Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 8-31-1969, Part 2: Sam & Dave

Here's the second album of the second day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. It's a set by soul music duo Sam and Dave.

Note, by the way, that I don't know the exact order of the performances on the second day, with a couple of exceptions. So this order is just a guess.

We're very lucky to have this album, because there are very few recordings of Sam and Dave performing live in the 1960s prime (at least that are publicly available). They never released a live album, and there are virtually no bootlegs. The only partial exception with bootlegs is a 1967 concert in Norway that I've posted, which includes a Sam and Dave set that lasts only 20 minutes. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/07/various-artists-stax-volt-revue.html 

Sam and Dave had lots of hits from 1965 to 1969. But they had a change of record companies and producers, and lost the use of some key songwriters who had been working them, and the hits suddenly dried up. They broke up in early 1970, ending their peak era. They got back together multiple times, starting in 1971, but the magic was gone. They basically became an oldies act, doing it to make a living. They typically would show up separately for shows, require separate dressing rooms, not look at each other onstage, and communicate through intermediaries. So it's good to have this recording from the tail end of their peak era, right before everything went to hell for them.

For some reason, a common bootleg of this festival only includes two songs by Sam and Dave, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" and "May I, Baby." But in fact, there are all these songs, with soundboard quality.

This album is 35 minutes long.

01 Sing a Simple Song [Instrumental Version] (Sam & Dave)
02 I Take What I Want (Sam & Dave)
03 talk (Sam & Dave)
04 I've Been Loving You Too Long (Sam & Dave)
05 May I, Baby (Sam & Dave)
06 Soul Man (Sam & Dave)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QrRRwprE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/YOnN14e4yEbDzrI/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert. As with many of the acts for this festival, I was lucky to find just one photo actually from the festival. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it using the Kolorize program. I also improved the detail with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Isaac Hayes & David Porter: 1965-1989

Here's another album from my "Covered" series, which highlights the careers of great songwriters. This time, it's the songwriting team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter.

In the 1960s, Hayes and Porter worked for the Stax Records label in Memphis, Tennessee. Both of them were local kids that got involved as session musicians, slowly graduating to producers and songwriters as well. Around 1965, they began writing songs together, mostly for the soul duo Sam and Dave, but also for some others on the Stax label. 

Unfortunately, their collaboration didn't last long. In 1968, Hayes put out a solo album called "Hot Buttered Soul." It was an unexpected hit, turning Hayes into a big soul music star. It, and following albums, mostly consisted of very extended versions of cover songs, so the songwriting team of Hayes and Porter wasn't needed much. As a result, the songwriting team broke up around 1969. But they wrote about 200 songs together during their roughly four years together, many of them all time classics, like "Hold On, I'm Coming" and "Soul Man."

Porter didn't have much success writing songs with others after Hayes. But Hayes became an even bigger star in the early 1970s, especially with "Theme from 'Shaft'," which was a Number One hit in the U.S. in 1971. Although I've included that song, I avoided other Hayes solo songs, since this is focused on the Hayes-Porter collaboration. The songs here are in chronological order by year, and after "Theme from 'Shaft'" at track 13, all the songs are covers of earlier Hayes-Porter compositions. 

The one exception is "Deja Vu" by Dionne Warwick. That was an instrumental Hayes was working on in the late 1970s. Warwick heard him playing it, and liked it. She asked Hayes if she could finish it off with another songwriter, and he agreed, so she did. That songwriter, Adrienne Anderson, kept the title "Deja Vu" that Hayes gave to the instrumental, and Warwick had a big hit with it.

Here are the Wikipedia entries if you want to know more about them:

Isaac Hayes - Wikipedia

David Porter (musician) - Wikipedia

I tried to select a variety of different performers so I didn't have too many of any one. However, Sam and Dave did so many definitive versions that I kept four of their performances.

