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.

Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 1973, Late Show

Yesterday, I posted the early show of Big Mama Thornton playing at Ebbets Field in Denver in 1973, with Tommy Bolin on lead guitar. Here's the late show.

Most of what I'd want to say about this was said in my write-up for the early show. So please read that. Just a quick recap: it would be plenty interesting to have a recording of blues legend Big Mama Thornton performing at a small club like this in 1973. But a nice bonus is having Bolin on guitar. He was living in the area at the time, shortly before joining the James Gang and then later joining Deep Purple, and he sometimes would back up blues artists when they were passing through town. This seems to be the only instance of that that luckily got recorded.

As with the early show, if you listen to this, it's pretty clear Thornton was winging it, singing whatever song came into her head at any moment. Bolin and the rest of the back-up band probably had no practice time with her, and did a good job trying to keep up with her. 

One nice thing is that the songs in the late show are almost entirely different than those of the early show, with only "Hound Dog" and "Swing It on Home" being the same. And apparently that was Thornton playing the short drum solo at the end of the last song.

If anyone knows the names of the instrumental second and third tracks, please let me know, so I can give them proper names. I did some Internet searching and found someone who had played with Bolin who knew the name of the first song, or I never would have been able to name that instrumental.

As with the early show, the music is unreleased and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Swamp Carol [Instrumental] (Tommy Bolin)
02 Instrumental Jam (Tommy Bolin)
03 Blues Shuffle [Instrumental] (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
04 Pack Up My Troubles (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
05 Good Morning, Little Schoolboy [Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl] (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
06 talk (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
07 Oh Happy Day (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
08 Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
09 He's Got the Whole World in His Hands (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
10 Go Down Moses - He's Got the Whole World in His Hands [Reprise] (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
11 talk (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
12 Drink on the Table (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
13 talk (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
14 What'd I Say (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
15 Hound Dog (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
16 Swing It on Home - Drum Solo [Edit] (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WNLRoRCv

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/VLaXtYf8pAPGlJP/file

The cover image shows Big Mama Thornton on the "Dick Cavett Show" on July 22, 1971. That's the case for the early show cover image as well. I thought it would be nice to have her in the same clothes for the covers of the early and late shows. 

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."

Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 1973, Early Show

The next installment of Ebbets Field radio broadcast concerts is something unexpected: blue legend Big Mama Thornton performing with Deep Purple lead guitarist Tommy Bolin! There are early and late shows, with the two of them quite different. Here's the early show.

Thorton is best known for the song "Hound Dog." She had a hit with it in 1952, before Elvis Presley's version. Her version sold half a million copies, which was a remarkable amount back at that time. She's also well known for a song she wrote, "Ball and Chain," after Janis Joplin did a great version of it in the late 1960s. Her time in the spotlight in the 1950s didn't last long, since she only had that one hit. But in the 1960s and into the 1970s she had a career revival playing in blues and/or folk clubs and festivals. At the time of this concert, she was about 46 years old.

Here's her Wikipedia page:

Big Mama Thornton - Wikipedia 

Tommy Bolin was born and raised in Iowa, but his family moved to Boulder, Colorado, in his late teens. He began playing in local bands. One of them, Zephyr, released a couple of albums, and toured nationally, though they didn't have any hits. After that band broke up around 1971, he joined a couple other short-lived bands, and wrote a lot of songs. In 1973, he joined the James Gang (after Joe Walsh left) and dominated it, writing nearly all the songs for two albums. By 1975, he'd left the James Gang and joined Deep Purple for about a year. He also released solo albums in 1975 and 1976. But he died of a drug overdose at the very end of 1976.

Tommy Bolin - Wikipedia

Anyway, the reason I mention all this about Bolin is because it's relevant in explaining how his involvement with Thornton came to be. In 1972 and 1973 especially, Bolin was at loose ends and living in Boulder, often without a band. During this time, he developed a good relationship with Chuck Morris, who owned the Ebbets Field venue (and a couple more in the area). Often, when blues musicians were passing through town and were lacking a backing band, Morris would get Bolin and/or some of Bolin's friends to provide the backing. (Bolin would make the drive from Boulder to Denver in less than an hour.) Or sometimes Bolin would just ask to sit in. In this way, he played with many musical greats, including Howlin' Wolf, Albert King, and Chuck Berry. Usually, these big names would be greatly impressed by Bolin, who was far from being just an inexperienced local musician. 

