The Paul Butterfield Blues Band with Muddy Waters - The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA, 10-2-1966

Here's a really great concert by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. At the time, the band was firing on all cylinders with Paul Butterfield on harmonica and Mike Bloomfield playing lead guitar. (Bloomfield would leave for a solo career a year later.) But what really kicks this concert to the next level is that the blues legend Muddy Waters joined them to sing two songs for an encore.

Lucky for us, promoter Bill Graham was running the Fillmore venue at the time, and he often recorded the concerts there. So this is an excellent sounding soundboard, despite the fact that it's still unreleased.

The only problem with this recording was the song "East-West." This is a truly great instrumental, on the cutting edge of improvisational rock in 1966. Each time the band played it, it came out quite differently, so much so that there's an official release just consisting of different versions of this song. Unfortunately, most versions of this song that I've come across get cut off before the song finishes, probably because the song was so long that the tape would run out. That's the case here, with this 18-minute-long version. So I found a different version and added the last 15 seconds or so from that to this version, just long enough to give it a proper finish. That's why this one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

I believe Muddy Waters and his band was on the same bill as the Butterfield Blues Band. At the time, the Fillmore often added musical acts to concerts that weren't just the usual rock acts, to help give the audience a musical education. So that's why there was a cross over, with Muddy Waters joining in for a couple of songs.

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 Shake Your Money Maker (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
02 The Sky Is Crying (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
03 talk (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
04 Oh Pretty Woman (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
05 Help Me (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
06 Never Say No (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
07 talk (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
08 You're So Fine (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
09 talk (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
10 East-West [Instrumental] [Edit] (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
11 talk by Bill Graham (Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Muddy Waters)
12 Clouds in My Heart [Edit] (Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Muddy Waters)
13 talk (Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Muddy Waters)
14 I Got My Mojo Working (Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Muddy Waters)
15 Closing Theme [Instrumental] (Paul Butterfield Blues Band & Muddy Waters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KgY5ip8K

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/vg3LnwD0AJhMLnZ/file

The cover image shows Paul Butterfield playing harmonica on the left and Mike Bloomfield playing guitar on the right. It was taken in New York City, probably in 1966.

Muddy Waters with B.B. King - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 6-19-1974

If you like listening to the blues, what a remarkable concert recording this is! It started out as a concert starring blues legend Muddy Waters and his band performing in a small club in Denver. But then, halfway through, blues legend B.B. King came on stage, playing lead guitar and also singing a couple of songs. I don't know of any other recordings of these two absolute legends performing together like this, so this is a special treat.

I did a little research on this. It turns out King happened to perform at a different venue in Denver that evening. When his show was over, he went to the Waters concert and joined in. At the time, even though Ebbets Field was only a small venue holding a maximum of about 200 people, many of its concerts were broadcast live on a local radio station, and this was one such concert. So that's why we have this recording with excellent sound quality. One can find various "grey market" releases of this, meaning they are put on the market in Europe due to legal loopholes. But none of them are legit, with profits going to the performers (or the performers' estates).

I have to admit there are two instrumentals at the start, before Waters joined the stage, that I cut out. I didn't find them that interesting, and I wanted to get to the "good stuff" with Waters and King. If you're interested in those, check out one of those grey market releases I mentioned.

At the time of this concert, Waters was 61 years old, and already nearing the end of his career. Pretty much all of his classic recordings were behind him, but he was far from done as a performer. In fact, he had a bit of a career renaissance in the late 1970s, thanks to some albums he made with the help of blues musician Johnny Winter. Waters kept performing pretty much right until his death in 1983. By contrast, King was ten years younger, and in the middle of an exceptionally long career. He also kept playing almost until his death, much, much later, in 2015, at the age of 89.

I came across this concert after discovering that there were a whole bunch of great radio broadcasts from this venue in the mid-1970s. In recent days, I posted two other concerts that took place there (Gene Clark and Dan Fogelberg). At some point, I'd like to get around to posting more, but it might be a while until that happens.

By the way, if anyone knows the names of either or both of the instrumentals (tracks 1 and 14), please let me know so I can fix the titles. 

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 Introduction (Muddy Waters)
02 talk (Muddy Waters)
03 My Sweet Little Baby (Muddy Waters)
04 talk (Muddy Waters)
05 Rock Me (Muddy Waters)
06 talk (Muddy Waters)
07 Can't Get No Grindin' [What's the Matter with the Meal] (Muddy Waters)
08 I Got My Mojo Working (Muddy Waters)
09 Forty Days and Forty Nights (Muddy Waters)
10 talk (Muddy Waters)
11 I Know You Didn't Want Me (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
12 talk (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
13 The Thrill Is Gone (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
14 Instrumental (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
15 talk (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
16 Caldonia (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
17 talk by emcee (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wzvyEcr8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/p4WBvfAPdsMuojL/file

The cover photo is a real photo of Waters and King. However, I drastically edited it. The full photo actually shows James Cotton standing between Waters and King, as well as Johnny Winter off to the side. I cropped out Winter, and then used Photoshop to bring Waters and King closer together, cutting out Cotton along the way. It's from a concert at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, on June 29, 1979. Also, it was in black and white. I used the Kolorize program to colorize it.

Muddy Waters & Friends - Blues Summit, PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 7-18-1974

Pretty much since I started this blog in 2018, I've wanted to post an album by blues legend Muddy Waters, but I couldn't find anything worthy. Now I have. This was the very first episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show (after they changed their name from "Made in Chicago" and became a national program, that is), and no doubt they wanted this to be first so they could start with a bang. The episode was titled "Blues Summit," and for good reason. Waters led the show and sang most of the song, but good portion of the biggest names in blues music still alive and active at that time joined him on stage: Junior Wells, Johnny Winter, Dr. John, Willie Dixon, Koko Taylor, Pinetop Perkins, Mike Bloomfield, Buddy Miles, and Nick Gravenites. Wow, what a collection of talent!

