Taj Mahal with John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Jesse Ed Davis - Palomino Club, Los Angeles, CA, 2-19-1987

This is a pretty amazing Taj Mahal concert, because just look at who his special guests were: John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, AND George Harrison! And all three of them stayed on stage for the vast majority of the concert, with Fogerty and Harrison singing several songs each. (Dylan was content just to play guitar and sing backing vocals.) I had known about this concert for a long time, but I'd never had it in my collection due to sound quality issues. But recently I revisited it, because advances in audio editing technology enabled me to make some improvements. Now, it sounds like a soundboard, even though the sound quality still is not ideal.

I found an extensive quote about this concert that George Harrison gave to Q Magazine in 1988, so I'll start with that:

"I'll tell you what happened there. I'd gone to America, and Bob [Dylan] rang me and said, you know, did I want to come out for an evening and see Taj Mahal who was playing at the Palomino? So we went there and had a few of these Mexican beers, and had a few more. And Jesse Ed Davis, who played guitar on 'Watching the River Flow,' is in the audience, and Bob says, 'Hey, why don't we all get up and play - we've had a few beers, right - and you can sing!' So we get up there and I'm in the spotlight and Bob's hanging back in the shadows and I start singing: 'What’s the matter with me? I don't have much to say...' and every time I get near the microphone, Dylan comes running up and just starts singing this rubbish in my ear, trying to throw me off. But it was really funny because when I got pushed on stage at Wembley [in London, with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Dylan] and sang a bit of 'Rainy Day Women' I couldn't remember the words and just made up this stuff. And Bob came up to me afterwards, backstage, and said, 'So you got even with me!' But it was nice to recapture the feeling of what it was like on stage to make sure I could go back into that situation in the future."

Most of that is correct, but a couple of things he said were slightly off. We can tell a lot about what really happened because the video of this entire recording is available on YouTube, though the picture quality is extremely poor. It seems Jesse Ed Davis - a very talented lead guitarist who had worked with many big names since the late 1960s - was already there as part of Taj Mahal's backing band from the start of the recording. Then, after just the first song, Harrison went up on stage. It seems he went up unprompted, and there was absolutely no comment made by Mahal or anyone else about him being there. But if you watch the video, you can see Mahal give him an electric guitar and help him get in position to play by the start of the second song, "Checkin' Up on My Baby."

For a few songs, it was Taj Mahal and four members of his backing band on stage (Jesse Ed Davis, Mark Shark, Bobby Tsukamoto, and Gary Ray), plus Harrison. Then, before the start of "Matchbox," Mahal very strongly encouraged Dylan to also join them on stage, teasing him that he was going to come get him if he didn't. So Dylan went on stage, got a guitar, and started playing it.

Halfway through "Matchbox," Harrison surprised by taking over lead vocals for most of the rest of the song. Then, near the very end of the song, John Fogerty went on stage too. He was plugged in and ready to join in by the start of the next song, "Lucille." Once again though, there's no mention by Mahal or anyone else about him being there.

Up until that point, it had basically been a Taj Mahal concert. And Mahal was the sole lead singer for the next few songs. But Harrison, Dylan, and Fogerty stayed on stage for the entire rest of the concert. And from "Knock on Wood" to the end of the concert, 11 songs in all, Harrison and Fogerty stepped up and basically dominated. They sang lead on all but two of the songs from that point on.

However, if you're a Dylan fan, there's a lot less here for you. He was definitely involved playing guitar. If you watch the video, you can see he even got a couple of the songs started. And he did sing some backing vocals. But he seemed determined not to sing any lead vocals. When Harrison started singing "Watching the River Flow," it happened just as Harrison described in the above quote: Dylan basically shouted nonsense words right into Harrison's ear, playfully trying to get him to screw up! Perhaps Harrison, being a huge Dylan fan, started that song because he knew that Jesse Ed Davis played the guitar solo on Dylan's studio version, recorded in 1971. Davis got to reprise his solo in this performance.

One historic aspect of this concert was that it caused John Fogerty play a Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) song in public for the first time in 15 years. Many years later, he explained how it happened:

"I'd gone there to see Taj Mahal, who I love, and sat down. And at some point, I heard a rumor that George Harrison was there, that he was kind of in this cloak room. So I went in and talked to George for a little bit, and that was really fun. Then I went back and sat down. Then I heard a rumor that Bob Dylan was somewhere in the room. I didn't know until much later that actually George and Bob were really tight, they were great friends, and they had arrived together."

