The Rising Sons - Ash Grove, Los Angeles, CA, 5-30-1965

The Rising Sons were a band in the mid-1960s that looked like they were headed for big things. But they broke up and never even released an album. However, the two main band members, Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder, both went on to have long successful solo careers. In 2021, I posted a short concert bootleg of this band recorded in 1966. Now, here's another one from 1965.

Given this band was only in existence from 1965 to 1966, and never achieved any commercial success, it's a miracle we have any live music from them at all. But it turns out there are multiple bootlegs with stellar sound quality, due to the fact that the often performed at the Ash Grove, a small club in Los Angeles, and the people running that venue often made soundboard recordings of the concerts there.

However, there was one big problem: these in-house recordings were often done in a sloppy manner, probably someone just turning the recording device on and walking away. As a result, the balances were usually off. For instance, with the Rising Sons concert I previously posted, the prominent harmonica playing by Taj Mahal was buried in the mix. That was the same problem here, with the harmonica sounded like it was recorded several rooms away from everything else. That's why, even though I had these recordings, I only posted the 1966 one.

Happily, now it's 2026, and audio editing technology has improved by leaps and bounds since 2021. The bad mix of that 1966 concert bugged me. So I went back and fixed the buried harmonica problem. Here's a link where you can get the fixed version:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-rising-sons-ash-grove-los-angeles.html

Then I did the same thing here: I used the MVSEP program to separate out just the harmonica from everything else. Then I boosted that volume relative to everything else. While I was at it, I made some other fixes. For instance, Taj Mahal did most of the singing, but sometimes he would sing little asides with his mouth away from the microphone. In many cases, I was able to fix those so you could clearly hear those bits. Now, in my opinion, the sound quality here is really impressive, especially for 1965, when bootleg recording was rare and usually poorly done.

This recording is actually a combination of four different concerts. Most of it, tracks 1 through 20, is from May 30, 1965. But I had a few extra bits from partially recorded sets on other nights, so I added those in at the end. Tracks 21 through 24 are from May 29th. Tracks 25 to 30 are from May 31st. And the last two tracks, 31 to 32, are from June 29th.

All the studio recordings by this band were finally released an album in 1992, with the title "Rising Sons Featuring Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder." But quite a few of the songs here were not recorded for that album, including an original by band member Jesse Lee Kincad, called "I'll Always Be There." (There actually were two versions of that song in these recordings, but I only included one. It was the only case of there being a duplicate.) 

These concerts used to be available at Wolfgang's Vault. But that site stopped working a few months ago. And they never spread very far. For instance, none of this music can be found at SoulseekQT as a type this, and SoulseekQT has an amazing amount of stuff. So hopefully this post will put this music into wider public circulation. 

If you aren't familiar with this band, you should check this out. Their sound doesn't seem that unique today, but that's because so many other bands went on to make music in a similar vein in later years. According to AllMusic, Rising Sons' "languid, bluesy, folksy sort of sound anticipated future recordings by outfits like Moby Grape, Buffalo Springfield, the Grateful Dead, and even the southern rock Allman Brothers, and the country-rock Byrds."

This album is an hour and 21 minutes long. 

01 Crawling King Snake (Rising Sons)
02 talk (Rising Sons)
03 It's All Over Now (Rising Sons)
04 talk (Rising Sons)
05 Statesboro Blues (Rising Sons)
06 talk (Rising Sons)
07 Walking the Dog (Rising Sons)
08 talk (Rising Sons)
09 Hambone - Band Introductions (Rising Sons)
10 Meet Me in the Bottom (Rising Sons)
11 talk (Rising Sons)
12 Baby, What Do You Want Me to Do (Rising Sons)
13 talk (Rising Sons)
14 I'm a King Bee (Rising Sons)
15 talk (Rising Sons)
16 I'll Always Be There (Rising Sons)
17 Fanny Mae (Rising Sons)
18 Corrina, Corrina (Rising Sons)
19 talk (Rising Sons)
20 Dust My Blues (Rising Sons)
21 talk (Rising Sons)
22 Too High to Fall (Rising Sons)
23 talk (Rising Sons)
24 Hush Hush (Rising Sons)
25 Who Do You Think You Is (Rising Sons)
26 talk (Rising Sons)
27 Blues in Three-Four Time [Instrumental] (Rising Sons)
28 talk (Rising Sons)
29 So Fine (Rising Sons)
30 Little Red Rooster (Rising Sons)
31 talk (Rising Sons)
32 Grown So Ugly (Rising Sons)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Fv7xM9z6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/LRYE8EbaSG5vtjx/file