It seems none of these shows pairing Bolin with these blues legends were recorded... except for this one with Thornton, somehow. I don't know if this was broadcast on the radio at the time, like other Ebbets Field shows, or if just got luckily recorded by the venue anyway. Bobby Berge and Stan Shelton rounded out the backing band. 

Chances are there was little to no practice between Thornton and the backing band beforehand. You can hear at times where Thornton starts a song and just expects the other musicians to figure out what's going on and join in. But it's also clear that she respected Bolin's lead guitar playing, as can be seen by the space he was given to solo, especially with the two instrumentals at the beginning. (If anyone knows the names of those songs, if they have names, please let me know. I also had to figure out the names of the other songs. Please let me know if I got any of them wrong.)

Surprisingly, not only was Thornton a great blues vocalist, she could also play drums pretty well. That's her playing a short drum solo near the end of this recording.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Instrumental Jam (Tommy Bolin)
02 Blues Shuffle [Instrumental] (Tommy Bolin)
03 Blues with Intro (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
04 Little Red Rooster [Early One Morning] (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
05 Rock Me Baby (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
06 talk (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
07 Shake, Rattle and Roll - Hi Ho Silver (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
08 talk (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
09 Ball and Chain (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
10 Hound Dog (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
11 talk (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
12 Swing It on Home - Drum Solo (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)
13 talk (Big Mama Thornton with Tommy Bolin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fnNa7zWg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/XF5Bz0rmGxi8TR1/file 

The cover image shows Big Mama Thornton on the "Dick Cavett Show" on July 22, 1971. By the way, looking at the cover, you may wonder that she doesn't look like a "Big Mama." When she was younger, she was most definitely big - at one point, she weighed about 450 pounds. But years of heavy drinking gave her health problems that caused her to lose a lot of weight by the early 1970s. By the time she died in 1984, she only weighed about 95 pounds.

Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 8-11-1973

Here's another Ebbets Field radio broadcast. This one features Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen.

The Wikipedia entry intro is badly written, so I'll try to come up with my own summary. This band was led by pianist and vocalist George Frayne IV, a.k.a. Commander Cody. The band was formed in 1967, but they didn't release their debut album until 1971. Once they did, it contained a surprise hit with the song "Hot Rod Lincoln," which made it all the way to the Top Ten in the U.S. singles chart. It was a surprise hit because it was a cover of an obscure 1950s song, and the 1950s style was very much out of step with the musical trends of 1971. 

Unfortunately, it would prove to be their only hit. The band broke up in 1977. However, Frayne continued to make a lot more music using the "Commander Cody" name. He died in 2021.

Although Wikipedia didn't have a good intro for this band, it does have a good paragraph explaining the band's style. So I'll quote that here: "[the band's] style was built on the foundation of country music, which the band fused with boogie woogie, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, Western swing and jazz, which Classic Rock said resulted in 'a counter-cultural twist to the Nashville sound.' Relix said that the band 'tossed together rockabilly, blues, country, boogie-woogie, Western swing and whatever else came their way.' Tinnitist called the band 'one of the more interesting bands of the hippie era, fusing county, rockabilly, western swing, jump blues, and more into an infectious amalgam that set the table for outfits like NRBQ.'"

Here's the rest of the entry:

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen - Wikipedia

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 Instrumental Intro (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
02 Good Rockin' Tonight (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
03 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
04 What's the Matter Now (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
05 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
06 Truck Driving Man (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
07 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
08 Four or Five Times (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
09 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
10 Down and Out (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
11 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
12 Mama Hated Diesels (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
13 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
14 Little Sally Walker (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
15 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
16 Ain't Nothin' Shakin' (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
17 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
18 Daddy's Drinkin' Up Our Christmas (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
19 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
20 Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
21 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
22 Hot Rod Lincoln (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
23 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
24 Rave On (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
25 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
26 Rock That Boogie (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
27 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
28 Jailhouse Rock (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
29 talk by emcee (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
30 talk (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
31 Mean Woman Blues (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
32 Lost in the Ozone Again (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)
33 talk by emcee (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5C8xtSek 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/49LEVP2T5KtIvTS/file

The cover image comes from an appearance on the "Midnight Special" T.V. show in Burbank, California, on July 6, 1973.

Sandy Denny - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 4-29-1973

The flood of Ebbets Field radio broadcasts continues. You may have noticed I'm trying to post one of these each day. Here's one from folk singer Sandy Denny.

