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. 

Joan Baez - Baez Sings Baez, Volume 4: 1977-1983 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's a guest post by Fabio from Rio. It's another volume in the "Baez Sings Baez" series. This is a collection of all the songs written by Joan Baez. Fabio wanted to make that point that although she has been primarily as someone who sings cover songs, she's written a lot of good songs herself.

The first six songs are from studio albums in 1977 and 1979. But after that, it seems she had trouble getting record companies interested in releasing more of her studio albums. New wave, punk, and disco came along and made her style of folk music seem out of fashion. She wouldn't release another studio album until 1987.

But that leads us to some of the more interesting songs here, because around 1980, she recorded material for an album that never got released, and she was backed by the Grateful Dead for all the songs! So there are five songs here with the Dead (tracks 8 through 12), all of them still unreleased.

There's a lot more to say about this Dead connection and other matters. But I'll leave that to Fabio, who wrote more extensive notes that are included in the download zip. 

This album is an hour long. 

01 Luba the Baroness (Joan Baez)
02 The Altar Boy and the Thief (Joan Baez)
03 Honest Lullaby (Joan Baez)
04 Michael (Joan Baez)
05 For Sasha (Joan Baez)
06 Free at Last (Joan Baez)
07 Cambodia (Joan Baez)
08 Don't Blame My Mother (Joan Baez & the Grateful Dead)
09 Happy Birthday Leonid Brejnev (Joan Baez & the Grateful Dead)
10 Lady Di and I (Joan Baez & the Grateful Dead)
11 Marriot U.S.A. (Joan Baez & the Grateful Dead)
12 Lucifer's Eyes (Joan Baez & the Grateful Dead)
13 Children of the Eighties (Joan Baez)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GjgtvAKU

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/TACY7VBfYSTtFMj/file

The cover photo is from 1982. Fabio found the picture, so I don't know the details. 

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: Billy Steinberg & Tom Kelly: 1980-2019

I don't keep a close eye on music news, but yesterday I happened to hear that songwriter Billy Steinberg died. Specifically, he died on February 16, 2026, at the age of 75. That probably doesn't mean anything to most people, because I don't think he's very well known as far as songwriters go. But it meant something to me, because I had already made a "Covered" album of the songs he and songwriting partner Tom Kelly made. (It's one of several dozen "Covered" albums I've made but haven't gotten around to posting yet.) Due to his death, I decided to post this sooner rather than later.

Steinberg and Kelly wrote a lot of hits from the 1980s to the 2000s that you probably know without ever knowing who wrote them. Even though they were male, somehow they had the most success with females covering their songs. They had five Number One hits in the U.S., all sung by women: "Like a Virgin" by Madonna (1984), "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper (1986), "Eternal Flame" (co-written with Susanna Hoffs and recorded by the Bangles in 1989), "So Emotional" by Whitney Houston (1987), and "Alone" by Heart (1987).

Billy Steinberg was born in Fresno, California, though his family moved to Palm Springs when he was a teenager. After graduating from college, he formed a band called Billy Thermal. However, they didn't have any success, and one album they recorded around 1980 wasn't released until decades later, after he made a name for himself as a songwriter. He had his first songwriting success with "How Do I Make You," which was a hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1980.  

Tom Kelly was born in a small town in Illinois in 1952. He went to a college in that state, but dropped out to pursue a music career. He was a backing musician for Dan Fogelberg in 1976 and 1977. He also did a lot of session work, for instance singing backing vocals on Toto albums. He had his first songwriting success with "Fire and Ice," a minor hit for Pat Benatar in 1981.

Both Steinberg and Kelly independently had songs on Benatar's 1981 album, "Precious Time." They met at a party that year, and soon began writing together. Previously, both of them had written lyrics and music. But they soon fell into a pattern where Steinberg generally wrote the lyrics while Kelly wrote the music. Their really big break as a songwriting team was "Like a Virgin" by Madonna. After that, they were in high demand. What's on this album is just the cream of the crop of the many dozens of songs they wrote for well-known musical acts.

Their partnership continued very fruitfully until the mid-1990s. At that point, Kelly tired of songwriting and dropped out of the music business. He'd already had enough success to live on the royalties he'd made. However, Steinberg kept going with new songwriting partners. From the mid-1990s until the mid-2000s, he mostly wrote with Rick Newels, who already was a successful professional songwriter. From the mid-2000s to about the mid-2010s, he mostly wrote with Josh Alexander.

Steinberg had a lot of songwriting success after he stopped working with Kelly. But I listened to his big hits and, to be honest, didn't like them very much after about 2000. They suffer the same problems as most popular pop music since about 2000: formulaic and forgettable. So I generally didn't include most of those. To be honest, even a lot of their earlier stuff was formulaic and forgettable, but sometimes, in fact many times, they had some real winners.

But in case you're curious, Steinberg's biggest later hits include "I Turn to You" by Melanie C (2000), "Love Doesn't Have to Hurt" by Atomic Kitten (2003), "Too Little Too Late" by JoJo (2006), "Don't Hold Your Breath" by Nicole Scherzinger (2011), and "Give Your Heart a Break" by Demi Lovato (2012). After that, the hits petered out, although some older songs keep getting rerecorded and making the charts again, especially "Alone" and "I Drove All Night." For instance, Alyssa Reid went all the way to Number Two in the British charts with "Alone" in 2012, although it was titled "Alone Again" and had the now practically obligatory rap section.

I'm not a fan of Whitney Houston's version of "So Emotional." But since it was a massive Number One hit, I wanted to include it in some form. I found a radically different cover version by Jon McLaughlin from 2019 that I like much better, so I used that instead. Had it not been for that song, this album would end in 2000.

Here are their Wikipedia pages: 

Billy Steinberg - Wikipedia

Tom Kelly (musician) - Wikipedia  

That album is an hour and ten minutes long. 

