Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 8: December 1969 to February 1970

Here's the seventh volume of the episodes I compiled of the "Playboy After Dark" TV show. It's the third volume of the show's second season.

I'll only mention some things about a couple of the performances. The rest should be evident just by listening. 

This episode features a previously unknown chapter of Lesley Gore's music career. She'd had a string of hits from 1963 to 1967, but her music went out of style. She continued to release some singles, but they all flopped. In 1972, she put out an album for the first time since 1967, "Someplace Else Now," that recast her in a singer-songwriter mode, similar to Carole King and her seminal 1971 album "Tapestry." In her Playboy TV appearance, she sang two songs that were moving into that mode. Neither of them were officially released by her anywhere, as far as I could tell. One of them, "Didn't We," is a Jimmy Webb song that was covered by many musical artists in this time period. 

Another bit of lost history are the two songs by Joanne Vent and Muscatel. Vent was an attractive White woman with a soulful, bluesy voice, who seemed to have potential for a big music career, a la Janis Joplin. She put out a solo album in 1969, called, "The Black and White of It Is Blues." Unfortunately, as one review I read put it, "Great voice, but not such a great album." At the time of this show, she was getting ready to release a second album with a new backing band, called Muscatel. I found a web link of someone selling a test pressing of it on eBay. But somehow that album never came out. The two songs she sang here suggest what her second album could have sounded like. She also was part of a duet in Volume 5, and shows up again in Volumes 10 and 11.

It's great that Fleetwood Mac is included here. But unfortunately, their performance was badly edited down. Their one song, "Rattlesnake Shake," is only two and a half minutes long. It's clear the performance was longer, since the song both fades in and fades out. They also did a second song, "Coming Your Way," but it only showed up for half a minute at the very end of that particular episode, under an overdubbed advertisement for T.W.A. Airlines. So I didn't bother to include that.

I've mentioned that each episode ended with talking over the music. But, by chance, that only impacted one song in this volume,  "The Category Stomp by John Hartford. That's why that one has "[Edit]" in its title.

This album is an hour and eight minutes long. 

01 Something (Dolores Hall)
02 Just Because of You (Dolores Hall)
03 A Simple Thing as Love (John Hartford)
04 Natural to Be Gone (John Hartford)
05 The Category Stomp [Edit] (John Hartford)
06 Let's Get Together (Jack Jones)
07 If You Want Me To (Chambers Brothers)
08 Love, Love, Love (Chambers Brothers)
09 Georgia on My Mind (James Brown)
10 Yesterday (Vicki Anderson)
11 By the Time I Get to Phoenix (James Brown)
12 God Bless the Child (Jack Jones)
13 The More I See You (Jack Jones)
14 Rattlesnake Shake (Fleetwood Mac)
15 Hello Young Lovers (Lesley Gore)
16 Didn't We (Lesley Gore)
17 High Sheriff of Calhoun Parrish (Tony Joe White)
18 Groupy Girl (Tony Joe White)
19 Slow Train (Joanne Vent & Muscatel)
20 Long Walk to D.C. (Joanne Vent & Muscatel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JdGHbzj8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/HAcJNqwRYyI9p09/file

The cover image shows Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac. It's a screenshot I took from one of these episodes.

Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 4: November to December 1968

Here's the fourth volume of the episodes I compiled of the "Playboy After Dark" TV show. 

Imagine having James Brown in his musical prime perform for you and a small circle of friends in your living room! As you can see from the cover art for this volume, that's exactly what happened on this T.V. show. Except instead of it being your living room, it was a duplicate of the living room of Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion in Chicago, redone to allow filming in ideal conditions in Los Angeles. But basically all the performances on all the volumes in this series are like that, with a couple dozen of people gathered around the musical act. And, also as you can see from the cover image, there was a suspiciously high number of very beautiful women there. Naturally, a lot of them were Playboy models.

It so happens there's a good number of soul music acts on this volume. If anyone knows the name of the instrumental performed by Buddy Miles, tell me so I can fix the song title.

By the way, Three Dog Night appeared on the show another time, but that performance was lip-synced. But luckily, this one was not. 

It seems Playboy head Hugh Hefner had a lot of say over which musical acts were included. He seems to have had a personal preference from pre-rock and roll crooners. So we got an unusually big spot here for Sammy Davis, Jr., who got to play six songs instead of the usual two or three. 

