Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman (of the Guess Who) - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 1977

If you're a fan of the Canadian band the Guess Who, this is a particularly interesting episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show. It's a reunion of the two biggest names from the Guess Who, Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman.

Burton Cummings was the lead singer and a key songwriter for the Guess Who, from 1965 to 1975, when he broke up the band for the first time. (There would be later reunions.) But Randy Bachman was also a key member, being the lead guitarist and also another important songwriter. However, he left the band in 1970, right at the height of their success.

At the time of this concert, both Cummings and Bachman had a lot of success with their post-Guess Who careers. Cummings had just started his solo career, with one solo album in 1976. But that contained the single "Stand Tall," which was a very big hit, selling over a million copies in the U.S. alone. It would be the biggest hit of his solo career by far. However, Bachman was even more successful. From 1973 to 1977, he led the band Bachman-Turner Overdrive. They arguably were even more successful than the Guess Who. They had six hits in the U.S., including the big hits "Takin' Care of Business" and "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet." However, in March 1977, he quit Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and they didn't have much success without him.

Unfortunately, I don't know when in 1977 this concert took place. If anyone knows, please tell me so I can update the album title and such. But I'm guessing it took place after March 1977, when Bachman didn't really have a band to perform with anymore, at least for a little while. It seems Cummings and Bachman performed some concerts together in 1977, although they didn't release any music. In addition to this concert, they also did an hour-long TV special for Canadian TV (the CBC), which was broadcast in October 1977. 

After 1977, both Cummings and Bachman had less success with their solo careers. That led to the first big official Guess Who reunion in 1983. More reunions occasionally followed, and sometimes Cummings and Bachman recorded or toured together without the Guess Who name.

This concert has a little bit of everything. There are Guess Who songs (sung by Cummings), Bachman-Turner Overdrive songs (sung by Bachman), and solo songs. There's some acoustic music, and some with a full band. There are solo highlights for Cummings, and solo highlights for Bachman.

Unfortunately, a few of the songs got a little clipped at their starts or ends, due to quick cuts to commercials and that sort of thing. I tried to fix those a bit, which is why four songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. Also note that some of these songs are short versions because they were parts of medleys. For instance, "Laughing" is only about a minute long.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Your Backyard (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
02 Never Had a Lady Before (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
03 Laughing [Edit] (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
04 These Eyes [Edit] (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
05 Undun (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
06 American Woman (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
07 No Time (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
08 Let It Ride - Lookin' Out for Number One - Hey You (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
09 You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
10 My Own Way to Rock (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
11 Framed [Edit] (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
12 Stand Tall (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
13 Charlemagne (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)
14 Takin' Care of Business [Edit] (Burton Cummings & Randy Bachman)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3ah2VV71

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/rafE5Cu48hgeeGa/file

A video of the full Soundstage show can be found on YouTube. Unfortunately, the image quality is poor. So, for the album cover here, I took a screenshot from their other 1977 special together, the CBC one I mentioned above. That's Bachman with his back turned and Cummings on keyboards. 

The Guess Who - HSBC Arena, Buffalo, NY, 9-9-2001

The Guess Who first broke up in 1975. This is a concert from a reunion tour in 2001.

Normally, I'm not a fan for albums by musical acts long past their glory years. But this is an exception. One key reason is that the two main creative forces in the original band, lead singer Burton Cummings and lead guitarist Randy Bachman, didn't actually stay together that long. Bachman left the band in 1970. Then he went on to big success with his band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, even having a Number One single in the U.S. in 1974 with "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet." Their reunion in the early 20002s featured Cummings and Bachman together for the first time since 1970 (outside a couple of early reunion shows), which meant Bachman got to play lead guitar on all the Guess Who songs he missed after 1970, and some Bachman-Turner Overdrive hits got incorporated into the set list.

Furthermore, while Cummings and Bachman may not have looked as fit as they were back in the 1970s, their singing and playing was top notch. Furthermore, the rest of the band consisted of members from the 1970s. The one major holdout was Jim Kale, who was the bassist from the band's origin until 1972. In the 1980s, he noticed that the name "The Guess Who" had never been trademarked in the U.S., and he scooped that up for himself without consulting other band members. Then he created a touring group using that name. Not surprisingly, this pissed off Cummings, Bachman, and others. So while Kale didn't take part in the reunion tours, he got a percentage of their profits by allowing them to use the Guess Who name. (In 2024, after many years of legal battles, Cummings and Bachman finally reclaimed the band name.)