01 How Do I Make You (Linda Ronstadt)
02 Fire and Ice (Pat Benatar)
03 Like a Virgin (Madonna)
04 Sex as a Weapon (Pat Benatar)
05 True Colors (Cyndi Lauper)
06 Eternal Flame (Bangles)
07 Alone (Heart)
08 In Your Room (Bangles)
09 I Touch Myself (Divinyls)
10 My Side of the Bed (Susanna Hoffs)
11 I Drove All Night (Roy Orbison)
12 Night in My Veins (Pretenders)
13 Lucky Love [Acoustic Version] (Ace of Base)
14 I'll Stand by You (Pretenders)
15 Falling into You (Celine Dion)
16 California (Belinda Carlisle)
17 One and One (Edyta Gorniak)
18 Everytime It Rains (Ace of Base)
19 The Consequences of Falling (k.d. lang)
20 So Emotional (Jon McLaughlin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4xNLLW9p 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/uxa5jlpb5sQPr8t/file

I don't know the details of the cover photo. But that's Tom Kelly on the left and Billy Steinberg on the right. There are patches of white in Steinberg's hair, which went completely white in later photos of him. 

Covered: Tom Waits, Volume 1: 1973-1994 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

It's high time I post more for the "Covered" series, highlighting great singer-songwriters. This time, we're looking at the songs of Tom Waits. Enough material has been found for four volumes. Here's the first one. As with all albums in this series, the focus is on cover versions, instead of versions done by the songwriter.

First off, I've gotta say I wouldn't be posting this now had it not been for the help of musical friend Fabio from Rio. It was he who suggested making Covered albums for Waits. I would have wanted to tackle him eventually, but that probably would have been well into the future. I have an issue with Waits: I can't stand his voice. As a result, even though it's easy for me to see he's a very talented songwriter, I haven't been that familiar with his songs. But Fabio is a big fan. He sent me literally hundreds of Waits cover versions, with recommendations on the best ones. I went through that and narrowed it down quite a lot. Hopefully this will make a strong collection that can turn the curious on to Waits' music.

Fabio from Rio helped with all aspects of putting this together. He even wrote the write-ups for the four volumes for Waits. So first I'm posting the relevant Wikipedia page:

Tom Waits - Wikipedia 

And now, take it away, Fabio (and a big thanks to him for all his work on this!):

For the general public, Tom Waits is "that guy with the raspy wino voice and the weird songs. Wasn't he one of the convicted fellows in that offbeat Jim Jarmusch movie?" A few music aficionados may also know him as the writer of songs like Springsteen's "Jersey Girl" or Rod Stewart's "Downtown Train", but that is usually where the story ends.

What many are not aware of is that Waits is widely recognized by his peers and by musical experts as an exceptional and influential songwriter. He is praised for his unique voice, vivid storytelling, poetic lyrics, and innovative musical style that blends genres like blues, jazz, vaudeville, and experimental rock. Waits is also known for creating three-dimensional characters and detailed narratives, often exploring life on the fringes. His lyrics are celebrated for their specificity, humor, melancholy, and ability to evoke strong moods, often drawing comparisons to Beat poets and Mark Twain.

Waits is a "songwriters' songwriter," with songs covered by literally hundreds of artists, many of them great composers themselves. He has been subject to many tributes. While searching for tracks for that project, I collected about three dozen different albums fully dedicated to his songs, and around 400 assorted covers, adding up to almost 1,200 tracks and 80-plus hours of music!

I initially selected about 220 different tunes (an almost fully comprehensive "Tom Waits songbook" that would comprise about 15 hours) which Paul wisely helped reduce to around 60 tracks across four volumes. We could have another four or eight volumes with additional top-notch Tom Waits songs - there is enough quality material for that - but I feel this reduced version is just the right size for a first dive into Tom Waits vast catalog. I hope you enjoy it!

Some listeners may find Waits' music difficult to approach due to his peculiar tone (which, contrary to popular belief, was not destroyed by booze and cigarettes, but was conscientiously cultivated as a vocal persona, as he mentioned in some interviews). The fact that some of his more experimental work sounds like monkeys loose in a crystal store doesn't help either. For those, a "Covered" collection focusing on his more melodic output is a great starting point, where one may discover the essence of Waits' music (often through soothing, frequently female, voices).

This first volume includes performances from a long range of years (1973 to 1994), but most of the songs here were composed during Waits' early and middle phases (the seventies and early eighties). His first albums feature piano-led ballads, romantic melancholy, and a relatively smooth, crooning voice. The character is that of a late-night drifter, nostalgic and tender. As his career progressed, Waits' voice grew tougher (both literally and figuratively) and his narratives darker and more cinematic. His late seventies and early eighties albums introduced sardonic humor, social misfits, and a sharper sense of irony, while still rooted in jazz, blues, and cabaret traditions.

Waits started as a folk singer/songwriter in the early seventies, with heavy jazz influences, when his voice was still not so rough. You can hear this in the first selection of this collection, "Rosie," from his 1973 first album. It's the only song in these four volumes that is the composer's own interpretation. He also first caught the ear of the public with an early cover of "Ol' 55" by The Eagles (which we skipped in favor of Sarah McLachlan's 1993 version, which both Paul and myself prefer). Other famous interpreters at the first volume are Johnny Cash and Marianne Faithfull (with songs Tom composed specifically for them), and also 10,000 Maniacs, Elvis Costello, Crystal Gayle and Canned Heat, which showcases the full range of styles and performers reached by Waits' compositions.

---

Thanks again, Fabio. I'll just add that there were only a few cases where Waits wrote hit songs, so we weren't tied down much by that factor. ("Downtown Train" is probably his biggest hit, thanks to the 1989 Rod Stewart version, included here.) And often, his songs didn't get a lot of covers until many years after they were written. So if you don't see some of his songs you really like from this era, wait before you judge. There's a good chance those songs could show up on one of the later volumes.

This album is 54 minutes long. 

01 Rosie (Tom Waits)
02 Foreign Affair (Manhattan Transfer)
03 Jersey Girl (Bruce Springsteen)
04 Is There Any Way Out of This Dream (Crystal Gayle)
05 I Hope that I Don't Fall in Love with You (10,000 Maniacs)
06 Strange Weather (Marianne Faithfull)
07 Downtown Train (Rod Stewart)
08 Gun Street Girl (Canned Heat)
09 San Diego Serenade (Nanci Griffith)
10 Tom Traubert's Blues [Waltzing Matilda] (Rod Stewart)
11 More than Rain (Elvis Costello & Brodsky Quartet)
12 Ol' 55 (Sarah McLachlan)
13 Down There by the Train (Johnny Cash)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/FBZaqvMS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/IJ5fbwJ3YDrAHXl/file

The cover photo was taken in Chicago, Illinois, on May 30, 1986.

