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.

The Gregg Allman Band - BBC Rock Hour, Uncle Sam's, Hull, MA, 11-12-1982

Here's an interesting BBC concert starring Gregg Allman, one of the main singer-songwriters for the Allman Brothers Band. I just stumbled upon this the other day, and I'm posting it straight away because it's very hard to find.

This concert came at a difficult time in Allman's musical career. The Allman Brothers Band reunited in the late 1970s after a couple of years apart, and put out three studio albums. But their music was out of sync with the musical trends of the time, and they broke up again in early 1982. This break up would last until 1988. Allman was forced to focus on his solo career. But he was even less of a draw as a solo act than as part of his old band. For several years, he was reduced to mostly performing in small clubs, if he could get paid to perform at all.

Given that context, it's rather surprising that 1982 seems to be the one and only time the BBC recorded and broadcast a Gregg Allman concert. Kudos to them. Also, kudos to Allman to sticking to his musical style instead of trying to chase the latest musical trends, a strategy that rarely works. This was his first tour after the Allman Brothers Band broke up for the second time earlier in 1982. He would keep touring through the 1980s. He finally would get a break when his next album, "I'm No Angel," was a surprise hit in 1987. It helped that, by that time, the mass public was getting around to appreciating his style of music again.

Already, Allman's band largely consisted of the same people he'd find success with in 1987. Most importantly, he stuck with two brothers, Dan Toler on lead guitar and David Toler on drums. Both of them were members of the Allman Brothers Band from 1979 to 1982.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. Most of the songs were originally done by the Allman Brothers Band, or were on 1970s Gregg Allman solo albums.

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 talk (Gregg Allman)
02 Dreams (Gregg Allman)
03 talk (Gregg Allman)
04 Sweet Feelin' (Gregg Allman)
05 talk (Gregg Allman)
06 Matthew's Arrival [Instrumental] (Gregg Allman)
07 talk (Gregg Allman)
08 Trouble No More (Gregg Allman)
09 Queen of Hearts (Gregg Allman)
10 talk (Gregg Allman)
11 Midnight Rider (Gregg Allman)
12 talk (Gregg Allman)
13 Stand Back (Gregg Allman)
14 One Way Out (Gregg Allman)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LaoQUfXc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/hcLgiq4ky6Yxcsu/file

The cover photo was taken at the Keystone Palo Alto, in Palo Alto, California, on September 26, 1985.

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.

Various Artists - Rally for Nuclear Disarmament, Central Park, New York City, 6-12-1982

A few days ago (as I write this in December 2025), I posted five hours of a concert called "Peace Sunday," which was a big benefit concert for the anti-nuclear war movement in 1992, held in Los Angeles. As I was researching that one, I discovered there was another concert for the same cause that took place a week later in New York City. I did a little more digging, and found part of it that got broadcast on radio station WNEW at the time. So I'm presenting that here. 

There's a lot about this concert that I don't know, apparently lost in the mists of time. I do know there was an absolutely enormous protest rally in Central Park on June 12, 1982. News reports say about a million people attended, making it the largest protest rally in the history of the U.S., at least up until that time. Part of that all day event was a concert. Some of it was broadcast on the radio, and that's what I have here. But I can't find any information about how much more there was that is now missing. 

However, I do have some clues. Rita Marley actually performed four songs, which I found on YouTube. But the sound quality, apparently from homemade video footage was poor. I managed to salvage one song to at least represent her, but I had to do a LOT of work on it (using the MVSEP program) to make it at least listenable. Note the sound quality gets better after that, so don't be discouraged because it's the first song. I also know Jackson Browne played the song "For Everyman," which is not here. The radio broadcast cut in part way through the song, and there were technical problems, so only the last minute was salvageable. That was so little that I decided to just cut it out entirely. I also know performed a duet of the song "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine." One can find a video of that on YouTube, but the quality was so bad that I had no hope of salvaging that one. They also did the song together in the studio for Ronstadt's 1982 album "Get Closer," by the way.

Furthermore, at the end of the concert, there were appearances by Jesse Colin Young, Bonnie Raitt, Carly Simon, and Graham Nash. I suspect one or more of them probably had songs of their own earlier in the concert. I also saw a mention that Holly Near sang something at some point. The problem is, the radio broadcast only showed highlights of some of the big names, and even then it seems they took commercial breaks from time to time, skipping songs. If anyone knows more (for instance if you attended and remember what happened), please let us know.

To make matters more complicated, two days earlier, there was a related concert with a very similar name, the "Concert for Nuclear Disarmament," held at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, just outside New York City. That holds about 15,000 people. I found a review of that concert. There were only three acts: James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, and Jackson Browne. But because there were fewer acts, each of them performed almost full sets. I found one audience bootleg of part of that, but the sound quality was pretty terrible, so I won't be posting it. 

Anyway, having something (in worthy sound quality) is better than having nothing. What we have here is pretty nice, even though many of the performers are the same ones who played in the "Peace Sunday" concert a week earlier in Los Angeles. Linda Ronstadt even played "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)" with the same two well-known backing singers, Rosemary Butler and Nicolette Larson.

It was notable that Bruce Springsteen performed. However, I consulted the "Brucebase" website, which is very thorough, and that confirms that he only performed on two songs, while a guest during Jackson Browne's set. He sang his own song, "Badlands," with Browne on backing vocals, then Browne sang his own "Running on Empty" with Springsteen on backing vocals. 

Another interesting tidbit is that James Taylor and John Hall jointly performed the song "Children's Cry." Taylor mentioned before the song started that they had written it together specifically for this concert. I did a little searching. It seems the only time this song was ever played was at this concert and at the "Concert for Nuclear Disarmament" two days earlier. And it apparently was never officially released in any form.

This concert recording sounded pretty decent, but there were issues. Some time back, musical friend Lil Panda did some audio editing to improve just the Linda Ronstadt songs. So I used his version for those. I also tried some editing of my own. I ran all the songs through MVSEP, and got rid of most of the crowd noise during songs while keeping it at the ends of songs. I then ran all the songs through MVSEP again, and adjusted the balance between the lead vocals and the instruments. For maybe half the songs, the lead vocals were too low.

It anyone has more of this concert (or the related Concert for Nuclear Disarmament), please share it. 

This album is an hour and 33 minutes long. 

