Covered: Denny Randell & Sandy Linzer: 1964-1998

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This album is 57 minutes long. 

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

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xSguvDEM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/revo89NczNfZKK9/file

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

The Carpenters - Imaginary Piano Recital, Volume 2: 1976-1983 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's another Fabio from Rio guest post. It's the second and last of two volumes featuring the Carpenters. As I was saying with Volume 1, Fabio and I love Karen Carpenter's voice, and the songs, but we usually don't love the overproduction of most of the Carpenters records. So, for these two volumes, Fabio is presenting the songs stripped down to just vocals and a piano. 

These are all the released studio versions, but edited to remove the other instruments. For the songs with "[Edit]," Fabio did at least some of the editing himself. For the others, he found versions on the Internet where people had already made edits.

There's more to say, but Fabio says that in the liner notes he wrote included in the download zip. Other than that, there's not much more for me to say, except thanks to Fabio for putting these albums together. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 I Have You [Edit] (Carpenters)
02 There's a Kind of Hush [All Over the World] [Edit] (Carpenters)
03 We've Only Just Begun [Edit] (Carpenters)
04 You [Edit] (Carpenters)
05 All You Get from Love Is a Love Song [Edit] (Carpenters)
06 Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft [Edit] (Carpenters)
07 I Just Fall in Love Again (Carpenters)
08 Honolulu City Lights [Edit] (Carpenters)
09 I Need to Be in Love (Karen Carpenter)
10 Merry Christmas, Darling (Carpenters)
11 Where Do I Go from Here [Edit] (Carpenters)
12 If We Try [Edit] (Karen Carpenter)
13 Make Believe It's Your First Time [Edit] (Carpenters)
14 When It's Gone [Edit] (Carpenters)
15 Two Lives [Edit] (Karen Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Xn8YmPqA 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/amevxgiU6IsLSFf/file

As with Volume 1, Fabio and I wanted a photo of Karen singing and Richard playing piano, and nothing else. That's what we got with this one. This one is from September 1971, probably September 23rd. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help 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: 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 2: 1977-1983 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's the second volume of the Carpenters' "Full Apcappella." Like the first volume, this was mostly put together by musical friend Fabio from Rio, with just a little assistance by me. Again, we get to hear Karen Carpenter's marvelous lead vocals, and sometimes backing vocals, with no instrumental music getting in the way.

This volume deals with the latter half of the Carpenters' musical career. It wasn't as commercially successful as the first half, probably due to Karen Carpenter's self-inflicted declining physical health. Tragically, she died in 1983 at just the age of 32, so this volume ends in that year.

Like Volume 1, Fabio wrote extensive notes talking about the tracks and where they're from. He also explains why some of the songs have edits. That's included in the download zip. 

By the way, note that back in 2018, I posted an album that contained versions of Carpenters that only had vocals, bass, and drums. I called it "Near Acappella," because it was stripped way down, but not fully acappella. Well, Fabio found two more songs for that while he was looking for songs for these two volumes. So I've just updated that album with those two added songs. I also changed the cover image to one I like better. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-carpenters-near-acappella-1969-1975.html 

This album is 51 minutes long. Thanks again to Fabio for putting these albums together!

01 All You Get from Love Is a Love Song [Edit] (Carpenters)
02 Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft [Edit] (Carpenters)
03 Knowing When to Leave (Carpenters)
04 Make It Easy on Yourself (Carpenters)
05 Suntory Pop Jingle No. 1 (Carpenters)
06 Suntory Pop Jingle No. 2 (Carpenters)
07 Silent Night (Carpenters)
08 Ave Maria (Carpenters)
09 Where Do I Go from Here [Edit] (Carpenters)
10 Someday (Carpenters)
11 Lovelines [Edit] (Carpenters)
12 The Uninvited Guest (Carpenters)
13 If We Try [Edit] (Karen Carpenter)
14 Make Believe It's Your First Time (Carpenters)
15 When It's Gone [Edit] (Carpenters)
16 Two Lives [Edit] (Karen Carpenter)
17 I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day (Carpenters)
18 Little Altar Boy (Carpenters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZBC5J2CX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/aV3vEIDjOPMuc7c/file

I don't know where or when the cover photo is from. I just thought it was a nice picture of Karen Carpenter. 

Covered: Shel Silverstein, Volume 2: 1974-2010

Here's the second and final volume celebrating the songwriting of Shel Silverstein for the "Covered" series.

As with all these Covered albums, the songs are in loose chronological order, usually by year. Silverstein was active writing lots of new songs in the 1970s, and a lot of cover versions resulted. Some of his songs were hits, especially on the country charts. But, typically, his songs were more memorable and interesting than the usual hit material. Not many songwriters could write children's songs, funny songs, and even erotic songs. (Hopefully not all in the same song though!)

Silverstein gradually slowed his songwriting, as people do. He only released one album of new songs after 1985. So a lot of the later songs here were actually originally written earlier, sometimes much earlier. He died of a heart attack in 1999, at the age of 68.

It just occurred to me that I don't think I included a link to his Wikipedia page in the Volume 1 write-up, so here it is:

Shel Silverstein - Wikipedia 

To be honest, I know the well known songs written by Silverstein, but not all the lesser known ones. But he's the type of songwriter who wrote quirky gems. So if any of you know of some excellent songs he wrote that I left out, and especially covers of them, please let me know and I'll consider adding them in. 

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Marie Laveau (Bobby Bare)
02 Queen of the Silver Dollar (Emmylou Harris)
03 Alimony (Bobby Bare)
04 I Got Stoned and I Missed It (Dr. Hook)
05 The Danger of a Stranger (Stella Parton)
06 More like the Movies (Dr. Hook)
07 The Ballad of Lucy Jordan (Marianne Faithfull)
08 Put Another Log on the Fire (Bill & Boyd)
09 Numbers (Bobby Bare)
10 I'm Checkin' Out (Meryl Streep)
11 Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out (Tori Amos)
12 The Twistable, Turnable Man Returns (Andrew Bird)
13 The Winner (Kris Kristofferson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Mha2Sjvi

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/FojQ9dwYjS5kuAi/file

I don't know when or where the cover photo was taken. Clearly though, he's older than in the Volume 1 photo, judging from the grey in his beard. The original photo was a black and white one, showing him in a crouching pose in front of some trees. I stripped out the background. Then I used the Kolorize program to colorize the picture.