This is a must-have for any serious blues fan. It's a great performance with excellent sound quality. So I was surprised how hard it is to find. It had eluded all my previous searches for this sort of thing until a couple of days ago, when I started to hone in on finding Soundstage episodes. I discovered that it was released on DVD (but not on CD) in 2015. However, I had great trouble finding this. For instance, it wasn't on YouTube, other than a lower quality version recorded off the TV that was missing the last two and a half songs. I couldn't even find it on SoulseekQT, and they generally immediately have what I want 99 percent of the time, or, very rarely, it isn't there at all. But luckily, after a couple of days, I finally got a Soulseek hit on someone who had the DVD. I promptly converted that to mp3s, and here you are.

I only had a couple of issues with the recording. There was a voiceover on an instrumental section of the first song, "Blow Wind Blow." That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title, because I removed that talking while keeping the underlying music, thanks to the UVR5 program. The next track was several minutes of people milling backstage and talking to each other. It's a lot more interesting to see the video of blues legends interacting than what can be heard here, so I deleted that track. If interested, check out the YouTube video of it.

The list of artist names per song is woefully incomplete. It would have taken me a long time to figure out exactly who played on what, and then I would have had some very long file names. So instead of that, I generally stuck to mentioning Muddy Waters (since he stayed on stage the entire concert), plus whoever happened to sing lead vocals on any given song, if it was someone instead of, or in addition to, him. That leaves a lot of people unmentioned. For instance, Buddy Miles, a star in his own right, played drums for most of the show, but he isn't mentioned in any of the song credits because he didn't sing lead vocals. 

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Blow Wind Blow [Edit] (Muddy Waters)
02 talk (Muddy Waters)
03 Long Distance Call (Muddy Waters)
04 talk (Muddy Waters)
05 Messin' with the Kid (Muddy Waters with Junior Wells & Nick Gravenites)
06 talk (Muddy Waters)
07 Stop Breaking Down (Muddy Waters with Junior Wells)
08 talk (Muddy Waters)
09 Mannish Boy (Muddy Waters)
10 talk (Muddy Waters)
11 Wang Dang Doodle (Muddy Waters with Willie Dixon & Koko Taylor)
12 talk (Muddy Waters with Johnny Winter)
13 Walking through the Park (Muddy Waters with Johnny Winter)
14 Hoochie Coochie Man (Muddy Waters with Willie Dixon)
15 talk (Muddy Waters)
16 Sugar Sweet (Muddy Waters with Dr. John)
17 I Got My Mojo Working (Muddy Waters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/U8RWbQui

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bPTOCcglRs8dIOc/file

As I watched the video of this concert, I kept an eye out for a spot where I could take a good screenshot for the cover image. But the quality was low-res, and it was rare to get more than one person on screen at the same time, since long distance shots were ruined by the low picture quality. Luckily, I found an image of the DVD cover. That had pictures of four of the stars, taken from the concert, so I used those. That's Muddy Waters at the top left, Johnny Winter at the top right, Dr. John at the bottom left, and Junior Wells at the bottom right. I was able to improve the image quality somewhat with the Krea AI program.

Foghat and Friends - New York Library Benefit Concert, The Palladium, New York City, 9-30-1977

Here's a very unique concert. It has less to do with Foghat and more their special guests, who were blues and R&B legends like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Johnny Winter, and Otis Blackwell.

Foghat is a rock band best known for their 1970s hits "Slow Ride" and "I Just Want to Make Love to You." But the band members were students of the blues. So when the band put together this benefit concert to be broadcast on national TV, they used it as kind of a way to educate the public about blues music. Only the first two songs were performed just by Foghat. After that, the guest stars generally took over, with Foghat only being the backing band. 

All we have of this concert is what made it onto the hour-long TV broadcast. That included some short voice-overs that introduced the guest stars. I just wanted to hear the concert with that, so I cut those bits out whenever possible. When the voice-overs went over the music, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to remove the talking while keeping the underlying music. That's why a few songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

As the show went on, some of the guests stayed on stage. By the last song, "I Just Want to Make Love to You," pretty much everyone was on stage. The song was originally performed by Muddy Waters, and he dominated the performance. But John Lee Hooker, Foghat, and some others had turns singing some of the lead vocals.

I believe everything from this concert remains officially unreleased. But if you want to see it was well as heard it, you should be able to find the video of it on YouTube.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Sweet Home Chicago (Foghat)
02 talk (Foghat)
03 It Hurts Me Too (Foghat)
04 My Baby's Gone [Edit] (Foghat & David 'Honeyboy' Edwards)
05 talk (Foghat)
06 Done Somebody Wrong [Edit] (Foghat & Eddie Kirkland)
07 Love Light [Instrumental] (Foghat & Eddie Kirkland)
08 talk (Foghat)
09 Shake Your Money Maker [Edit] (Foghat & Paul Butterfield)
10 Crawling King Snake (Foghat & John Lee Hooker)
11 talk (Foghat)
12 All Shook Up [Edit] (Foghat & Otis Blackwell)
13 talk (Foghat & Otis Blackwell)
14 Don't Be Cruel (Foghat & Otis Blackwell)
15 talk (Foghat & Johnny Winter)
16 Last Night (Foghat & Johnny Winter)
17 talk (Foghat & Muddy Waters)
18 Hoochie Coochie Man (Foghat & Muddy Waters)
19 I Just Want to Make Love to You (Foghat, Muddy Waters & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/etpduLpH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5biynw2DBpUZmMR/file

The cover comes from this exact concert. I believe that's Dave Peverett, lead vocalist of Foghat, with Muddy Waters looking at him.