Fogerty watched from the audience as first Harrison and then Dylan joined Mahal on stage. "I'm usually kinda shy, but for some reason I thought, 'Man, I hope they have another guitar! Please call me up there!' I just wanted to get up there. It just looked historic and a lot of fun."

Apparently, Mahal saw Fogerty in the audience and gave him a signal to come up. After a while, the crowd wanted the famous guests to play some of their original songs. As mentioned above, Dylan's "Watching the River Flow" was played, although that seemed to be against Dylan's wishes. Then Harrison sang "Honey Don't." Although it was originally by Carl Perkins, it had been recorded by the Beatles. Plus, Harrison had helped sing "Matchbox," which also had been recorded by the Beatles. So now the pressure was on for Fogerty to do one of his songs. 

Fogerty further explained, "And then the audience started going, 'John, John! C'mon! Play "Proud Mary!" And this was during the time that I had sworn off playing my own songs from the Creedence days because of legal and emotional entanglements. I'm really being kind of, let's say, stubborn about it. But suddenly Bob Dylan turns me and he goes, 'John, if you don't play "Proud Mary," everybody's gonna think it's a Tina Turner song.' And I looked at him, and by God, I played 'Proud Mary.'" 

Clearly, he had fun. After the song finished, you can hear him say, "Eat your heart out, Tina!" 

Fogerty had just done a concert tour in 1986 for the first time since 1972. He wouldn't do another full tour until 1997. But later in 1987, he would take part in "Welcome Home," a benefit concert, and he would play more CCR songs for it. And he would keep playing them from that point on. So this Taj Mahal concert was a turning point for him, breaking his stubbornness about not wanting to give any royalties to his record company for the CCR songs. And while Dylan didn't do much singing on stage, his involvement may have been the key factor that got Fogerty singing his old songs again.

Now, let's get to sound quality. From what I understand, the owner of the Palomino Club saw something special was likely to happen, and began videotaping the concert. (He probably missed some Taj Mahal songs before the first one that shows up here.) So it has been recorded for posterity due to the video tape. That video later got converted to audio, and made into a popular bootleg under the name the "Silver Wilburys." However, that only included about half of the songs here, generally the later ones starring the famous guests. So I found a YouTube video to get the audio for the entire thing.

The sound quality was pretty good, but there was a lot of hiss, and some other issues. I ran all of it through the MVSEP program, using the "Denoise" filter to get rid of most of the hiss. Then I ran it through another filter to get rid of even more hiss. I also made some other adjustments, like boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments. I think it sounds a lot better now. 

Additionally, there was a lot of dead air between songs. The musicians on stage were winging it, so it took time for them to decide what song to play next, then determine what key to play it in, and things like that. Most of that discussion couldn't be heard at all. Plus, there was a lot of guitar tuning. So I cut out some of that, when it started to really drag between songs. But still, I kept most it, especially whenever any talking on stage could be heard. I also turned down the volume of the guitar noodling between songs, so one could better hear what else was going on.

I made an additional edit on the song "Proud Mary," enough to add "[Edit]" to the song title. Taj Mahal was helping with the singing. On the other songs, this was fine. But this song was Fogerty's moment, singing a CCR song for the first time in 15 years, and Mahal's vocal ad-libs were a distraction for the most part. I read a comment on the YouTube video of this concert that likened his singing on that song to the way Yoko Ono sometimes ruined a John Lennon song. I had to agree. So, using MVSEP again, I cut out just the parts of his vocals that annoyed me. For instance, at one point, Mahal began singing one part of the song when Fogerty sang another part of the song. Needless to say, Fogerty sang the correct part. 

When listening to this, please keep in mind the spirit of this performance. After the first few songs, which Taj Mahal and his band knew well, it's safe to assume that the rest involved everyone winging it. So you have some mistakes that even an average bar band wouldn't make, like how Taj Mahal forgot half the lyrics to "Johnny B. Goode." But that wasn't point. Some legendary musical figures were just having fun on stage (including both Harrison and Fogerty playing some guitar solos). This is pretty much the only and only time in rock music history these people did anything like this. 

This album is an hour and 48 minutes long. 

Here's another photo from the concert. 

