Buffy Saint-Marie - BBC In Concert, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 11-11-1992

Here's a BBC concert by American singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. 

I've already discussed Sainte-Marie some when I posted a "Songwriters' Circle" album that she was involved in. You can read more about her there, including a Wikipedia link to even more:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2025/01/donovan-buffy-sainte-marie-roger-cook.html

I'll just add some more information relevant to this album. Sainte-Marie had a successful career in the 1960s and early 1970s. But then she went 16 years without releasing an album of new music. That changed in 1992, with her album "Coincidence and Likely Stories." It was mostly ignored in the U.S., failing to make the charts. But it got a better reception in Britain, even resulting in two minor hit singles there. "The Big Ones Get Away" in particular made the Top Forty. So the songs here are about an even split between those from her most recent album at the time and her best known songs from earlier in her career.

This concert has been pretty much impossible to find on the Internet, as far as I could tell. But musical associate Progsprog had a copy and passed it on to me. So a big thanks to him. 

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

This album is 56 minutes long. 

01 talk (Buffy Saint-Marie)
02 Getting Started (Buffy Saint-Marie)
03 talk (Buffy Saint-Marie)
04 The Piney Wood Hills (Buffy Saint-Marie)
05 talk (Buffy Saint-Marie)
06 The Big Ones Get Away (Buffy Saint-Marie)
07 I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again (Buffy Saint-Marie)
08 talk (Buffy Saint-Marie)
09 Disinformation (Buffy Saint-Marie)
10 talk (Buffy Saint-Marie)
11 Universal Soldier (Buffy Saint-Marie)
12 talk (Buffy Saint-Marie)
13 Fallen Angels (Buffy Saint-Marie)
14 Until It's Time for You to Go (Buffy Saint-Marie)
15 talk (Buffy Saint-Marie)
16 Bad End (Buffy Saint-Marie)
17 Soldier Blue (Buffy Saint-Marie)
18 talk (Buffy Saint-Marie)
19 The Priests of the Golden Bull (Buffy Saint-Marie)
20 talk (Buffy Saint-Marie)
21 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Buffy Saint-Marie)
22 talk (Buffy Saint-Marie)
23 Starwalker (Buffy Saint-Marie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/STUM34h7

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/chFZzhQhYHoMKP7/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Paris, France, on February 22, 1993. 

Donovan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, & Roger Cook - Songwriters' Circle, Porchester Hall, London, Britain, 10-14-2011

I recently got a couple requests to post a BBC album by Buffy Sainte-Marie. I looked, and it seems there's only a couple of songs here and there, not nearly enough for an album. However, I remembered I have this, and I've been trying to make a point of posting more of these interesting "Songwriters' Circle" concerts. So here you are, with Donovan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Roger Cook.

As usual, this BBC TV program brought together three talented and famous singer-songwriters, and had them take turns performing their own songs in solo acoustic mode. In this case more than most episodes of this show, I feel the three musicians liked each other and the music they made. One can hear this with some of the between-song banter, as well as they way they supported each other on some songs with backing vocals and such. In the case of Donovan and Buffy Sainte-Marie, their musical connection went way back, because Donovan covered Sainte-Marie's song "Universal Soldier" in 1965 and had a hit with it, which was the first big commercial success for both him and Sainte-Marie.

I've posted a lot of Donovan's music at this blog already, with more planned to come, so I don't feel the need to introduce him. Sainte-Marie was one of the most famous female singer-songwriters in the 1960s and 70s. But while she had some success with her own songs, for instance "Soldier Blue" reached the Top Ten in Britain and many other countries in 1971, she's had more success with others covering her songs. The most prominent example of this is "Up Where We Belong." She started it, and it was finished off by two professional songwriters. A duet version by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes reached Number One in the U.S. singles chart in 1982, and was one of the biggest hits of the year.

I'm writing this in 2025. In recent years, Sainte-Marie has faced controversy because she prominently identified as Native American for her entire music career, but a 2023 investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) concluded that this wasn't true, and she is of English and Italian descent. She has since stated, "My mother told me that I was adopted and that I was Native, but there was no documentation as was common for Indigenous children at the time," and "I don't know where I'm from or who my birth parents are, and I will never know." She hasn't attempted to settle the dispute by publicly posting DNA results.

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

Buffy Sainte-Marie - Wikipedia

Roger Cook never had a successful music career of his own. However, he was an extremely successful professional songwriter, writing dozens of hits from the 1960s to the 1980s, often in partnership with Roger Greenaway. I would say more, except I plan on posting his hits in my "Covered" songwriter series. So I'll wait for more of an explanation there.

Here's his Wikipedia page:

Roger Cook (songwriter) - Wikipedia

This unreleased concert has been available as a video on YouTube, but I haven't seen it as an audio bootleg. I found a high quality version of the video and converted that to audio, and broke it into mp3s.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 Sunshine Superman (Donovan)
02 talk (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
03 Until It's Time for You to Go (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
04 talk (Roger Cook)
05 Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart (Roger Cook)
06 talk (Donovan)
07 Catch the Wind (Donovan)
08 talk (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
09 Codine (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
10 talk (Roger Cook)
11 You've Got Your Troubles (Roger Cook)
12 talk (Donovan)
13 Colours (Donovan)
14 talk (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
15 Little Wheel Spin and Spin (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
16 talk (Roger Cook)
17 Talking in Your Sleep (Roger Cook)
18 talk (Donovan)
19 Lalena (Donovan)
20 talk (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
21 I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
22 talk (Roger Cook)
23 I Believe in You (Roger Cook)
24 talk (Donovan)
25 Mellow Yellow (Donovan)
26 talk (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
27 Up Where We Belong (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
28 talk (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
29 Universal Soldier (Buffy Sainte-Marie)
30 talk (Roger Cook)
31 I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (Roger Cook)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZPW7vK93

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/user/files/Anj3vGR3SMp1NMU/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It's a screenshot I took from a YouTube video, so the quality isn't the best. I improved it slightly with the Krea AI program.