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.

R.E.M. - B&L Warehouse, Athens, GA, 4-24-1981

Here's a really interesting, great sounding concert recording by a very early version of R.E.M. This was so early in their career that they hadn't even released their first single yet. ("Radio Free Europe" would come out as a single in July.) This concert was available as a middling sounding audience boot for a long time. But apparently it was only a few weeks ago when a high-quality soundboard version emerged. That probably makes this the best sounding concert recording from this very early era for the band.

This was sent to me by musical associate Lil Panda. He got it from Rob, who is the person who runs the dB's Repercussion music blog. It's an excellent blog, and one I've mentioned before, but here's the link if you're not aware of it:

https://dbs-repercussion.blogspot.com/

Anyway, Rob wrote some notes about this concert, which I've included in the download zip file. In those notes, he mentions this: "T. Patton Biddle (aka Pat the Wiz) of Athens, GA, is the source for this recording. He was the sound tech for many of R.E.M.'s shows in and around Athens in the early 1980s. This comes from a first-generation analog copy of the master reel, recorded by Pat as he ran sound for R.E.M.'s opening set." So thanks to Lil Panda, Rob, and Pat the Wiz!

This contains all the songs the band performed. (It was a short set, since they were the opening act for XTC.) Unfortunately though, the taper didn't start taping until about a minute into the first song, "Radio Free Europe," and he ran out of tape after about a minute and a half of the last song, "Gardening at Night." So I found different early live versions of those two songs (from a concert in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1982), and used those to fill in the missing portions. I had to make some changes to get them to fit. It was especially noticeable that this version of "Radio Free Europe" was much faster than the 1982 one. Anyway, that's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

When I first saw the song list to this concert, I was confused, because I didn't recognize about half of the songs. It turns out the band played some pretty obscure songs, all originals. Four of the songs here remain officially unreleased: "Body Count," "Dangerous Times," "Hey Hey Nadine," and "That Beat." Three more are rarities from the "Dead Letter Office" compilation album: "All the Right Friends," "Burning Down," and "Windout." Another, "Gardening at Night," is from the band's early EP "Chronic Town." That just leaves four songs from the "Murmur" album, which would be released in 1983, and the "Reckoning" album, which would be released in 1984.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Radio Free Europe [Edit] (R.E.M.)
02 Burning Down (R.E.M.)
03 Dangerous Times (R.E.M.)
04 All the Right Friends (R.E.M.)
05 Shaking Through (R.E.M.)
06 Body Count (R.E.M.)
07 talk (R.E.M.)
08 Pretty Persuasion (R.E.M.)
09 [Don't Go Back To] Rockville (R.E.M.)
10 Hey Hey Nadine (R.E.M.)
11 talk (R.E.M.)
12 That Beat (R.E.M.)
13 Sitting Still (R.E.M.)
14 talk (R.E.M.)
15 9-9 (R.E.M.)
16 Windout (R.E.M.)
17 Gardening at Night [Edit] (R.E.M.)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EvPkci2i

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/xOZB57vKBuvuc2r/file

The cover image is from an advertisement for this exact concert. When I came across it, I saw that it was close to square (I widened it a bit), so I thought it would make a good cover. The only change is that the concert actually featured XTC and R.E.M., with XTC the headlining act. So I erased XTC and made R.E.M. larger to fill in the difference.

Kool & the Gang - BBC In Concert, Rainbow Theatre, London, Britain, 11-7-1981

It seems that, if one looks hard enough, every musical act of note performed for the BBC eventually. For instance, I wasn't expecting to ever find a Kool and the Gang concert, but I came across one the other day. 

Kool in the Gang released their first album in 1969, and had their first big hits in 1973 with "Jungle Boogie" and "Hollywood Swinging." But then their commercial fortunes went steadily down as the 1970s went on. A big problem was they didn't have a great lead singer, so they did a lot of instrumentals. But in 1979, the got a new lead singer, James "J.T." Taylor (not to be confused with the singer-songwriter with the same name), and moved in more of a mainstream pop direction. That resulted in two big hits in 1979, "Ladies' Night" and "Too Hot." Then in 1980 they did even better, getting their first Number One on the main U.S. singles chart with "Celebration." They had another big hit in 1981 with "Get Down on It."

That's the point when this concert happened, in late 1981. They went on to have a few more big hits in the next few years, especially "Joanna," which was the most played song on the radio in 1984. Most of their hits through 1981 were performed here, although I was a bit surprised not to see "Jungle Boogie."

When I first posted this, I didn't have "Ladies' Night." But within hours, musical friend Progsprog saw that omission and sent me the missing song. So thanks for that. 

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

This album is an hour and nine minutes long. 

01 Take It to the Top (Kool & the Gang)
02 Hangin' Out (Kool & the Gang)
03 Hollywood Swinging (Kool & the Gang)
04 talk (Kool & the Gang)
05 Jones vs. Jones (Kool & the Gang)
06 If You Feel like Dancin' (Kool & the Gang)
07 talk (Kool & the Gang)
08 Steppin' Out (Kool & the Gang)
09 Get Down on It (Kool & the Gang)
10 Take My Heart (Kool & the Gang)
11 Love Festival (Kool & the Gang)
12 Too Hot (Kool & the Gang)
13 Ladies' Night (Kool & the Gang)
14 Celebration (Kool & the Gang)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Fr24B1Lo

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/CsoA7PL2ivg5vOn/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on the "American Bandstand" TV show in February 1982. I also found a logo of the band's name, and used that at the top. 

Gary U.S. Bonds - BBC In Concert, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 11-24-1981

Here's a BBC concert by Gary U.S. Bonds. It appears to be the only BBC concert he did, during the brief revival of his career in 1981.