01 One Love (Rita Marley)
02 The Pretender (Jackson Browne & Gary U.S. Bonds)
03 talk (Joan Baez)
04 Imagine (Joan Baez)
05 Promised Land (Bruce Springsteen with Jackson Browne)
06 talk (Jackson Browne)
07 Running on Empty (Jackson Browne with Bruce Springsteen)
08 talk (Jackson Browne)
09 Tumbling Dice (Linda Ronstadt)
10 Blue Bayou (Linda Ronstadt)
11 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
12 The Shoop Shoop Song [It's in His Kiss] (Linda Ronstadt with Rosemary Butler & Nicolette Larson)
13 Desperado (Linda Ronstadt)
14 Heat Wave (Linda Ronstadt)
15 Living in the U.S.A. (Linda Ronstadt)
16 That Lonesome Road (James Taylor)
17 You've Got a Friend (James Taylor)
18 talk (James Taylor)
19 Up on the Roof (James Taylor)
20 Stand and Fight (James Taylor)
21 talk (James Taylor & Chaka Khan)
22 It's Growing (James Taylor & Chaka Khan)
23 talk (James Taylor)
24 Children's Cry (James Taylor & John Hall)
25 talk (Joy Ryder & Avis Davis)
26 No More Nukes (Joy Ryder & Avis Davis)
27 talk (John Hall)
28 Plutonium Is Forever (John Hall)
29 talk (John Hall)
30 talk (Jackson Browne & Graham Nash)
31 Power (John Hall, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash & Carly Simon)
32 talk (John Hall)
33 Let's Get Together (Jesse Colin Young & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hjST8tt6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NVjT1WCkPe1RhvJ/file

The cover photo shows Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. I would bet this was taken during the duet they did, "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine," which unfortunately is not included here. The original was in black and white. But I used the "Kolorize" program to colorize it.

Various Artists - Peace Sunday, Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA, 6-6-1982, Part 5: Linda Ronstadt & Nicolette Larson, Bette Midler, Jackson Browne, Gary U.S. Bonds, and Tom Petty

Here's the fifth out of five albums that make up the "Peace Sunday" concert in 1982.

I'll just paste in a paragraph I wrote in my post for Part 2, since it still applies here:

If you want a full explanation of what the concert was about, please read my write-up for Part 1. In that, I also explained about the sound quality issue. In short, the only known source for the whole concert is an audience bootleg. It didn't sound very good, so this concert recording hasn't been shared that much. But I could tell there was potential there, if I could get rid of most of the much. As I explained in detail in my write-up, I think I did get rid of most of it. It still doesn't have excellent sound, but it's pretty good, and worthy of being posted at my blog, where I have pretty high sound quality standards.

This big concert ended with a bunch of star performers. Linda Ronstadt dominated the first half of this part of the concert. During her set, she let her friend Nicolette Larson sing one song, while Larson and Rosemary Butler sang back-up on another song. Then Bette Midler just sang one song, acappella style, and also made a lot of funny comments.

Jackson Browne dominated the second half of this part of the concert. After performing three songs, he had Gary U.S. Bonds sing one song, "This Little Girl," which was a hit in 1981. Then Browne and Bonds sang a song together, "The Pretender." The song was written by Browne and released by him in 1975. But Bonds did a version on his 1981 album. After that, Tom Petty showed up to sing two songs, with Browne backing him up. Curiously, he sang two cover versions instead of any of his own songs. Perhaps that was because he was backed by Browne's band instead of the Heartbreakers, like he was used to.

At the very end, all the stars from earlier in the concert came back to sing two songs. First, Graham Nash led the others on his song "Teach Your Children." Then everyone sang "Give Peace a Chance," originally by John Lennon. But this version skipped the verses (with very hard to remember lyrics) and just repeated the chorus over and over again. 

Two songs, "Blue Bayou" and "I Only Want to Be with You," have "[Edit]" in their titles. As I mentioned in my Part 1 write-up, I did a lot of editing on all the songs. But those two needed even more work on top of that. For instance, with "Blue Bayou" the first verse had the sound of some person near the taper talking through it. But luckily the verse was repeated later, so I patched in sections of that to get rid of that person's voice. 

This album is an hour and eight minutes long.

Note that, for all the parts, the track numbers continue from the numbers in the previous part. That way, you can put all the songs together and listen to the whole thing at once if you want.  

61 Blue Bayou [Edit] (Linda Ronstadt)
62 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
63 The Shoop Shoop Song [It's in His Kiss] (Linda Ronstadt with Rosemary Butler & Nicolette Larson)
64 talk (Linda Ronstadt & Nicolette Larson)
65 I Only Want to Be with You [Edit] (Nicolette Larson with Linda Ronstadt)
66 Get Closer (Linda Ronstadt)
67 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
68 Back in the U.S.A. (Linda Ronstadt)
69 talk (Bette Midler)
70 You Must Ask the Heart (Bette Midler)
71 talk (Bette Midler)
72 talk (Jackson Browne)
73 Crow on the Cradle (Jackson Browne)
74 talk (Jackson Browne)
75 Running on Empty (Jackson Browne)
76 Doctor My Eyes (Jackson Browne)
77 talk (Gary U.S. Bonds & Jackson Browne)
78 This Little Girl (Gary U.S. Bonds with Jackson Browne)
79 The Pretender (Gary U.S. Bonds & Jackson Browne)
80 talk (Jackson Browne)
81 Well... Alright (Tom Petty with Jackson Browne)
82 Not Fade Away (Tom Petty with Jackson Browne)
83 talk (Everyone)
84 Teach Your Children (Graham Nash & Everyone)
85 Give Peace a Chance (Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tBipmuXn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/g4QkgU1zmITJigf/file

I got really lucky when it comes to this concert. I only found a handful of photos from the whole thing, but that was just enough to find good ones for four out of the five parts. This one shows Tom Petty (in front) and Jackson Browne during this part of the concert. 

Various Artists - Peace Sunday, Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA, 6-6-1982, Part 3: Stevie Wonder and Joan Baez & Bob Dylan

Here's the third out of five albums that make up the "Peace Sunday" concert in 1982. Musically, this concert is best known for the songs Bob Dylan sang with Joan Baez, and you'll find them in this part.

I'll just paste in a paragraph I wrote in my post for Part 2, since it still applies here:

If you want a full explanation of what the concert was about, please read my write-up for Part 1. In that, I also explained about the sound quality issue. In short, the only known source for the whole concert is an audience bootleg. It didn't sound very good, so this concert recording hasn't been shared that much. But I could tell there was potential there, if I could get rid of most of the much. As I explained in detail in my write-up, I think I did get rid of most of it. It still doesn't have excellent sound, but it's pretty good, and worthy of being posted at my blog, where I have pretty high sound quality standards.

Now, let's get to the music. This part of the concert started with some songs by Stevie Wonder. Just one month before this concert, he released a best of album called "Stevie Wonder's Original Musiquarium I." It contained four new songs, and he performed two of them here, "Front Line" and "Do I Do." He also had a new songs written for the occasion, but it seems he and his band couldn't practice the song enough in time to his satisfaction, so he simply spoke the lyrics instead. I don't know the actual name of the song/poem, but I made an educated guess of "Throw Down in the Name of Love." If anyone knows a better title, please let me know.

The rest of this part of the concert consists of a set by Joan Baez, capped by three songs where she was joined by Bob Dylan. The two of them had a long personal history together, especially since they were romantically linked for a couple of years in the 1960s. The two of them toured together in 1975 and 1976. But after that, they didn't appear on stage together again until this concert. Then they were stage some more in 1984. As far as I know, they have been on stage together again in the many years since then.

Dylan wasn't one of the scheduled performers, so his appearance here was a pleasant surprise. That was especially the case because he basically took all of 1982 off. He didn't release or record any music, and this was his one and only concert appearance. They dueted on two classic Dylan anti-war songs, which were ideal for the occasion. The third song they sang was a real surprise though: "A Pirate Looks at Forty," by Jimmy Buffett. I'm pretty sure that's the only time Dylan ever sang a Jimmy Buffett song in concert.