The cover photo is from a photo shoot either in 1965 or 1966. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. Taj Mahal is the Black man wearing a hat, and Ry Cooder has a hand on his shoulder.

All Our Colors Benefit, Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA, 10-10-1992 - Part 6: Santana

Here's the sixth and final album from the "All Our Colors" benefit concert in 1992. For an overview of the concert as a whole, check out my write-up for Part 1. This is a set by Santana. 

It's a bit unusual in that about half of the set prominently features guest stars Ry Cooder and Steve Miller. No doubt, lead guitarist Carlos Santana took advantage of the fact that these two other talented guitarists were at the venue, since they had performed in earlier sets. Mostly, Cooder and Miller jammed on guitars with Santana, but Miller also did the lead vocals on the blues classic "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)."

I'm guessing that John Lee Hooker, who played a set earlier in the evening, went to sleep already, since he was well over 70 years old by this time. Had he been awake, he probably would have wanted to join in on "The Healer," because it's a song from Hooker's 1989 album of the same name. Santana co-wrote it and performed on it. 

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long. 

01 talk (Santana)
02 Peace on Earth... Mother Earth... Third Stone from the Sun (Santana)
03 Somewhere in Heaven (Santana)
04 Viva La Vida [Life Is for Living] (Santana)
05 Savor [Instrumental] (Santana)
06 talk (Santana)
07 The Healer [Instrumental] (Santana with Ry Cooder)
08 talk (Santana with Ry Cooder)
09 All Your Love [I Miss Loving] (Santana with Ry Cooder & Steve Miller)
10 Sacred Fire [Instrumental] (Santana with Ry Cooder & Steve Miller)
11 Why Can't We Live Together (Santana with Ry Cooder & Steve Miller)
12 Exodus (Santana with Ry Cooder & Steve Miller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/W1VeBVud

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tvlzB8CYRYgsZ6o/file

The cover photo of Carlos Santana is from this exact concert.

All Our Colors Benefit, Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA, 10-10-1992 - Part 3: John Lee Hooker with Ry Cooder

Here's the third album from the "All Our Colors" benefit concert in 1992. For an overview of the concert as a whole, check out my write-up for Part 1. This is a set by blues legend John Lee Hooker. For his entire set, he was backed on slide guitar by Ry Cooder.

If you're a fan of blues music, you should know John Lee Hooker, who is one of the biggest names in the genre. (He died in 2001 in his 80s, his exact age being uncertain.) He had a very long music career, starting with the classic hit single "Boogie Chillen," which was the best selling race record in 1949. By the 1980s, it seemed his best years were behind him. But in 1989, he had a career revival that started with the album "The Healer." It was a hit (for the blues genre), thanks in large part to many guest stars on it, such as Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, and Los Lobos. He repeated the guest star formula with his 1991 album "Mr. Lucky."

However, his relatively short set was pretty different from those albums. He performed without any backing other than Cooder, and generally played songs from much earlier in his career. But it does seem worth mentioning that Cooder helped produce "Mr. Lucky," so I'd guess that's how they started musically collaborating. 

This album is 24 minutes long. 

01 talk (John Lee Hooker with Ry Cooder)
02 Lonely Man (John Lee Hooker with Ry Cooder)
03 talk (John Lee Hooker with Ry Cooder)
04 Serve Me Right to Suffer (John Lee Hooker with Ry Cooder)
05 Hobo Blues (John Lee Hooker with Ry Cooder)
06 Crawling King Snake (John Lee Hooker with Ry Cooder)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pM3c2HEf 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Y9DY1Rm1QRX0CmD/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. That's Hooker on the left (wearing a hat) and Cooder on the right. I used Photoshop to move them a few feet closer together.