Denny was a member of Fairport Convention from 1968 to 1969. She left to pursue a solo career. She rejoined Fairport Convention from 1974 to 1975. I have two albums of that band performing at Ebbets Field in 1974 when she was a member. That will be coming soon. 

She was pretty popular in Britain. She even won "Best British Female Singer" in a readers' poll for Melody Maker magazine in 1970 and 1971. But she was far less well known in the U.S., which helps explain why she was performing in this small club that seated 250 people at most. Her most recent album at the time of this concert was "Sandy," in 1972.  

So far, I believe all the concerts I've posted from this venue have been officially unreleased. But this one came out as part of the 2012 deluxe edition of the "Sandy" album. That said, the recording was still pretty raw, with some sonic imbalances. So I made some changes with the MVSEP program.

This album is 32 minutes long. 

01 Late November (Sandy Denny)
02 talk (Sandy Denny)
03 The Music Weaver (Sandy Denny)
04 talk (Sandy Denny)
05 It Suits Me Well (Sandy Denny)
06 talk (Sandy Denny)
07 Bushes and Briars (Sandy Denny)
08 talk (Sandy Denny)
09 The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood (Sandy Denny)
10 talk (Sandy Denny)
11 The Sea Captain (Sandy Denny)
12 talk (Sandy Denny)
13 At the End of the Day (Sandy Denny)
14 talk (Sandy Denny)
15 John the Gun (Sandy Denny)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NRSGaEk8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3SIvyMcViAiWgn0/file

The cover image is from the Ngaruawahia Music Festival in New Zealand in 1973. The sky was blue behind her, so I changed that to grey to better fit with this album, since the Ebbets Field club was indoors.

Robin Trower - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 8-6-1973

Here's another one of the many Ebbets Field radio broadcasts. This one stars lead guitarist Robin Trower.

Here's the Wikipedia entry intro about him:

"[Trower] is an English rock guitarist and producer who achieved success with Procol Harum from 1967 until 1971 and as the bandleader of his own power trio known as the Robin Trower Band. Although Procol Harum was primarily known as a progressive rock band, Trower himself is known for his blues-infused guitar playing, which critics have frequently compared to that of Jimi Hendrix, whom he has cited as an influence. As a solo artist, Trower released four consecutive gold-certified albums from 1974 to 1977 that charted well in the U.S. and Canada, but in the 1980s his career faltered. He briefly returned to Procol Harum for their 1991 reunion album, The Prodigal Stranger, but left again to resume his solo career. His most recent solo album, Come and Find Me, was released in 2025."

Here's the full entry:

Robin Trower - Wikipedia

This concert took place about six months after the release of Tower's debut album, "Twice Removed from Yesterday." At the time, it didn't do that well. It just missed making the Top 100 album chart. But his next album, "Bridge of Sighs," would do much better, making the Top Ten.

A key member of Trower's band at this time was James Dewar. He not only was the bass player, he was the lead vocalist. He essentially was the "voice" for Trower until they parted ways in 1983. Trower and Dewar co-wrote most of the songs on the debut album. On later albums, Trower would dominate the songwriting a lot more.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 The Fool and Me (Robin Trower)
02 talk (Robin Trower)
03 Twice Removed from Yesterday (Robin Trower)
04 talk (Robin Trower)
05 Lady Love (Robin Trower)
06 talk (Robin Trower)
07 Daydream (Robin Trower)
08 talk (Robin Trower)
09 Day of the Eagle (Robin Trower)
10 talk (Robin Trower)
11 I Can't Wait Much Longer (Robin Trower)
12 talk (Robin Trower)
13 Man of the World (Robin Trower)
14 talk (Robin Trower)
15 Sinner's Song (Robin Trower)
16 talk (Robin Trower)
17 Little Bit of Sympathy (Robin Trower)
18 talk (Robin Trower)
19 I Can't Stand It (Robin Trower)
20 talk by emcee (Robin Trower)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5aTe9eMj

alternate:

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

All I know about the cover is it was taken in March 1973. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. 

Covered: Randy Newman, Volume 2: 1973-1999

Here's the second out of three "Covered" albums for singer-songwriter Randy Newman.

As I mentioned in "Volume 1," in the early 1970s, Newman was considered a cult albums, very critically acclaimed, but with not much commercial success for his own career. Even the many covers of his songs were rarely hits, though there were exceptions, especially "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)," which was a Number One hit in the U.S. for Three Dog Night in 1970.