Warren Zevon - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 7-27-1978

Here's another concert from the excellent "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. This one stars singer-songwriter Warren Zevon. It's from 1978, one of the last concerts available from the show. 

Zevon's music career began in the mid-1960s. He had some success as a songwriter. For instance, he co-wrote "Outside Chance," which was a hit for the Turtles in 1966. But his own music career didn't get very far. He released a solo album in 1970, but it was ignored at the time. So his solo career only really got rolling in 1976, with his major label debut, the cleverly-titled "Warren Zevon." He followed that in 1978 with the album "Excitable Boy." Most of his "classic" songs come from these two albums. And "Excitable Boy" contained his sole big hit, "Werewolves of London." So 1978 is a good time for a live album.

The sound quality is excellent. The one issue I had was with the talking between the songs. The vocals of his banter was quite low. That was easily fixed, by boosting the volume of those tracks. But there also was a lot of reverb and hiss on his voice, making it hard to hear what he was saying. So I ran those tracks through Adobe's on-line vocal enhancer program. That cleared things up quite nicely.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 talk (Warren Zevon)
02 Johnny Strikes Up the Band (Warren Zevon)
03 Tenderness on the Block (Warren Zevon)
04 talk (Warren Zevon)
05 Mohammed's Radio (Warren Zevon)
06 talk (Warren Zevon)
07 Excitable Boy (Warren Zevon)
08 Werewolves of London (Warren Zevon)
09 Accidentally like a Martyr (Warren Zevon)
10 talk (Warren Zevon)
11 Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner (Warren Zevon)
12 Poor, Poor Pitiful Me (Warren Zevon)
13 talk (Warren Zevon)
14 Lawyers, Guns and Money (Warren Zevon)
15 I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (Warren Zevon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RY38FKSa

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/7PzJzfGwob9xr8Y/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Riviera Theater, in Chicago, Illinois, on May 13, 1978. The original was in color, but the colors were bad, with everything way oversaturated with red. Rather than try to tweak it, I colorized it from scratch, using the Kolorize program.

Dan Fogelberg - Best of Studio: 1974-1987 (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Recently, I mentioned to my musical friend Mike Solof that I wasn't very familiar with the music of the band Kansas, other than their big hits. He went and made me a "best of" album, which I've posted here. Then I happened to mention I wasn't familiar with the music of Dan Fogelberg either, again other than the big hits. So boom, once again he made me a "best of." I really need to be careful about what I say around Mike, it seems, or my music collection will keep growing too much! ;)

It turns out Mike is a very big fan of Fogelberg's music, just like he is of the music of Kansas. In fact, he likes Fogelberg's stuff so much that he made two albums. He made a studio album and a live one. As you can see from the title, this is the studio one. The live one will follow shortly.  

As is his habit, Mike has included a PDF to explain his thoughts, as well as provide some good pictures. So please check that out for more information. In this case, the PDF is the same for both the studio and live albums. 

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long. 

01 Nexus (Dan Fogelberg)
02 The Power of Gold (Dan Fogelberg with Tim Weisberg)
03 Lonely in Love (Dan Fogelberg)
04 In the Passage (Dan Fogelberg)
05 Better Change (Dan Fogelberg)
06 Beggar's Game (Dan Fogelberg)
07 Sweet Magnolia [And the Traveling Salesman] (Dan Fogelberg)
08 Tell Me to My Face (Dan Fogelberg with Tim Weisberg)
09 Times like These (Dan Fogelberg)
10 The Reach (Dan Fogelberg)
11 Empty Cages (Dan Fogelberg)
12 Tucson, Arizona [Gazette] (Dan Fogelberg)
13 As the Raven Flies [Alternate Version] (Dan Fogelberg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2MFP7NnJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ZhEqShKlvNQ1RV8/file

The cover image was selected by Mike. I don't know exactly where or when it's from.

Chris Rea - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 6-7-1980

We've lost another one. While I was on Christmas vacation, I heard that Chris Rea died. He died on December 22, 2025, at the age of 74. That came after many years of serious health issues. He almost died of a stomach ulcer in 1994, and had pancreatic cancer in 2001, a stroke in 2016, and much more. But he doggedly kept making music, with his last studio album coming in 2019. So I've decided to post some music from him.

To be honest, I'm shockingly ignorant about Rea, given how much I know of other music done by similar musicians. I guess that's mainly because I'm American. Rea only had one hit in the U.S., "Fool (If You Think It's Over)" in 1978. By contrast, he was a big star in Britain and the rest of Europe. For instance, looking at his discography, I count 47 Top 100 hit singles he had in Britain, with 13 of those reaching the Top Forty. He sold over 30 million records worldwide. 

And until now, I've been oblivious to nearly all of that. I literally only know him for "Fool (If You Think It's Over)." So I'm fast tracking some BBC albums by him, which will help me learn his music. It also happens that he only released one official live album ("The Road to Hell and Back," released in 2006), so posting some BBC concerts will help flesh out his live career. 

Rea found success right away. He was in a few bands for a few years as he developed his skills. But his first single release on a major record label was "Fool (If You Think It's Over)," which would become one of his best known songs. Weirdly though, it seems he didn't actually like the song very much, since it wasn't done in a style he preferred. He later said, "It's the only track I never played guitar on, which tells you something about the spirit of it. On top of that, it was just a huge hit. So there was nothing I could do. It was like: 'This is not me!'" Perhaps because of that, I haven't seen it on any of the BBC concerts he performed, and I found a handful of those. But I wanted to have at least one version of it on one album, so I found a good, live, non-BBC version, and I've included that at the end of this album as a kind of quasi-bonus track. It's from a concert in Newcastle, Britain, in December 1978.

