Ralph McTell - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Cambridge Folk Festival, Cherry Hinton Hall Grounds, Cambridge, Britain, 6-28-1984

Here's another BBC album by British singer-songwriter Ralph McTell. This is a concert recorded at the annual Cambridge Folk Festival, in 1984.

To be honest, I'm still not very familiar with McTell's music, other than the two BBC albums I've posted from him so far. But I've enjoyed what I've heard, and I saw that musical friend Progsprog had this in his music collection, so I asked him to pass it on to me. This seems to be another case where this album hasn't been publicly available, or at least it's been so hard to find that I couldn't track it down anywhere. Hopefully that'll change now, because this is a nice acoustic performance with excellent sound quality. 

At the time of this concert, McTell hadn't put out a regular studio album since 1982. But he was getting a higher profile through TV and radio work, including hosting his own BBC radio show in 1983, and writing songs for British TV shows aimed at children, "Alphabet Zoo" and "Tickle on the Tum."

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 talk (Ralph McTell)
02 First Song (Ralph McTell)
03 talk (Ralph McTell)
04 Michael in the Garden (Ralph McTell)
05 Mr. Connaughton (Ralph McTell)
06 Water of Dreams (Ralph McTell)
07 talk (Ralph McTell)
08 From Clare to Here (Ralph McTell)
09 Sweet Mystery (Ralph McTell)
10 When Maddy Dances (Ralph McTell)
11 talk (Ralph McTell)
12 Tequila Sunset (Ralph McTell)
13 talk (Ralph McTell)
14 Zimmerman Blues (Ralph McTell)
15 talk (Ralph McTell)
16 One Heart (Ralph McTell)
17 talk (Ralph McTell)
18 Spiral Staircase (Ralph McTell)
19 talk (Ralph McTell)
20 Streets of London (Ralph McTell)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hDBSoh2v

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/27NabisyCLW1KFY/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

Ralph McTell - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1970-1974

Here's an album of British singer-songwriter Ralph McTell performing for the BBC.

In late 2024, I posted a BBC concert he did in 1976. At the time, that was the only BBC material I could find. Now that I've found this, that other one has been renamed to "Volume 2." Here's the link to it if you want to redownload it with the changed cover art and mp3 tags and such:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2024/12/ralph-mctell-bbc-sessions-old-grey.html

The music for this volume comes entirely from the "Top of the Pops" BBC radio show. (As usual, I'm obliged to point out that was totally different than the BBC TV show of the same name.) Once again, this is all thanks to my anonymous source, who has given me material from this show that is so hard to find that in this case I don't think it even has been bootlegged until now. McTell's first album came out in 1968. The performances here began in 1970, with the first four songs. The next three are from 1971, then three from 1972, and the last three are from 1974. 

Ironically, this ends with "Streets of London," because that was his biggest hit by far, reaching Number Two when it was rerecorded and rereleased in 1974. I'm sure the BBC wanted to have him on more after that, and I'll bet they did. But that was the point where the "Top of the Pops" generally switched from broadcasting unique BBC performances to just playing the recorded versions. In fact, we're lucky to get some songs from 1974, because that transition mostly happened in 1973.

If you look at the song list, you'll see that eight out of the 13 songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. That's due to BBC DJ Brian Matthew's bad habit of talking over the starts and ends of songs. He started easing up on that around 1972, which is why most of those are from the first half of this album. As usual, I got rid of his voice using the UVR5 audio editing program.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. Oh, and generally speaking, these are solo acoustic performances.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Daddy's Here [Edit] (Ralph McTell)
02 Eight Frames a Second [Edit] (Ralph McTell)
03 Spiral Staircase [Edit] (Ralph McTell)
04 Too Tight Rag [Edit] (Ralph McTell)
05 Lay Your Money Down [Edit] (Ralph McTell)
06 First and Last Man [Edit] (Ralph McTell)
07 In Some Way I Loved You [Edit] (Ralph McTell)
08 First Song (Ralph McTell)
09 Gypsy (Ralph McTell)
10 When I Was a Cowboy (Ralph McTell)
11 Let Me Down Easy (Ralph McTell)
12 Nanna's Song (Ralph McTell)
13 Streets of London [Edit] (Ralph McTell)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/poBXAEL9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UPKu7NqOjbVXKDL/file

The album cover is from some point in the early 1970s. But I don't know any details.

Ralph McTell - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC TV Theatre, Shepherd's Bush, London, Britain, 11-9-1976

I have to admit I'm not very familiar with Ralph McTell or his music. Even his huge hit, "Streets of London," was a Number Two hit in Britain, and similarly big in some other countries, but it never was a hit at all in the U.S., so I was only barely familiar with it. But I found this unreleased solo acoustic BBC concert, and I gave it a listen and I liked it. So now I'm sharing it.

Ralph McTell, an English singer-songwriter, released his first solo album in 1968. His original song "Streets of London" was put on his second solo album in 1969. However, it wasn't released as a single until it was slightly redone in 1974. That's when it hit big and made him famous. But judging from the songs here, he's a lot more than just a one-hit wonder. On this album, he does a mix of originals and blues covers.

Here's his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

Ralph McTell - Wikipedia

This is from an episode of the BBC TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test" that mostly or entirely consisted of one of his concerts. I found a video file of this concert and converted it to mp3s.

This album is 40 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On October 4, 2025, I redid the mp3 download file. The musical content is exactly the same, but I changed the title to "Volume 2" after I found material for a "Volume 1," and I redid the cover art and mp3 tags.

01 talk (Ralph McTell)
02 Weather the Storm (Ralph McTell)
03 talk (Ralph McTell)
04 Dry Bone Rag [Instrumental] (Ralph McTell)
05 talk (Ralph McTell)
06 From Clare to Here (Ralph McTell)
07 talk (Ralph McTell)
08 Naomi (Ralph McTell)
09 talk (Ralph McTell)
10 Old Grey Rag [Instrumental] (Ralph McTell)
11 talk (Ralph McTell)
12 May You Never (Ralph McTell)
13 talk (Ralph McTell)
14 Big Tree (Ralph McTell)
15 talk (Ralph McTell)
16 Hesitation Blues (Ralph McTell)
17 Streets of London (Ralph McTell)
18 talk (Ralph McTell)
19 Winnie's Rag (Ralph McTell)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6aMX1U2Q

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/8WmZVRB8TbHYy5C/file

The cover photo is a screenshot from this exact concert.