This soundboard bootleg sounds great, as good as an official live album. However, note that there is a similar official live album called "Running Back Thru Canada." It was recorded a year earlier at a concert in Winnipeg, Canada. But while the set list is pretty similar, there are unique songs on both. I'm a big enough Guess Who fan to have both that and this.

This album is an hour and 30 minutes long.

01 talk (Guess Who)
02 Shakin' All Over (Guess Who)
03 Guns, Guns, Guns (Guess Who)
04 Hand Me Down World (Guess Who)
05 talk (Guess Who)
06 These Eyes (Guess Who)
07 talk (Guess Who)
08 You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet (Guess Who)
09 Clap for the Wolfman (Guess Who)
10 Glamour Boy (Guess Who)
11 Lookin' Out for Number One (Guess Who)
12 No Sugar Tonight - New Mother Nature (Guess Who)
13 Let It Ride (Guess Who)
14 talk (Guess Who)
15 Undone (Guess Who)
16 talk (Guess Who)
17 American Woman (Guess Who)
18 Laughing (Guess Who)
19 Bus Rider (Guess Who)
20 No Time (Guess Who)
21 talk (Guess Who)
22 Share the Land (Guess Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/19RFfoiF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Yyv1Ft0MFSDdSFD/file

The cover photo shows Randy Bachman (left) and Burton Cummings (right) at the Radio and Records Convention in Beverly Hills, California, in 2001. They were further apart, but I moved them closer together in Photoshop.

The Guess Who - Ambassador Theatre, St. Louis, MO, 5-6-1974

Here's a Guess Who bootleg concert.

I'm not much for hyping things, so instead I'll include a quote from Mark Doble, who an essay called "Burton Through The Bootlegs":

"The Ambassador Theatre bootleg may in fact be the finest bootleg of the Guess Who in existence. Recorded from a stereo FM broadcast, the recording includes 19 songs, all of the hits as well as some notable gems such as an impromptu rendition of Bobby Darin’s 'Artificial Flowers' by Burton Cummings while the bass amp was being repaired. ... Overall, the sound quality of this bootleg is spectacular. If there is a 'must have' in the collection of Guess Who bootlegs, this is it! This show was also one of the last concerts the Guess Who would play with Kurt Winter and Donnie McDougall in the lineup."

As mentioned there, the sound quality is excellent, so I didn't have to fix much. But at least on the version I had, the volume often varied a lot from one song to another, so I evened that out. And a couple of songs didn't have any cheering at the end, so I patched in applause from the ends of other songs. 

In my opinion, the Guess Who peaked around 1969 to 1971, and then had a slow decline all the way to breaking up in 1975. But you wouldn't notice that decline from listening to this. The band was still in strong form, playing a bunch of really solid songs, including all the hits you'd expect. If I had to pick just one live album for the band, I might prefer this to their 1972 album "Live at the Paramount."

This album is an hour and 33 minutes long.

01 Bus Rider (Guess Who)
02 New Mother Nature (Guess Who)
03 talk (Guess Who)
04 Artificial Flowers (Guess Who)
05 talk (Guess Who)
06 Sour Suite (Guess Who)
07 talk (Guess Who)
08 Undun (Guess Who)
09 talk (Guess Who)
10 Albert Flasher (Guess Who)
11 Runnin' Back to Saskatoon (Guess Who)
12 talk (Guess Who)
13 Glamour Boy (Guess Who)
14 talk (Guess Who)
15 Self Pity (Guess Who)
16 Clap for the Wolfman (Guess Who)
17 These Eyes (Guess Who)
18 talk (Guess Who)
19 Star Baby (Guess Who)
20 talk (Guess Who)
21 Straighten Out (Guess Who)
22 talk (Guess Who)
23 Bye Bye Babe (Guess Who)
24 American Woman - No Sugar Tonight - Truckin' Off Across the Sky (Guess Who)
25 Share the Land (Guess Who)
26 No Time (Guess Who)
27 Orly (Guess Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NkKnJSm5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/cgsxnKyvP0U2RIf/file

The cover is a screenshot I took of the band appearing on the TV show "The Midnight Special" in 1974.

