he failed to get the proper permits. The festival only happened because it would have caused more trouble for the government to have tens of thousands of angry fans who had paid to fly to Puerto Rico just to attend the festival.

Cooley later explained how the festival ended for him: "[A] guy who was working in the festival, came over to me, the last night of the festival, and said [the government] issued a warrant in San Juan and they were coming to arrest me. So they smuggled me out of there with a Volkswagen bus. I got in the bus and they put things on top of me and they took me to the airport and there were people at the airport that were very sympathetic towards this and they let them.... Of course, you'd never be able to do this now - they let them drive the Volkswagen out on to the runway. So I got out of the Volkswagen and got directly on the plane. So that's how I got out of San Juan, out of Puerto Rico."

He left in all sorts of trouble, including owing at least $40,000 in taxes that apparently never got paid.

Cooley wasn't the only one who had trouble leaving the festival. Creem Magazine reported, "People had begun making the long trek back to San Juan and points beyond after the first day of the festival, but even this steady exodus didn't avert the Tuesday tie-up at the airport. Many of the people who had purchased the $149 festival package found that their return plane tickets were good only for stand-by, thus effectively leaving the stranded until auxiliary flights could be arranged."

Luckily, the government helped take care of the people stranded at the airport. Tents were set up near the main terminal. The Red Cross, the government, and even some airline companies provided food, water and medical attention. Some bands performed for the stranded passengers. Pan American Airlines provided the flights for about 3,000 people who attended the festival from outside Puerto Rico who otherwise couldn't leave. It took several days before everyone was able to leave the country. 

No wonder the government was mad at Cooley and the other festival organizers. It's also no wonder why Puerto Rico didn't have another rock festival like this until decades later.

This album is 55 minutes long. 

01 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
02 Athens County (Jonathan Edwards)
03 Dues Day Bar (Jonathan Edwards)
04 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
05 Give Us a Song (Jonathan Edwards)
06 Shanty (Jonathan Edwards)
07 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
08 Sometimes in the Morning (Jonathan Edwards)
09 Train of Glory (Jonathan Edwards)
10 It Ain't Easy (Long John Baldry)
11 talk (Long John Baldry)
12 Bring My Baby Back (Long John Baldry)
13 Hemos Dicho Basta [Incomplete] (Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010)
14 Ya Se Van (Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010)
15 Y Sharp [Instrumental] (Osibisa)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZSLiFptp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/iaLTJsYB36ObzqH/file

The cover image of Jonathan Edwards is from this exact concert. 

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-3-1972, Part 1: Cactus, Faces & More

Here is the first part of the third, and last, day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. Unfortunately, for this last day of the festival, I wasn't able to find as much music as I found for the first two days. So I just have portions of sets. This has music from Cactus, the Faces, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Potliquor.

The four Cactus songs all come from official sources. The first three are from a live album called "'Ot 'n' Sweaty," released in 1972. The fourth song, "Bedroom Marurka," is from the official live album of the festival, "Mar y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival."

Cactus broke up a couple of months after this festival. Two band members, bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice, joined with Jeff Beck to form the band Beck, Bogert and Appice, releasing an album later in 1972. Here's the Wikipedia entry about Cactus:

Cactus (American band) - Wikipedia 

The Faces, starring Rod Stewart, were one of the main headliners of the festival. However, they didn't perform last on the last day, as one might expect of a headliner. Apparently, the organizers realized that the audience size steadily declined towards the ends of festivals like this, so it was better to have the headliners on earlier. (Interesting fact: when Jimi Hendrix performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, most of the audience had left already. Only about 30,000 to 100,000 of the peak 600,000 people remained.) Unfortunately, we only have three songs from the Faces. All three of those are unreleased.

There's just one song here from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the jazz fusion band led by guitarist John McLaughlin, "Noonward Race." But it's an impressive 13-minute-long instrumental. It comes from the official live album of the festival. Here the Wikipedia entry about this band:

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Wikipedia

Finally, that leaves the final song, from a band called Potliquor. This band played Southern rock with a Louisiana influence, since they were from Louisiana. They were together from 1969 to 1973 (plus a reunion in the late 1970s), and put out three albums in those years. Unfortunately, they were signed to a small record label and didn't get much promotion or distribution help. They were building some momentum, but that ended when the band broke up after only a few years. Their one song here is unreleased.

Here's their Wikipedia entry:

Potliquor - Wikipedia

This album is 59 minutes long. 