Ry Cooder - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 11-16-1978

Here's another episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show, from 1978. This one stars guitarist Ry Cooder.

Around the time of this concert, in June 1978, Cooder released the studio album "Jazz." (I don't know if the date in the title is the date of the concert or of the TV broadcast.) The sound of the album harkened back to early jazz, from about 1900 to 1930. A few of the songs are from that album: "Big Bad Bill Is Sweet William Now," "The Dream," In a Mist," " Davenport Blues," "Shine," and "Nobody," and basically the whole album has that early jazz sound.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is very good. There were a few problems though. One problem was that the cheering at the ends of some songs came to abrupt ends. So I did a little copying and pasting to allow for a few more seconds until the audience went silent. Also, there's some hiss. I got rid of most of that for the banter tracks, using noise reduction. But I have a rule against using noise reduction on actual songs, so I let the hiss be in those cases. It's not much hiss though. 

This album is 41 minutes long. 

01 Big Bad Bill Is Sweet William Now (Ry Cooder)
02 The Dream [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
03 talk (Ry Cooder)
04 Jezebel (Ry Cooder)
05 talk (Ry Cooder)
06 Shine (Ry Cooder)
07 Maria Elena [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
08 In a Mist [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
09 Flashes [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
10 Davenport Blues [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
11 Nobody (Ry Cooder)
12 Comin' In on a Wing and a Prayer [Edit] (Ry Cooder)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qALjCBhF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/oz1kkgHnbvHk2pf/file

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from this exact concert.

John Lee Hooker - BBC In Concert, John Lee Hooker and Friends, The Sweetwater, Mill Valley, CA, 1-6-1992

Here is a rather unusual concert as far as concerts in the long-running "BBC In Concert" series go. This primarily stars blues legend John Lee Hooker, but he's joined by different special guests on almost every song: John Hammond, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, and Charlie Musselwhite. The sound quality is excellent despite this being unreleased. The only bummer is that it's rather short, less than an hour long.

A lot of really interesting musical moments happened at the tiny Sweetwater club in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Just two months ago (writing this in February 2025), I posted a 1989 concert that took place there and featured Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and many others. For years, this club was a place where musicians hung out and performed with each other with barely anyone noticing, since the club could fit 100 people at best. 

This is the first and only example I could find of the BBC recording anything at this venue. I'm guessing what happened was that John Lee Hooker was suddenly hip again in the early 1990s after the success of his 1989 album "The Healer." He was 73 years old when it came out. It was the best selling album of his career, largely due to the appearance of many big name guest stars like Carlos Santana, Los Lobos, and Bonnie Raitt. In 1991, he released a similar album with more guest stars, "Mr. Lucky." So the BBC wanted a show from him, but he very rarely made it over to Europe. So they arranged to broadcast a concert from the U.S. And by having it at the Sweetwater, they were able to get some more guest stars to show up, since that kind of thing happened there a lot anyway. (For instance, Carlos Santana played many songs with Hooker at a Sweetwater concert in 1989.)

Many of these guest-filled Sweetwater shows from that era have somehow become soundboard quality bootlegs. But this one has not, as far as I know. So we're damn lucky that the BBC was there to record it. It's a shame that we only get six songs, but that's better than nothing. And what we do have sound great. (Given that Albert Collins was included in a group photo from this concert, I'll bet he was involved on stage somehow.)

John Hammond, Ry Cooder, and Charlie Musselwhite only helped out either on guitar or harmonica. But Bonnie Raitt dueted with Hooker on "I'm in the Mood" as well as playing slide guitar on that one and one other, and Robert Cray dueted with him on "Mr. Lucky" as well as playing lead guitar on that one too.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Father Was a Jockey (John Lee Hooker with John Hammond)
02 talk (John Lee Hooker)
03 Crawling King Snake (John Lee Hooker with Ry Cooder)
04 talk (John Lee Hooker)
05 I'm in the Mood (John Lee Hooker & Bonnie Raitt)
06 talk (John Lee Hooker)
07 I Want to Hug You (John Lee Hooker)
08 talk (John Lee Hooker)
09 Mr. Lucky (John Lee Hooker & Robert Cray)
10 talk (John Lee Hooker)
11 Boogie Chillun (John Lee Hooker with Charlie Musselwhite & Bonnie Raitt)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/heJTdFet

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/1eZ4xI4Sd9qzl7A/file

The cover photo must have been taken either right before or after this concert, because it's from the same date and location. However, I cropped it, because off to the left it also show Johnnie Johnson and Roy Rogers in the top row and Albert Collins in the bottom row. I especially didn't want to mislead people into thinking this had Albert Collins on it by having his picture on the cover.