The Guess Who - Let's Go, Volume 3: 1968-1970

About a month ago, I posted a couple of albums of the Guess Who performing on the Canadian TV show "Let's Go." Since the band isn't British, they didn't do any BBC sessions in the late 1960s, but this effectively serves the same function, allowing the band to play lots of covers and originals in a studio setting without an audience. I have a lot of things to post at this blog, and I forgot about posting the third and final volume. But a commenter today made a comment about a Guess Who album, and that reminded me. So here we go.

For the first two volumes in this series, the vast majority of the performances actually came from the "Let's Go" TV show. For this one, that's only true for the first four songs. At some point, I figure around early 1969, the band got so popular that they outgrew their role as the house band for that weekly show. However, I found some other things that fill out the rest of the band's era when Randy Bachman (later of Bachman-Turner Overdrive fame) was the lead guitarist. He left in mid-1970, just after the band hit it really big with their "American Woman" single and album.

Songs five through eight, plus twelve, come from other TV show appearances. That means the sound quality is similarly high, even though they're all officially unreleased. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't find many TV show performances where the band wasn't forced to lip-sync. There were some really key songs left out. So I resorted to finding versions of those songs in different ways. Songs nine through eleven are bonus tracks to the "American Woman" album. They're alternate versions, so they're much like versions performed on TV shows without an audience.

Finally, I turned to bootleg concert recordings. Unfortunately, there's almost nothing from the Randy Bachman era that has really excellent sound quality. It turns out there's one great soundboard from that time, but it's only 14 minutes long! So that's what makes up the last three songs.

I would be happy to keep this series going into 1971 and beyond, but there just isn't the proper material for it. Even though the band was very popular for a few years, I could only find one or two brief TV show appearances. However, there are some quality bootlegs of entire shows, so I think that's a better way to go for different versions of songs in those years.

This album is 56 minutes long.

UPDATE: On November 9, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I added "These Eyes." I put a different version of that song on Volume 2 in this series. But this version is worthy of inclusion because it uses an unusual arrangement that prominently features the Neil Harris Singers on backing vocals.

01 Minstrel Boy (Guess Who)
02 Ramblin' Gamblin' Man (Guess Who)
03 No Time (Guess Who)
04 Touch Me (Guess Who)
05 Shakin' All Over (Guess Who)
06 All My Loving (Guess Who)
07 With a Little Help from My Friends (Guess Who)
08 These Eyes (Guess Who with the Neil Harris Singers)
09 Laughing (Guess Who)
10 Talisman [Alternate Version] (Guess Who)
11 No Sugar Tonight - New Mother Nature [Alternate Version] (Guess Who)
12 American Woman [Alternate Version] (Guess Who)
13 Share the Land (Guess Who)
14 Hand Me Down World (Guess Who)
15 American Woman Blues (Guess Who)
16 American Woman (Guess Who)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119171/TGuessW_1968-1970_LtsGoVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot I took of the band playing the song "Laughing" on a TV show in 1969.

The Guess Who - Let's Go, Volume 2: 1968

I recently posted this first volume in this series. Here's a quick recap: in the late 1960s, the Guess Who were the house band for a Canadian TV show called "Let's Go." This is the second of three albums compiling their performances for that show. 

Actually, it seems that most of the band's performances were lost over the years. The best of the surviving ones were included on the official albums "Let's Go" and "This Time Long Ago." I can't find any information on when each of the songs were performed, so I've used my best guesses. But those are pretty rough. 

In the first volume, all but two of the songs were covers of current hits. For this volume, the majority are originals. The only covers are "Time of the Season," "White Room," "Tin Soldier," and "Blackbird." "Tin Solider" is the only unreleased song here (not counting the bonus track), and the sound quality for it is a bit lower than the rest. But I wanted to include it anyway, because I really like hearing the Guess Who do that excellent Small Faces song.

As for that bonus track, a medley of the 1950s classics "Rock Around the Clock" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll," it also is unreleased, as mentioned above. It doesn't sound as good as "Tin Soldier," in my opinion, but I've included it as a bonus track because I think it's interesting. (Several other poor quality covers didn't even merit bonus track status.)

This album is 51 minutes long, not counting the bonus track.