Unfortunately, Dylan's performance wasn't the best. If you listen, it's pretty clear he did little to no practice with Baez. He even got the lyrics to "Blowin' in the Wind" wrong, singing the same verse twice. But still, it was great to have his involved with this concert. Since the mid-1960s, he's rarely been overtly politically active, but he was making his voice heard on the issue of nuclear disarmament by singing these particular songs at this particular concert.

I mentioned in my write-up to Part 1 that I spent a long time fixing the sound quality issues with this concert. I could have put "[Edit]" on all the songs, since I edited every single one of them a lot. But since I did the same treatment to all of them, I've saved that for the most extreme edits. There's one case here, with "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man." On top of all the other problems I was fixing, the beginning of the song was missing. Probably, the taper was saving tape by stopping during long pauses between songs, and then was a little slow it hitting "record" again in this case. But luckily, the lyrics at the start of the song were repeated later in the song, so I was able to fill in the missing section. 

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

Note that, for all the parts, the track numbers continue from the numbers in the previous part. That way, you can put all the songs together and listen to the whole thing at once if you want. 

33 talk (Stevie Wonder)
34 Front Line (Stevie Wonder)
35 talk (Stevie Wonder)
36 Throw Down in the Name of Love [Spoken Lyrics] (Stevie Wonder)
37 Master Blaster [Jammin'] (Stevie Wonder)
38 Do I Do (Stevie Wonder)
39 We Demand World Peace Today (Stevie Wonder)
40 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man [Edit] (Joan Baez)
41 talk (Joan Baez)
42 Warriors of the Sun (Joan Baez)
43 Imagine (Joan Baez)
44 Diamonds and Rust (Joan Baez)
45 talk (Joan Baez)
46 With God on Our Side (Joan Baez & Bob Dylan)
47 A Pirate Looks at Forty (Joan Baez & Bob Dylan)
48 Blowin' in the Wind (Joan Baez & Bob Dylan)
49 talk (emcee)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rZFaw6jr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/XxOyn7vxXc2PzU7/file

The cover image of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - Peace Sunday, Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA, 6-6-1982, Part 2: Timothy B. Schmidt & Don Felder, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Stephen Stills & Dave Mason, and Taj Mahal

Here's the second out of five albums that make up the "Peace Sunday" concert in 1982.

If you want a full explanation of what the concert was about, please read my write-up for Part 1. In that, I also explained about the sound quality issue. In short, the only known source for the whole concert is an audience bootleg. It didn't sound very good, so this concert recording hasn't been shared that much. But I could tell there was potential there, if I could get rid of most of the much. As I explained in detail in my write-up, I think I did get rid of most of it. It still doesn't have excellent sound, but it's pretty good, and worthy of being posted at my blog, where I have pretty high sound quality standards.

Now, switching to the music here, most of this Part 2 section is dominated by Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN). Graham Nash already sang a song on his own in Part 1. Weirdly though, only two songs were performed by CSN here. Then Stephen Stills stayed on stage and performed three more songs on his own (with a back-up band), and then two more with Dave Mason joining in. (However, Mason could mostly be heard helping with lead guitar, not singing lead vocals.) The two songs with Mason weren't ones that Stills usually did with CSN. But the other three he did solo definitely were CSN standards. I would guess that CSN was going through tough times in the early 1980s, mainly due to David Crosby's excessive drug use. So Stills probably was more interested in his solo career. 

On a different note, the Eagles broke up around 1980. But two members of the Eagles, Timothy B. Schmidt and Don Felder, sang an Eagles hit, "I Can't Tell You Why." Most Eagles songs were written and sung by other band members, but that was one that was mainly written and sung by Schmidt.

This album is 49 minutes long. 

By the way, note that the track list numbering picks up where Part 1 left off. That way, you can easily listen to all of the songs from the entire concert in a row if you want to. 

17 talk (Graham Nash)
18 I Can't Tell You Why (Timothy B. Schmidt with Don Felder)
19 talk (Graham Nash)
20 Long Time Coming (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
21 Chicago (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
22 talk (emcee)
23 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills)
24 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills)
25 Dark Star (Stephen Stills)
26 talk (Stephen Stills)
27 Hoochie Coochie Man (Stephen Stills & Dave Mason)
28 Rocky Mountain Way (Stephen Stills & Dave Mason)
29 talk (emcee)
30 talk (Taj Mahal)
31 Going Up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue (Taj Mahal)
32 Stagger Lee (Taj Mahal)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2P8yiZNv

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/GHuHYJqbFPuA5TV/file

The cover photo of CSN is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - Peace Sunday, Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA, 6-6-1982, Part 1: Gil Scott-Heron, Jesse Colin Young, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and Donovan

I really like posting big rock festivals. I feel these often get forgotten. This was a very interesting one. Just look at some of the musical acts that took part: Gil Scott Heron, Jesse Colin Young, Bonnie Raitt, Donovan, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Stevie Wonder, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Dan Fogelberg, Stevie Nicks, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and Tom Petty. However, the problem with this one is that only known recording is a problematic audience bootleg. However, I have spent many, many hours getting this into listenable shape. It's still far from ideal sound quality, but I think it's definitely worth listening to, after all the audio edits I've made. I've split this long concert into five albums. This is the first one.

First, let me explain what this concert was about. In the early 1980s, the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia (then the Soviet Union) heated up. Ronald Reagan was president of the U.S., and struck a more militaristic posture, such as calling Russia "the evil empire." The U.S. decided to base intermediate nuclear weapons in Western Europe for the first time. This led to a growing anti-nuclear war movement, which was related to an anti-nuclear power movement triggered by the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. 

This concert in 1982, which was attended by about 85,000 people, was meant to draw attention to the nuclear war issue, and put pressure on the U.S. to reduce it's aggressive policies. It was just one of many around that time. For instance, one week later, there was a protest march and concert in New York City attended by about a million people that was the biggest protest in history up until that time. In 1983, there were 50 simultaneous protests across the U.S. Also in 1983, the TV movie "The Day After" depicted the results of a nuclear war on a family. It was one of the top ten most watched TV shows of all time, showing how concern was spiking over the issue. In Europe, there were even more opposition and protests. Eventually, there were peace talks, and in 1987, the U.S. and Russia signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which led to the destruction of all intermediate range nuclear weapons. That, and other peace treaties, helped lower the tensions and fear.

It turns out the protesters had good reason to be concerned. In 1983, the world actually came very close to being destroyed in a nuclear war, entirely by accident. A Russian early warning system mistakenly showed five nuclear missiles heading towards Russia. A Russian engineer on duty was supposed to pass the warning up the chain of command. But he had a feeling it was a false alarm, and didn't pass the warning on. It turned out he was right, and the early warning system had malfunctioned.

