Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Carole King, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 1-24-2014

I recently started posting MusiCares tribute concerts. Here's another one. This one honors singer-songwriter Carole King, from 2014.

I've celebrated King's music on this blog quite a bit already. For instance, she and her songwriting partner Gerry Goffin are the subject of six albums in the "Covered" series. If there's an award for songwriting, she probably has gotten it, since she's written more hit songs than just about anybody on the planet. Oh, and her 1971 album "Tapestry" has sold over 15 million copies, making it one of the best selling albums of all time, as well as appearing in the Number 25 spot in Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the top 500 albums of all time. Not to shabby. 

This follows the usual format of such benefit concerts. Lost of guest stars performed their versions of King's songs. Then King gave an acceptance speech. Then she played a few songs at the end of the concert. She had a particularly close relationship with James Taylor, going back to the early 1970s, so it's not too surprising that Taylor dueted with her on most of those final songs.

The music here has not been released in audio format. However, it has come out on a DVD. That's how we have a recording, since these MusiCares concerts generally haven't been bootlegged at all. I converted the DVD to audio format, then broke the music into mp3s. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 39 minutes long.

01 talk (emcee)
02 Hi De Ho [That Old Sweet Roll] (LeAnn Rimes & Steven Tyler)
03 So Far Away (Pink with Paul Mirkovich)
04 I Feel the Earth Move (Train)
05 talk (Lady Gaga)
06 You've Got a Friend (Lady Gaga)
07 talk (Gloria Estefan)
08 It's Too Late (Gloria Estefan)
09 talk (will.i.am)
10 Love Makes the World - Where Is the Love (will.i.am & Leah McFall)
11 Beautiful (Sara Bareilles, Zac Brown, Jason Mraz & Raining Jane)
12 Way Over Yonder (Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill & Darlene Love)
13 talk (Joy)
14 Where You Lead (Jesse & Joy)
15 Crying in the Rain (Miguel & Kacey Musgraves)
16 talk (Alicia Keys)
17 [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman (Alicia Keys)
18 Been to Canaan (Jennifer Nettles)
19 I'm into Something Good (Amy Grant)
20 It Might as Well Rain until September (Miranda Lambert)
21 One Fine Day (Martina McBride)
22 Up on the Roof (James Taylor)
23 talk (Neil Portnow)
24 talk (Carole King)
25 Home Again (Carole King, Moez Dawad & Ahmad A. El Haggar)
26 Sweet Seasons (Carole King & James Taylor)
27 talk (Carole King & James Taylor)
28 Hey Girl (Carole King & James Taylor)
29 talk (Carole King & James Taylor)
30 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Carole King & James Taylor)
31 talk (Carole King)
32 Jazzman (Carole King & Tom Scott)
33 I Feel the Earth Move (Carole King & Everyone) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LE6zAFv4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Qi10lCVRGcuAGWH/file

The album cover image is from this exact concert. From left to right: James Taylor, Zac Brown, Carole King, Sara Bareilles, and Jennifer Nettles. (I'm not counting the bald headed man behind King. I don't know who he is.)

Merry Clayton - Please Send Me Someone to Love - Non-Album Tracks (1967-1975)

Merry Clayton had a long history as a backing vocalist for many famous musical acts. She's best known for singing the remarkable female vocals on the classic Rolling Stones song "Gimme Shelter." But she's had an intermittent career as a lead vocalist as well. In particular, I recommend her 1970 album "Gimme Shelter" and her 1971 album "Merry Clayton."

I've also previously posted a short live album from her. Here's the link to that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/11/merry-clayton-soul-wnet-studios-new.html

What I find most interesting about Clayton's music is that she came from a soul and gospel background, yet she got heavily involved with rock and roll due to her singing backing vocals for many rock artists. So her music often consisted of rock songs done in a soul or even gospel style.

You can definitely see that on this collection of stray tracks. For instance, four of the songs here are Bob Dylan covers. She also covers an Elvis Presley song ("Suspicious Minds"), a song by the Who ("Acid Queen"), and a Carole King song ("Oh No, Not My Baby").