01 Swim (Cactus)
02 Bad Mother Boogie (Cactus)
03 Our Lil Rock 'n' Roll Thing (Cactus)
04 talk (Cactus)
05 Bedroom Mazurka (Cactus)
06 It's All Over Now (Faces)
07 Maggie May (Faces)
08 Miss Judy's Farm (Faces)
09 Noonward Race [Instrumental] (Mahavishnu Orchestra)
10 The Train (Potliquor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DHMVDrgp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/izVfQzS9XcCFAi3/file

The cover image of Rod Stewart is from this exact concert. The original picture was in black and white, but I converted it to color with the Kolorize program.

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 4: Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Here is the fourth and last part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. There is still one more day of the festival to go after this. This set features the prog rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

At this point in the band's career, they had only released two albums: "Emerson, Lake and Palmer" in 1970, and "Tarkus" in 1971. They had a new album coming ("Trilogy"), but it wouldn't be released until June 1972, and they didn't perform any songs from it. 

The band's bassist and lead vocalist Greg Lake later shared some memories about the band's experience at the festival: 

"The first thing I remember about the Mar Y Sol festival was stepping down onto the runway to discover the sun was so intense it had begun to melt the tarmac. After quite a long drive, we arrived at a luxury tropical hotel. At first, it all felt like a holiday atmosphere until we began to learn there were serious problems at the site and the government was trying to get the festival stopped. I remember jumping down out of a helicopter and being greeted by the backstage manager, who told me that they had just killed a rattlesnake under the stage. The whole thing did not feel good. It was not until later that we discovered a body being ferried out on the helicopter we had just arrived in was, in fact, the dead body of someone who’d been murdered, apparently over some drug deal that went wrong."

Lake also recalls having problems during the band's set. "I remember performing and feeling my left arm becoming unbearably hot. I quickly snatched a look between playing and singing and could see that my left arm was actually beginning to give off smoke. Apparently they had set up a huge and powerful search light on the side of the stage and were planning to use it during the filming. After a few desperate and agonizing screams from me, they finally switched it off."

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

01 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
02 Hoedown [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
03 Tarkus (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
04 Take a Pebble (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
05 Lucky Man (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
06 Piano Improvisation [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
07 Pictures at an Exhibition (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
08 Rondo [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uC48SVJP 

alternate: 

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

I couldn't find many photos from this festival. For this album, I was only able to find one decent one. It only shows keyboardist Keith Emerson. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 3: Alice Cooper

Here is the third part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. (I'm guessing the order based on the relative popularity of the musical acts at the time.) This one features the band Alice Cooper.

At the time of this concert, the band was on their way to the big time. The album "Killer" was released in late 1971, and it was their first big album success. It would eventually go Platinum in the U.S., which means sales of a million or more. The band also had a lot of success with the song "I'm Eighteen," which made the Top Twenty in the U.S. singles chart in early 1971. However, greater popularity was coming. The band's next album, "School's Out" would be an even bigger success in 1972, propelled by a single with the same name. That single would be released only a few weeks after this concert.

The band was making a big impression with audiences due to their theatrical stage performances. One fan who attended this concert later commented, "I was not a fan of Alice Cooper until I saw him in concert at Mar y Sol. I think I was more amazed at the crowd reaction then the actual show, but they could rock. I remember this chill going over me when Alice hung himself. He also did the throwing money bit into the crowd, and watching people scramble for it was pretty funny." 

For this set, it happens that the entire performance has been officially released. It came out on a deluxe edition of the "Killer" album. Most of that album was performed in the concert, as well as "Public Animal  the show previews "Public Animal #9" from the upcoming album. The band played most of "Killer" during the concert, plus three songs from their previous album "Love It to Death," including their sole hit at the time, "I'm Eighteen."

This album is an hour and five minutes long.

01 Be My Lover (Alice Cooper)
02 You Drive Me Nervous (Alice Cooper)
03 Yeah, Yeah, Yeah (Alice Cooper)
04 talk (Alice Cooper)
05 I'm Eighteen (Alice Cooper)
06 Halo of Flies (Alice Cooper)
07 Is It My Body (Alice Cooper)
08 Dead Babies (Alice Cooper)
09 Killer (Alice Cooper)
10 Long Way to Go (Alice Cooper)
11 Under My Wheels (Alice Cooper)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Cfbk6aJd

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/g4Qks4DitkRsWpD/file

I could be wrong, since it's been a long time since I make the cover art for this festival, but I'm pretty sure the cover image is from this exact concert. I found just two photos of him from it, this one, and one of him holding a skull in his hands.