01 Time of the Season (Guess Who)
02 6 A.M. or Nearer (Guess Who)
03 We're Coming to Dinner (Guess Who)
04 Wednesday in Your Garden (Guess Who)
05 White Room (Guess Who)
06 These Eyes (Guess Who)
07 Maple Fudge (Guess Who)
08 Tin Soldier (Guess Who)
09 I Found Her in a Star (Guess Who)
10 Friends of Mine (Guess Who)
11 When You Touch Me (Guess Who)
12 Key (Guess Who)
13 Blackbird (Guess Who)

Rock Around the Clock - Shake, Rattle and Roll (Guess Who)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119173/TGuessW_1968_LtsGoVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo shows the band performing on TV in the late 1960s. I don't know the year or the TV show though.

The Guess Who - Let's Go, Volume 1: 1967-1968

I'm still making a particular focus on posting albums of BBC sessions. Unfortunately, that usually means British artists, though there are some exceptions. In the case of the Canadian band the Guess Who, I doubt they ever performed for the BBC. However, it turns out they did quite a few recorded performances for a Canadian TV show called "Let's Go." This can effectively serve as a substitute for BBC sessions, and at a similar level of sound quality.

The Guess Who had a bit hit in Canada and the US in 1965 with their cover of the song "Shakin' All Over." But, to be honest, they probably weren't ready for the big time yet. They still had to develop their songwriting skills, and they soon switched lead singers. It wouldn't be until 1969 when they had another significant hit. But still, that one hit made them pretty much the only Canadian rock act that could boast having a hit in the US. That gave them a ton of credibility. So when a weekly Canadian rock show started later in 1966, the Guess Who were a natural choice for the house band, and they got that job. 

It was a great opportunity for nationwide exposure. Furthermore, it forced the band to hone their skills. Each week, they had to play multiple hit songs by other acts, usually those that were still in the charts. So they had to hone their skills fast so they could play a wide variety of songs at a professionally impressive level. At first, they just did the covers of hits, but as time went on and their popularity grew, they were able to slip in some originals, despite none of them being hits (at least not yet).

I was able to find three album's worth of songs for this series. A bunch of the songs were released on an official album called "Let's Go," and a bunch more were released on an official album called "This Time Long Ago." Unfortunately, both albums gave almost no information on when each song was recorded. Perhaps that data was lost. I've done my best to guess in putting these songs in rough chronological order, mainly going by when the songs they covered were hits.

Those two official albums helped me a lot, but many of the songs in this series are unreleased, including the first eight on this album. The Guess Who played songs on that show every week for many weeks through the years for a couple of years, but the vast majority of the recordings were lost. The best of the surviving tapes were put on those two albums, but they missed some things here and there. The first five songs come from some YouTube clips of "Let's Go" shows that the compilers of those albums seem to have missed. The next three songs actually come from a concert bootleg. Most of that recording didn't sound good enough for me to want to listen. But for whatever reason, a few of the songs sounded much better than the others (probably due to having lighter arrangements). I've stripped them of audience noise. I think they fit in, and the sound quality is fairly comparable with the rest.

Pretty much all of the songs here are covers. Only the last two songs are originals. But the ratio of originals to covers will grow until there's a majority of originals on the last volume in this album series. With this album, you basically get the Guess Who covering a random selection of famous songs from 1966 and 1967, with a few older songs thrown in. In my opinion, one can see why this band was already considered the cream of the Canadian crop this early in their career, especially due to the vocals of lead singer Burton Cummings.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Daydream (Guess Who)
02 Don't Act So Bad (Guess Who)
03 Bus Stop (Guess Who)
04 Bring It on Home to Me (Guess Who)
05 Tossin' and Turnin' (Guess Who)
06 Funny How Time Slips Away (Guess Who)
07 Pretty Blue Eyes (Guess Who)
08 Ain't That Peculiar (Guess Who)
09 Summertime Blues (Guess Who)
10 Love Is All Around (Guess Who)
11 Light My Fire (Guess Who)
12 I'm in the Mood for Love (Guess Who)
13 Along Comes Mary (Guess Who)
14 You Keep Me Hangin' On (Guess Who)
15 When Friends Fall Out (Guess Who)
16 Of a Dropping Pin (Guess Who)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119097/TGuessW_1967-1968_LtsGoVolume1_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I found a photo of the Guess Who performing a song on TV around 1967. (I'm assuming the jackets are heavily based on the Beatles' 1967 "Sgt. Pepper's" look.) I'm not sure if it was the "Let's Go" show or something else, but it should give you a pretty good idea what those shows looked like.