Although "Fool" was a hit in the U.S., it only did okay in Britain. He kept plugging away, releasing new albums in 1979 and 1980. He didn't have any more hit songs or albums during that time, but he made enough of a name for himself to finally get a short BBC concert in 1980. The first seven tracks here come from that. 

Note that I've found different versions of this BBC concert floating around the Internet. Most of them are poorly labelled as only being from 1980, or August 1980. I was able to dig a little deeper and found a version with a specific date. This one also has an introduction by BBC DJ Bob Killby from the actual concert, whereas other versions had an introduction by BBC DJ Brian Matthew that was added later. That version also has the same songs, but the last song was cut short by about two minutes. So this is the superior version. 

Tracks 8 and 9 are from a 1978 episode of the BBC TV show "Old Grey Whistle Test." I didn't have any better place to put those, so I've stuck them here are more quasi-bonus tracks. They were done in the studio without any crowd noise, while all the rest of the songs have crowd noise.

This album is 43 minutes long. The main BBC show makes up 32 minutes of that.

01 talk by Bob Killby (Chris Rea)
02 Letter from Amsterdam (Chris Rea)
03 [Doing] The Things Lovers Should Do (Chris Rea)
04 Good News (Chris Rea)
05 Dancing Girls (Chris Rea)
06 Every Time I See Your Smile (Chris Rea)
07 Sweet Kiss (Chris Rea)
08 Whatever Happened to Benny Santini (Chris Rea)
09 Fires of Spring (Chris Rea)
10 Fool [If You Think It's Over] (Chris Rea)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fHyTWK4G

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/488Wtxi14iLWUeC/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Fernsehen, Germany, at some point in 1978.

Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge with Billy Swan - Sounds like Friday, BBC Television Studios, London, Britain, 9-29-1978

Here's a BBC concert starring both Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge, with one song sung by Billy Swan. It recently showed up at a bootleg sharing site in excellent quality, so I grabbed it and I'm posting it straight away.

I had never heard of "Sounds like Friday" prior to this, but it turns out it was a BBC TV show that only lasted for ten episodes in 1978 and 1979. Starting in 2017, the BBC had another TV show with the very similar title "Sounds like Friday Night," but it seems there's no connection. 

It made great sense to have Kirstofferson and Coolidge on the same show, because they were married to each other for most of the 1970s. They met in 1970, right when both of them were becoming stars, and got married in 1973. They had a child together, and recorded some duet albums. But they divorced in 1980. 

This concert came at or near the peak of Coolidge's popularity. She had three big hits in 1977 and 1978: "The Way You Do the Things You Do," "We're All Alone," and "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," and she performed all three of them here. Kristofferson didn't really have big hits on his own (with one or two partial exceptions), but had a more steadily successful career as a songwriter. (Check out the two "Covered" albums I've made for his songs.)

Billy Swan had one massive hit, "I Can Help." It went all the way to Number One on the U.S. singles chart in 1974. But what I didn't realize until doing this write-up is that he was more than just a "one-hit wonder." He wrote a bunch of country hits for others (as well as writing his own big hit), and had a series of minor country hits as well. He was a member of Kristofferson's band for many years, as well as a friend, which explains his presence here.

Although this is billed as a Kristofferson and Coolidge album, the first half mostly consists of Kristofferson (and Swan for his one song), and the second half mostly consists of Coolidge. The two of them finally came together to sing duets on the last two songs. Both of those songs were written by Kristofferson, by the way, as well as the other songs sung by him, while Coolidge's songs were cover versions.

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

This album is 44 minutes long. 

01 The Pilgrim, Chapter 33 (Kris Kristofferson)
02 Risky Bizness (Kris Kristofferson)
03 I Can Help (Billy Swan)
04 The Bigger the Fool [The Harder the Fall] (Kris Kristofferson)
05 Spooky Lady's Revenge (Kris Kristofferson)
06 Words (Rita Coolidge)
07 The Way You Do the Things You Do (Rita Coolidge)
08 We're All Alone (Rita Coolidge)
09 talk (Rita Coolidge)
10 For the Good Times (Rita Coolidge with Barbara Carroll)
11 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Rita Coolidge)
12 Help Me Make It through the Night (Rita Coolidge & Kris Kristofferson)
13 Me and Bobby McGee (Rita Coolidge & Kris Kristofferson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1xJSrcnB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/R8vqK04rTqK4fVZ/file

The cover imagine shows Rita Coolidge and Kris Kristofferson at a concert in New York City at some point in 1978. 

Gerry Rafferty with Stealers Wheel - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1972-1978

Here's a second BBC album for Gerry Rafferty. Some of the songs are from when he was part of the band Stealers Wheel, and some not.

Stealers Wheel only existed for a short time, late 1971 until 1975, but they had a complicated history. The two main band members were Rafferty and Joe Egan, with both of them writing and singing songs. They had a bit hit from their first album released in 1972, "Stuck in the Middle with You." Unfortunately, I couldn't find any BBC version of this song. In fact, I couldn't find any decent version of the song, other than the famous studio version. I did find one live version from the time period, but the sound quality was atrocious, so I didn't include it.

After a second album, the band broke up again. For a while, Rafferty left and Egan led the band. Then the band reformed, including Rafferty again. They released a third album in 1975, only for the band to break up for good after that. That's why there are some Stealers Wheel songs here, then some Rafferty solo ones, then more Stealers Wheel songs. And it could be that some of the Stealers Wheel ones don't have Raffery on them, I don't know. Maybe someone else can clarify that.