But things changed drastically for him in 1977, with the song "Short People." To pretty much everyone's surprise, his version was an massive novelty hit. It made it all the way to Number Two in the U.S., kept out of the top spot only by the all-time classic "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. It was wildly misunderstood, to say the least. A great many of his songs are sarcastic. For instance, his great song "Political Science" sarcastically advocates for blowing up the world with nuclear weapons. Many people who heard "Short People" didn't realize it was a sarcastic attack on prejudice by pointing out how silly it would be to hate short people for no reason, including ignoring the lyrics of the bridge, which explicitly run counter to the rest of the song. 

But in any case, the song made him a household name, even though his overall sales still didn't increase much. His only two really big hits on the singles charts remain "Short People" and "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)." Since Newman's version of "Short People" is so well known, it's the only song in this series I've included that's performed by him.

I also want to give a special mention to "Sail Away." I think it's an incredible song. But it also shows how unique his songwriting is, and how easy it can be for people to misunderstand his songs if they don't pay attention. It's basically an advertisement for a slave trader prior to the Civil War, attempting to coax Black Africans to come to the U.S. for a better life, when in fact the trader is tricking them into slavery. Yet somehow this sarcastic premise becomes a powerful song about the evils of slavery. It's been widely covered, including by the likes of Bobby Darin, Etta James, Linda Ronstadt, Ray Charles, Gladys Knight, Joe Cocker, and Kirsty MacColl. It was hard for me to pick just one cover, but I thought the version by Etta James is extra powerful.

From the start of Newman's songwriting career, he'd had a sideline writing instrumental music for T.V. shows, which then led to movie soundtrack work. That began way back in 1962, as I mentioned in the previous volume. His first movie soundtrack was in 1971. He did a few more movies here and there over the next couple decades. But his career took a turn in 1995, when he did the soundtrack for the hit movie "Toy Story." One song he did for that, "You've Got a Friend in Me," wasn't a hit per se, barely reaching the singles chart. But it became widely known, and widely beloved by children, and it's gone on to sell over three million copies! Surely that makes it one of the best selling non-hits ever. 

For that song, I've included a duet version between Newman and Lyle Lovett, since it's an interesting one that's also much less well known than the version just featuring Newman.

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 Have You Seen My Baby [Hold On] (Ringo Starr)
02 Sail Away (Etta James)
03 Last Night I Had a Dream (Fanny)
04 Let's Burn Down the Cornfield (Etta James)
05 Naked Man (Grass Roots)
06 Lucinda (Joe Cocker)
07 Short People (Randy Newman)
08 Baltimore (Nina Simone)
09 Mr. President (Marshall Tucker Band)
10 You Can Leave Your Hat On (Joe Cocker)
11 Louisiana 1927 (Aaron Neville)
12 Political Science (Everything but the Girl)
13 You've Got a Friend in Me (Randy Newman & Lyle Lovett)
14 Feels like Home (Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt & Dolly Parton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6SB3U9ZA

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/f6YT8V3gAvHLIQ3/file 

The cover image is from 1978.

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.

Dan Hicks - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 9-1973, Late Show

I just posted Dan Hicks performing the early show on this date as part of the Ebbets Field radio broadcasts. Here's the late show. 

Unfortunately, it seems we only have part of the late show. This one is 23 minutes shorter than the early show, and it doesn't end with anything sounding like an encore. But it's better to have some of the show than none at all.

Luckily, there is only a moderate amount of overlap between the early and late shows. Just three songs were played in both (at least in the parts we have recordings for): "Who Are You," "I'll Tell You Why that Is," and "Out on the Western Plain."

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I had to do a lot of volume adjustment on the version I found, especially boosting the volume of the banter between songs. But that was the only tinkering necessary.

This album is 34 minutes long.

01 Peach Pickin' Time (Dan Hicks)
02 talk (Dan Hicks)
03 He Don't Care - Sweet Lorraine (Dan Hicks)
04 Who Are You (Dan Hicks)
05 talk (Dan Hicks)
06 I'll Tell You Why that Is (Dan Hicks)
07 How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away (Dan Hicks)
08 Out on the Western Plain (Dan Hicks)
09 talk (Dan Hicks)
10 The Same Thing (Dan Hicks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/AtY6UufQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/P8JAlFyPSAhAiJR/file

The cover image was taken on May 8, 1973, for the "In Concert" ABC TV show. That's the same source for the cover image used for the early show. I wanted to have similar photos because Hicks probably would have been wearing the same clothes for the early and late shows. 