The Guess Who - Winnipeg Arena, Winnipeg, Canada, 2-25-1966

Here's something that I think is really neat, and underappreciated. I recently went on a deep dive of early Guess Who material. I like a lot of their 1970s stuff, but I like their era with Randy Bachman (of Bachman Turner Overdrive fame) on lead guitar even more. He was with the band from its inception in 1962 through early 1970. I went looking to see if there were any good concert recordings from that time. It turns out there are surprisingly few, and the ones that exist generally have middling to poor sound quality.

There's one glorious exception, which is the concert here. This has to be a soundboard, because the sound quality is as good as any live recording from 1966 that you'll hear. But that's really odd, in my opinion, because the band was just getting started in early 1966, when the concert took place. 

Also, it happened at a pivotal time for the band. They'd had a big hit in 1965, "Shakin' All Over," with Chad Allan as lead vocalist. But at the end of 1965, Burton Cummings joined as a keyboardist. It turned out that he could sing really well too, so much so that he was arguably even better than Allan. For a short time, the band had two main lead vocalists. This may well be the first concert with Cummings in the band. If not the first, it was definitely one of the first. I'm just speculating, but I wonder if the reason this recording exists is because the band wanted to hear how they sounded with Cummings added.

If you're familiar with the band's history, then you probably already know that Chad Allan left shortly after this, and Cummings became the lead singer for the rest of the band's existence. His distinctive voice was a key part of the band's sound. On this bootleg, Allan still sings the majority of the songs, but Cummings has a decent share, and sometimes they sang together. I'd be curious if anyone could list who sang what.

Anyway, I made some bold cuts to this recording. For one thing, I cut out a few songs that I felt weren't as good as the others. Those were "Money (That's What I Want)," "Baby's Birthday," "Louie, Louie," and "I Fought the Law." In some cases, like "Money," I thought the vocals were bad. (I think that one was sung by someone other than Allan or Cummings.) In others, like "I Fought the Law," I felt the band stumbled with their performance. I felt less is more, and the concert is a more enjoyable listen by cutting out the fat.

I also made some big cuts with what happened between songs. For one thing, the audience was small and/or unresponsive. The small scattered amount of clapping is so meager that it's sad. At one point, one of the band members even made a sarcastic comment about it, saying something like "Don't everyone clap at once." So I cut out all the clapping. 

Furthermore, strangely, there was a professional MC who spoke sometimes between the songs, but not all the time. I don't like that guy, whoever he was. He reminded me of the BBC DJ Brian Matthew in that he seemed excessively smooth and enthusiastic, like the stereotype of a used car salesman. So I cut out all of his comments. But I kept in all the comments the band members made between songs (except for the sarcastic comment about the lack of clapping mentioned above), and there were plenty of those.

The end result of these edits is that it sounds like the band was playing live in the studio, even though they played at a concert. The sound quality is good enough to make it sound that way.

In terms of the music, the majority of the songs are covers of the big hits of the day. But they did play some of their own songs, namely: "Hey Ho (What You Do to Me)," "Believe Me," "Tuff E Nuff," and "Shakin' All Over." (Technically, "Hey Ho" and "Shakin' All Over" were covers too, but I include them here because they were hits in Canada for the band.) Also, "Blue Is the Night" was introduced as a song by the Deverons, which is true. But what wasn't mentioned was that Burton Cummings was the lead singer in that band, and he sang the version of it here.  

As an aside, there's another very similar bootleg of the band playing in Winnipeg in February 1966. That one is of them playing the River Heights Community Club. That one seems to be much more popular than this one, and the set list is longer. But in terms of sound quality, this one is far superior. Hopefully by posting this, I can help make this one better known.

This album is 43 minutes long. I suspect the performance was longer, since there is nothing near the end to indicate the concert was coming to an end, such as an encore or comments about playing one last number or the like. But even so, I'll take this one over the longer River Heights one I mentioned any day of the week.