Everything here is unreleased. The first two songs are from a Stealers Wheel appearance on the "Old Grey Whistle Test BBC" TV show, in 1972. I believe they made a second appearance on the show later, but it seems no known versions are publicly available (if any survived at all). Tracks 3 and 4 are from the "Top of the Pops" BBC radio show (not the TV show of the same name) in early 1973. Tracks 5, 6, and 7 are from the "Top Gear" BBC radio show. Strangely, that was a Rafferty solo appearance, despite taking place less than two weeks after the "Top of the Pops" appearance. Perhaps that's when they broke up for the first time? Tracks 8 through 10 are from another "Top Gear" radio show, this time in 1975, when they briefly reunited for their third and final album.

After Stealers Wheel broke up for good in 1975, Rafferty was unable to release a solo album for three years, due to lingering legal issues. When he finally released his second solo album, "City to City," in 1978, it was a massive hit, selling over five million copies. That was due to the presence of two huge hit singles from the album, "Right Down the Line," and "Baker Street."

It seems that Rafferty toured at least in 1978 and 1980, but I can't find any concert bootlegs from that era at all. (Does anyone know of any?!) However, I did find some videos of him playing five songs for an unknown European TV show in 1978. I've included those, even though they're not from the BBC, since any live recordings from him are so hard to find. Happily, that includes "Baker Street," but frustratingly, no "Right Down the Line." That's a real shame, since it's my favorite song by him.

I have one more BBC album to post from him, a 1993 concert. Look for that here soon. 

This album is 56 minutes long. 

01 I Get By (Stealers Wheel)
02 Late Again (Stealers Wheel)
03 Outside Looking In (Stealers Wheel)
04 You Put Something Better Inside Me (Stealers Wheel)
05 Over My Head (Gerry Rafferty)
06 Don't Get Me Wrong (Gerry Rafferty)
07 My Singing Bird (Gerry Rafferty)
08 Wishbone [Edit] (Stealers Wheel)
09 This Morning (Stealers Wheel)
10 Monday Morning (Stealers Wheel)
11 Johnny’s Song (Gerry Rafferty)
12 High Fashion Queen (Gerry Rafferty)
13 Baker Street (Gerry Rafferty)
14 The Ark (Gerry Rafferty)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7K9CcY8r

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/IemyOxyMpOjGu7g/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Antwerp, Belgium, on June 24, 1978. 

Gallagher & Lyle - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Sight and Sound, Aylesbury Civic Hall, Aylesbury, Britain, 3-2-1978

Here's a second and final BBC album from the singer-songwriter duo Gallagher and Lyle. 

In the early 1970s, Gallagher and Lyle wrote a couple of hits when they were members of the band McGuinness Flint. They went solo as a duo in late 1971. They didn't have much success for a few years. But then they broke through with their 1976 album "Breakaway," which contained three hits in Britain, "Heart on My Sleeve," "I Wanna Stay with You," and "Breakaway." Then, in 1977, they had a minor hit with "Every Little Teardrop." Curiously, this doesn't include "Every Little Teardrop," but it does include their other three hits, plus "When I'm Dead and Gone," which was a big hit they wrote for McGuinness Flint in 1970.

To be honest, I've found three other Gallagher and Lyle BBC concerts. I included a few songs from them on the "BBC Sessions, Volume 1" album. But I don't plan on posting them, as I don't think there would be much demand. Besides, this one is the longest and the best, since it happened after they had their big success in 1976.

Five of the songs here were released on the official album "Live in Concert." Those are tracks 2, 7, 8, 13, and 19. Everything else is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.

This album is 53 minutes long. 

01 You're the One (Gallagher & Lyle)
02 Hurts to Learn (Gallagher & Lyle)
03 talk (Gallagher & Lyle)
04 Breakaway (Gallagher & Lyle)
05 All Grown Up (Gallagher & Lyle)
06 talk (Gallagher & Lyle)
07 Throwaway Heart (Gallagher & Lyle)
08 Next to You (Gallagher & Lyle)
09 Fifteen Summers (Gallagher & Lyle)
10 Stay Young (Gallagher & Lyle)
11 talk (Gallagher & Lyle)
12 The Runaway (Gallagher & Lyle)
13 Showdown (Gallagher & Lyle)
14 talk (Gallagher & Lyle)
15 I Wanna Stay with You (Gallagher & Lyle)
16 talk (Gallagher & Lyle)
17 Heart on My Sleeve (Gallagher & Lyle)
18 talk (Gallagher & Lyle)
19 When I'm Dead and Gone (Gallagher & Lyle) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eqyfvNWf

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/zu6Bbz1U2AxBRnG/file

I don't know any details of the cover photo. But it obviously was taken in the 1970s. 

Gallagher & Lyle - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1971-1978

I recently posted a couple of BBC albums by the British band McGuinness Flint. I pointed out at that time that most of their success was due to the songwriting talent of two members in that band, Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle, better known as Gallagher and Lyle. In late 1971, they left McGuinness Flint and began a music career as a duo. Here's the BBC studio sessions they left behind. 

Gallagher and Lyle wrote the two big hits McGuinness Flint had, "When I'm Dead and Gone" and "Malt and Barley Blues." But they didn't have much success on their own at first. Their first big success came in 1975, when Art Garfunkel had a Top Forty hit in the U.S. with a song they wrote, "Breakaway." (Their own version is included here.) Then, in 1976, they had Top Ten hits in Britain with "Heart on My Sleeve" and "I Wanna Stay with You." Their success petered out towards the end of the 1970s, and they broke up in 1980. But they continued to have some success as songwriters after that. Most notably, Lyle co-wrote "What's Love Got to Do with It?" which was a Number One hit in the U.S. for Tina Turner in 1984.