Bonds had a rather strange career, and his strange stage name is a part of that. His real name is Gary Anderson. But early in his career, back around 1960, his record company insist that he call himself "U.S. Bonds." The thinking is that radio stations would mistake his records for obligatory public service announcements for the sale of U.S. bonds, which was a thing at the time, and thus he would get extra exposure. Whether he liked it or not, the name stuck, though he soon at least changed it to "Gary U.S. Bonds."

Bonds had a number of hits, all between 1960 and 1962, with "New Orleans" and "Quarter to Three" being the biggest. But then his career was basically forgotten for a long time. Between 1963 and 1980, he released over 20 singles, and none of them even made the charts. But then, in 1981, everything changed, due to music superstar Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen had long been a fan of Bonds' music, and performed "Quarter to Three" in many concerts. Springsteen was heavily involved in making Bonds' 1981 album, called "Dedication." He wrote three songs for it, including "This Little Girl," which became a Top Ten hit in the U.S. He and/or his E Street Band played on many songs, and he dueted with Bonds on another song, "Jole Blon." That helped the album reach Number 27 on the U.S. album chart. Music critic Dave Marsh later called it "one of the most successful comeback albums in rock and roll history." Springsteen would also be involved in two more albums by Bonds, in 1982 and 2004, though to less commercial success.

This concert leaned heavily on the "Dedication" album. Many of the songs are from it: "Jole Blon," "From a Buick 6" (a Bob Dylan cover),  "Daddy's Come Home," "The Pretender" (a Jackson Browne cover), "It's Only Love," (a Beatles cover), "Dedication," "Way Back When," "Your Love," and "This Little Girl" (those last two being Springsteen covers). In fact, only two songs aren't from the album, "Dear Lady Twist" and "Quarter to Three." Even his big 1960 hit "New Orleans" wasn't included (although that probably was a BBC editing decision, since this almost certainly consists of selections from a longer concert).

This is another album where I had help from a new volunteer named Ed. I gave him a long list of albums to choose to work from, and this was one he picked. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have posted it for a long time. Ed edited all the files to improve the mix. 

There was one problem with the recording. The last song, "Quarter to Three," ended badly. On the BBC recording, a BBC DJ began talking over the music, announcing that the time allotted for the concert had come to an end. Then the song came to a sudden stop. I used the MVSEP program to wipe the DJ's voice, saving a little more of the music. Then I faded the song out, while adding in a growing amount of crowd noise, to bring the concert to a more satisfying end. That's why that last song has "[Edit]" in its title.

Everything here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 Jole Blon (Gary U.S. Bonds)
02 From a Buick 6 (Gary U.S. Bonds)
03 talk (Gary U.S. Bonds)
04 Daddy's Come Home (Gary U.S. Bonds)
05 talk (Gary U.S. Bonds)
06 The Pretender (Gary U.S. Bonds)
07 talk (Gary U.S. Bonds)
08 Dear Lady Twist (Gary U.S. Bonds)
09 talk (Gary U.S. Bonds)
10 It's Only Love (Gary U.S. Bonds)
11 talk (Gary U.S. Bonds)
12 Dedication (Gary U.S. Bonds)
13 Way Back When (Gary U.S. Bonds)
14 Your Love (Gary U.S. Bonds)
15 talk (Gary U.S. Bonds)
16 This Little Girl (Gary U.S. Bonds)
17 talk (Gary U.S. Bonds)
18 Quarter to Three [Edit] (Gary U.S. Bonds)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gth4teJz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/PExtveOGjFIloHW/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1981. But I don't know if it's from this exact concert or not, because I saw photos of him at that venue that year in different clothes, so he probably performed more than one concert there. 

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.

Paul Simon - Bread and Roses Festival, Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 10-3-1981

Here's something I just randomly came across on YouTube the other day. For ages, I've been looking for a good solo acoustic Paul Simon concert. The only solo acoustic tour he did was in 1984, but all the bootlegs I've heard from that tour don't sound that good. I've finally found something worthy, though it's from 1981 instead.

This was a one-off, apparently the only solo concert he did in 1981. That was the year he did the famous concert in Central Park as part of Simon and Garfunkel, which was attended by over half a million people and released as a live album. That took place on September 19, just a couple of weeks prior to this concert. You can hear a passing reference to it in some of the banter near the end of the concert.

The Break and Roses Festival is an annual folk festival. I've posted albums from the festival before: Joni Mitchell in 1978, Stephen Stills in 1978, and Neil Young in 1980. Apparently, the other main acts at the 1981 version of the festival were Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, Al Di Meola, Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, and Mimi Farina. I'm not aware of any recordings of those. But I'm sure the fact that Joan Baez was there performing her own set made it convenient for her to join Simon on one song ("The Boxer") for his set.

I have to warn you this album is not up to my usual sound quality standards. It comes from an audience bootleg, when I almost always use soundboard or FM radio bootlegs as sources. But I'm making an exception because this sounds pretty good as far as audience bootlegs go. As I mentioned above, it sounds better than several bootlegs I heard from his 1984, which are all audience boots too. It helps greatly that it's a solo acoustic performance, since that musical simplicity makes more forgiving for recordings.

There are some flaws with this recording. One is that the taper obviously stopped the recording at the end of every song, in order to save tape. As a result, most of the cheering was lost, and no doubt a lot of the banter between songs too. For instance, there's no introduction of Joan Baez, though that surely must have happened before "The Boxer." She's just there on stage all of a sudden, without any cheering or anything. I managed to fix the applause problem by taking little bits of what applause there was, putting together several songs of it, and then patching that into the ends of all the songs. But there was nothing I could do to bring back the missing banter. 

A curiosity is that he led the crowd through a short rendition of "Happy Birthday" for some girl in the audience that he didn't know. We can tell he didn't know her because he asked her what her name was. Chances are there was more banter leading up to why he was even interacting with the girl in the first place, but we'll probably never know since it wasn't included in this recording.

Simon's most recent studio album was "One Trick Pony," released in 1980. Curiously, he didn't play any songs from it. Perhaps he thought most of the songs from it really needed to be performed with a full band. Or, it's possible this isn't the full concert and he did play some of those, I don't know. But more interestingly, he played two songs he hadn't released yet: "Song about the Moon" and "The Late Great Johnny Ace." Both of them would be released on his next studio album, "Hearts and Bones," in 1983.