01 Wait (Guess Who)
02 talk (Guess Who)
03 Blue Is the Night (Guess Who)
04 Little Latin Lupe Lu (Guess Who)
05 Shakin' All Over (Guess Who)
06 It's Too Late (Guess Who)
07 talk (Guess Who)
08 I'm Down (Guess Who)
09 It's My Life (Guess Who)
10 talk (Guess Who)
11 Hey Ho [What You Do to Me] (Guess Who)
12 talk (Guess Who)
13 My Generation (Guess Who)
14 Look through Any Window (Guess Who)
15 talk (Guess Who)
16 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Guess Who)
17 Believe Me (Guess Who)
18 Batman Theme (Guess Who)
19 talk (Guess Who)
20 I'm a Man (Guess Who)
21 talk (Guess Who)
22 I'm Alive (Guess Who)
23 Tuff E Nuff (Guess Who)
24 California Dreamin' (Guess Who)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15293020/TGuessW_1966_WinnipgArnaWinnipgCnada__2-25-1966_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I'm tickled pink that I managed to find a photo of the band in concert in Winnipeg in 1966. It's not the exact concert here. It's from something called the "Bang-A-Rama" held at the Winnipeg Stadium in May 1966. But hey, close enough for horseshoes. ;)

The original was in black and white, but I colorized it. It's not the best colorization, due to the complexity of the photo, with the whole band showing. But hopefully it's good enough to be acceptable. Also, I used "The Guess Who?" (complete with question mark) as the band name in the cover, because that's what the band did at the time. I used the exact font style that they preferred back then as well.

The Guess Who - It's My Pride - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1966)

Two days ago, I posted a new Jefferson Airplane stray tracks album, because I discovered I had enough material to split an album of their earliest stuff into two albums. Today, I'm doing the exact same thing with the Guess Who. A couple of years ago, I posted one album, which I called "This Time Long Ago," that included all their best songs from their start in 1965 to 1968. I recently discovered there are more good earlier songs than I'd thought. So I'm keeping "This Time Long Ago," but I've removed some songs from it and added others, so it only deals with the years 1967 and 1968. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-guess-who-this-time-long-ago.html

That leaves this album to deal with the years 1965 and 1966. In those years, the Guess Who put out three studio albums. I think I overlooked this time period for a couple reasons. For one thing, the band had a different lead singer for most of that time, Chad Allan. For their third album, "It's Time," released in early 1966, they had a new band member, Burton Cummings. Allan still sang most of the songs on that album, but Cummings sang a few. I think Cummings is a superior singer, and I associate the sound of the Guess Who with his voice and songwriting. 

To add to that, the band wasn't even known  as the Guess Who for most of this time. They went through several names, including "Chad Allan and the Reflections" and "Chad Allan and the Expressions." But from their hit 1965 single "Shakin' All Over," their record company simultaneously marketed them as "The Guess Who?", hoping to boost sales by creating intrigue that they might be a famous band working under a different name. The name finally stuck permanently for their third album, and the question mark at the end was ditched. Anyway, all that name confusion furthered my feeling that they weren't the "real" Guess Who, which didn't happen until Burton Cummings was in charge, Chad Allan was gone, and they'd finally settled on their famous name.

But I was wrong. The truth is, this band had a lot of worthy songs in their early phase, definitely enough for a solid album cherry picking their best songs. Yeah, most of them have Chad Allan on lead vocals, but he was a pretty good singer and in these early recordings sometimes it's hard to tell his voice apart from Cummings' voice. But more importantly, they were a talented band that already was showing a lot of songwriting talent. If you like their later stuff, you shouldn't overlook this phase. They were operating more as a garage band with a heavy Beatles influence, but I love good garage band music, and you can't go wrong with a heavy Beatles influence.

The Guess Who had a huge hit in 1965 with a cover of "Shakin' All Over." It went to number one in Canada, and even hit the Top Twenty in the US, which was very rare for a Canadian band at the time. So that's here, of course. But eight out of the 14 songs are from their third album "It's Time." Their songwriting improved a lot by then, and Burton Cummings sings about half of those songs.

Speaking of Cummings, he was in a different Canadian band, the Deverons, just prior to joining the Guess Who. That band put out a couple of singles with Cummings as lead vocalist. I've included two of those songs here, "She's Your Lover" and "Blue Is the Night." They sound exactly like Guess Who songs. In fact, the Guess Who played "Blue Is the Night" in concert often in 1966. "She's Your Lover" was a Cummings original, the first put on record. Another song here, "Seven Long Years," is another Cummings original that was first done by the Deverons. By the way, that song sounds exactly like the songs the Animals were doing at the time, but it's so good that the Animals should have covered it.