Dan Hicks - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 9-1973, Early Show

Here's another album sourced from the Ebbets Field radio broadcasts. This time, it's Dan Hicks. He performed an early show and last show. That seemed to be standard procedure at that venue, but most of the time we only have the recording of one show. But this time, we have both. So here's the early show first.

I've already posted a little bit about Hicks, when he was a guest for an episode of the Midnight Special TV show, hosted by the Pointed Sisters. But here's some more on him. This is how his Wikipedia entry begins:

"[Hicks] was an American singer-songwriter and musician, and the leader of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. His idiosyncratic style combined elements of cowboy folk, jazz, country, swing, bluegrass, pop, and gypsy music. He is perhaps best known for the songs 'I Scare Myself' and 'Canned Music.' His songs are frequently infused with humor, as evidenced by the title of his tune 'How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?'"

Here's the rest of his Wikipedia entry:

Dan Hicks (singer) - Wikipedia

Hicks led the band "Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks" from 1967 to 1973. Their best selling album was released in 1973, "Last Train to Hicksville... the Home of Happy Feet." It seems likely he'd already broken that band up by the time of this concert, because he was billed as the "Dan Hicks Trio" here. 

As an aside, I haven't been familiar with his music until posting these albums. But I'm very familiar with the Thomas Dolby version of "I Scare Myself." I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was originally written and released by Hicks. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.  

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 Who Are You (Dan Hicks)
02 Humming to Myself (Dan Hicks)
03 talk (Dan Hicks)
04 Three Wishes (Dan Hicks)
05 I Got Mine (Dan Hicks)
06 talk (Dan Hicks)
07 We're Not on the Same Trip - Out on the Western Plain (Dan Hicks)
08 talk (Dan Hicks)
09 I Scare Myself (Dan Hicks)
10 Cowboys Dream No. 19 (Dan Hicks)
11 talk (Dan Hicks)
12 I'll Tell You Why that Is (Dan Hicks)
13 Evening Breeze (Dan Hicks)
14 talk (Dan Hicks)
15 Long Come a Viper (Dan Hicks) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/K5BB8i9d

alternate:

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

The cover image was taken on May 8, 1973, for the "In Concert" ABC TV show. 

Taj Mahal - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 5-16-1973, Late Show

The album I just posted is Taj Mahal performing at Ebbets Field in Denver on May 16, 1973, for the early show. This is the same, except it's the late show. The two shows have very similar set lists. (And both were broadcast on the radio, which is why they have such excellent sound quality.) Normally, I wouldn't post two concerts that are this similar. But I figure these are quite obscure. I had a difficult time finding them. So I want to post both, to bring them back into wider circulation.

The main difference between this show and the early show is the last two songs, which were only performed in this show. Plus, the last four songs in the early show weren't performed here. So if you want everything without multiple versions of songs, I suggest you save the early show, then add the last two songs from this late show to the end.

By the way, in case you didn't notice, I recently changed the font type and color for the Ebbets Field concerts I've been posting. The first seven or so had a yellow color. But there were some troublesome issues with that font. So when I found another sixty (!) or so concerts from this venue, I decided to use an easier one. I also found a little logo from the venue showing the baseball stadium in New York City that the venue was named after. I decided to stick that on all the albums from that venue. Since that logo was mainly in green, I changed the font color to green. In recent days, I went back and reposted all the yellow ones to the new color scheme, so they'll all be consistent. 

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 talk (Taj Mahal)
02 Kalimba [Instrumental] (Taj Mahal)
03 talk (Taj Mahal)
04 Banjo Rag [Instrumental] (Taj Mahal)
05 Cakewalk into Town (Taj Mahal)
06 Going Up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue (Taj Mahal)
07 Ain't Nobody's Business but My Own (Taj Mahal)
08 talk (Taj Mahal)
09 Big Legged Mammas Are Back in Style (Taj Mahal)
10 Fishin' Blues (Taj Mahal)
11 Sweet Home Chicago (Taj Mahal)
12 Linin' Track Blues (Taj Mahal)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZtaaiayH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/zRL9jT3pDSQnOT8/file

The cover image is from Great Southeast Music in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 26, 1973. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. Note that I took the picture from the early show from the same show. I like the similarity, since I figure he would have worn the same clothes in the two shows performed on this date.

Taj Mahal - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 5-16-1973, Early Show

The recent flood of posts from the Ebbets Field radio broadcasts continues. Here's Taj Mahal. I'll be posting both the early and late shows he did the same night.