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

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

01 Who Can I Turn To (Marva Whitney)
02 Celebrate (Three Dog Night)
03 Your Love (Marva Whitney)
04 Love Me So Hard (Three Dog Night)
05 If I Ruled the World (James Brown)
06 Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud (James Brown)
07 [Sittin' On] The Dock of the Bay (Checkmates, Ltd.)
08 I Can't Turn You Loose (Checkmates, Ltd.)
09 I Got You Babe (Buddy Miles)
10 Instrumental (Buddy Miles)
11 Tell Me All the Things (Joanie Sommers)
12 I Feel Fine (Joanie Sommers)
13 Just Squeeze Me [But Don't Tease Me] (Lou Rawls)
14 That's You (Lou Rawls)
15 Washington at Valley Forge (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band)
16 talk (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band)
17 Alligator Man (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band)
18 Your Red Wagon (Lou Rawls)
19 I've Gotta Be Me (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
20 The Joker Is Me - I'm Feeling Good - In My Dreams (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
21 What Kind of Fool Am I (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
22 Who Can I Turn To (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
23 Once in My Lifetime (Sammy Davis, Jr. & Anthony Newley)
24 Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody (Sammy Davis, Jr. & Jerry Lewis)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NDa7p1Cd

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/RayW1R6CnlrWuAa/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took of James Brown from one of the episodes in this volume. 

Various Artists - The TAMI Show, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA, 10-29-1964

When I recently posted the 1964 NME Poll Winners' Concert, I got a request to post another stellar 1964, known as "The TAMI Show." Like the NME concerts, this has to be one of the greatest collection of musical talent on one stage in the 1960s. The TAMI Show was made for a movie, which was released at the end of 1964. But I haven't seen just the audio available. So I converted a video of the movie into audio and chopped it into mp3s.

There's so much to say about the TAMI Show. I'm going to try to be relatively brief. It seems some clever people decided that rock music was all the rage in 1964, so if they could get enough big stars together for a concert, it would make a profitable movie. They did, and it did. The result was a classic, regularly cited as one of the best music movies of all time. In 2006, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

The key about the concert is that all the songs were performed live, at a time when lip-syncing was standard for TV appearances. Jan and Dean emceed the concert. They also performed its theme song, "Here They Come (From All Over the World)", written by songwriters P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. The concert brought together some British Invasion bands (Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, and the Rolling Stones) with Motown acts (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes), plus some other big names, like the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, and Lesley Gore.

The concert is probably best known for the performance by James Brown, and for good reason. The whole thing is worth watching, but especially his part. The Police even immortalized it in their song "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around," with the lyric:  

Turn on my V.C.R. 
Same one I've had for years
James Brown on the T.A.M.I. Show
Same tape I've had for years

In other words, Sting (who wrote that song) has a video of the TAMI Show, and is fascinated by James Brown's performance, watching it over and over. It's easy to see why. Brown's dancing is so extraordinary, it almost defies the laws of physics. He was moonwalking, and more, back when Michael Jackson was just a little baby. The lyrics are also interesting in that the TAMI Show was very hard to find for decades, generally only being available as a bootleg video, so that probably was an especially prized possession for Sting. It was finally remastered and rereleased as a DVD in 2010.

I worked from the DVD version, converted it to audio, and chopped it into mp3s. The sound quality isn't great, but it's as good as you could hope for from a 1964 concert. The lead vocals were rather low in the mix, so I used the UVR5 program to boost them relative to the instruments.

There was some controversy at the time whether James Brown or the Rolling Stones should be the final act in the show. At the time, the Stones had barely toured the U.S. at all. In fact, this would be only the third stop on their first big U.S. tour. But they were rapidly rising stars, enough for them to be chosen as the final act. However, James Brown wasn't pleased about that, and made sure to steal the show.

Mick Jagger, lead singers for the Stones, later said, "James Brown was probably the best thing about our trip. He is a fantastic artist. When you've seen him, you've seen the act to end all acts. We appeared with him on the TAMI Show and we had to follow him. It was a disaster in a way because nobody can follow James Brown, it’s impossible." Despite the competition, it was a friendly rivalry, and they were on good terms with him when they crossed his path at various times in later years.

By the way, the "TAMI Show" stood for either "Teenage Awards Music International" and "Teen Age Music International" - the producers were inconsistent about the meaning. The fact that they were inconsistent shows it didn't really matter much. Apparently, they just wanted an interesting sounding acronym. 

Here's a good article about the concert, written in 2025, if you want to know more:

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/teenagers-world-unite-2/

And here's the Wikipedia article:

T.A.M.I. Show - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and 52 minutes long. 

