Various Artists - Les Paul & Friends, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York City, 8-18-1988

Les Paul never liked rock and roll all that much, but he is one of the key people who made rock and roll what it is nonetheless. I'll explain more about his massive influence on music further down below. But first, this was a tribute concert to honor Paul when he was still in good enough health to perform. He was 73 years old at the time of this concert, but he would go on to live another 21 years before dying in 2009. A lot of musical stars showed up to honor him and perform music with him: Eddie Van Halen, B. B. King, Carly Simon, Steve Miller, Rita Coolidge, David Gilmour, Stanley Jordan, and the Stray Cats.

I think Les Paul isn't as well known as he should be today, because he made his considerable mark on music before the rock and roll era ever began. Here's the intro to his Wikipedia entry: 

"Les Paul was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar... and served as inspiration for the Gibson Les Paul. While he is mainly known for jazz and popular music, he had an early career in country music. In the 1950s, he and his wife, singer and guitarist Mary Ford, made numerous recordings, selling millions of copies. Paul is credited with many recording innovations. His early experiments with overdubbing, delay effects such as tape delay, phasing, and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention. His licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques, and timing set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day. Among his many honors, Paul is one of a handful of artists with a permanent exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. [He] is the only inductee in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame."

In this concert, Paul played lead guitar on some instrumentals by himself. He also served as the emcee, introducing the guest stars. He then played guitar for some of the guest stars as well.

This is that was broadcast on the Cinemax TV channel. Maybe this is all of it, or maybe there was more, I don't know. You can find the video of this on YouTube. However, this has never been officially released in any audio format. 

This album is exactly one hour long. 

01 How High the Moon [Instrumental] (Les Paul)
02 talk (Les Paul)
03 Lover [When You're Near Me] [Instrumental] (Les Paul)
04 talk (Les Paul & Eddie Van Halen)
05 Echo Tribune - Back Pain Boogie [Instrumental] (Eddie Van Halen)
06 talk (Les Paul)
07 Every Day I Have the Blues (B.B. King)
08 talk (Les Paul & B.B. King)
09 It Happens (Carly Simon)
10 talk (Les Paul & Carly Simon)
11 talk (Les Paul)
12 God Bless the Child (Steve Miller)
13 talk (Les Paul)
14 Am I Blue (Rita Coolidge)
15 Somewhere Over the Rainbow [Instrumental] (Les Paul)
16 talk (Les Paul)
17 It's Been a Long, Long Time [Instrumental] (Les Paul)
18 Deep in the Blues [Instrumental] (David Gilmour)
19 talk (Les Paul & David Gilmour)
20 talk (Les Paul & Stanley Jordan)
21 Georgia on My Mind [Instrumental] (Stanley Jordan)
22 talk (Les Paul & Waylon Jennings)
23 I Really Don't Want to Know (Waylon Jennings)
24 Blue Suede Shoes (Stray Cats & Everyone)
25 How High the Moon [Instrumental] (Everyone)
26 Vaya con Dios [Instrumental] (Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JHeRRgbe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bI4yBNMPj5h56H8/file

I assume the cover photo was taken either before or after the concert. From left to right, top row: B.B. King, Waylon Jennings, and Eddie Van Halen. In the middle is Les Paul. Left to right, bottom row: Stanley Jordan and Steve Miller.

Oh, by the way, I have some very good choices for the cover art. In addition to the one I chose, I've included two more in the download zip. One shows Les Paul with Eddie Van Halen, and the other shows most of the big name stars playing together for the finale. 

Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge with Billy Swan - Sounds like Friday, BBC Television Studios, London, Britain, 9-29-1978

Here's a BBC concert starring both Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge, with one song sung by Billy Swan. It recently showed up at a bootleg sharing site in excellent quality, so I grabbed it and I'm posting it straight away.

I had never heard of "Sounds like Friday" prior to this, but it turns out it was a BBC TV show that only lasted for ten episodes in 1978 and 1979. Starting in 2017, the BBC had another TV show with the very similar title "Sounds like Friday Night," but it seems there's no connection. 

It made great sense to have Kirstofferson and Coolidge on the same show, because they were married to each other for most of the 1970s. They met in 1970, right when both of them were becoming stars, and got married in 1973. They had a child together, and recorded some duet albums. But they divorced in 1980. 