Here's their Wikipedia entry:

Gallagher and Lyle - Wikipedia 

This album is all from BBC sources, and mostly consists of studio sessions. The first seven songs are from the BBC radio show "Top of the Pops" (and not the BBC TV show of the same name). These are from the same helper who gave me access to lots of other stuff from this show. I don't know if these have been easily publicly available before. Those date from 1971 and 1972. The next four songs come from the officially released album "Live in Concert," and are from a BBC concert in 1973. Then tracks 12, 13, and 14 are from the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show in 1973. Tracks 15 and 16 are from another BBC concert in 1974, and also made it to the "Live in Concert" album. Then tracks 17 and 18 are from another appearance on the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show, in 1976. Finally, the last three tracks are from another on the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show, in 1978.

For the live tracks from the "Live in Concert" album, I used the MVSEP program to get rid of the applause, so they'd fit in with the other studio tracks. The "Old Grey Whistle Test" songs were performed live, but without an audience.

There's a BBC concert from 1978 that I will be posting as well. 

This album is an hour and two minutes long. 

01 Desiderata (Gallagher & Lyle)
02 Comfort and Joy (Gallagher & Lyle)
03 City and Suburban Blues (Gallagher & Lyle)
04 Home (Gallagher & Lyle)
05 Among the Birks (Gallagher & Lyle)
06 Give the Boy a Break (Gallagher & Lyle)
07 Joie de Vivre [The Great Australian Dream] (Gallagher & Lyle)
08 Conversation (Gallagher & Lyle)
09 Willie (Gallagher & Lyle)
10 Thoughts from a Station (Gallagher & Lyle)
11 International (Gallagher & Lyle)
12 Shine a Light (Gallagher & Lyle)
13 talk (Gallagher & Lyle)
14 I Believe in You (Gallagher & Lyle)
15 Seeds (Gallagher & Lyle)
16 The Clearing (Gallagher & Lyle)
17 Breakaway (Gallagher & Lyle)
18 I Wanna Stay with You (Gallagher & Lyle)
19 Showdown (Gallagher & Lyle)
20 talk (Gallagher & Lyle)
21 Throw Away Heart (Gallagher & Lyle) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YSW1dqef

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/o0zLJ4Pd7AXTgbV/file

That's Lyle on the left and Gallagher on the right. 

Dickey Betts & Great Southern - Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC Television Theatre, London, Britain, 2-21-1978

Here's another album from a big number of recordings I recently discovered of the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show. This one stars Dickey Betts, one of the main singer-songwriters and lead guitarists for the Allman Brothers Band.

At the time of this concert, the Allman Brothers Band had broken up. They'd hit the big time by 1973, and then they were overwhelmed by the usual problems of drugs and ego. They broke up in 1976, and stayed that way until about the summer of 1978. In the meantime, Dickey Betts formed the band Great Southern (after already putting out a solo album in 1974), and released new albums in 1977 and 1978. This concert took place about a month before the release of their 1978 album, "Atlanta's Burning Down," and featured three songs from it, "Leaving Me Again," "Back on the Road," and "Good Time Feeling." The other songs here are songs Betts first did as part of the Allman Brothers Band.

The music is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. I converted a video file to audio, then broke it into mp3s. The only problem is that the last song, "High Falls," cuts out after only about four minutes. This is a very long song, with the album version being 14 minutes long, so it was just getting started when it ended. 

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 talk by Bob Harris (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
02 talk (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
03 Leaving Me Again (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
04 Back on the Road (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
05 Good Time Feeling (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
06 Jessica [Instrumental] (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
07 Ramblin' Man (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
08 talk by Bob Harris (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
09 Southbound (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
10 High Falls [Instrumental] (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hBGUtQyz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/4pqjdfX6pnLlzWT/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. 

Randy Newman - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC Television Theatre, London, Britain, 6-6-1978

Here's a short BBC concert by American singer-songwriter Randy Newman, from 1978. He performed this with a small band.

The Old Grey Whistle Test (OGWT) was a BBC TV show that ran from 1971 until 1987. It featured a lot of live music, especially rock and roll. Usually, each episode featured a couple of songs from several musical acts, but sometimes an entire episode would be devoted to a single act, like this concert I'm presenting here. I've previously posted some OGWT concerts here. I've just created a new label for OGWT, and I count 12 episode-length concerts, plus other songs from the show here and there. I've wanted to post more, but many of the ones I had been looking for I was unable to find.

However, a couple of days ago, I found a person on SoulseekQT who is sharing virtually all the available OGWT episodes from 1971 to 1980. (A small number appear to be lost, and even the official website for the show doesn't know the details for those.) I'm pretty happy about this. Expect me to celebrate by posting a bunch of OGWT-sourced albums in the coming days. The only snag is that these come as a single video file, so I have to concert them to audio and then cut them into mp3s, as I did with this one.

I'm starting posting these recently discovered OGWT concerts with this one, because it's one that I had been looking for for a long time. Randy Newman had been critically acclaimed since he released his first album in 1968. But his first wider commercial success happened in 1977, with the song "Short People." It went all the way to Number Two in the U.S. singles chart, held back from the top spot only by the mega-hit "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. Curiously, the song didn't chart in Britain whatsoever. But it seems it still gave him enough fame to merit his first BBC concert. 

(And by the way, note that "Short People" was supposed to make fun of people making fun of short people, but a lot of people didn't understand his sarcasm. He has a lot of other sarcastic songs, such as "Political Science," performed here, which basically advocates global nuclear war.)

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.  

This album is 39 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On October 5, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I found a 1974 concert by him I'd previously missed, so I renamed the album to "Volume 2." 

01 talk by Bob Harris (Randy Newman)
02 Birmingham (Randy Newman)
03 talk (Randy Newman)
04 Leave Your Hat On (Randy Newman)
05 Texas Girl at the Funeral of Her Father (Randy Newman)
06 talk (Randy Newman)
07 Short People (Randy Newman)
08 Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear (Randy Newman)
09 talk (Randy Newman)
10 In Germany Before the War (Randy Newman)
11 talk (Randy Newman)
12 Political Science (Randy Newman)
13 talk (Randy Newman)
14 Rider in the Rain (Randy Newman)
15 I Think It's Gonna Rain Today (Randy Newman)
16 Rednecks (Randy Newman)
17 Guilty (Randy Newman)
18 Sail Away (Randy Newman)
19 It's Lonely at the Top (Randy Newman)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tqsmQtMw

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/urJF9l92ZnuH3Wf/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. I took it from a BBC website page describing this concert (though the link the music is dead). The top of his head was cropped out, but I used Photoshop to extend the image.