If anyone has what they think is a worthy recording from Simon's 1984 solo acoustic tour, please let me know. I've found mention of a couple, like from Pine Knob, Illinois, and Vancouver, that are supposed to some pretty decent, but I can't find those anywhere. 

This album is 37 minutes long. 

01 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)
02 Duncan (Paul Simon)
03 America (Paul Simon)
04 Song about the Moon (Paul Simon)
05 talk (Paul Simon)
06 The Late Great Johnny Ace (Paul Simon)
07 Mrs. Robinson (Paul Simon)
08 Slip Slidin' Away (Paul Simon)
09 American Tune (Paul Simon)
10 Happy Birthday (Paul Simon)
11 talk (Paul Simon)
12 The Boxer (Paul Simon & Joan Baez)
13 Something So Right (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PPad69ov

alternate:

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

The cover photo is from this exact concert. I found several, and I thought this one that also included Joan Baez was the most interesting. I used Photoshop to bring them closer together.

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. 

Kiki Dee - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967-1981

If you've been following this blog for a while, you maybe be aware that I have an anonymous musical friend who has been sending me "Top of the Pops" BBC radio recordings that usually are not in public circulation at all. He sent me some of those for British singer Kiki Dee. That inspired me to make this album. 

The Top of the Pops recordings mentioned above make up the first three tracks, all from 1967. They also make up tracks 9 and 10, from 1973, and tracks 11, 12, and 13, from 1974. By 1973, that radio show usually just played the recorded versions, and it was getting increasingly rare for them to play unique versions recorded just for the show. But I double checked these 1973 and 1974 and confirmed they all are unique.

By the way, a few of these Top of the Pops songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. That was due to the usual problem of BBC DJ Brian Matthew talking over parts of the song. As usual, I fixed that with the help of the UVR5 program. 

Put together, all those Top of the Pops recordings only make up 27 minutes of music, which would make for a very short album. So I went looking for other BBC performances she did. I found some stray things here and there, mostly from BBC TV shows. Tracks 4, 5 and 6 are from "Scott," a 1968 TV show hosted by singer Scott Walker. Tracks 7 and 8 are from different TV shows in 1971. Tracks 16 and 17 are from a 1980 show, and track 18 is from a 1981 show.

That just leaves two songs. Track 14, "Water," is from a BBC concert she did in 1975. I'm only including the one song though, because I actually found two BBC concerts she did that year, and they're very similar. I'll be posting the other one in full, so the only thing that interested me from this one was that single unique song. I also found a 1977 BBC concert she did, so expect that one to be posted soon as well.

Finally, track 15, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," is the song Dee is best known for. This duet with Elton John was a massive hit in 1976, hitting Number One in the both the U.S. and Britain. I wanted to include a version of it on this album. However, the TV appearances I found just had Dee and John lip-syncing. But I did find a concert version from 1976 that featured both of them, so I included that one. For all the other songs with audience applause, I got rid of the applause using the MVSEP program. But I kept the applause for this one, due to the spoken intro and some other things that wouldn't have sounded right without crowd noise.

If you want to know more about Dee's career, here's her Wikipedia page:

Kiki Dee - Wikipedia 

This album is 59 minutes long. 

01 Excuse Me (Kiki Dee)
02 If I Loved You [Edit] (Kiki Dee)
03 She Was Really Saying Something [Edit] (Kiki Dee)
04 Passing Strangers (Scott Walker & Kiki Dee)
05 Up, Up and Away (Kiki Dee)
06 Games People Play (Kiki Dee)
07 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Kiki Dee)
08 Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Kiki Dee)
09 Amoureuse [Edit] (Kiki Dee)
10 Loving and Free (Kiki Dee)
11 Little Frozen One (Kiki Dee)
12 Hard Luck Story (Kiki Dee)
13 I've Got the Music in Me (Kiki Dee)
14 Water (Kiki Dee)
15 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Elton John & Kiki Dee)
16 Star (Kiki Dee)
17 Twenty-Four Hours (Kiki Dee)
18 Midnight Flyer (Kiki Dee)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6t6xHnDH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/FyUD0xC3QdCCv3P/file

The cover photo is from 1973. I don't know any other details.

Olivia Newton-John - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1974-1981

Here's the second album of singer Olivia Newton-John performing for the BBC. Like the first one, it consists of various sessions, although this one happens to be entirely made of TV show appearances, not radio shows.

Newton-John's fame grew bigger and bigger as the 1970s went on. However, most of the music here comes before 1978, when she became a superstar due to her leading role in the hit movie "Grease." 

The first ten songs all come from 1974. It seems she spent most of the year in Britain, staying there long enough to have her own short-lived BBC TV show called "Moods of Love." It only consisted of four half-hour episodes, but each one was chockablock with songs she sang that she never put on record. Unfortunately, it seems the BBC wiped the recordings (as they so often did back then). Only a few songs from it could still be found on YouTube, and I couldn't use all of those due to sound quality issues. Tracks 5, 6, and 7 here come from her show, which include duets with Cliff Richard and Neil Sedaka.

Here's a link to a fan's webpage about the show, if you want to get frustrated seeing the names of all the song performances that apparently got lost:

Moods Of Love - UK show 

The first two songs are from a show called "Clunk Click." The next two are from "Presenting Nana Mouskouri." One of those, "Sing," features a duet of Newton-John with Mouskouri. Furthermore, she made some appearances on Cliff Richard's BBC TV show that year, "It's Cliff Richard." Those are tracks 8 through 10, and include two more duets with Richard.

Tracks 11 and 12 are from a 1977 appearance on "The Val Doonican Show." If You Love Me (Let Me Know)" was a hit for Newton-John with her being the only one singing lead. But she did a duet version of it with Val Doonican here. Track 13 is from another 1977 show. Track 14 is from the "Top of the Pops" TV show (not to be confused with the radio show of the same name). Normally, performances on this show were lip-synced. However, in this case, Newton-John sang live lead vocals over a prerecorded backing track, so I included it. 