This concert was in solo acoustic mode. Mostly, he played guitar. But he also played a little banjo, as well as an African instrument known as the kalimba (also known as the mbira). On the cover image, he can be seen playing a banjo.

His most recent album at the time was "Recycling the Blues and Other Related Stuff," released in 1972. He has an instrumental on that album simply called "Kalimba," which is how I know the name of that song. (I had to figure out most of the song titles, since the bootleg I took the music from was bad with titles.) "Cakewalk into Town" and "Corrina" are the only other songs he played from that album. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. But I did do a fair amount of audio editing in the Audacity program to improve things. Some parts were too loud, sometimes the vocals were too low, and so on.

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 Banjo Rag [Instrumental] (Taj Mahal)
02 talk (Taj Mahal)
03 Kalimba [Instrumental] (Taj Mahal)
04 Cakewalk into Town (Taj Mahal)
05 Big Legged Mammas Are Back in Style (Taj Mahal)
06 Going Up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue (Taj Mahal)
07 Ain't Nobody's Business but My Own (Taj Mahal)
08 Fishin' Blues (Taj Mahal)
09 Straight Shootin' Blues (Taj Mahal)
10 Ain't Gwine Whistle Dixie [Any Mo'] (Taj Mahal)
11 Done Changed My Way of Living (Taj Mahal)
12 Corrina [Corinna] (Taj Mahal)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UEQAJ8sk

alternate:

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

The cover image is from Great Southeast Music in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 26, 1973. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

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.

Billy Preston with Buddy Miles - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 8-31-1973

It's time for another episode from that fantastic TV show, "The Midnight Special." This one stars Billy Preston, with Buddy Miles as his guest.

Preston started his music career quite young. Having taught himself how to play piano, he began performing on stage by the time he was ten. In 1963, he released his first studio album, at the age of 16. But he didn't have a lot of success at first, and mostly worked as a backing musician for Ray Charles and others. He got a big break in early 1969 when he backed the Beatles in the studio for a couple of weeks during their Get Back / Let It Be sessions. And when the song "Get Back" was released as a single that year, it was credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston." He had his first big hit later in 1969 with "That's the Way God Planned It." It didn't do much in the U.S., but it almost reached the Top Ten in Britain. More hits followed by the time of this show, especially "Outa-Space," "Will It Go Round in Circles," and "Space Race."

Here's his Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more:

Billy Preston - Wikipedia 

This album is a combination of three episodes. Most of the songs come from the August 31, 1973 episode named in the album title. But "Blackbird" and "That's the Way God Planned It" come from a February 16, 1973 episode. Actually, "That's the Way God Planned It" was played twice, in the August and February episodes. But the August version faded out before the end of the song. So I used the complete February version. However, the talking right before it is from the August version. Also, tracks 11, 12 and 13 come from the December 14, 1973 episode.

Preston hosted the show again in 1975. I plan on posting that again. It seems he and Buddy Miles actually were friends (as they said on this episode), because Miles was a guest on that episode as well. It seems the host often had some say on who the guests for their episodes would be. 

I included Miles as the guest mostly because they performed "My Sweet Lord" together, as you can see from the cover image. Also, they had similar soul music styles. In case you're curious, the other guests on the August 1973 episode that Preston hosted were: Steely Dan, Bo Diddley, Maureen McGovern, Ned Doheny, and Gladstone. For the opening talk by Wolfman Jack, I edited it so that mentions of the those other guests weren't included. That's what that track has "[Edit]" in the title. I also included only part of the next track, which consisted of some comments by comedian Tommy Smothers.

By the way, "I'm So Tired" is not the Beatles song of the same name. However, "Blackbird" is a Beatles cover. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 talk [Edit] (Wolfman Jack)
02 talk (Tommy Smothers)
03 Will It Go Round in Circles (Billy Preston)
04 talk (Billy Preston)
05 Them Changes (Buddy Miles)
06 talk (Wolfman Jack)
07 My Sweet Lord (Billy Preston & Buddy Miles)
08 talk (Billy Preston)
09 All Spaced Out (Billy Preston)
10 Music's My Life (Billy Preston)
11 Space Race [Instrumental] (Billy Preston)
12 How Long Has the Train Been Gone (Billy Preston)
13 I'm So Tired (Billy Preston)
14 Blackbird (Billy Preston)
15 Thinking of You (Buddy Miles)
16 talk (Billy Preston)
17 That's the Way God Planned It (Billy Preston)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2vHo8jnd

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/PCrntjhghM3NAH8/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. That's Buddy Miles playing drums, and Billy Preston looking over at him while playing keyboards. I used Photoshop to remove some mostly empty space between them.