This album is only 37 minutes long, but that's in line with the lengths of albums at the time. I called it "It's My Pride" because I consider that the best song here. It's too bad it was only a B-side, because it should have been a big hit. The songs are in rough chronological order with the exception of the last one, which I thought made for a good closer.

01 Shakin' All Over (Guess Who)
02 I'd Rather Be Alone (Guess Who)
03 Hey Ho [What You Do to Me] (Guess Who)
04 Use Your Imagination (Guess Who)
05 She's Your Lover (Deverons with Burton Cummings)
06 You Know He Did (Guess Who)
07 Believe Me (Guess Who)
08 Clock on the Wall (Guess Who)
09 It's My Pride (Guess Who)
10 Seven Long Years (Guess Who)
11 Gonna Search (Guess Who)
12 Don't Act So Bad (Guess Who)
13 And She's Mine (Guess Who)
14 Blue Is the Night (Deverons with Burton Cummings)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119096/TGuessW_1965-1966_ItMyPride_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the only decent color photo of the band from their early years that I could find. I think it was included in an archival album of those years, but I forget which one. In any case, all the versions I found of this had a reddish tint on it. I used Photoshop to get rid of that. I think it looks much better now (and is more accurate, since they didn't live in a red haze!).

For the text, I used the same exact font that was used for the band name on their first two albums. I also included the question mark in the name, since that's what those albums did too. I also mimicked those albums by including the record company logo.

The Guess Who - Albert Flasher - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1971)

In early 1970, the Guess Who were at the peak of their success. They'd just released their hit album "American Woman," and were in the middle of recording a bunch of excellent new songs for their next album. Then guitarist Randy Bachman quit. This was devastating, because not only was Bachman's guitar playing key to the band's sound, but he co-wrote most of the band's song with lead singer Burton Cummings. (Bachman would go on to huge success with Bachman-Turner Overdrive a few years later.)

The Guess Who scrapped the songs they were working on, recruited a couple of new members to replace Bachman, then put out an album of entirely different songs, called "Share the Land." It too was a success. But what happened to those other songs, all but one of which were co-written by Bachman and Cummings? Seven of them were finally released as the album "The Way We Were" in 1976, one year after the Guess Who broke up.

This album mostly consists of the songs on "The Way We Were." But that album has long been out of print, with the songs on it split as bonus tracks to both the "American Woman" and "Share the Land" albums.

Furthermore, I've added some key songs to the end. "Got to Find Another Way" also dates from around the same time, but was inexplicably left off "The Way We Were" and finally found its way as a bonus track to yet another version of the "American Woman" album.

The songs from this "lost album" are all solid, but I'm not sure if any of them could have been a big hit (though maybe "Palmyra" fits the bill). However, in 1971, the Guess Who released a hit, "Albert Flasher," that didn't go on any of their albums. So I've included that here too (as well as its B-side, "Broken"), and titled the album after it.

The instrumental song "La Jolla" comes from a Randy Bachman solo album called "Axe." That song, and the other songs from that album, were recorded at the exact same time, and in the same studio, as "The Way We Were" songs. Bachman also used the Guess Who drummer, and played his own bass parts. I would include more songs from "Axe," except they're all instrumentals and not that interesting, in my opinion.

I've also added two bonus tracks. They're by a different band, Brother, a trio from Canada, but this band had very close ties with the Guess Who. When Bachman left the Guess Who, guitarist Kurt Winter from Brother was picked as his replacement. One year later, bassist Jim Kale left the Guess Who and was replaced by Bill Wallace from Brother. So Brother was effectively taken over by the Guess Who, with Brother's best songs becoming Guess Who songs, such as "Bus Rider" and "Hand Me Down World."

Brother was in existence for less than a year before they broke up, and they never had a chance to record and release any of their songs. But after Winter left, he briefly reformed the band long enough to record a single. The A- and B-sides of that single are included as the bonus tracks. The vocals are sung by Winter and/or Wallace, both of whom were in the Guess Who or soon would be, so they're kind of Guess Who songs, in my opinion.