01 Leaving Trunk (Taj Mahal)
02 talk (Taj Mahal)
03 Checkin' Up on My Baby (Taj Mahal)
04 She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride (Taj Mahal)
05 Farther on Down the Road [You Will Accompany Me] (Jesse Ed Davis with Taj Mahal)
06 You're Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond (Taj Mahal)
07 talk (Taj Mahal)
08 Matchbox - Gone, Gone, Gone (George Harrison & Taj Mahal)
09 talk (Everyone)
10 Lucille (Taj Mahal)
11 Crosscut Saw (Taj Mahal)
12 talk (Everyone)
13 Bacon Fat (Taj Mahal)
14 talk (Everyone)
15 Knock on Wood (John Fogerty with Taj Mahal)
16 talk (Everyone)
17 In the Midnight Hour (John Fogerty with Taj Mahal)
18 talk (Everyone)
19 Honey Don't (George Harrison)
20 talk (Everyone)
21 Blue Suede Shoes (John Fogerty & George Harrison)
22 talk (Everyone)
23 Watching the River Flow (George Harrison with Bob Dylan)
24 talk (Everyone)
25 Proud Mary [Edit] (John Fogerty with Taj Mahal)
26 talk (John Fogerty)
27 Johnny B. Goode (Taj Mahal)
28 talk (Everyone)
29 Willie and the Hand Jive (Taj Mahal)
30 Peggy Sue (George Harrison with Bob Dylan)
31 talk (Everyone)
32 Dizzy Miss Lizzy (George Harrison)
33 talk (Everyone)
34 Twist and Shout (John Fogerty & Taj Mahal)
35 talk (Taj Mahal)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nStUSnDq 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/GV7bA4Zovc8wkh7/file

I was only about to find two photos of this concert that looked even halfway decent. I posted the best one as the cover, even though it only shows Dylan, Harrison, and a member of the backing band standing between them. I posted the other one up above the song list. It sounds the overall club environment, but you can barely make out who is on stage.

There also are a couple of photos of all the band members together back stage, which must have been taken after the concert, since Fogerty said he wasn't sure the likes of Dylan and Harrison were there when the concert began. The Native American musician John Trudell is in the picture as well. He was probably there to see Jesse Ed Davis, another Native American, who played on Trudell's albums. Unfortunately, Davis had a lot of problems with drug addiction. He died of a drug overdose a year after this concert took place.

Taj Mahal - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 5-16-1973, Late Show

The album I just posted is Taj Mahal performing at Ebbets Field in Denver on May 16, 1973, for the early show. This is the same, except it's the late show. The two shows have very similar set lists. (And both were broadcast on the radio, which is why they have such excellent sound quality.) Normally, I wouldn't post two concerts that are this similar. But I figure these are quite obscure. I had a difficult time finding them. So I want to post both, to bring them back into wider circulation.

The main difference between this show and the early show is the last two songs, which were only performed in this show. Plus, the last four songs in the early show weren't performed here. So if you want everything without multiple versions of songs, I suggest you save the early show, then add the last two songs from this late show to the end.

By the way, in case you didn't notice, I recently changed the font type and color for the Ebbets Field concerts I've been posting. The first seven or so had a yellow color. But there were some troublesome issues with that font. So when I found another sixty (!) or so concerts from this venue, I decided to use an easier one. I also found a little logo from the venue showing the baseball stadium in New York City that the venue was named after. I decided to stick that on all the albums from that venue. Since that logo was mainly in green, I changed the font color to green. In recent days, I went back and reposted all the yellow ones to the new color scheme, so they'll all be consistent. 

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 talk (Taj Mahal)
02 Kalimba [Instrumental] (Taj Mahal)
03 talk (Taj Mahal)
04 Banjo Rag [Instrumental] (Taj Mahal)
05 Cakewalk into Town (Taj Mahal)
06 Going Up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue (Taj Mahal)
07 Ain't Nobody's Business but My Own (Taj Mahal)
08 talk (Taj Mahal)
09 Big Legged Mammas Are Back in Style (Taj Mahal)
10 Fishin' Blues (Taj Mahal)
11 Sweet Home Chicago (Taj Mahal)
12 Linin' Track Blues (Taj Mahal)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZtaaiayH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/zRL9jT3pDSQnOT8/file

The cover image is from Great Southeast Music in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 26, 1973. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. Note that I took the picture from the early show from the same show. I like the similarity, since I figure he would have worn the same clothes in the two shows performed on this date.

Taj Mahal - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 5-16-1973, Early Show

The recent flood of posts from the Ebbets Field radio broadcasts continues. Here's Taj Mahal. I'll be posting both the early and late shows he did the same night.