No Nukes Concerts, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 9-21-1979: Ry Cooder

The eleventh album I'm posting from the 1979 No Nukes concerts is a set by singer and guitarist Ry Cooder.

All the music here comes from the September 21st concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It's possible that Cooder did other sets on other nights, but I don't know one way or another.

Cooder plays many instruments, but he's best known for his slide guitar playing. He released many solo albums in the 1970s, mostly consisting of cover versions. His latest album had been released just a month before this concert, "Bop until You Drop." All the songs he performed in this set were from that album except for "Lookin' for a Love."

Two guest stars had prominent roles. Soul singer Bobby King helped sing "Lookin' for a Love." Then Chaka Khan helped sing "Don't Mess Up a Good Thing." She had helped sing that song on his "Bop until You Drop" album as well. As you can hear from Cooder's comments at the end, her set immediately followed his, so she probably stayed on stage.

The song "Little Sister" was included on the official "No Nukes" album. If Cooder only did this one set, then that must be the same version as this one. Everything else is unreleased.

This album is 27 minutes long.

01 talk by Jackson Browne (Ry Cooder)
02 Little Sister (Ry Cooder)
03 Go Home Girl (Ry Cooder)
04 The Very Thing That Makes Her Rich [Makes You Poor] (Ry Cooder)
05 talk (Ry Cooder)
06 Lookin' for a Love (Ry Cooder & Bobby King)
07 talk (Ry Cooder)
08 Don't Mess Up a Good Thing (Ry Cooder & Chaka Khan)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17318133/VA-NONUKS1979MdisnSqurGrdnNwYrkC__9-21-1979_RyCodratse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tZ3ihSYR

I couldn't find a photo of Ry Cooder at the 1979 No Nukes concerts. This one is from a concert in Austria in 1979.

Little Village - Orpheum Theatre, Boston, MA, 4-26-1992

Little Village was a roots rock "supergroup." It consisted of John Hiatt on guitar, piano, and vocals, Nick Lowe on bass and vocals, Ry Cooder on lead guitar and vocals, and Jim Keltner on drums. They first got together to play all the songs on Hiatt's acclaimed 1987 album "Bring the Family." Then they got together again for Lowe's 1990 album "Party of One." The third and final got together, they released the Little Village album "Little Village" in 1992. Most of the songs were sung by Hiatt, but Lowe sang two and Cooder sang one.

You may not have heard of Little Village because they only stuck around for that album, and it was a disappointing one. Even Lowe later said about it, ""Little Village was really good fun. Unfortunately, the record we did was no good. I suppose on some level, it worked, but [our record company] kind of gave us too much time to do it." However, the band promoted the album with tours of the U.S. and Europe. And I repeatedly heard that they were much better live and on that album. For instance, if you read the write-up about the band at allmusic,com, it states, "Although the record was a bit of a disappointment, the live shows were superb."

So if you like the artists involved, you should listen to one of their concerts. There aren't that many bootlegs of their shows (and no official releases). This is the best sounding one I could find. It was professionally recorded and broadcast on the radio.

One reason the concerts were better than the album was because the album was dominated by Hiatt's songs, while the concerts were more evenly split between songs by Hiatt, Lowe, and Cooder. Naturally, they played most of the songs from the album, but also many songs from their various solo careers. They had to, since the album was 45 minutes long, and this concert was almost two hours long.

More specifically, this album is an hour and 56 minutes long.