You can read all about it in this Wikipedia article:

1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident - Wikipedia 

The common perception is that the trend of musicians staging benefit concerts for altruistic reasons began with Live Aid in 1985. But this concert was in 1982. And there were others like it in those years, such as the No Nukes concerts in 1979, and the 1982 New York City concert I mentioned above, which starred Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Bonnie Raitt, and many more. (I've only found some of that one, but I'm looking for more.)

Okay, so that explains what this concert was all about. Now, let me address the sound quality issue. As I mentioned above, the only source I could find for this concert is a merely decent audience bootleg. It suffered from the usual problems audience boots have, some one which I could fix, and some I couldn't. It's clear the person who recorded it turned their tape recorder off between songs a lot, so we miss many introductions and other banter. There was nothing I could do about that. 

But the main problem, of crowd noise, was one I could fix, although it turned out to be a very big pain in the ass. For starters, I ran all the songs through the MVSEP program, specifically separating the crowd noise from everything else. Then I wiped out most of the crowd noise, except where it was appropriate to keep, for instance at the ends of songs and during sing-alongs. That alone made a BIG difference. There had been a constant level of backround noise, and I got rid of nearly all of it. 

However, there was more crowd noise that was harder to fix. Often during songs, people near the taper would shout "WOOHOO!" and the like. Sometimes there would be entire conversations. I ran all the songs through MVSEP again, splitting the vocals from everything else. Then I carefully went through the vocals and got rid of anything that didn't belong. Occasionally, the bits I wanted to remove overlapped with singing, and I couldn't remove it. But that was relatively rare. Most of the time, people saved their "woohoos" and such for the instrumental parts.

The result is still not great. But it's way better than before, in my opinion, and sometimes it could be mistaken for soundboard quality. Luckily, the audience bootleg was fundamentally good. If that hadn't been the case, I wouldn't have taken on this time-consuming task.

Luckily, as far as I can tell, the taper did record all the songs by all the musical acts, even if some of the banter is gone. For instance, not only is there no introduction of the first artist, Gil Scott-Heron, the recording began in the middle of some comments he made. And while we have an introduction for Donovan, we don't have one for Jesse Colin Young. Lots of little missing bits like that. But the main thing is the music.

Oh, speaking of the banter, that often was muffled and hard to understand. So I ran all the "talk" tracks through the Adobe voice enhancer program. That only works for talking, not singing, but it really helps with the clarity.

This album is 52 minutes long.  

01 talk (Gil Scott-Heron)
02 Alien (Gil Scott-Heron)
03 talk (Gil Scott-Heron)
04 Please Save the Children (Gil Scott-Heron)
05 talk (Gil Scott-Heron)
06 Shut 'Em Down (Gil Scott-Heron)
07 Imagine (Jesse Colin Young)
08 Let's Get Together with Susie Young, Graham Nash & Jerry Corbitt (Jesse Colin Young)
09 talk (Graham Nash)
10 Military Madness (Graham Nash)
11 talk (Bonnie Raitt & Graham Nash)
12 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt with Graham Nash)
13 talk (Graham Nash)
14 Sunshine Superman (Donovan)
15 Season of the Witch (Donovan)
16 Mellow Yellow (Donovan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JPtfeBmR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Drcen3BFlcbmwxj/file

I found photos of musical acts performing for all the albums I've made out of this festival, except for this first part. However, I did find this cover of the official program for the festival, and I thought the image of a nuclear bomb blast morphing into a tree was interesting, so I used it. I had to crop it a bit, and clean it up some in Photoshop. Other than that, the only change I made was adding the text at the bottom. All the text at the top was on the original image.

Hot Chocolate - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Lighthouse Poole Centre for Arts, Poole, Britain, 8-27-1982

Here's a short BBC concert by the British R&B band Hot Chocolate.

Note that I previously made a collection of BBC studio sessions by this band. Now that I've found this, I've renamed that album to "BBC Sessions, Volume 1." You can find the updated version with new cover art and so forth at this link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2025/05/hot-chocolate-bbc-sessions-1970-1976.html

When I was putting that album together back in May 2025, I was annoyed to find the band did many TV appearances in the 1970s and 80s, but the vast majority were lip-synced. They even did an entire concert for German TV that was lip-synced. Furthermore, the band never released a live album. I couldn't find any bootlegs from them either. This particular concert was so obscure that in all my digging to find any live recordings of the band, I never even found a hint of its existence.

Happily, recently, I've been in contact with a musical associate who goes by the nickname Progsprog. He has a very large music collection, and we've been trading dozens of albums. Look for a lot more great stuff sourced by him in the coming days and weeks. I was very pleasantly surprised to see he had this, and I'm posting it straight away. Now, a concert from this band can start to circulate.

This concert shows the band was very capable of performing live, so there was no need for them to lip-sync so much. That was probably just a reflection of the kinds of TV shows they were going on, where lip-syncing was often standard procedure. The sound quality is excellent. The only disappointment is it's quite short.

At the time, 1982, the band had two hits in Britain, "It Started with a Kiss" and "Girl Crazy." So it's not surprising that both of them were performed here. 

This album is 29 minutes long. 

01 You Sexy Thing (Hot Chocolate)
02 Are You Getting Enough (Hot Chocolate)
03 Emma (Hot Chocolate)
04 It Started with a Kiss (Hot Chocolate)
04 So You Win Again (Hot Chocolate)
05 Heaven Is in the Backseat of My Cadillac (Hot Chocolate)
06 Girl Crazy (Hot Chocolate)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SHr8CfXd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/EjWyEYD6PsiUNLw/file

The cover image is from a 1982 concert. It's a screenshot I took of the band's lead singer Errol Brown, taken from a YouTube video of a 1982 TV show. The video suggests it was a BBC TV show, but it doesn't seem to be this concert, since I checked versions of the song being performed, and they're different.

Covered: Joe South: 1962-2005

Lately, I've had so much music I'm discovering, especially from "Midnight Special," "Ultrasonic," Live at the Record Plant," and "PBS Soundstage," that my Covered series highlighting worthy songwriters has fallen by the wayside. Again. But I'm going to make more of a concerted effort to post more of these, since a have a big number ready to go. Here's an album celebrating the songs of Joe South.

Joe South's songs were very popular for a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was born in 1940 in Atlanta, Georgia, and his music has an obvious southern influence. He began a career as both a performer and a songwriter in the late 1950s, when he was in his late teens. For many years, he only had minor success with both of those pursuits. The first song here is from 1962, and the second is from 1965. But then he hit his stride in 1968, when more people started covering his songs, and sometimes having big hits with them. For instance, Deep Purple had a big hit with "Hush" in 1968 (which was pretty atypical for them compared to their usual hard rock sound).

Then, in 1969, he had a big hit of his own, "Games People Play." It just missed the Top Ten in the U.S. singles chart, and since then is probably considered his signature song. Then he had another in 1970, with "Walk a Mile in My Shoes," which also just missed the Top Ten. I've chosen to include the Joe South version of "Games People Play." But the main point of this series is to focus on cover versions, so that's the only song I've included that's performed by him. 

In 1970, he also had his biggest success as a songwriter with "(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden." It was first released by Billy Joe Royal in 1967, and there were a couple more covers after that. But when Lynn Anderson released her version in 1970, it went all the way to Number One in the country chart, and Number Three in the main U.S. singles chart, and became one of the best selling songs of the year. 