Ry Cooder - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 11-16-1978

Here's another episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show, from 1978. This one stars guitarist Ry Cooder.

Around the time of this concert, in June 1978, Cooder released the studio album "Jazz." (I don't know if the date in the title is the date of the concert or of the TV broadcast.) The sound of the album harkened back to early jazz, from about 1900 to 1930. A few of the songs are from that album: "Big Bad Bill Is Sweet William Now," "The Dream," In a Mist," " Davenport Blues," "Shine," and "Nobody," and basically the whole album has that early jazz sound.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is very good. There were a few problems though. One problem was that the cheering at the ends of some songs came to abrupt ends. So I did a little copying and pasting to allow for a few more seconds until the audience went silent. Also, there's some hiss. I got rid of most of that for the banter tracks, using noise reduction. But I have a rule against using noise reduction on actual songs, so I let the hiss be in those cases. It's not much hiss though. 

This album is 41 minutes long. 

01 Big Bad Bill Is Sweet William Now (Ry Cooder)
02 The Dream [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
03 talk (Ry Cooder)
04 Jezebel (Ry Cooder)
05 talk (Ry Cooder)
06 Shine (Ry Cooder)
07 Maria Elena [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
08 In a Mist [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
09 Flashes [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
10 Davenport Blues [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
11 Nobody (Ry Cooder)
12 Comin' In on a Wing and a Prayer [Edit] (Ry Cooder)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qALjCBhF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/oz1kkgHnbvHk2pf/file

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from this exact concert.

Covered: Hank Williams, Volume 1: 1954-1995

It's time for more from my "Covered" series, highlighting widely covered songwriters. This one celebrates the music of Hank Williams, who has been called "the father of country music." I've found enough for two albums. Here's the first one.

There's no doubt that Williams was a pivotal musical figure. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him number 74 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, which is saying a lot, considering that magazine doesn't pay much attention to country music. Encyclopedia Britannica called him "country music's first superstar" and an "immensely talented songwriter and an impassioned vocalist." AllMusic.com said that he "established the rules for all the country performers who followed him and, in the process, much of popular music."

So far with this "Covered" series, I've generally selected songwriters from the rock and roll era, meaning 1955 and after. But Williams was from earlier. His recording lasted from 1947 to 1953. He died in 1953 at only the age of 29. His cause of death is controversial, but it seems he died of a heart attack caused by misuse of drugs and alcohol. 

I eventually want to go back and make "Covered" albums of songwriter greats like him from earlier eras. However, in Williams' case, his music often doesn't appeal to those who don't like country music. So instead of just going with the big hit versions of his songs, I made a concerted effort to pick covers that I liked but also often weren't country versions, or at least weren't hard-core country versions. So if you're not a big country music fan, you might still want to give this a try. There are some country versions early on, but less so as this album goes on, and even less so on the second volume. 

This album starts in 1954 and proceeds chronologically after that, so everything from here is after his death. In fact, Williams had a lot of success with people covering his songs during his life, but those generally are the hard core country type songs I've tried to avoid here. A pivotal cover was "Cold, Cold Heart" by Tony Bennett in 1951. Bennett was reluctantly convinced to cover it, doing it in a pop style. It was a Number One hit on the U.S. singles chart. This caused people in the music business to start to realize that Williams' songs could be popular outside of just the country music charts, and many covers followed. However, I didn't include Bennett's version or many other hit cover versions from that time period because I don't think they've dated well. But some songs from the time, including "Cold, Cold Heart," will appear on the second volume, done in more modern styles.

By the way, I have to say that I was surprised to find out that Williams co-wrote "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)." I had assumed that was a traditional New Orleans / Cajun song going way back. But Williams wrote it with Moon Mulligan, another country star, in 1952, basing the melody on a little-known traditional love song called "Grand Texas." His version was a massive hit, spending 14 weeks at Number One on the U.S. country singles chart. It also is his most covered song, with at least 500 recorded versions. Good luck going to New Orleans and not hearing it played a bunch of times!

Here's the Wikipedia entry about Williams, if you want to know more:

Hank Williams - Wikipedia 

This album is 49 minutes long. 

01 There'll Be No Teardrops Tonight (Tony Bennett)
02 Long Gone Lonesome Blues (Marty Robbins)
03 Jambalaya [On the Bayou] (Brenda Lee)
04 Moanin' the Blues (Marty Robbins)
05 Hey, Good Lookin' (Ray Charles)
06 Weary Blues from Waitin' (Vince Martin & Fred Neil)
07 Your Cheatin' Heart (Ray Charles)
08 Kaw-Liga (Charley Pride)
09 Settin' the Woods on Fire (Little Richard)
10 I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Al Green)
11 Move It on Over (George Thorogood)
12 You Win Again (Rolling Stones)
13 Why Don't You Love Me like You Used to Do (Elvis Costello & the Attractions)
14 I Saw the Light (Etta James)
15 Honky Tonk Blues (Huey Lewis & the News)
16 Mind Your Own Business (Saffire, the Uppity Blues Women)
17 Honky Tonkin' (The The)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CZJhCXUX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/DLOTfNuLcZ1oCt7/file

I don't know what year the photo is from. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Various Artists - Fifty Years of Country Music, Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, TN, 1-22-1978

Every now and then, I randomly stumble across some really interesting concerts on YouTube. (If you do as well, please let me know.) It seems there are many "various artists" concerts like this, often tributes, that one can find on video sometimes but have never been converted to an audio bootleg. I've seen a bunch of country-themed ones, such as annual awards ceremonies, that are just okay. But this one from 1978 stands out as exceptional. It was a three-hour TV special celebrating the last 50 years of country music. Just look at the names of all the stars in the song list and hopefully you'll see why I thought this was worth my time to convert this and post it here.

