Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary - Madison Square Garden, New York City, 5-14-1988, Part 1: Nu Shooz, Stacey Q, The Coasters, Phil Collins, LaVern Baker, Foreigner, Iron Butterfly, & Laura Branigan

Here's another big benefit concert. As I've mentioned before, I think these tend to get overlooked, except for the portions performed by really famous musical acts. In this case, the concert is best known for the second Led Zeppelin 1980s reunion, after they reunited for Live Aid in 1985. But there's so much more to this, including other interesting reunions. 

The entire concert was about 12 hours long. I didn't find all of it, but I found the vast majority of it. Presumably, a big chunk of those 12 hours was dead time between acts. I was able to find six hours of music. I've broken that up into five albums.

This was a rather unusual concert, in that it celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Atlantic Records record company. I'd be hard pressed to think of any other records companies celebrated like this, other than Motown Records. And it's odd that it was a 40th anniversary concert with no similar one for the 25th anniversary, or 30th, or 50th, etc... But it was probably lucky that it happened when it did, before some of the older acts retired or passed on. Atlantic Records had an interesting history in that it started out in the 1950s as the most important record company for R&B music before branching out into all musical genres. So a lot of the 1950s and 1960s stars that made the record company successful were able to perform at this concert.

I found a newspaper article that explains a little bit about how this concert came to be. When the show was first planned, the idea was to have a smaller auditorium and invite just a couple thousand people, mainly Atlantic Records employees and special guests. Ken Ehrlich, who produced the show, explained, "When it first started, it was to be a two-hour black-tie event at Radio City Music Hall. But I said to [Atlantic Records founder and president] Ahmet [Ertegun]: 'You've made music for kids, now you want to invite your friends to a party. You have to do it at [Madison Square] Garden. You want kids to scream and yell.' Eventually, the size dictated that we do it at the Garden. We wanted to reflect 40 years and reach a new audience. I want 15-year-old kids to see Ruth Brown and the Coasters."

The concert was a curious mix of self-promotion and charity. The self-promotion was first that the record company was patting itself on its back while also using the concert to promote some of their young and up and coming acts. But at the same time, the concert was expected to make at least 10 million dollars in profits due to selling TV broadcast and radio broadcast rights, and all of that money was to go to charity. Furthermore, most of the charity money was sent to the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, a charity created by the record company to basically give their legacy acts the profits they deserved but had been screwed out of back in the 1950s and 60s.

Before I say more, I want to point out that while many big names did perform at this concert, many other long-time Atlantic Records artists did not. The ones who didn't perform included Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Cream, the Allman Brothers Band, the Rolling Stones, INXS, King Crimson, Dusty Springfield, Hall and Oates, Peter Gabriel, and Chic. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Probably the biggest miss was the Rolling Stones. But they'd had a big falling out in the early 1980s and wouldn't reunite until a year later.

As far as I know, a couple of hours of highlights from this concert has been officially released on DVD, but nothing has appeared on album. So I've had to rely on bootlegs. The most easily accessible version of the concert is a portion that was broadcast on the HBO cable network. But that was less than half. Parts of it were also broadcast on ABC TV. Furthermore, other parts were broadcast on other networks. I found some bits from a German broadcast, for instance. Apparently, the entire show was broadcast on BBC, in one-hour weekly segments. But I haven't been able to find that anywhere. If anyone has any parts that I've missed, please let me know so I can add those bits in.

I've done my best to put this together as it really happened, but it's hard because I haven't been able to get a definitive list of the order of the performers. Still, the different versions did have a lot in common, and I've found clues from newspaper articles, so I've made best guesses. 

Let me mention some of the bits that I think are still missing from this portion of the show. Apparently, Crosby, Stills and Nash performed the song "Southern Cross" to open the show, and then returned for a longer set near the end of the show. LeVert did the song "Casanova." Bobby Short played two songs: "Hop Scotch Blues" and "Black and Blue." Rachelle Cappelli sang "The Truth'll Set You Free" plus an Aretha Franklin cover. LaVern Baker also did the song "Tweedle Dee." 

Note also that I have some introduction of acts, but I'm probably missing about half of those. In some cases, famous people who didn't perform themselves did the introductions, while in other cases performers from other parts of the show did the introductions. So, for instance in this part, Marv Albert, a sports broadcaster, introduced the Coasters. But Foreigner was introduced by Roberta Flack, who sang later in the show.

One notable event from this part of the show was the reunion of the Coasters. They were one of the biggest acts on the Atlantic label in the 1950s and early 1960s. But this was the first time the original members performed together in about twenty years.

Here's a Wikipedia article about the concert. But note that it doesn't say much, and its list of performers is incomplete and mostly follows the HBO broadcast:

Atlantic Records 40th anniversary - Wikipedia

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long.

001 talk (Robert Townshend)
002 Should I Say Yes - I Can't Wait (Nu Shooz)
003 Two of Hearts (Stacey Q)
004 talk (Marv Albert)
005 That Is Rock and Roll (Coasters)
006 Youngblood (Coasters)
007 Charlie Brown (Coasters)
008 I'm a Hog for You (Coasters)
009 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
010 talk (Phil Collins)
011 Jim Dandy (LaVern Baker)
012 Saved (LaVern Baker)
013 talk (Roberta Flack)
014 Hot Blooded (Foreigner)
015 Urgent (Foreigner)
016 talk (Foreigner)
017 I Want to Know What Love Is (Foreigner)
018 Juke Box Hero (Foreigner)
019 In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Iron Butterfly)
020 Gloria (Laura Branigan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kCLD3BmR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ksQX0KcmnRSwASW/file

The cover photo of the Coasters is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - Covered: Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Volume 2: 1959-1962

I've put together three albums of the best of the songwriting team Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. I feel like posting all three at once, so here's the second one in the series.