After all this success in just a couple of years, his future looked very promising. But then tragedy struck. Tommy South, his brother, committed suicide. Tommy had been in Joe's backing band, and they two of them were very close. Joe irrationally blamed himself for the suicide. He sank into a deep depression that lasted for years, and started taking heavy drugs to cope. His time as a promising songwriter basically ended at that point, as he lost his inspiration for many years. He later said, "I really kicked myself around for years... one of the main hang-ups was I just refused to forgive myself. You know, you can go through drug treatment centers, and it's not a permanent healing until it's a spiritual healing." He finally turned his life around in the late 1980s, but musical trends had largely passed him by, and he never released any new albums after 1975. All the songs here were written before that 1971 tragedy, though some of them were covered many years later. 

He died of a heart attack in 2012, at the age of 72. Here's his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more: 

Joe South - Wikipedia 

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 You're the Reason (Arthur Alexander)
02 I've Got to Be Somebody (Billy Joe Royal)
03 Hush (Deep Purple)
04 Games People Play (Joe South)
05 Down in the Boondocks (Billy Joe Royal)
06 These Are Not My People (Johnny Rivers)
07 Don't It Make You Want to Go Home (Brook Benton)
08 Walk a Mile in My Shoes (Elvis Presley)
09 [I Never Promised You A] Rose Garden (Lynn Anderson)
10 Redneck (Swamp Dogg)
11 Yo-Yo (Osmonds)
12 Don't Throw Your Love to the Wind (Jody Miller)
13 Birds of a Feather (Johnny Nash)
14 I Knew You When (Linda Ronstadt)
15 Children (Stephanie Finch)
16 The Greatest Love (Kelly Hogan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Cs7VpEZz

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/SgxQeTnbykRnLm9/file

I took the cover photo from the cover of an album called "The Joe South Story." I don't know the details. But it was one of very few I could find that was in color and showed him when he was young. 

Covered: Teddy Randazzo & Bobby Weinstein: 1960-2024

Here's another album in my "Covered" series. This time, the focus is on the songwriting team of Teddy Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein. Chances are you haven't heard of them. But I'd also bet that you're very familiar with some of their songs, such as "Goin' Out of My Head," "It's Gonna Take a Miracle," "Pretty Blue Eyes," and "Hurt So Bad."

Randazzo was born in New York City in 1935, and Weinstein was born there four years later. (I've noticed an unusual number of talented songwriters from this era were born in New York City, with many of them being Jewish. In this case, Randazzo was ethnically Italian and Weinstein was Jewish.) Both of them got involved with rock and roll bands. Randazzo had more success, being a member of the Three Chuckles. They had a Top Twenty hit in 1954, and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show several times. In 1957, they began writing songs together. Their first big success was "Pretty Blue Eyes," which was a Top Ten hit for Steve Lawrence in 1960.

Randazzo had the good looks of a potential star, and kept a solo career going for several more years, but didn't have any big hits. However, he and Weinstein found more and more success as songwriters. Their biggest success of all was probably "Goin' Out of My Head." Little Anthony and the Imperials first had a Top Ten hit with it in 1964. But it's endured strongly, with over 400 cover versions, some of them hits as well. It's now in the top 50 of the most recorded and best selling songs of all time. Randazzo and Weinstein wrote many more songs for Little Anthony and the Imperials, even arranging and producing entire albums for them. Another big hit for that band was "Hurt So Bad," which was written by Randazzo, Weinstein, and Bobby Hart of the Boyce and Hart songwriting team. (I've already posted a "Covered" album for them, which includes a Linda Ronstadt version of that song.)

Most of the hits by Randazzo and Weinstein were in the 1960s. "It's Gonna Take a Miracle" was first a hit for the Royalettes in 1965. However, I've included a 1982 version by Deniece Williams because that was a bigger hit, reaching the Top Ten. It seems the songwriting partnership faded in the 1970s. Randazzo continued writing some hits in that decade, particularly for the soul groups the Manhattans and the Stylistics. However, I've only included one, "A Million to One" by the Manhattans in 1971.

Randazzo moved to Hawaii and had some limited success as a producer and songwriter there. He died in 2003 at the age of 68. Weinstein became a music executive, eventually becoming the president of the National Academy of Popular Music. He died in 2022 at the age of 82.  

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Randazzo:

Teddy Randazzo - Wikipedia 

And here's the entry for Weinstein:

Bobby Weinstein - Wikipedia 

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Pretty Blue Eyes (Steve Lawrence)
02 Let the Sunshine In (Dee Dee Sharp)
03 Goin' Out of My Head (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
04 I'm on the Outside [Looking In] (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
05 Can't Stop Running Away (Ian & the Zodiacs)
06 Hurt So Bad (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
07 Trick or Treat (Teddy Randazzo & All 6)
08 Don't Tie Me Down (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
09 Buttercup Days (Kane Triplets)
10 Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March (Box Tops)
11 I'm Hypnotized (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
12 Yesterday Has Gone (Cupid's Inspiration)
13 Rain in My Heart (Frank Sinatra)
14 A Million to One (Manhattans)
15 It's Gonna Take a Miracle (Deniece Williams)
16 Where's the Love (Vivian Buczek)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/AeftLAgu

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/user/files/EM9pT1qmY7eaGeM/file

Photos of Teddy Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein are extremely rare. Luckily, I found one of them hugging each other. It's from when they were older. That's Randazzo on the left and Weinstein on the right.

Covered: Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein & Richard Gottehrer: 1962-1982

Here's a rather unusual entry in my "Covered" series highlighting talented songwriters who were widely covered by others. This one focuses on the songwriting and production team of Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer. You probably don't know their names, but I'll bet you know a bunch of their songs.

Bob Feldman and Jerry Goldstein were friends and neighbors growing up in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1950s. They began writing songs together, and released a single as "Bob and Jerry." In 1962, they met Richard Gottehrer, and he joined their songwriting team. Then the hits started coming. Their first really big smash was "My Boyfriend's Back" by the Angels, which made it all the way to Number One in the U.S. in 1963. The song was started by Feldman, after he overheard a girl talking to a boy she was rebuffing.

The three of them had their greatest success in the mid-1960s. As they were all young and musically talented, they decided to form their own rock band, which they called the Strangeloves. Although, weirdly, they claimed that they were three brothers from a sheep farm from Australia. Perhaps they thought being seen as Jewish kids from Brooklyn wasn't cool. In 1965, they had a Top Ten hit in the U.S. under the Strangeloves name with "I Want Candy," a song the three of them wrote with Bert Berns. (I've posted two Covered albums featuring him.) However, instead of including that version here, I've included the 1982 version by Bow Wow Wow, which was a Top Ten hit in Britain. They had two other Top 40 U.S. hits in 1965 as the Strangeloves: "Cara-Lin" and "Night Time." I've included the Strangeloves version of "Night Time," but I chose a version the Sorrows did of "Cara-Lin."