Lulu - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: 1973-1975

Here's the next volume of Lulu performing for the BBC. Only three songs here were on the previous Lulu BBC album I'd made dealing with this time period: tracks, 7, 9, and 10. Everything else is music I recently discovered.

The main reason I discovered a bunch of Lulu music is that I found the entire 1975 season of videos of Lulu's BBC TV show. (For that season, the show was renamed from "It's Lulu" to just "Lulu.") The sound quality was excellent, so I converted those to audio and cut out the mp3s of the songs featuring her. That 1975 material starts with track 11, and continues until the end of the album. It also makes up the bulk of the three additional BBC albums I'll be posting after this one.

That still leaves the rest of the album, tracks 1 through 10. As I mentioned, three of those songs are ones I posted on the old version of "BBC Sessions, Volume 4" (now completely replaced). After finding the 1975 season, I looked around and more still more videos I'd previously missed, mostly from YouTube. It helps that there's an active Lulu YouTube page, and it's posted a bunch of new stuff since I originally made some BBC albums for her. Tracks 1 through 9 come from the 1973 edition of her BBC TV show. (I couldn't find anything from 1974.) Only track 10 ("The Man Who Sold the World") is different, coming from a BBC radio show.

All the music here is unreleased. The sound quality is generally excellent, though it varies somewhat. I removed the applause as best I could from nearly all of these using the UVR5 audio editing program. But I couldn't get rid of all of it on all the songs. 

This album is 49 minutes long. 

01 Touch Me in the Morning (Lulu)
02 Killing Me Softly (Lulu with Sergio Mendes)
03 That's When the Music Takes Me (Lulu)
04 When You Smile (Lulu)
05 She (Lulu & David Clayton-Thomas)
06 For the Good Times (Lulu)
07 Blue Suede Shoes - Hound Dog - Heartbreak Hotel - Love Me Tender - Teddy Bear - Jailhouse Rock (Lulu)
08 Mr. Tambourine Man (Lulu)
09 Lean On Me (Bill Withers & Lulu)
10 The Man Who Sold the World (Lulu)
11 Never Can Say Goodbye (Lulu)
12 Goodness Gracious Me (Lulu & Michael Bates)
13 The Man with the Golden Gun (Lulu)
14 Smile, Darn You Smile (Lulu)
15 Baby Love (Lulu)
16 Let's Put It All Together (Lulu)
17 Stand by Your Man (Lulu)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/z563zgfb

alternate:

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

The cover photo is from an appearance on Lulu's TV show "It's Lulu" at some point in 1973.

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. 

Fleetwood Mac - Long Beach Arena, Long Beach, CA, 4-15-1973

The band Fleetwood Mac went through many personnel transformations, with only the bassist (John McVie) and the drummer (Mick Fleetwood) remaining constants. I'm interested in pretty much all versions of this band, because they remained consistently good despite all the changes. As far as live recordings go, I always though 1973 was a lost year. I couldn't find even one decent recording from that year. But recently (writing this in February 2026), I came across a worthy one. So here it is.

In 1972, the main creative forces in the band were Christine McVie on keyboards, Bob Welsh on lead guitar, and Danny Kirwan on lead guitar. By the end of 1972, Kirwan was out of the band. The band brought in two new members: Bob Weston on slide guitar, and Dave Walker on lead vocals. That's the line-up for this concert: Christine McVie, Bob Welsh, Bob Weston, Dave Walker, plus the two unchanging members, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood.

Walker, who had been the lead vocalist for the band Savoy Brown, was brought into the band because the band's manager thought the band needed a charismatic lead vocalist. However, he didn't last long. He was included in the album "Penguin," released in March 1973. But he only sang lead vocals on two songs, one of which he wrote. At the end of the tour to promote the album, he was ejected from the group. So, in the larger history of this band, Walker is a minor blip, only remembered for singing two songs on one album. But he actually dominates this concert, singing most of the songs. 

The band carried on with just five members. Later in 1973, the band released another album, "Mystery to Me." Shortly after the tour to promote that album started, it was discovered that Bob Weston was sleeping with the wife of Mick Fleetwood. The tour was immediately cancelled, and the band actually broke up for several months. When they finally got back together, Weston was gone. So this is probably the only decent concert bootleg out there prominently featuring both Walker and Weston. One can tell Weston's guitar playing since he pretty much exclusively played slide guitar.