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 You Don't Know like I Know (Sam & Dave)
02 Boot-Leg (Booker T. & the MG's)
03 Candy (Astors)
04 Hold On, I'm Coming (Sam & Dave)
05 60 Minutes of Your Love (Homer Banks)
06 B-A-B-Y (Carla Thomas)
07 Soul Man (Sam & Dave)
08 I Take What I Want (James & Bobby Purify)
09 Toe Hold (Sharon Tandy)
10 Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody (Cliff Bennett)
11 Your Good Thing [Is about to End] (Lou Rawls)
12 Soul Sister, Brown Sugar (Sam & Dave)
13 Theme from 'Shaft' (Isaac Hayes)
14 You Got Me Hummin' (Cold Blood)
15 I Thank You (ZZ Top)
16 Deja Vu (Dionne Warwick)
17 Wrap It Up (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
18 When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17236601/COVRDIsacHyesDvidPrter_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HnTWxBFb

It's easy to find photos of Isaac Hayes, since he was a big star, but it's very hard to find photos of David Porter, since he was a low-profile songwriter. It's even harder to find photos of them together. I found a decent one for the cover, but it's from 2005, decades after their songwriting partnership ended.

Various Artists - Stax-Volt Revue - Njardhallen, Oslo, Norway, 4-7-1967

Here's something a little different. In the 1960s, there were two distinctive and influential record labels when it came to soul music: Motown in Detroit and Stax in Memphis. (Stax is sometimes referred to as Stax/Volt, as it is here, due to Stax having a sister record label called Volt that was basically the same.)

At the time, instead of having individual musical artists doing entire concerts by themselves, it was typical in soul music to have a "revue" with a bunch of different artists. Not surprisingly, the Stax artists were usually packaged together, just as the Motown artists were.

Around 1966 and 1967, there was a huge surge of interest in soul music in Europe. This is because most soul records hadn't been available, and then they suddenly became available, and Europe found out about all kinds of great, classic songs in a short time. The Stax record company realized this and had their Stax revue tour Europe in the summer of 1967. They were greeted by very enthusiastic crowds everywhere they went, even though they were typically all white crowds of people generally new to soul music.

By some lucky chance, one such concert in Olso, Norway, was filmed, and the footage survived. This is very important footage, especially since Otis Redding was the main star and he died about half a year later. This footage has been released as a DVD, but I don't think there's any corresponding album release. So I converted the video to audio and broke it up into mp3s.

The concert starts with a bunch of instrumentals. Some are credited to "Booker T. & the MGs" and some are credits to the "Mar-Keys," but they're the same musicians, including the likes of guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Duck Dunn. They are then the house band for all the acts in the rest of the concert. (That was typically the case on the records as well.)

After that are relatively brief spots by Arthur Conley and Eddie Floyd. (I must say I'm really surprised Floyd's huge 1966 hit "Knock on Wood" wasn't included.) Then Sam and Dave and Otis Redding got larger slots of about 20 minutes each, because they were bigger acts.

If you're a fan of 1960s soul music, this is a priceless historical document, and a fun listen.

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long.

01 Red Beans and Rice [Instrumental] (Booker T. & the MGs)
02 Green Onions [Instrumental] (Booker T. & the MGs)
03 Philly Dog [Instrumental] (Mar-Keys)
04 Grab This Thing [Instrumental] (Mar-Keys)
05 Last Night [Instrumental] (Mar-Keys)
06 In the Midnight Hour (Arthur Conley)
07 Sweet Soul Music (Arthur Conley)
08 Raise Your Hand (Eddie Floyd)
09 You Don't Know like I Know (Sam & Dave)
10 Soothe Me (Sam & Dave)
11 When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (Sam & Dave)
12 Hold On, I'm Coming (Sam & Dave)
13 Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa [Sad Song] (Otis Redding)
14 My Girl (Otis Redding)
15 Shake (Otis Redding)
16 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Otis Redding)
17 Try a Little Tenderness (Otis Redding)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15481730/StxVltRevue_1967_NjardhallnOsloNorwy__4-7-1967_atse.zip.html

The cover is based on the cover of the DVD. However, that was rectangular in shape, in keeping with the concert posters of the time, including fully copying the artistic style. So I used Photoshop to squish things vertically while not squishing the black and white photos that were included in the art.