The last song is "Physical" from 1981. By this time, she was such a big star that she probably didn't feel the need to appear on BBC TV or radio much anymore. So we don't get versions of many of her big hits from the late 1970s and 1980s. But luckily we do get this one, which was the biggest hit of her career, thanks to an appearance on the TV show "Stars."

Note that some of the songs here were never recorded for any of her albums or singles, especially most of the duets.

There is one more BBC album coming from her, a 1977 concert. It comes third since this one chronologically starts earlier.

There are two bonus tracks. There's nothing wrong with them, except there already are other versions of those songs. ("Sam" from this volume and "Take Me Home, Country Roads" from Volume 1.)

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Someday (Olivia Newton-John)
02 Hands Across the Sea (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Amoureuse (Olivia Newton-John)
04 Sing (Olivia Newton-John & Nana Mouskori)
05 Tea Cosy (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
06 Sing Me (Olivia Newton-John & Neil Sedaka)
07 Nevertheless (Olivia Newton-John)
08 I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John)
09 I’m Leaving It All Up to You (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
10 All I Have to Do Is Dream (Olivia Newton-John & Cliff Richard)
11 Sam (Olivia Newton-John)
12 If You Love Me [Let Me Know] (Olivia Newton-John & Val Doonican)
13 Let It Shine (Olivia Newton-John)
14 A Little More Love [Live Lead Vocals Only] (Olivia Newton-John)
15 Physical (Olivia Newton-John)

Sam (Olivia Newton-John)
Take Me Home, Country Roads (Olivia Newton-John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BxmDJZwW

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Y0O1cVwP00MbQ6x/file

The cover image is a screenshot taken from a video of her 1978 performance of "A Little More Love" on the "Top of the Pops" TV show.

Covered: Bob Crewe & Bob Gaudio, Volume 2: 1974-2024

Here's the second of two "Covered" volumes highlighting the songwriting of Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio.

In Volume 1, the vast majority of the songs were written by Crewe and Gaudio together. In this volume, all or nearly all of the new songs (meaning new at the time) were written by either Crewe with others or Gaudio with others. However, as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem that they had a falling out, or even stopped writing songs together. For instance, as late as 1983 they co-wrote a couple of minor hit songs for the duo of Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson. It's just that it seemed both of them had better success with other songwriters when it came to big hits in this era.

As I mentioned in my write-up for Volume 1, by the start of 1974, it seemed as if the songwriting success of both Crewe and Gaudio had petered out. Also around 1971, Gaudio phased himself out of being a member of Franki Valli and the Four Seasons, apparently due to stage fright and introversion. However, he retained a key financial stake, and continued to write songs for the group. So their musical futures were looking bleak. But both of them had a series of stunning songwriting successes, especially in 1974 and 1975.

For instance, I consider the first song here, "Lady Marmalade" by Labelle, one of the greatest dance songs of all time. It was a Number One hit in the U.S. in 1974, and then a cover of it was an even bigger Number One hit by Christina Aguiliera, Pink, and others in 2001. It was co-written by Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan, another professional songwriter Crewe started working with around this time. Crewe also wrote "My Eyes Adored You" and "Get Dancin'" with Nolan, as well as "Swearin' to God" with another songwriter.

Crewe's "My Eyes Adored You" totally turned out the fortunes of Franki Valli and the Four Seasons, as it was a Number One hit in the U.S. in early 1975. (As with Volume 1, I've tried to avoid having lots of songs by that act, so I chose a duet version by Isaac Hayes and Dionne Warwick instead.) But then Gaudio also rose to the occasion in 1975, writing "Who Loves You" and "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" with Judy Parker, who would later become his wife. "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" in particular was a massive hit, not only reaching Number One in both the U.S. and Britain, but was the fourth best selling song of the year. (Again not wanting to include too many Franki Valli and the Four Seasons performances, I chose an interesting mostly acappella version from 2024.)

Unfortunately, the revived successes of Crewe and Gaudio didn't last that long. Gaudio co-wrote "Silver Star," which was a big hit in 1976. But after that, the new hits for both of them became smaller and fewer, and petered out altogether in the early 1980s. However, they still had more big successes with earlier songs that eventually became hits with cover versions. For instance, "Bye Bye Baby," a minor Franki Valli and the Four Seasons hit in the 1960s, was a Number One hit in Britain for the Bay City Rollers in 1975. 

Some songs kept coming around again and again. For instance, "Let's Hang On," a Four Seasons hit in 1965, was a big hit by the Darts in Britain in 1980, then again by Barry Manilow in 1981. And "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," a hit first for Franki Valli in 1967, has been hits by other musical acts so many times that it's hard to keep track, including making Number Four in Britain in 1982 by the Boys Town Gang.

Crewe, who was 13 years older than Gaudio, died in 2014 at the age of 84. Gaudio is still alive at the age of 82 years old as I write this in 2025.

As I said in Volume 1, I think these two are very underrated songwriters. I could have included many more hits, enough for another volume or two, but I wanted to give this a stronger appeal by including only their biggest hits. It seems some of their songs are going to be hits forever, periodically revived with new cover versions. For instance, "Beggin'," a minor hit when first released by Franki Valli and the Four Seasons in 1967, is another one that keeps getting covered to big success, with Madcon having a Number Five hit in Britain with it in 2008, and then Maneskin having a Number Six hit with it there in 2020.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Lady Marmalade (Labelle)
02 Get Dancin' (Disco Tex & the Sex-O-Lettes)
03 Swearin' to God (Frankie Valli)
04 Sherry (Adrian Baker)
05 Bye Bye Baby [Baby Goodbye] (Bay City Rollers)
06 My Eyes Adored You (Isaac Hayes & Dionne Warwick)
07 Silver Star (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
08 Rag Doll (Steeleye Span)
09 Buzz Buzz a Diddle It (Matchbox)
10 The Night (Lene Lovich)
11 Let's Hang On (Barry Manilow)
12 Walk like a Man (Mary Jane Girls)
13 Barbarella (Wondermints)
14 Who Loves You (Murray Head)
15 December, 1963 [Oh, What a Night] (Jared Halle)

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

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Ia2z6pVWw86bXGm/file

As with Volume 1, I couldn't find good photos of the two of them together. So I found individual photos and put them on the cover. The Bob Crewe one (with red hair) is from 1976. I don't know the date of the Bob Gaudio one, but I'd guess it's from the 1970s. Both were in black and white, but I colorized them using the Kolorize program. Then I improved the quality with the Krea AI program.