01 talk (Little Village)
02 She Runs Hot (Little Village)
03 talk (Little Village)
04 The Action (Little Village)
05 talk (Little Village)
06 Fool Who Knows (Little Village)
07 Crazy about an Automobile (Little Village)
08 Inside Job (Little Village)
09 talk (Little Village)
10 Do You Want My Job (Little Village)
11 talk (Little Village)
12 Alone in the Dark (Little Village)
13 talk (Little Village)
14 Take Another Look (Little Village)
15 talk (Little Village)
16 Solar Sex Panel (Little Village)
17 Don't Think About Her When You're Trying To Drive (Little Village)
18 talk (Little Village)
19 Memphis in the Meantime (Little Village)
20 Crying in My Sleep (Little Village)
21 talk (Little Village)
22 Don't Go Away Mad (Little Village)
23 talk (Little Village)
24 Big Love (Little Village)
25 talk (Little Village)
26 Little Sister (Little Village)
27 talk (Little Village)
28 Across the Borderline (Little Village)
29 talk (Little Village)
30 Don't Bug Me When I'm Working (Little Village)
31 talk (Little Village)
32 Half a Boy and Half a Man (Little Village)
33 talk (Little Village)
34 Thing Called Love (Little Village)
35 Lipstick Sunset (Little Village)
36 talk (Little Village)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hogzyv9Q

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/wYTD4eIEw4oEWrX/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/a2cTy

The cover is from a concert in Brussels, Belgium, on July 2, 1992. Left to right: Lowe, Hiatt, and Cooder. In the original picture, there was a big gap between Cooder and the others, but I eliminated that gap in Photoshop.

Popgala '73, Sporthal de Vliegermolen, Voorburg, Netherlands, 3-9-1973, Part 2: Ry Cooder

Next up from the Popgala '73 rock festival is a set by slide guitarist Ry Cooder. Happily, I was able to find enough material for an album's worth of songs.

As I mentioned in the write-up for the previous album in this series, I often have cobbled these albums together from different sources. That was the case here. The first five songs came from one source and the last four came from a different source, yet one song ("Billy the Kid") was the same between them. So who knows what the correct song order is. However, I watched the video, and Cooder left the stage after "Jesus on the Mainline," and the few songs before that were filmed without pause. 

So I think this is pretty close. However, it's very possible that additional songs were played that I've missed since they weren't included in any of the released film footage. 

Cooder did his entire set in solo acoustic mode. Mostly, he played slide on the acoustic guitar. But I believe he switched to mandolin for some of the songs.

This album is 39 minutes long.

By the way, note that I'm continuing the numbering from the first volume, in case you want to put all the albums from the festival into one folder for a single, continuous listening.

022 Floating Bridge (Ry Cooder)
023 talk (Ry Cooder)
024 F. D. R. in Trinidad (Ry Cooder)
025 Ditty Wa Ditty (Ry Cooder)
026 Dark Is the Night [Instrumental] (Ry Cooder)
027 Now That I'm Going Down (Ry Cooder)
028 Clean Up at Home (Ry Cooder)
029 Tattler (Ry Cooder)
030 talk (Ry Cooder)
031 Billy the Kid (Ry Cooder)
032 Jesus on the Mainline (Ry Cooder)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205459/VA-POPGLA197302RyCoodr.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hQqm6MEF

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4BOLF1H5N2TiB6s/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert. However, the original was in black and white. But I was able to watch video of his performance on YouTube, so I was able to get the colors exactly correct. That includes his unusual shirt, which was generally blue near his neck, but morphed to shades of red father down.

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

The Rising Sons - The Ash Grove, Los Angeles, CA, 5-9-1966

Yesterday, when I posted a Jorma Kaukonen concert from 1964, I commented that it's amazing how one can sometimes find some rare stuff on the Internet that one can barely believe even exists. That got me thinking about a couple of bootlegs I have featuring the Rising Sons. 

If you're not familiar with this band, they are most famous for having Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder as members before they got famous. Their style of electrified folk blues was ahead of its time in the short period they were together, from 1964 to 1966. They recorded a bunch of songs in the studio, but only one single was released while they stayed a band. However, an excellent archival release came out in 1992. 