This concert was in solo acoustic mode. Mostly, he played guitar. But he also played a little banjo, as well as an African instrument known as the kalimba (also known as the mbira). On the cover image, he can be seen playing a banjo.

His most recent album at the time was "Recycling the Blues and Other Related Stuff," released in 1972. He has an instrumental on that album simply called "Kalimba," which is how I know the name of that song. (I had to figure out most of the song titles, since the bootleg I took the music from was bad with titles.) "Cakewalk into Town" and "Corrina" are the only other songs he played from that album. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. But I did do a fair amount of audio editing in the Audacity program to improve things. Some parts were too loud, sometimes the vocals were too low, and so on.

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 Banjo Rag [Instrumental] (Taj Mahal)
02 talk (Taj Mahal)
03 Kalimba [Instrumental] (Taj Mahal)
04 Cakewalk into Town (Taj Mahal)
05 Big Legged Mammas Are Back in Style (Taj Mahal)
06 Going Up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue (Taj Mahal)
07 Ain't Nobody's Business but My Own (Taj Mahal)
08 Fishin' Blues (Taj Mahal)
09 Straight Shootin' Blues (Taj Mahal)
10 Ain't Gwine Whistle Dixie [Any Mo'] (Taj Mahal)
11 Done Changed My Way of Living (Taj Mahal)
12 Corrina [Corinna] (Taj Mahal)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UEQAJ8sk

alternate:

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

The cover image is from Great Southeast Music in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 26, 1973. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 3: October to November 1968

Here's the third volume compiling episodes of the "Playboy After Dark" TV show. 

I said most of what I wanted to say about this weird TV show in general in my write-ups for the first and second volumes. So this time I'll concentrate more on the music.

I'm especially psyched that this has Jackie DeShannon performing two songs. I've been looking for a concert recording from her for ages. I found one she did in 1963, and I've posted that at this music blog, but that's about all I've found. (There are a few YouTube videos of her performing, but most of them are from decades later.) So this is a real find, in my opinion.

As I keep posting these volumes, you'll probably notice a mix of famous musical acts and total obscurities. MC Squared is an example of an obscurity. They were a band many compared to Jefferson Airplane. But they only ever managed to release four singles, none of which dented the charts. 

However, I noticed that many of the obscurities "just happened" to be very attractive women. Cathy Carlson and Lynn Kellogg are examples of that on this volume. Both of them only had one single released under their own names at the time of this show, and neither of them went on to release even a single album. (Although Kellogg did have some minor success later in movie and Broadway play roles.) I surmise that Playboy head Hugh Hefner figured many people would watch his show as much for the many beautiful women shown in the crowd scenes as for the music, comedy, and other performances, so he probably preferred musical acts featuring beautiful women as well. Even MC Squared fits this pattern, since that band had an attractive female lead singer.

Also, unfortunately, as I mentioned in more detail in the write-up for Volume 2, Hefner was an expert in sexual manipulation and grooming. It's highly likely that he often tried to tempt women to have sex with him by dangling the prospect of them performing on this show (or even just being an extra in the party crowds), though it's impossible to say if he was successful with that in any specific instance. In some later episodes, there are cases of female singers on the show who posed nude for Playboy Magazine as well. Though I'll mention again that I didn't include all the musical performances in these compilations. There were the occasional few who just weren't very good, in my opinion, or I had other issues with them, so they were left out.

Something else just came to my mind about Hefner. One reason he got away with his sexual exploitation for so long was because people assumed he was an enlightened person due to his progressive social and political views. For instance, he was ahead of the curve promoting minorities and women in his business empire, as well as giving them opportunities in his magazines and T.V. shows and such. We can see examples of that enlightened reputation in this volume. Not only does it include liberal folk singers Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, but he gave them ample time to talk about their progressive causes, in addition to just singing songs. For instance, before singing, Baez led a discussion that lasted several minutes, arguing there was a moral imperative to oppose the Vietnam War. I highly doubt there were other T.V. shows in that era with a national audience that allowed that sort of discussion. But we now know Hefner could have both been progressive in some of his attitudes in public while also sexually exploiting many women in private. 

This album is an hour and one minute long. 