I'm not quite sure why the producers considered 1978 the 50th anniversary of country music. It was never explained in the banter of the show. I looked it up, and the first country records were recorded in 1922 and 1923. But a pivotal moment was the "Bristol sessions" in 1927, when both future country music legends Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family were recorded for the first time. That's probably what they were referring to here, since the special contained mini-tributes to country legends Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, Bob Wills, and Hank Williams, so obviously they were thinking of Rodgers and the Carter Family specifically.

As I mentioned above, this TV special was three hours long, but if you remove the time spent on commercials, that leaves you with two and a half hours. That was divided into third. Glen Campbell hosted the first third, Dolly Parton hosted the middle third, and Roy Clark hosted the last third. So the three of them prominently feature in this, not just talking but singing lots of songs. At the end, all three of them came together to sing a final Hank Williams medley.

There are a couple of frustrations to watch out for. One is that to cram in as many songs as possible in the limited time allotted on TV, frequently shortened versions of songs were performed, often just a minute or two. Another is that although Gene Autry was still alive (he lived until 1998), a recording of him in his prime was used instead of a live recording. Normally, I edit out that kind of thing, but I kept it in here since it was short and I wanted to keep the banter talking about him.

Generally speaking, the recording I found of this on YouTube was complete and had pretty good sound quality. However, there were some exceptions. One problem was that the song "Wichita Lineman" by Glen Campbell got abruptly cut off after about a minute. I found another live recording of Campbell singing that song from the 1970s and I used that to patch in the missing portion. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title. Also, most of "One Piece at a Time" by Johnny Cash was missing. Luckily, I found another YouTube video of that song from this exact concert, so I was able to fill that in. I ended up splicing the two versions together because the other version was missing some of the intro. 

There were some other problems here and there. For instance, sometimes the overall volume would fluctuate. So I had to make fixes for that. Also, there usually were "coming up next" type teasers before commercial breaks. I got rid of all of those. And when there were commercial breaks, that often meant abrupt cuts. I carefully edited each of those, usually patching in some more applause to smooth over where there was a start and stop gap due to commercials.

On the plus side, in my opinion country music was a lot better back in the 1970s than it is today, with many legends still alive and even in their primes. Remarkably, this really is a pretty good history of fifty years of country music. Also, it's interesting for the duets and combinations, such as Glen Campbell singing a song with Ray Charles and Johnny Cash singing a song with Roy Clark. This special remains unreleased on video and audio, but it shouldn't be forgotten. 

This album is two hours and 28 minutes long.

01 Stars [Edit] (Glen Campbell)
02 Rhinestone Cowboy (Glen Campbell)
03 emcee (Introduction)
04 talk (Glen Campbell)
05 Wabash Cannonball (Roy Acuff & His Smoky Mountain Boys)
06 talk (Glen Campbell)
07 I'll Get Over You (Crystal Gayle)
08 talk (Glen Campbell)
09 That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine (Gene Autry)
10 talk (Glen Campbell)
11 Back in the Saddle Again (Glen Campbell)
12 Southern Nights (Glen Campbell)
13 talk (Glen Campbell)
14 Louisiana Man (Doug Kershaw)
15 talk (Glen Campbell)
16 I'll Go to My Grave Loving You (Statler Brothers)
17 You and Me (Tammy Wynette)
18 Love Put a Song in My Heart (Johnny Rodriguez)
19 talk (Glen Campbell)
20 Take These Chains from My Heart (Ray Charles)
21 talk (Ray Charles & Glen Campbell)
22 Bye Bye Love (Glen Campbell & Ray Charles)
23 talk (Glen Campbell)
24 Gentle on My Mind (Glen Campbell)
25 Honey Come Back (Glen Campbell)
26 By the Time I Get to Phoenix - Wichita Lineman [Edit] (Glen Campbell)
27 Galveston - Country Boy [You've Got Your Feet in L.A.] (Glen Campbell)
28 talk (emcee)
29 Here You Come Again (Dolly Parton)
30 talk (Dolly Parton)
31 Blue Moon of Kentucky (Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys)
32 talk (Dolly Parton)
33 Muleskinner Blues (Dolly Parton & Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys)
34 talk (Dolly Parton)
35 Our Love Is Home Grown (Earl Scruggs)
36 talk (Dolly Parton)
37 Walking After Midnight (Loretta Lynn)
38 Sweet Dreams (Loretta Lynn)
39 Back in Baby's Arms - Crazy (Loretta Lynn)
40 talk (Dolly Parton)
41 I Just Wish You Were Someone I Love (Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers)
42 The Cowgirl and the Dandy (Dolly Parton)
43 talk (Dolly Parton)
44 Keep on the Sunny Side - Wildwood Flower (Carter Family)
45 Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Carter Family)
46 Hello Stranger (Carter Family)
47 talk (Dolly Parton)
48 If You're Ever in Nashville (Carlene Carter)
49 talk (Dolly Parton)
50 talk (Merle Haggard & the Texas Playboys)
51 Ida Red (Merle Haggard & the Texas Playboys)
52 talk (Merle Haggard & the Texas Playboys)
53 Faded Love (Merle Haggard & the Texas Playboys)
54 Roly Poly (Merle Haggard & the Texas Playboys)
55 San Antonio Rose (Merle Haggard & the Texas Playboys)
56 talk (Dolly Parton)
57 The Seeker - All I Can Do (Dolly Parton)
58 Jolene (Dolly Parton)
59 Two Doors Down (Dolly Parton)
60 I Will Always Love You (Dolly Parton)
61 talk (emcee)
62 Rocky Top (Roy Clark)
63 talk (Roy Clark)
64 In the Jailhouse Now - Jimmie Rodgers' Last Blue Yodel [Women Make a Fool Out of Me] (Ernest Tubb & the Texas Troubadours)
65 Waiting for a Train (Ernest Tubb & the Texas Troubadours)
66 talk (Roy Clark)
67 talk (Roy Clark & Minnie Pearl)
68 It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels (Kitty Wells)
69 You're the One (Oak Ridge Boys)
70 talk (Roy Clark & Mel Tillis)
71 Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town (Mel Tillis)
72 talk (Roy Clark & Charlie Rich)
73 Behind Closed Doors (Charlie Rich)
74 talk (Roy Clark & Johnny Cash)
75 Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
76 One Piece at a Time [Edit] (Johnny Cash)
77 Orange Blossom Special (Johnny Cash & Roy Clark)
78 Ghost Riders in the Sky [Instrumental Version] (Roy Clark)
79 talk (Roy Clark)
80 Instrumental (Chet Atkins)
81 talk (Roy Clark)
82 Instrumental (Stoney Mountain Cloggers)
83 Hey Good Lookin' (Roy Clark, Dolly Parton & Glen Campbell)
84 Your Cheating Heart (Roy Clark, Dolly Parton & Glen Campbell)
85 Cold, Cold Heart (Roy Clark, Dolly Parton & Glen Campbell)
86 I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Roy Clark, Dolly Parton & Glen Campbell)
87 I Can't Help It [If I'm Still in Love with You] - You Win Again (Roy Clark, Dolly Parton & Glen Campbell)
88 I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry - I Saw the Light (Roy Clark, Dolly Parton & Glen Campbell)
89 Jambalaya [On the Bayou] (Roy Clark, Dolly Parton & Glen Campbell)
90 talk (Roy Clark)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VhNfssNn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/LzjSJer5qXloFoA/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. I made it from screenshots taken from the last medley in the concert, when Roy Clark, Dolly Parton and Glen Campbell were singing together. However, the YouTube video I was using was very low-res. So I had to resort to taking close up screenshots of each of their heads, plus one of all three of them together, and then putting it together in Photoshop. I used the Krea AI program to help clean it up. That's a big portrait of Hank Williams on the wall in the background.