None of the band's live performances have ever been officially released. However, I have two bootlegs, one from 1965 and the other from 1966. Both are from the Ash Grove, a folk club in Los Angeles. The Rising Sons were ahead of their time in that they had a mix of black and white band members. Apparently, this meant that many clubs were afraid to book them, so they didn't get the kind of exposure they needed to break through. But the Ash Grove liked them, and let them play there quite a lot. Thus, both of these bootlegs are from that club.

Unfortunately, these bootlegs both sound great and terrible at the same time. They're great in that they're pristine soundboards, which certainly is unusual for the time. But they're terrible in that only part of the band was properly recorded. The lead vocals (all by Taj Mahal) and some of the instruments come in clearly, but other instruments are barely heard at all. That's why I've never posted either bootleg here. However, today, it occurred to me that now I'm using the sound editing program Spleeter, I could drastically improve the mix. So that's what I did for this 1966 concert.

There's good news and bad news. The good news is that the mix is much improved. In particular, I was able to boost the guitar to make this sound very listenable. The bad news is that the harmonica playing in particular was so faint to begin with that I didn't have much to work with, and it's still very faint. One can tell the harmonica should be quite prominent, with some solos here and there, but it sounds like it's coming from two rooms away... or maybe two planets away!

Anyway, if you can tolerate that, I think the rest sounds great for a 1966 recording. Minus the harmonica problem, and maybe the bass being rather low, this could easily be worthy of an official release.  It's a bummer that there's only 30 minutes of music here, but that's 30 minutes more than you probably ever expected to hear of this band live (if you've been aware of them at all).

By the way, an interesting fact is that Taj Mahal mentioned between song that blues legends Lightnin' Hopkins and Son House were in the audience. That's almost certainly true. There are many more bootlegs from the Ash Grove in the 1960s (unfortunately the vast majority having the same mixing problems). There's one of Lightnin' Hopkins from this same date, and others on different dates of Son House. The Rising Sons must have been in awe playing in front of some of their musical heroes.

UPDATE: On February 24, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. The song list is the same. However, I was able to use recent technological advances in audio editing (specifically the MVSEP program) to finally fix the problems I mentioned above, especially of the harmonica being too ow in the mix.

01 Hi-Heel Sneakers (Rising Sons)
02 talk (Rising Sons)
03 Who Do You Think You Is (Rising Sons)
04 talk (Rising Sons)
05 I Got My Mojo Working (Rising Sons)
06 talk (Rising Sons)
07 Walking Down the Line (Rising Sons)
08 talk (Rising Sons)
09 Walking the Dog (Rising Sons)
10 Little Red Rooster (Rising Sons)
11 talk (Rising Sons)
12 Statesboro Blues (Rising Sons)
13 Hambone (Rising Sons)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oLCyXAao

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2g7qej7FQosrTKy/file 

There are very, very few color photos of the Rising Sons. I couldn't find any of them in concert. I did find a nice one of them which I've used here. But there was a problem: it's a rectangular shot, with Ry Cooder way far from the from the rest of the band. So, using Photoshop, I moved him so he's sitting on his butt in front of the others. (Taj Mahal, with hat, is now standing directly above his head.) 

I also found a playbill advertising the Rising Sons playing at the Ash Grove, though for a different date. I used the exact font from that for the text. Finally, just for fun, I added the stereo and record company logos to make it look like a released album from the 1960s.

Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder - The Ash Grove, Los Angeles, CA, 9-3-1963

I'm amazed that I'm able to present this concert, because until a few days ago, I never had any idea that such a recording existed (and in excellent sound). Not to mention the fact that I never had a clue that Jackie DeShannon ever performed a concert like this!

In case you don't know, DeShannon has had a long career as a singer songwriter. She's best known as the singer of the 1960s hits "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" and "What the World Needs Now Is Love," as well as writing hits for others, such as "When You Walk in the Room" and "Betty Davis Eyes." She was very musical since she was a young child, hosting her own local radio show in Kentucky by the age of 11, and having her first single in 1956 at the age of 15. A long series of singles followed, nearly all of them flops. However, in early 1963, she had a minor hit with "Needles and Pins" in the US, though it was a number one hit in Canada.