Elvis Costello - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1981-1986

In the BBC poll I conducted here in February 2025, Elvis Costello was tied for the third most votes. So here's something else from him. This is a collection of BBC studio sessions from 1981 to 1986.

This album was rather tough to compile, because Costello performed for the BBC many times, both for TV and radio shows. This gathers together eight different appearances, most of them unreleased. The first song is from an appearance on "Jim'll Fix It" in early 1981, and is a duet with Glenn Tilbrook, lead singer of Squeeze. The next two songs are from a 1981 benefit concert that was broadcast on the BBC. One of them, "Psycho Song," was released on a very obscure official album of the concert, called "Fundamental Frolics."

Tracks four through seven are from a conventional BBC radio session, for the Kid Jensen show in 1981. The next four, tracks eight through 11, are from another Kid Jensen show, in 1983. Two them, "Danger Zone" and "Big Sister's Clothes - Stand Down Margaret," later appeared as bonus tracks for the "Punch the Clock" album. "Peace in Our Time" is from a 1983 BBC TV show. "Georgia on My Mind" is from a 1985 BBC TV show. That's quite an interesting version, because it was done as a duet with his father, Ross MacManus, who was a professional trumpet player and singer in jazz bands. (Costello's birth name is Declan MacManus.)

 

"Don't Get Above Your Raising" is a duet with Ricky Scaggs. It was part of a Scaggs concert broadcast by the BBC in 1986, which was later released as the live album "Ricky Scaggs: Live in London." That makes it the fourth and final officially released performance on this album. The last three songs are from an appearance on the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show in 1986.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 From a Whisper to a Scream [Edit] (Elvis Costello & Glenn Tilbrook)
02 Gloomy Sunday (Elvis Costello)
03 Psycho Song (Elvis Costello)
04 Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down (Elvis Costello)
05 Sweet Dreams (Elvis Costello)
06 Colour of the Blues (Elvis Costello)
07 Why Don't You Love Me (Elvis Costello)
08 Danger Zone (Elvis Costello)
09 Big Sister's Clothes - Stand Down Margaret (Elvis Costello)
10 Pills and Soap (Elvis Costello)
11 Shipbuilding (Elvis Costello)
12 Peace in Our Time (Elvis Costello)
13 Georgia on My Mind (Elvis Costello & Ross MacManus)
14 Don't Get Above Your Raising (Ricky Skaggs & Elvis Costello)
15 I Hope You're Happy Now (Elvis Costello)
16 Uncomplicated (Elvis Costello)
17 Leave My Kitten Alone (Elvis Costello)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sUcXKCFr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/PvXCJSalBkFgBtZ/file

The cover photo shows Costello in concert in 1982. I don't know the details beyond that.

Covered: Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards, Volume 2: 1980-2015

Here's the second and final Covered album highlighting the talents of the songwriting duo Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards.

As usual, the songs here are in rough chronological order. At the beginning time period for this album, 1980, Rodgers and Edwards were in crisis. They'd had hit after hit in the late 1970s. In fact, the first song here, "Upside Down" by Diana Ross, would top the singles chart in the U.S. and many other countries in 1980. However, pretty much all their hits songs were in this disco genre, and the popularity of disco was crashing hard in 1980. "Upside Down" was one of the last gasps. They basically broke up their wildly successful band Chic, keeping it together only because they owed more records to their record company. Rodgers in particular was depressed by the changing musical trends and developed a bad drug habit.

Disco was so reviled due to overexposure that people actually organized the mass destruction of disco records. Rodgers and Edwards responded by focusing most of their energies on writing and producing songs for other musical acts. Unfortunately, I can only include songs in which they're writers or co-writers, not songs they only produced. But Rodgers in particular became one of the hottest producers in the music business in the 1980s. For instance, he helped produce David Bowie's smash album "Let's Dance" in 1983 and Madonna's smash album "Like a Virgin" in 1984. He also produced albums for Duran Duran, Sheena Easton, Jeff Beck, Thompson Twins, Mick Jagger, the B-52's, Grace Jones, Al Jarreau, Steve Winwood, Cyndi Lauper, and many more. In the 1990s, he produced for Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, David Lee Roth, the Stray Cats, and again many more.

Note that I've included the song "Let's Dance" by David Bowie despite the fact that the song is solely credited to Bowie. That's because in my opinion Rodgers, who produced the song, totally deserved cowriting credit. Believe it or not, when Bowie first presented the song to Rodgers, it was a folk song, with just Bowie's voice and an acoustic guitar! Rodgers utterly transformed the song with a new arrangement, changing the chords, the key, the rhythm, and just about everything else but the basic melody and words. It went on to be a Number One hit in the U.S., Britain, and many other countries. Bowie even later cited Rodgers as the main reason for the song's massive success. (Note that a demo of the song was later released, but this is already after Rodgers had transformed the song, not the original acoustic demo.) 

I would suspect that Rodgers often helped co-write songs as part of his production duties without getting official songwriting credit. One example where he did get credit was "Tick Tock" by Stevie Ray Vaughan (as part of the Vaughan Brothers), which he co-wrote with Vaughan. 

The songwriting success for this duo slowed down as they got older, as is common. That was magnified by the fact that they focused much more on producing. Unfortunately, the Rodgers and Edwards partnership was cut short in 1996 when Edwards died of pneumonia while on tour with Chic in Japan. As I write this in May 2025, Rodgers is still alive and is 72 years old.

By the 2010s, one would have thought that the biggest songwriting success for Rodgers was behind him. But in 2013, he collaborated on four songs with Daft Punk, and of them was "Get Lucky." This would go on to be one of the biggest hits of the decade. It reached Number One in many countries, though it stalled out at Number Two in the U.S. for several weeks. With this new popularity, Rodgers' 1970s band Chic released their first single in 23 years with "I'll Be There" in 2015, and it went to the top of the dance singles chart (though it didn't make the pop singles chart).