01 [Here They Come] From All Over the World (Jan & Dean)
02 talk (emcee)
03 talk (Jan & Dean)
04 Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)
05 Maybellene (Chuck Berry & Gerry & the Pacemakers)
06 Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
07 It's Gonna Be Alright (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
08 Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
09 How Do You Do It (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
10 Nadine (Chuck Berry)
11 I Like It (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
12 That's What Love Is Made Of (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
13 You've Really Got a Hold on Me (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
14 Mickey's Monkey (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
15 Stubborn Kind of Fellow (Marvin Gaye)
16 Pride and Joy (Marvin Gaye)
17 Can I Get a Witness (Marvin Gaye)
18 Hitch Hike (Marvin Gaye)
19 talk (Jan & Dean)
20 Maybe I Know (Lesley Gore)
21 You Don't Own Me (Lesley Gore)
22 You Didn't Look Around (Lesley Gore)
23 Hey Now (Lesley Gore)
24 It's My Party - Judy's Turn to Cry (Lesley Gore)
25 The Little Old Lady from Pasadena (Jan & Dean)
26 Sidewalk Surfin' [Surfin' Safari] (Jan & Dean)
27 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys)
28 I Get Around (Beach Boys)
29 Surfer Girl (Beach Boys)
30 Dance, Dance, Dance (Beach Boys)
31 Little Children (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
32 Bad to Me (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
33 I'll Keep You Satisfied (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
34 From a Window (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
35 When the Lovelight Starts Shining through His Eyes (Supremes)
36 Run, Run, Run (Supremes)
37 Baby Love (Supremes)
38 Where Did Our Love Go (Supremes)
39 Hey Little Bird (Barbarians)
40 talk (Jan & Dean)
41 Out of Sight (James Brown)
42 Prisoner of Love (James Brown)
43 Please, Please, Please (James Brown)
44 Night Train (James Brown)
45 Around and Around (Rolling Stones)
46 Off the Hook (Rolling Stones)
47 Time Is on My Side (Rolling Stones)
48 It's All Over Now (Rolling Stones)
49 I'm Alright (Rolling Stones)
50 Let's Get Together (Rolling Stones & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vRghL7X4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/IlezlVz2skiZmQ5/file

Since James Brown had the most renowned performance in this concert, I decided it was fitting to have a photo of him on the cover. That photo is from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. All the other text and graphics comes from original promotional material for the concert. But I used Photoshop to do some repositioning and other editing.

The O'Jays with James Brown - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 9-14-1974

Damn, there's so much good music I'm discovering from these "Midnight Special" TV shows. It's going to take me months to get through it all, I'm sure. (And there's more episodes being reposted weekly.) Here's an episode with the O'Jays as the main host. But James Brown is a prominently featured guest too. So this is a non-stop, funky soulfest.

The O'Jays were very big in 1973. In 1973, their song "Love Train" reached Number One on the main U.S. singles chart, and in 1974, "For the Love of Money" made it all the way to Number Three. Plus they had even more success on the U.S. R&B singles chart. So it made sense they would be hosts for an episode of this show.

James Brown was also doing very well. While he didn't have any really big hits, he had a seemingly continual stream of Top Forty hits. Three of the songs he performed here, "The Payback," "Papa Don't Take No Mess," and "My Thang," were Top Forty hits in 1974 (again, I'm referring to the main singles chart, not the R&B chart, where he did even better). Unfortunately, his winning streak would soon come to an end for a long time. After 1974, he wouldn't have another Top Forty hit until 1985. 

When I made a poll about potential Midnight Special albums, I put James Brown on there. I thought I would have enough material for an album by him, but unfortunately it turns out there's only enough for this shared album with the O'Jays. At least for now, that is. In 1976, he would actually host the show twice. So I'll hopefully have an album for that once it gets posted on YouTube.

The O'Jays were on the show twice before this, both in 1973. For one of them, they did a duet version of "Love Train" with Lou Rawls. I think I'll stick that on a different album eventually. For another, the May 11, 1973 episode, the did a version of "Love Train" on their own. That was lucky for me, because the version here was mostly cut off, due to the TV broadcast ending. So I was able to take the last two plus minutes of that 1973 version to finish off the version here. That's what that song has "[Edit]" in its title.

The only song that's from a different episode is "Get on the Good Foot." James Brown returned to the show just one month later, playing two songs for the October 18, 1974 episode: "Papa Don't Take No Mess" and "Get on the Good Foot." I didn't include that version of "Papa Don't Take No Mess" since he did a version of it here already. But I did include the rare "Get on the Good Foot" (especially since it's possibly my favorite James Brown song). 