Now, let me address this recording. This is an audience bootleg. I generally shy away from those, due to sound quality issues. But it was an unusually good one. The main problem was that the lead vocals were buried in the mix. So I used the MVSEP program to bring them back up. That made a big difference. I also ran MVSEP over all the songs again to get rid of the crowd noise during the songs. Furthermore, the banter between songs was hard to understand. I ran those tracks through the Adobe vocal enhancer program, and that helped a lot. After all that, I think this concert sounds almost as good as a soundboard boot from the time. 

The one disappointment I have in this concert is that McVie only sang lead vocals on one song, "Get like You Used to Be." That's curious, because the lead single for the album they were promoting at the time, "Penguin," was "Remember Me," a song written and sung by McVie. 

This album is 55 minutes long. It's relatively short for a concert, but that's because they were an opening act. You can hear right at the end how the emcee announces there will be a short break before the main act, Deep Purple, takes the stage. 

01 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
02 The Green Manalishi [With the Two Prong Crown] (Fleetwood Mac)
03 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Oh Well, Part 1 (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Get like You Used to Be (Fleetwood Mac)
06 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Night Watch (Fleetwood Mac)
08 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Same Old Blues (Fleetwood Mac)
10 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
11 In the Country (Fleetwood Mac)
12 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
13 Rattlesnake Shake (Fleetwood Mac)
14 talk by emcee (Fleetwood Mac)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BfV3NdrW

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/IoeQxCwJoYsPsA1/file

The cover image is kind of a creative invention. I found a photo of band members Bob Weston and Bob Welch in concert in 1973, and another photo of Dave Walker in concert in 1973. I put them together in Photoshop. Both original photos were in black and white, but I colorized them using the Kolorize program. From right to left: Bob Weston, Bob Welch, and Dave Walker. 

The Guess Who - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 3-29-1974

I have a lot of new things I keep finding that distracts me from posting more of projects I've previously announced, but all those projects are still in progress. One of them is posting more from the "Midnight Special" TV show. When I posted a poll about this show, the Guess Who were one of the top vote getters. They were on the show a handful of times. I've turned that into two albums. Here's the first one.

The Guess Who didn't have any big hits in 1972 or 1973, after having more success from 1969 to 1971. But in 1974, they had another Top Ten hit in the U.S. with "Clap for the Wolfman," which was a tribute song for DJ Wolfman Jack. At the time, the Midnight Special was hosted by none other than Wolfman Jack, who naturally loved the song. He spoke some lines on the record. He repeated those here in this live version. (According to the Wikipedia article about the song, he even performed the song with the band sometimes while they were on tour in 1974.) I find it interesting that this episode aired at the end of March 1974, and probably was recorded a little earlier than that, but "Clap for the Wolfman" wasn't released on album until April 1974, and wasn't released as a single until June 1974. So this may have been the public debut of the song.

The Guess Who hosted this show on the date mentioned in this album title, March 29, 1974. Most of the songs here are from that date. But tracks 7 through 10 are from an episode that aired on December 14, 1973. And track 11 is from an episode that aired on February 22, 1974. They hosted the show again in 1975, but that will be the subject of a different album.

The first track has "[Edit]" in the title because I removed the theme song playing in the background and replaced it with crowd noise. And "Clap for the Wolfman" also has that in its title because there was a glitch in the song. Luckily, it happened during a chorus, so I was able to repair it by patching in a bit from a different chorus.

In case you're curious, the other musical acts in the main episode here were Wishbone Ash, Sha Na Na, Slade, David Essex, Judi Pulver, and Leo Kottke.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 40 minutes long. 

01 talk by Wolfman Jack [Edit] (Guess Who)
02 American Woman (Guess Who)
03 talk (Guess Who)
04 Star Baby (Guess Who)
05 These Eyes (Guess Who)
06 Clap for the Wolfman [Edit] (Guess Who with Wolfman Jack)
07 Albert Flasher (Guess Who)
08 Undun (Guess Who)
09 Straighten Out (Guess Who)
10 Glamour Boy (Guess Who)
11 Share the Land (Guess Who)
12 talk (Guess Who)
13 Hand Me Down World (Guess Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8Mf4TUco

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/xnDkn4NazWflbLF/file

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from this exact concert. I could have selected more of a close-up pic, but I liked this unusual perspective showing how the stage stuck out into the audience. That's lead singer Burton Cummings on the front edge of the stage.