Covered: Jackie DeShannon: 1961-2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jackie DeShannon - Wikipedia 

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

This album is 49 minutes long.  

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

https://pixeldrain.com/u/e2eqJ5kb

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/Nf8kBkKT8PbNtQ1/file

The cover photo is from 1967. 

Covered: Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, Volume 2: 1968-2023

Here's the second and final album of the Covered series for the songwriting team of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham.

In the first volume, I noted that Penn and Oldham had a lot of success writing hit songs from about 1966 to 1968, while based in Memphis, Tennessee. The first song here is from 1968. But after that, there was a sharp drop with their musical successes. Penn later claimed that there was a lot of fruitful collaboration between white songwriters like Spooner and him and the black singers they were mainly writing for during that time period, but that changed as the years went on. He saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 as a key moment. After that, race became more of an issue, and the expectation grew that soul music songs sung by black singers would be written by black songwriters too.

Due to this changed environment, Penn and Oldham split up. Oldham moved to Los Angeles, where he found a lot of success playing keyboards as a session musician. That continued for decades, with him playing on albums by the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Aretha Franklin, Jackson Browne, the Everly Brothers, J.J. Cale, Linda Ronstadt, and many, many more. 

Meanwhile, Penn moved to Nashville, the home of country music, and tried to find success writing country songs. However, although his style had always been an interesting combination of soul and country music, he didn't do well writing just  for country singers. In 1973, he finally released his first solo album, "Nobody's Fool." While it was critically acclaimed, it sold very little. He did have some success as a songwriter and/or producer, but in a low-key way.

In 1994, Penn and Oldham reunited for Penn's second solo album, "Do Right Man." This mostly consisted of Penn's versions of his biggest hits from the 1960s. It was critically acclaimed. And while it also wasn't a big seller, it generated enough interest for Penn and Oldham to essentially start a new career as duo, going on tour to promote the occasional new album by Penn. Since then, Penn has released three more studio albums. The two of them have built up a following. As I write this in 2025, they are still going on tour, despite the fact that they're both in their early eighties.

Penn continues to write new songs, though it seems not often with Oldham anymore. He's had the occasional successful late career song. For instance, "Don't Give Up on Me" was the title track to Solomon Burke's acclaimed 2002 album by that same name. And "Memphis Women and Chicken" from Penn's 1994 album is usually performed in the concerts by Penn and Oldham.

Most of the songs here were written by Penn with others instead of Oldham. However, "Lonely Women Make Good Lovers" was written by Oldham without Penn. Unlike the hit-filled Volume 1, there really aren't any big hits here, though arguably some could be considered classics, and the songwriting is still at a consistently high level. Some of the songs were written much earlier than when the versions here were recorded. For instance, "Keep On Talking," recorded by Texas in 2023, was first released by someone else in 1965. In cases like that, these are the versions I like best.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 I Met Her in Church (Box Tops)
02 A Woman Left Lonely (Janis Joplin)
03 Rainbow Road (Percy Sledge)
04 Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (Bob Luman)
05 Zero Willpower (Irma Thomas)
06 Like a Road Leading Home (Jerry Garcia Band)
07 Where There's a Will [There's a Way] (Dan Penn)
08 Time I Took a Holiday (Nick Lowe)
09 Don't Give Up on Me (Solomon Burke)
10 Memphis Women and Chicken (Gary Nicholson)
11 I Hate You (Nicki Bluhm)
12 Keep On Talking (Texas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9MFesvnn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ImNWdOz5yf5WAU7/file

I don't know what year the cover photo is from. But I did find this photo of the two of them together, probably in the 1990s. I used Photoshop to move them closer together.