Personally, I think "American Woman" and "Share the Land" are the two strongest Guess Who albums, and this "lost" album from in between them is just as good as either of them.

01 Silver Bird (Guess Who)
02 Species Hawk (Guess Who)
03 Runnin' Down the Street (Guess Who)
04 Miss Frizzy (Guess Who)
05 La Jolla [Instrumental] (Randy Bachman)
06 Palmyra (Guess Who)
07 The Answer (Guess Who)
08 Take the Long Way Home (Guess Who)
09 Got to Find Another Way (Guess Who)
10 Albert Flasher (Guess Who)
11 Broken (Guess Who)

Second Time around the Woodpile (Brother)
Sending Money (Brother)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15181843/TGuessW_1970-1971_AlbertFlashr_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover to the "Albert Flasher" single. That had the B-side title "Broken" on it, so I removed that and resized or repositioned other parts of the image.

The Guess Who – This Time Long Ago – Non-Album Tracks (1967-1968)

Note that I first posted this album back in 2018. This is a drastically different version. Originally, this album dealt with the years 1965 to 1968. But I reassessed the band's earliest years and found enough material for a 1965 and 1966 stray tracks album, and also enough to add to this one so that it only deals with the years 1967 and 1968. I think this is still a very solid album, and it holds together better musically, since it's from a more narrow time period when styles were rapidly changing.

You can find the earlier stray tracks album I made here:

 

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-guess-who-its-my-pride-various.html

 

The Guess Who put out three albums from 1965 to 1966, while the band's name changed several times and they also changed lead singers. Despite having some hits, especially in their native country of Canada, they didn't release any albums in 1967 or 1968. Instead, they put out singles while staying busy being the house band for a Canadian TV show called "Let's Go." Five of the songs here are either the A- or B-Sides to singles. 

 

Three more songs come from an album called "A Wild Pair." This was a weird album because half of it contains Guess Who songs and the other half contain songs from the Staccatos, another Canadian band that would later find more success under the name "Five Man Electrical Band." The Guess Who had a rare opportunity to work with an orchestra for this album, so most of the songs have prominent strings on them. I only included three out of the five songs that the Guess Who did, as I think the other two aren't that good.

Another three songs come from an archival compilation called "This Time Long Ago." (I really should have called this album something else to avoid confusion with that one, but oh well.) One, "Miss Felicity Grey," is a studio outtake, and two others, "Sitar Saga" and "Shadow Cross the Shadows," were performed live on the "Let's Go" TV show mentioned above. They sound just as good as studio outtakes, especially since there wasn't an audience.

 

Most of the songs here are originals, though a notable exception is a cover of Neil Young's "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong" from a time when Young wasn't very well known.

 

I think this album shows that the Guess Who could have easily released a strong album from 1967 or 1968 without having to resort to cover versions. It's a shame they didn't.

 

There are two bonus tracks here, "Of a Dropping Pin" and "When Friends Fall Out." They're perfectly fine recordings. Each was the A-side to a single in 1968. The reason that they're only bonus tracks is because the band put different versions of these songs on later albums. "Of a Dropping Pin" was on "Canned Wheat" in 1969 and "When Friends Fall Out" was on "American Woman" in 1970. These single versions aren't that different from the album versions, but they aren't the same, so I figured they were worth including at least as bonus tracks.

This album is 34 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

 

01 This Time Long Ago (Guess Who)

02 There's No Getting Away from You (Guess Who)
03 Miss Felicity Grey (Guess Who)
04 Flying on the Ground Is Wrong (Guess Who)
05 If You Don't Want Me (Guess Who)
06 Mr. Nothin' (Guess Who)
07 Heygoode Hardy (Guess Who)
08 I Need Your Company (Guess Who)
09 Guess Who Blues (Guess Who)
10 Sitar Saga [Instrumental] (Guess Who)
11 Shadow Cross the Shadows (Guess Who)

 

Of a Dropping Pin [Single Version] (Guess Who)

When Friends Fall Out [Single Version] (Guess Who)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119170/TGuessW_1967-1968_ThisTmeLongAgo_atse.zip.html

Note that the album cover shown here was made by PJ of the Albums I Wish Existed website. When I revised the song list, I made some changes to the cover to allow the center photo to be larger.