Given that she already had spent eight years as a singles artist by 1963, what's strange is that this concert is fully acoustic, and almost all the songs she performs are traditional folk and blues songs. I had no idea DeShannon went through a phase where she was a full-on "folkie," but apparently she did that in 1963. That was the year she released her first studio album, simply called "Jackie DeShannon," and it was filled with folk songs, though it was given a mainstream glossy production. She claims she wanted to do an entire album of Bob Dylan covers, which would have been a bold move, because Dylan was just starting to break big in 1963. However, her record company nixed that idea, though she did get to put three Dylan covers on that album.

However, this concert is strange even given the fact that she released that folk album, because this concert occurred a few months after that album came out, and yet she played only one of the songs from it! She also didn't play any of her own songs, despite the fact that she already was a talented songwriter. (She would have a minor hit with her song "When You Walk in the Room" only a couple of months after this concert. The Searchers would have a much bigger hit with it a year after that.)

We're very lucky this concert was recorded at all. DeShannon didn't tour much, and I've never seen or heard of any concert bootleg from her until I came across this one. It exists because the Ash Grove, a folk music club in Los Angeles, recorded just about every concert in its club for years, going back to the early 1960s (though nearly all of those recordings remain unreleased). So not only does this recording exist, but it's a pristine soundboard! From 1963!

DeShannon was a very beautiful 22 year old at the time of this concert, as you can see from this album cover, but she wasn't just another pretty face. So it's no surprise to me that she plays these folk songs very well. She certainly would have excelled in this genre if she'd decided to continue with it. But the Beatles dominated the music world starting in early 1964, and she changed her style to catch the new trend. She even toured with the Beatles for a few months beginning in February 1964. Thus, her folkie phase probably lasted less than a year.

She played two sets in this one evening at the Ash Grove. She played a lot of the same songs in the two sets, and I'm not a fan of having the same song twice on the same album, so I haven't included the songs on the second set that are repeats from the first set. By eliminating the duplicates, this album turns out to be 43 minutes long, which would have been a fine album length for that era.

I also made big edits to two songs. The first song, "Key to the Highway," faded in partially through the song. I knew the song repeated the first verse as the last verse, so I copied the last verse back to restore the missing first verse. (That was a nice lucky break that the song repeats itself like that.) Also, the song "Trouble in Mind" is where her second set starts, and the recording had an announcer talk a lot over the intro to the song. So I found a section later in the song that repeated the intro, and i patched that in.

Note that Ry Cooder is also credited on this album. DeShannon was a capable guitar player herself, but she was accompanied for this concert by Cooder for the lead guitar parts, as well as David Cohen for some bass playing. At this time, Cooder's musical career was just starting and he was a total unknown, so I'm sure his name wouldn't have been on the billing. His participation is only significant in hindsight, thanks to his later successful career. But you can hear him playing some nice guitar solos here and there.

By the way, the one disappointment I have with this concert is that the last song fades out after less than a minute. And that's particularly unfortunate, because it's a cover of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," the only non-traditional song played at the concert. Plus, since it fades out, I don't know if there are other songs after it that didn't get recorded. Plus, the first song of the first set also fades in, so there could be more missing songs there. But we're damn lucky to at least have this much.

01 Key to the Highway [Edit] (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
02 talk (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
03 Frankie and Albert (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
04 talk (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
05 Silver City Bound (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
06 Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
07 Betty and Dupree (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
08 Black Eye Blues (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
09 James Alley Blues (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
10 talk (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
11 Ninety-Nine and a Half (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
12 talk (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
13 Mean Old Bed Bug Blues (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
14 Trouble in Mind (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
15 Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
16 The House of the Rising Sun (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
17 talk (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
18 Dink's Song [Fare Thee Well] (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
19 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right [Incomplete] (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TuFp4ic3

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/QZxlCWqT6Ccncxn/file

I found it nearly impossible to find a good color photo of DeShannon from 1963 for the cover art. I had to resort to using a photo from her 1963 self-titled album. In February 2025, I upgraded it somewhat with the Krea AI program.