This concert came at or near the peak of Coolidge's popularity. She had three big hits in 1977 and 1978: "The Way You Do the Things You Do," "We're All Alone," and "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," and she performed all three of them here. Kristofferson didn't really have big hits on his own (with one or two partial exceptions), but had a more steadily successful career as a songwriter. (Check out the two "Covered" albums I've made for his songs.)

Billy Swan had one massive hit, "I Can Help." It went all the way to Number One on the U.S. singles chart in 1974. But what I didn't realize until doing this write-up is that he was more than just a "one-hit wonder." He wrote a bunch of country hits for others (as well as writing his own big hit), and had a series of minor country hits as well. He was a member of Kristofferson's band for many years, as well as a friend, which explains his presence here.

Although this is billed as a Kristofferson and Coolidge album, the first half mostly consists of Kristofferson (and Swan for his one song), and the second half mostly consists of Coolidge. The two of them finally came together to sing duets on the last two songs. Both of those songs were written by Kristofferson, by the way, as well as the other songs sung by him, while Coolidge's songs were cover versions.

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

This album is 44 minutes long. 

01 The Pilgrim, Chapter 33 (Kris Kristofferson)
02 Risky Bizness (Kris Kristofferson)
03 I Can Help (Billy Swan)
04 The Bigger the Fool [The Harder the Fall] (Kris Kristofferson)
05 Spooky Lady's Revenge (Kris Kristofferson)
06 Words (Rita Coolidge)
07 The Way You Do the Things You Do (Rita Coolidge)
08 We're All Alone (Rita Coolidge)
09 talk (Rita Coolidge)
10 For the Good Times (Rita Coolidge with Barbara Carroll)
11 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Rita Coolidge)
12 Help Me Make It through the Night (Rita Coolidge & Kris Kristofferson)
13 Me and Bobby McGee (Rita Coolidge & Kris Kristofferson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1xJSrcnB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/R8vqK04rTqK4fVZ/file

The cover imagine shows Rita Coolidge and Kris Kristofferson at a concert in New York City at some point in 1978. 

Paul Williams with Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 6-29-1973

Here's another episode of Paul Williams on the "Midnight Special" TV show. This time, he was joined by Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge.

I already posted an album of Williams hosting this show in 1973. That episode aired at the start of June 1973. Remarkably, he was back to host the show again at the end of June. I've looked over a lot of these show episodes, and I have yet to see another case of the host being the same twice in one month.

Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge were married from 1973 to 1980. During that time, they did a lot of musical collaboration, so it's not surprising they were both on the same episode of this show, even though they mostly did their own songs. I've included their songs because they joined Williams on a version of "Me and Bobby McGee," a song written by Kristofferson. In case you're curious, here are the other music acts on the June 29th show hosted by Williams: the Electric Light Orchestra, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, King Harvest, and Brewer and Shipley.

All the songs here are from the June 29, 1973 episode, except for the last two. Those two are from an episode aired on July 19, 1974. Williams also hosted another episode in 1976, so I'll probably post that once it becomes available. And he performed two other songs in 1974, but I plan to put that on a different album where he was a guest of the Righteous Brothers, and sang a song with them.

As usual for this show, everything is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. I started with the YouTube video, converted it to audio, and broke it into mp3s. Then I added in audience noise between some songs to help link them together.

This album is 41 minutes long. 

01 Someday Man (Paul Williams)
02 talk (Paul Williams)
03 talk (Paul Williams)
04 Loving Her Was Easier [Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again] (Kris Kristofferson)
05 talk (Paul Williams)
06 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (Rita Coolidge)
07 That's What Friends Are For (Paul Williams)
08 I Never Had It So Good (Rita Coolidge with Kris Kristofferson)
09 Out of Mind, Out of Sight (Kris Kristofferson)
10 My Crew (Rita Coolidge)
11 talk (Paul Williams & Kris Kristofferson)
12 Me and Bobby McGee (Paul Williams, Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge)
13 Look What I Found (Paul Williams)
14 You Know Me (Paul Williams)
15 Driftwood (Paul Williams)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NzzyfFbw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/BrjeHxt1qzKC38b/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. It's a screenshot I took during the one song done with Williams, Kristofferson, and Coolidge. Williams is in the middle, and Kristofferson is the one with the beard.