Note that nearly all the songs presented here are the original hit versions. But one exception is "Thinking of You" by Paul Weller. He had a Top 20 hit with it in Britain in 2004. However, it first was a hit for Sister Sledge back in 1984. The other exception is "Everybody Dance." I included a hit version by Evolution in 1993. But it was first a hit for Chic back in 1977.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Upside Down (Diana Ross)
02 Backfired (Debbie Harry)
03 Why (Carly Simon)
04 The Jam Was Moving (Debbie Harry)
05 Let's Dance (David Bowie)
06 Kissing with Confidence (Will Powers with Carly Simon)
07 Tick Tock (Vaughan Brothers)
08 Everybody Dance (Evolution)
09 Thinking of You (Paul Weller)
10 Get Lucky (Daft Punk)
11 I'll Be There (Chic)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZPKXNq3N

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/k5MpBQsKfqqwW8O/file

For the cover image, I found black and white photos of Rodgers and Edwards in 1981. I combined them and moved their bodies close together. Then I colorized them using the Kolorize and Photoshop programs.

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 5: 1981-1989

Here's Volume 5 in my "Covered" series highlighting the songwriting of Stevie Wonder. As with the other volumes in this series, this consists of other musical acts covering his songs.

Wonder was still very commercially successful in the early 1980s, but there was a slow decline as the decade went on. However, that isn't so important for this album, because many of the covers here are of songs he wrote earlier in his career.

Some songs here were written by Wonder but never officially released by him. Those are tracks 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, and 12. That's a lot of songs. It's too bad he didn't put more of those songs on his own albums. 

My usual rule is to only include one version of each song in this series. However, I couldn't resist with "Superstition," since it's one of the greatest songs of all time and I really like two covers of it. I included a version by Jeff Beck on an earlier volume, and a version by Stevie Ray Vaughan here.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Happy Birthday (Brotherhood of Man)
02 Betcha' Wouldn't Hurt Me (Quincy Jones)
03 Lately (Rudy Grant)
04 Buttercup (Carl Anderson)
05 Try Jah Love (Third World)
06 If You Really Love Me (Mary Wells)
07 You're Playing Us Too Close (Third World)
08 The Crown (Gary Byrd & G.B. Experience with Stevie Wonder)
09 Ribbon in the Sky (Nancy Wilson)
10 Superstition (Stevie Ray Vaughan)
11 Remembering the Sixties (George Duke)
12 Hold On to Your Love (Smokey Robinson)
13 Higher Ground (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SMBE8DsJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tBVPCnxrzfmeh4J/file

The cover photo is from 1985. That's all I know about it.

Humble Pie - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Reseda Country Club, Los Angeles, CA, 5-17-1981

Here's another album of the British band Humble Pie performing for the BBC. It's a BBC concert, from 1981.

As far as I can tell, the only previous BBC concert by this band took place in 1970. I find it kind of strange that there were no other BBC concerts in the early 1970s, when the band was at a commercial peak. By 1981, the band was having a hard time. It broke up in 1975, then got back to make a new album in 1980. But musical tastes had changed, and the band's style of boogie rock was no longer in vogue. The band put out albums in 1980 and 1981, but both albums sold poorly, with neither of them even making the U.S. charts at all. In July 1981, only a couple of months after this concert, the band's lead singer and lead guitarist Steve Marriott developed an ulcer, which forced the cancellation of a tour. The band broke up at that point. Just one year later, Marriott formed an all-new band, but due to commercial reasons he was obliged to call it Humble Pie. That only lasted for about a year before the band was retired for good, at least as far as any Marriott version went.

Marriott had gone through a lot of things since the early 1970s, and it could be argued that he was a shadow of his former self creatively, especially when it comes to songwriting. At once point in the late 1970s, he was so hard up for money that he took to collecting empty bottles to redeem them for spare change. He frequently had big issues with drugs and alcohol. But despite all that, if you listen to this recording, he was still singing and playing lead guitar at a top level. I checked out a forum of Humble Pie fans, and this is considered one of the band's best concert recordings, period, in terms of both sound quality and performance.

The music here has been officially released, but in an obscure way. A box set of five CDs called "The Official Bootleg Box Set, Volume 2" came out, consisting of five different Humble Pie concerts, and this was one of them. But in terms of sound quality alone, this one deserves more attention, since it sounds better than most of the other material in that set.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 I Don't Need No Doctor (Humble Pie)
02 Infatuation (Humble Pie)
03 30 Days in the Hole (Humble Pie)
04 Tin Soldier (Humble Pie)
05 Fool for a Pretty Face (Humble Pie)
06 [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66 (Humble Pie)
07 Be-Bop-A-Lula (Humble Pie)
08 Tulsa Time (Humble Pie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YPG5JBky

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ZAsYh76vroOngpH/file

The cover photo of Steve Marriott is from a concert at the Park West, in Chicago, Illinois, on April 15, 1981.

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 4: 1976-1981

Here we are again with another "Covered" album consisting of songs written or co-written by Stevie Wonder. This volume deals with the years 1976 to 1981.

I my opinion, the peak of Wonder's music career was from about 1972 to 1981. So this represents the latter half of that. But keep in mind that covers always come after the original versions, sometimes decades later. So many of the songs he wrote during this time don't show up until later volumes.

However, just like with previous sessions, there are some songs here that Wonder didn't release himself. This time, those are tracks 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 Boogie On Reggae Woman (Slickers)
02 Creepin' (Herbie Mann feat. Cissy Houston)
03 You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Ella Fitzgerald)
04 Love Having You Around (First Choice)
05 The Real Thing (Sergio Mendes & New Brasil 77)
06 Stick Together (Minnie Riperton)
07 Don't Make Me Wait Too Long (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
08 I Can't Help It (Michael Jackson)
09 I'm Wondering (Amy Holland)
10 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Syreeta Wright)
11 Let's Get Serious (Jermaine Jackson)
12 Pastime Paradise (Ray Barretto)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Psmhz2QD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4WAUE3LanH8uQY8/file

All I know about the cover image is that it's from 1982.