In addition to songwriting, the three of them also found success as producers. One of their biggest successes came early, with "Hang On Sloopy." They didn't have a hand in writing it (though Bert Berns did). But they were getting a big reaction performing it live in concerts. They wanted to release it as their next single, but their song "I Want Candy" was still rising in the charts. So they took the version they'd already recorded in the studio and had a then-unknown singer from another band, Rick Derringer, sing lead on it. That version, credited to the McCoys, hit Number One in the U.S.

This songwriting team was really good at the garage rock song that was all the rage in 1965 and 1966. When popular trends moved to psychedelic music in 1967, their success went way down. The Strangeloves faded away in 1968. The three of them gradually drifted apart. Each of them found success as producers. In 1966, Gottehrer co-founded Sire Records. It was a very successful independent record company for many years. In 1978, it essentially got swallowed up by Warner Brothers Records, though it still exists as a branch of that mega-company. Gottehrer went on to produce albums by the Go-Go's', Dr. Feelgood, Richard Hell, the Bongos, Marshall Crenshaw, Joan Armatrading, Link Wray, and many more.

As a songwriter, Goldstein was the only one of the three who continued to have big success into the 1970s. He became the producer for the band War from their very first album in 1970. He co-wrote most of their biggest hits while continuing to produce them, including "All Day Music," "Low Rider," and "Why Can't We Be Friends." In fact, he was so closely tied to the band War that in a 1990s lawsuit he won the right to the band name, forcing virtually all of the original members to record as the Lowrider Band instead. 

Feldman died in 2023 at the age of 83. Goldstein and Gottehrer are still alive as I write this in 2025.

Here are their Wikipedia pages, if you want to know more:

Bob Feldman - Wikipedia 

Jerry Goldstein (producer) - Wikipedia 

Richard Gottehrer - Wikipedia

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 What Time Is It (Jive Five)
02 My Boyfriend's Back (Angels)
03 I'm on Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis)
04 The Drifter (Ray Pollard)
05 Cara-Lin (Sorrows)
06 Sorrow (Merseys [Merseybeats])
07 Night Time (Strangeloves)
08 Say Those Magic Words (Birds)
09 Beat the Clock (McCoys)
10 Come On Down to My Boat (Every Mother's Son)
11 It's Nice to Be with You (Monkees)
12 All Day Music (War)
13 Low Rider (War)
14 Why Can't We Be Friends (War)
15 Summer (War)
16 I Want Candy (Bow Wow Wow)
17 You Got the Power (War)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SYsxwH2r

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/yznTM351UNw7hYf/file

Feldman, Goldstein, and Gottehrer were the members of the band the Strangeloves in the mid-1960s. The cover photo is taken from a promotional photo of the band. They put out a lot of photos wearing these zebra-striped vests. From left to right: Richard Gottehrer, Bob Feldman, and Jerry Goldstein.

Olivia Newton-John - Olivia in Concert, Weber State University, Ogden, UT, 10-13-1982

Over the past week or two, I've posted all the Olivia Newton-John albums I have worthy posting. This if the fifth album I'm posting from her, and the last. (Unless I find things I'd previously missed, of course.) In my opinion, this is the ideal live album of her in her musical prime. So if you had to get just one of the five albums from her I've posted, I'd suggest this one.

Newton-John became a superstar in 1978, thanks to her lead role in the movie "Grease." But in 1981 she took her superstardom to an even higher level, mostly thanks to the title song of her 1981 album, "Physical." That song spent 10 weeks at Number One in the U.S., tying the record for the longest, and was the best-selling song of the 1980s. 

However, it turned out that her early 1980s peak didn't last that long. She had a few more big hits through 1983 (like "Make a Move on Me," "Heart Attack," and "Twist of Fate"), but only minor hits after that. I suspect some of that commercial decline was that she essentially stopped touring for many years. She did a big tour in 1982 to promote the "Physical" album. But after that, she didn't tour again until 1998! (She started a tour in 1992, but quickly canceled it after she was diagnosed with cancer, and had to seek treatment.) She has put out four live albums, but all of them date from after her resumption of touring in 1998, long after her commercial peak. 

She did document her 1982, but only on video format. This concert was released as the video "Olivia in Concert." I simply took that video and converted it to audio, then chopped it into mp3s. I also cut out a video presentation of the highlights of her career at the start of the video, since one has to see that to appreciate it. The sound quality is excellent, with no problems. 

In this concert, Newton-John played just about all her biggest hits, from the early 1970s until "Heart Attack," which had been released earlier in 1982. So this also doubles as an effective "best of" collection.  

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. 

01 Deeper than the Night (Olivia Newton-John)
02 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
03 Let Me Be There (Olivia Newton-John)
04 Please Mr. Please (Olivia Newton-John)
05 If You Love Me [Let Me Know] (Olivia Newton-John)
06 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
07 Jolene (Olivia Newton-John)
08 Sam (Olivia Newton-John)
09 Xanadu (Olivia Newton-John)
10 Magic (Olivia Newton-John)
11 Suddenly (Olivia Newton-John)
12 A Little More Love (Olivia Newton-John)
13 Silvery Rain (Olivia Newton-John)
14 Falling (Olivia Newton-John)
15 Heart Attack (Olivia Newton-John)
16 Make a Move on Me (Olivia Newton-John)
17 talk (Olivia Newton-John)
18 Hopelessly Devoted to You (Olivia Newton-John)
19 You're the One that I Want (Olivia Newton-John)
20 Physical (Olivia Newton-John)
21 I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/STrbk7mg

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/gkavzBxQvQk6spu/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert, I think. It's from promotional material for the DVD of it, at least.

Covered: Henry Mancini: 1959-1998

I have so much material for Covered series albums that I'm going to try to make another concerted effort to post a lot more of them. So here's another, focusing on the songwriting of Henry Mancini.

Mancini is a bit of a left field choice for the Covered series, since he mostly composed instrumental music for movies, and is far removed from rock and roll. But he was responsible for so many classic songs that I feel I can't leave him out. The intro to his Wikipedia article sums him up well, stating that Mancini "was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flutist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995."

Mancini was born in 1924 and grew up in rural Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school, he studied at the prestigious Julliard School of Music in New York City for two years. But then he was drafted in the U.S. Army and fought in World War II from 1943 to 1945. After the war, he became a pianist and arranger for the Glenn Miller Orchestra (which continued despite the fact Miller died in World War II). In 1952, he got a job writing music for movies for Universal Pictures, a major movie studio in Hollywood. 

However, he didn't really become famous until after he left that company in 1958 to become an independent composer and arranger. One of his first jobs was writing the theme for a new TV show called "Peter Gunn." His song, the "Peter Gunn Theme," was a big hit for Duane Eddy, and has since become an often covered classic. It won an Emmy award and two Grammys, and put Mancini in high demand writing for more TV and movie projects.

Mancini typically only wrote music, usually instrumentals. But sometimes he would work with another songwriter who would write the lyrics. His next major hit, "Moon River," was such a case, with the lyrics written by famed songwriter Johnny Mercer. The version sung by actress Audrey Hepburn in the movie of the same name in 1961 went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song, as well as Grammys for Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

After that, Mancini kept steadily releasing music for decades, including scores for dozens of movies. He recorded over 90 albums on his own, from big band to jazz to light classical. He became, and remains, one of the biggest names in the "easy listening" genre. 