I was a bit surprised that the O'Jays and James Brown didn't perform a song together. They would have made a good match. Oh well. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. As usual for this show, I did a lot of editing, adding in audience applause to smooth the transitions between songs.

This album is 49 minutes long. 

01 Put Your Hands Together Intro (O'Jays)
02 Put Your Hands Together (O'Jays)
03 People Keep Tellin' Me - Time to Get Down (O'Jays)
04 This Air I Breathe - 992 Arguments (O'Jays)
05 Backstabbers - People Keep Tellin' Me (O'Jays)
06 The Payback (James Brown)
07 Cold Sweat (James Brown)
08 Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (James Brown)
09 For the Love of Money (O'Jays)
10 Hell (James Brown)
11 Papa Don't Take No Mess (James Brown)
12 Sunshine (O'Jays)
13 My Thang (James Brown)
14 Get on the Good Foot (James Brown)
15 Love Train [Edit] (O'Jays) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/w6CJgGNb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/haNPB3PzACjWgPz/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

James Brown - Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA, 9-16-1966

Here's a James Brown concert from 1966.

I usually don't post much live music from Brown, because there's been a large number of official live albums released already. However, it's very rare to have a recording from this far back with this pristine sound quality, even though it's a bootleg. Also, I don't think there have been any official live releases from 1966. And this recording seems to have stayed surprisingly obscure, so hopefully this post will help spread it around.

At the time of this release, Brown's most recent single hit was "Money Won't Change You." That's probably why it was emphasized, getting played once at the start and then again at the end. " It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World" was also emphasized, making up most of a 14-minute-long medley, as that was a big hit earlier in the year.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 talk by emcee (James Brown)
02 The King [Instrumental] (James Brown)
03 Money Won't Change You (James Brown)
04 Try Me (James Brown)
05 Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (James Brown)
06 Prisoner of Love (James Brown)
07 Maybe the Last Time (James Brown)
08 I Got You [I Feel Good] (James Brown)
09 talk (James Brown)
10 It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World - Lost Someone (James Brown)
11 When a Man Loves a Woman - It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World [Reprise] (James Brown)
12 Please, Please, Please (James Brown)
13 Money Won't Change You [Reprise] (James Brown)
14 talk by emcee (James Brown)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oR9hd5be

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/9aejtTgDWUBJ6mu/file

The cover photo shows Brown on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1966. I used the Krea AI program to improve the image quality. For the name at the top, I used a concert poster from the 1960s.

James Brown - Keystone, Berkeley, CA, 1-30-1982

Good God, poeple! Take it to the bridge! Here's Jaaaaameeeees Brooooown!

I've long wanted to post something here by James Brown, since he is one of the soul music greats. However, my policy is to only post worthy music, and there have been so many zillions of James Brown albums officially released, including about 30 live albums, that I didn't come across anything worthy. 

But that's finally changed. I came across an unreleased concert that has excellent sound quality and performance, plus a great selection of songs. Also, it's from a time, the early 1980s, when there are no official live albums (at least that I know of). In fact, if you just wanted one James Brown live album from the second half of his career, it would be hard to beat this one, official or not.

Brown had a pretty rough time in the late 1970s. Disco was all the rage, largely replacing his style of funky soul music. His sales plummeted. He tried disco, but it didn't work. Thankfully, by the time of this concert, disco fever had broken. Brown wisely went back to doing the funky soul he did so well. Although this concert was recorded in 1982, the set list and performance could have easily come from 1974.

Brown did two shows on this evening. Most of the music here is from the first show. But he played three different songs in the late show, so I added those to the end. 

This concert is 55 minutes long.

01 Show Intro (James Brown)
02 James Brown Intro (James Brown)
03 The Payback (James Brown)
04 It's Too Funky in Here (James Brown)
05 Doing It to Death (James Brown)
06 Try Me (James Brown)
07 Talk with Me (James Brown)
08 Get on the Good Foot (James Brown)
09 Prisoner of Love (James Brown)
10 I Got the Feelin' (James Brown)
11 It's a Man's Man's Man's World (James Brown)
12 Cold Sweat (James Brown)
13 Please Please Please (James Brown)
14 Jam (James Brown)
15 [Get Up I Feel like Being A] Sex Machine (James Brown)
16 Georgia on My Mind (James Brown)
17 Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (James Brown)
18 I Got You [I Feel Good] (James Brown)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16036901/JmesBrwn_1982_KystneBerkelyCA__1-30-1982_atse.zip.html

The cover photo isn't from this exact concert, but it's close. It's from a concert only one day later, in Reseda, California. With the text, I drew upon the style of old James Brown concert posters for inspiration with the font type and colors and so forth.