Clayton's solo career never really caught fire. She certainly had the talent, with an incredible voice, but she didn't have the luck or whatever the "it" factor is. She was most active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In addition to the albums she put out then, all the songs here are officially released. Four of them are A- or B-sides. The rest are from movie soundtracks or various artists compilations.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Please Send Me Someone to Love (Curtis Amy with Merry Clayton)
02 I Know You Love Me (Sisters Love with Merry Clayton)
02 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Brothers & Sisters of L.A. with Merry Clayton)
03 The Mighty Quinn [Quinn the Eskimo] (Brothers & Sisters of L.A. with Merry Clayton)
04 All Along the Watchtower (Brothers & Sisters of L.A. with Merry Clayton)
05 Poor White Hound Dog (Merry Clayton)
06 Lift Every Voice and Sing [Black National Hymn] (Merry Clayton)
07 Oh No, Not My Baby (Merry Clayton)
08 Suspicious Minds (Merry Clayton)
09 The Acid Queen (Merry Clayton)
10 Jump Back (Tom Scott & the L.A. Express with Merry Clayton)
11 Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow (Merry Clayton)
12 Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35 (Merry Clayton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ry7hztoi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/DOHOXjS25hpkvNg/file

I don't know exactly where or when the cover photo is from, but it looks to be from this time period. I kept the photo exactly as is, with lots of red lighting, and just added the parts above and below it. In February 2025, I upgraded the image with help of the Krea AI program.

Merry Clayton - SOUL!, WNET Studios, New York City, 3-8-1972

By chance, I'm posting this right after posting an album by Dana Gillespie. But I'm glad at the coincidence, because in a better world both of them would have been big stars. They certainly had the talent. If you know Merry Clayton at all, you probably know the fact that she's the female singer who sings some truly amazing vocals on "Gimme Shelter," the classic Rolling Stones song. But she's done a lot more than that.

Vocally, Clayton is very much in the mold of classic Aretha Franklin. She's as soulful as it gets, and she can belt a song out like a diva. She put out two songs in the early 1970s that I highly recommend: "Gimme Shelter" in 1970, and "Merry Clayton" in 1971. But her music career faltered after that. She's continued to sing for decades, but she's only put out three more albums.

So what happened? There are answers to that question in the 2013 documentary film "20 Feet from Stardom," an Academy award winning film about back-up singers. Basically, to make it as a star, you need luck, drive, ambition, charisma, looks, and other key factors. Sheer talent isn't enough. Clayton had all the talent in the world, but lacked some of those other things. So she mostly made a living being a back-up singer. 

You can read more about her at her Wikipedia entry here:

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

I'm mostly interested in her career in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those were peak years for soul music in general, so it's not surprising she was firing on all cylinders then too. I plan on posting a stray tracks album for her from that time. But first, I want to post this live album, because I think it's a good intro for those who aren't familiar with her material.

Because Clayton never became a major artist, we're lucky that there's an live recordings of her from those early years at all. There are basically no bootlegs to speak of, and only a couple of officially released live songs. But thankfully she played a mini-concert on the early 1970s TV show "Soul!" and someone uploaded that to YouTube. I converted that to mp3s. 

Unfortunately, it's not the full show. That's clear, because the last song got cut off. (I didn't include the incomplete song, because there wasn't much of it.) If anyone has the rest, please let me know, so I can present all of it. There are only 24 minutes here from that show. But what there is certainly shows that she had the talent to go toe to toe with Aretha or any other female soul singer of the time. I especially like her cover of Neil Young's "Southern Man." Hearing the song sung by a black person puts it in a different light and adds greatly to its emotional power.

Since what we have of the "Soul!" show is relatively short, I tried to add to it with other live songs by her. But the pickings were extremely slim. I found two songs she did for the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1970. Luckily, those made it to the official album of that concert. I also found a bootleg containing her singing just one song, "Acid Queen," since it was part of bunch of musicians singing the different parts to the Who's concept album "Tommy."

All those songs are from 1970 or 1972. At the end of the album, I've included a song from much, much later, 1989. But I feel it fits in well, because it's a song she did on her 1971 album "Merry Clayton." So it's highly likely she would have played it in 1972. By the way, the song is "Steamroller," which is a cover of a James Taylor song.

One weird thing is that pretty much all the songs had the audience applause cut short. So I did some editing to all the ends of songs to give them more reasonable audience reactions.

The album is 44 minutes long.

01 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Merry Clayton)
02 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Merry Clayton)
03 After All This Time (Merry Clayton)
04 Grandma's Hands - Amazing Grace - Grandma's Hands (Merry Clayton)
05 Southern Man (Merry Clayton)
06 Love Me or Let Me Be Lonely (Merry Clayton)
07 The Acid Queen (Merry Clayton)
08 Steamroller (Merry Clayton)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15284283/MerryClay_1972_SoulWNETStdiosNewYrkC__3-8-1972_atse.zip.html

You may notice this album cover looks very similar to one for an Al Green album I posted. That's because both concerts were played at the same place, for the same TV show, about one year apart. The font for the "Soul!" title was exactly that way for the show, so I figured I would just use that same font and such again.

The photo though, obviously is different than the Al Green one. It was taken in London in 1972.