For this album, I tried to boil the selections down to just his very best known songs, so that even people who aren't typically into can easy listening style can enjoy this. For instance, I find it hard to believe there's anyone out there who doesn't enjoy hearing the highly creative "Pink Panther Theme." Like that song, the vast majority of songs here are instrumentals. "Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" wasn't actually written by him, but his arrangement changed the song so drastically that I've included it here anyway.

Most of Mancini's best known songs date from the 1960s. After that decade, he switched more to arranging songs written by other people, though he did sometimes write his own material. Some of the songs near the end of this album are covers of songs from much earlier in his career. I generally tried to avoid Mancini's own versions, as I usually do with these Covered albums. But I have two songs by him here since I couldn't find good versions of those ones otherwise.

He was still composing and arranging, though less prolifically, when he died of pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the age of 70 years old. His music made such a cultural impact that in 2004 he was the subject of a U.S. postage stamp. 

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Peter Gunn Theme (Ray Anthony & His Orchestra)
02 Moon River (Audrey Hepburn)
03 Baby Elephant Walk (Lawrence Welk & His Orchestra)
04 Theme from Hatari (Henry Mancini & His Orchestra)
05 A Shot in the Dark (Shirley Scott)
06 The Shadows of Paris (Elsie Bianchi)
07 Pink Panther Theme (Those Fantabulous Strings)
08 Slow Hot Wind (Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66)
09 Two for the Road (Peggy Lee)
10 Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet [A Time for Us] (Johnny Mathis)
11 Send a Little Love My Way (Anne Murray)
12 Newhart (Henry Mancini)
13 Days of Wine and Roses (Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass)
14 Dreamsville (Dave Grusin with Diana Krall)
15 Charade (Monica Mancini)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YcfTBdHW

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/nDvHfXT0X64bFSQ/file

The cover photo dates from 1985. I don't know any other details.

Don McLean - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: In Concert, New York City, 1-25-1982

Here's the sixth and presumably final Don McLean BBC album I plan on posting. (If I find more, I'll be happy to post them, but I'm very surprised to find this much.) Out of the five album concerts in this series, this is one of the best, if not the best. The sound quality is excellent, and the song selection represents his career well. 

The only problem is "American Pie" isn't included. He probably played it in the full concert, but just didn't include it in the edit down to fit the hour long time slot. It seems he was sick of the song by this time, just as he'd only included a very short version in his 1978 BBC TV special (which is Volume 5 in this series).

This was first broadcast in the U.S. as part of the King Biscuit Flower Power radio program. However, it was later broadcast by the BBC, and more than once. That makes it a BBC concert in my book. Some purists may disagree, but note that I probably wouldn't be posting this otherwise. Unfortunately, I don't know the location of the venue, other that it took place somewhere in New York City. So if anyone does know, please tell me so I can change the title.

McLean's prime period of commercial success lasted from 1971 until 1981. After having no hits in the late 1970s, he had a revival, with "Crying" a big hit in 1980, as well as the Top Forty hits "Since I Don't Have You" and "Castles in the Air" in 1981. So this was a particularly good time for a concert recording like this, especially since he performed all three of those songs.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 He's Got You [She's Got You] (Don McLean)
02 talk (Don McLean)
03 Vincent (Don McLean)
04 Orphans of Wealth (Don McLean)
05 talk (Don McLean)
06 Tapestry (Don McLean)
07 Castles in the Air (Don McLean)
08 Crying (Don McLean)
09 Since I Don't Have You (Don McLean)
10 Jerusalem (Don McLean)
11 Believers (Don McLean)
12 It Doesn't Matter Anymore (Don McLean)
13 talk (Don McLean)
14 Banjo Pickin' [Instrumental] (Don McLean)
15 talk (Don McLean)
16 Under the Double Eagle - Salt Creek [Instrumental] (Don McLean)
17 talk (Don McLean)
18 Building My Body (Don McLean) (Don McLean)
19 Wonderful Baby (Don McLean) (Don McLean) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RppwkaWf 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/iKISTncc5G1BAug/file 

The cover photo is from a concert at Park West in Chicago, IL, on April 11, 1981.

Elkie Brooks - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1977-1987

Here's a third volume (out of four) of British singer Elkie Brooks performing for the BBC. In this case, every song comes from appearances on BBC TV shows.

The first album in this series consisted of BBC studio sessions. It ended in 1977, which was the year Brooks had her first big hits. The second one was a full concert from 1977. In Volume 1, I only had two of her hits, "Pearl's a Singer" and "Lilac Wine." But from 1977 until 1987, she had lots of hits in Britain (while she never had any hits in the U.S.). So I tried to put this collection together to deal with that period. 

Everything here is unreleased. I often had to dig deep to find the material. For instance, I found she did some appearances on the BBC TV show "The Two Ronnies" in 1980, but none of them were on YouTube. So I downloaded all the episodes of that show that year from SoulseekQT and went through them, found the songs she did, and turned them into mp3s. Those are tracks 4, 5, and 6.

As for the other tracks, the first three plus tracks 9 and 13 are from the "Top of the Pops" BBC TV show (not to be confused with the BBC radio show of the same name). I rarely use that as a source for my BBC projects, because the vast majority of performers on it lip-synced when on the show. However, Brooks usually did not. In ease case, I carefully compared those versions with the album versions to make sure. They're from 1977, 1978, 1979, 1982, and 1987 respectively.

Tracks 7 and 8 are from the TV show "Parkinson" in 1982. Tracks 10 and 11 are from a 1983 TV show hosted by singer Leo Sayer. Track 12 is from a TV show called "Wogan" in 1987. Generally speaking, I used the MVSEP program to get rid of crowd noise on the songs where there was crowd noise.

I searched for more BBC TV appearances after 1987, but I couldn't find any good ones until way later, and those were mostly repeats of earlier hits. That makes sense, because she didn't have any significant appearances after that year. Between this volume and "Volume 1" in this series, you'd have a pretty good "greatest hits" collection for her entire career, with only a couple of key songs missing.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Sunshine After the Rain (Elkie Brooks)
02 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Elkie Brooks)
03 The Runaway (Elkie Brooks)
04 Don't Cry Out Loud (Elkie Brooks)
05 Paint Your Pretty Picture (Elkie Brooks)
06 Dance Away (Elkie Brooks)
07 Fool [If You Think It's Over] (Elkie Brooks)
08 Superstar [Groupie] (Elkie Brooks)
09 Nights in White Satin (Elkie Brooks)
10 Gasoline Alley (Elkie Brooks)
11 Giving You Hope (Elkie Brooks)
12 We've Got Tonite (Elkie Brooks)
13 No More the Fool (Elkie Brooks) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/me7Fh3Yn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/V2ubR7qCxIoT7jV/file

The cover photo was taken circa 1980. I don't know more details.