This volume covers the years of their commercial and creative peak. So it only deals with four years, a lot less than for the other two volumes. The first volume was dominated by Elvis Presley songs, with nine. There are only two songs performed by him this time.

There are five song by the Coasters. There would have been one more, but I went with a version of "Three Cool Cats" by the Beatles. The Coasters had a minor hit with the song, while the Beatles were nobodies at the time. In fact, their recording comes from an early audition to try to win a record contract. But of course, they're the Beatles. ;)

01 Kansas City (Wilbert Harrison)
02 Along Came Jones (Coasters)
03 Dance with Me (Drifters)
04 That Is Rock and Roll (Coasters)
05 Love Potion No. 9 (Clovers)
06 There Goes My Baby (Drifters)
07 Charlie Brown (Coasters)
08 Smokey Joe's Cafe (Buddy Holly)
09 Saved (LaVern Baker)
10 Dirty, Dirty Feeling (Elvis Presley)
11 Shoppin' for Clothes (Coasters)
12 Stand by Me (Ben E. King)
13 Don Juan (LaVern Baker)
14 Little Egypt [Ying-Yang] (Coasters)
15 Spanish Harlem (Ben E. King)
16 Your Old Lady (Isley Brothers)
17 Some Other Guy (Richie Barrett)
18 She's Not You (Elvis Presley)
19 I Keep Forgettin' (Chuck Jackson)
20 Three Cool Cats (Beatles)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17180180/COVRDLeibStllr1959-1962Volum2_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

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

As I mentioned in my write-up for volume 1, I don't like using black and white photos for the cover art. Luckily, I figured out a way to colorize such photos, so that's what I did for this one.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Volume 1: 1952-1958

So far with this blog, I'm been prioritizing posting stray tracks compilation albums for individual artists, since those usually can't be found elsewhere. But there are other things I want to post, and one major category is various artists compilations. So far, I've posted a little bit of that, especially my series of "Nuggets" compilations sorted by country. I still plan on posting the US and Britain compilations in that series, but I have to figure out how to organize it into manageable pieces. In the meantime, I'm going to start this new series, which I call "Covered."

In my opinion, songwriters are drastically underappreciated. I believe that, in the long run, the quality of the song matters more than the performance. But of course the performer gets nearly all the fame and glory, in the same way that movie stars are usually much better known than directors, producers, or screenwriters. In this series, I want to highlight some of the greatest songwriters, or songwriting teams, of all time. Some in this series, such as Carole King or Smokey Robinson, have been major performing stars as well, but I plan on looking exclusively at songs performed by others.

Sometimes, there have been various artists collections along these lines. For instance, there have been a couple of pretty good box sets dealing with the music of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. But even with the best official efforts, there are licensing problems that mean key songs are left out. On the flip side, there usually are many songs included that aren't that good. I'm making exactly what pleases me. I'm trying to include all the big hits, but if there's one I don't like, I'll probably resort to using a version of that song by someone else, or maybe not include it at all. And there usually are rarities that I do like and weren't hits at all.

The first in this series is the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, because their success goes way back to the early 1950s. I'm not going to recount their story. If you don't know who they are, check out their Wikipedia entry as a starting point to learn more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Leiber_and_Mike_Stoller

In short, they wrote over 70 hits, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, and are undoubtedly one of the best songwriting teams of all time. They produced a great number of hits as well, and ran their own record company. They especially fed a lot of hits to the Coasters and to Elvis Presley. I've usually selected the original hit, but sometimes I went with an alternate, especially because I didn't want to overload this with Coasters and Elvis performances. So, for instance, I went with Big Mama Thornton's version of "Hound Dog" instead of Presley's. Also, my rule is to only include one version of a particular song, even if two or more artists had big hits with it.

As I mentioned above, I try to include the hits, but not if I don't like them. For this album, probably the only controversial choice is that I don't like "Loving You" by Presley. I find it slow, it a boring and overdone manner. But it was a huge hit. So I found a rare fast version that I like much better, and I've included that instead.

I've broken up this collection into three albums of about 50 minutes of music each. This is the first. For all albums in this "Covered" series, the songs are ordered chronologically by year. But I don't go into enough detail to figure out the release order within each year.

01 Hard Times (Charles Brown)
02 Nosey Joe (Bull Moose Jackson)
03 Hound Dog (Big Mama Thornton)
04 Riot in Cell Block No. 9 (Robins)
05 I Smell a Rat (Big Mama Thornton)
06 Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots (Cheers)
07 Down in Mexico (Coasters)
08 Love Me (Elvis Presley)
09 Jailhouse Rock (Elvis Presley)
10 Fools Fall in Love (Drifters)
11 [You're So Square] Baby I Don't Care (Elvis Presley)
12 Lucky Lips (Ruth Brown)
13 Loving You [Fast Version] (Elvis Presley)
14 Santa Claus Is Back in Town (Elvis Presley)
15 Young Blood (Coasters)
16 Treat Me Nice (Elvis Presley)
17 Framed (Ritchie Valens)
18 Trouble (Elvis Presley)
19 King Creole (Elvis Presley)
20 Yakety Yak (Coasters)
21 Don't (Elvis Presley)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17180184/COVRDLeibStllr1952-1958Volum1_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kVpYpkqc

As usual, I don't like using black and white photos for the cover art. But I couldn't find any color photos of Leiber and Stoller from the 1950s, so I colorized this one. I believe it dates from 1959. Leiber is on the left.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.