Don McLean - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1972-1982

American singer-songwriter Don McLean is best known for his classic 1971 song "American Pie," but he's much, much more than that. That was such a massive Number One hit that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America" took a poll of music industry insiders in 2001 and voted it Number Five on a list of the most historically significant songs of the 20th century. That song has overshadowed the fact that McLean has had quite a successful music career even without it, including the hits "Vincent," "Castles in the Air," "Dreidel," and "Crying." 

This is another album that wouldn't be possible without the anonymous helper who has been sending me "Top of the Pops" BBC studio sessions. Being American, McLean mostly performed in the U.S. But he did sometimes perform concerts in Britain, and occasionally did something for the BBC while he was there. Tracks 1 through 5, plus 7 and 8 all come from Top of the Pops sessions in 1972 and 1973. As far as I can tell, these are not only unreleased, but they haven't even been bootlegged anywhere. These are very different from the album versions as well. I surmise McLean was performing in a solo acoustic mode at the time, without any band. So all of these Top of the Pops performances are just his voice and his acoustic guitar.

However, those songs combined only made for 25 minutes of music. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the Top of the Pops radio show largely went to just playing the album versions around 1973, so it's not too surprising there aren't any more live versions of him on that show after that. But I looked around and found some more songs he did for the BBC, all BBC TV shows. Tracks 6 and 7 are from an appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1973. Track 10 is from another BBC TV shows in 1973. Tracks 11, 12, and 13 are from another appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977. Track 14 is from a BBC TV show in 1978. Tracks 15 and 16 come from BBC TV shows in 1982. For all the songs done before an audience, I removed the clapping to make those songs fit in with the ones done without an audience.

Thankfully, BBC DJ Brian Matthew restrained himself for once and didn't talk over the music to any of the Top of the Pops songs. That's probably due to the fact that Matthew finally rid himself of that bad habit around 1973. 

There's one bonus track, "Mountains of Mourne." There's nothing wrong with it; it's just that I had another version from the Top of the Pops show. Actually, I found yet another version, from the Old Grey Whistle Test, but I figured two versions of the same song as bonus tracks was overkill, so I only included one.

This album is 50 minutes long, not including the bonus track. Everything here is officially unreleased.

UPDATE: On December 4, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. I added the song "Prime Time" and "Colour TV Blues," plus the talk track between them.

01 Vincent (Don McLean)
02 What Can I Do for You (Don McLean)
03 Circus Song (Don McLean)
04 Everyday (Don McLean)
05 Magdalene Lane (Don McLean)
06 talk (Don McLean)
07 Yonkers Girl (Don McLean)
08 Mountains of Mourne (Don McLean)
09 And I Love You So (Don McLean)
10 Fool's Paradise (Don McLean)
11 Prime Time (Don McLean)
12 talk (Don McLean)
13 Colour TV Blues (Don McLean)
14 When Love Begins (Don McLean)
15 Crazy Eyes (Don McLean)
16 Castles in the Air (Don McLean)

Mountains of Mourne (Don McLean)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LkFWTi8U

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/1ahFR4GkyPpSONH/file

I don't know much about the cover photo except it was taken at a BBC performance in 1972.

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.

Covered: Ron Miller: 1966-1993

I decided that before I post any more of Stevie Wonder's "Covered" albums, I should post this one, featuring the songwriting of Ron Miller. In writing the write-up for "Volume 1" of Wonder's "Covered" albums, I tried to explain that many of his 1960s hits weren't actually written by him. It turns out that a bunch of them were written by Miller. So even though he wasn't that prolific, this album is kind of a companion piece to the Steve Wonder "Volume 1" album I posted earlier today.

Miller was born in Chicago in 1932. After working some odd jobs, including selling washing machines, he was discovered by Motown head Berry Gordy while playing songs in a bar. Although he was signed to Motown around 1963, he didn't seem like an obvious good fit. His daughter later wrote that he was "a young, Jewish songwriter with a very Rodgers and Hammerstein musical theater writing style." But Gordy wanted some of his musical acts to move into the supper club circuit that catered to the tastes of mainstream white audiences. For instance, in 1967, the Supremes released an album consisting entirely of Rodgers and Hart covers - the same Rodgers who was part of the Rodgers and Hammerstein duo.

At first, Miller wrote a couple of songs for faux Broadway albums for Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. (Gaye's album was actually called "Hello Broadway.") These songs weren't that good, and not in the typical Motown style, so I didn't include them. One of Miller's apparently failed early songs was "For Once in My Life." Co-written by Orlando Murden, who had no other songwriting success worth noting, it was first released by the obscure Jean DuShon in 1966, and went nowhere. About 15 more musical acts covered it over the next two years, including the Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, Tony Bennett, Nanci Wilson, and even Wayne Newton, but none of those versions were hits either.

Then Stevie Wonder gave the song a try in 1967. The song had been written as a slow ballad, and everyone who covered it at first played it that way. However, Wonder gave the song a drastically different upbeat arrangement. Motown head Berry Gordy didn't like it, and vetoed releasing it. But after a full year, he was finally talked into releasing it. It went on to hit Number One in one of the U.S. singles charts, and was a massive hit. It also has become one of the most covered songs of all time, with an estimated 700 versions. 

I mentioned above that Miller wasn't that prolific, at least when it came to conventional soul, pop, or rock songs. He had a whole other career writing songs for musicals, but I didn't really investigate that since he didn't have obvious hits. He generally wrote lyrics, and relied on a variety of co-writers for the melodies. 

If "For Once in My Life" was his only success, there wouldn't have been enough material for even a short album by him. But he had a couple of other massive hits, as well as several minor ones. "Touch Me in the Morning" by Diana Ross seems to have sold even more than "For Once in My Life," also reaching Number One in the U.S., though it hasn't become widely covered. "I've Never Been to Me" was first released as a single by Charlene in 1977, and barely scraped the bottom of the Top 100. But it was rereleased by her in 1982, and for some reason it became a huge smash at that time, reaching Number Three in the U.S., and Number One in Britain and several other countries.

Miller's songwriting successes mostly petered out by the end of the 1970s. However, some of his songs have had long legs with different cover versions. For instance, "If I Could" was first released in 1988, but many big name artists later covered it, such as Celine Dion, who put it on her greatest hits album. He died in 2007 at the age of 74. 

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

Ron Miller (songwriter) - Wikipedia

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 A Place in the Sun (Stevie Wonder)
02 Travelin' Man (Stevie Wonder)
03 Gotta See Jane (R. Dean Taylor)
04 For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
05 Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday (Stevie Wonder)
06 Someday at Christmas (Jackson 5)
07 Heaven Help Us All (Stevie Wonder)
08 Touch Me in the Morning (Diana Ross)
09 Don't Burn Down the Bridge (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 I've Never Been to Me (Charlene)
11 Used to Be (Charlene & Stevie Wonder)
12 If I Could (Ray Charles)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VFN2Zy4Z

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/ZJAMemYYFi0fC2W/file

I found several color photos of Miller. I don't know the details of the one I picked, such as what year it's from. I used Krea AI to improve and enlarge it. I just have to say, if there was a contest for the Motown songwriter who looked most like Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies, he would have been the easy winner!