01 I Know You [Your Nature Is like Mine] (MC Squared)
02 Everybody's Talkin' (MC Squared)
03 The Pill (Pete Seeger)
04 I Got It Bad [And That Ain't Good] (Carmen McRae)
05 Come Live with Me (Carmen McRae)
06 I Got the Reason (Jackie DeShannon)
07 Holly Would (Jackie DeShannon)
08 Everybody's Got to Change Sometime (Taj Mahal)
09 E Z Rider (Taj Mahal)
10 You Could End the World (Cathy Carlson)
11 Hurt So Bad (Cathy Carlson)
12 And the Address [Instrumental] [Edit] (Deep Purple)
13 Hush (Deep Purple)
14 Ol' Man River (Lynn Kellogg)
15 It's Just a Game Love (Brenton Wood)
16 Gimme Little Sign (Brenton Wood)
17 California Earthquake (John Hartford)
18 Natural to Be Gone (John Hartford)
19 Hickory Wind (Joan Baez)
20 Tears of Rage (Joan Baez)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/n4say7Ry

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/rOgqrK3kEfKZ9SF/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from one of the videos of these episodes of Jackie DeShannon. Do you see the mostly bald-headed man standing right behind her? That's Barry White, who would become a big soul music star in the 1970s. At this time, he was a relative unknown, working mostly as a producer and backing vocalist. He was heavily involved in DeShannon's career around 1968. In fact, the first song she sang here, "I Got the Reason," was written by White.

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.

Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 6-30-1971, Part 5: Elvin Bishop, Taj Mahal, and More

Here's the fifth set from the first day of five days of concerts that closed the Fillmore West venue in San Francisco in 1971. (See my write-up on the Boz Scaggs set for general information about the closing.) This set is different. Instead of featuring one musical act, it was a bonus jam session after all the acts scheduled to perform had finished their sets. 

I luckily found this set on YouTube, then converted it to audio format and broke it into mp3s. The text for that contained some informative text taken from Wolfgang's Vault, so I'll repeat that here: 

"As many may already know, on the final night (July 4th) of the closing week festivities at Fillmore West a lengthy jam session occurred, featuring many great musicians and singers. What few remember is that a similar event occurred earlier in the week (on the first night, June 30th). It was this jam session, in fact, that provided the two tracks that made it onto the 'Fillmore: The Last Days' live release. The core band includes Elvin Bishop on lead guitar, Stephen Miller (from Elvin's band) on organ, David Brown (from Boz Scaggs' band) on bass and Michael Shrieve (from Santana) on drums. This was one of the few sets not broadcast locally, and until these pre-production reels were recently discovered in the Bill Graham Archive, nobody was aware that most of this jam session existed on tape. This part of the session features Lester Chambers of The Chambers Brothers on lead vocals. On 'Have You Ever Been Mistreated,' Chambers sings in an unfamiliar falsetto and on 'You Better Believe,' sings in his distinctive voice, with the Pointer Sisters punching out their gospel-fueled vocals between each line of the verses. A truly captivating performance." 

I have some more information to add. This set also included some lead vocals by Linda Tillery, who was the lead singer for the band the Loading Zone. And Jo Baker was involved as well. She sang lead on some songs in the Elvin Bishop Group at the time. The Pointer Sisters sang lead vocals on one song. Their involvement here is especially interesting because they were just starting out. They signed a record contract at some point in 1971, and released a single later that year, as well as another one in 1972. But their debut album wouldn't come out until 1973.

The credits in the song list are only for the main lead vocalists. Many others were involved, but it's pretty much for me to tell who was playing on each song. But, for instance, the Pointer Sisters were an opening act for the Elvin Bishop Group in 1971, and doing a lot of backing vocals in studio sessions. So they sang some backing vocals here as well. 

This album is an hour and two minutes long. 

01 We Gonna Rock (Taj Mahal, Elvin Bishop & Boz Scaggs)
02 Long and Tall (Taj Mahal, Elvin Bishop & Boz Scaggs)
03 You Got Me Hummin' (Pointer Sisters)
04 I Found a Love (Linda Tillery)
05 Why I Sing the Blues (Linda Tillery)
06 Have You Ever Been Mistreated (Lester Chambers)
07 You Better Believe (Lester Chambers)
08 talk (Elvin Bishop)
09 Blues Jam (Elvin Bishop & Everyone)
10 talk (Elvin Bishop)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2x78nZby

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/kq2pNq5x6Li4Q5X/file

I thought it would be tough to find a good cover photo for this album, since there wasn't one main musical act this time. So I was tickled pink to discover a photo of Boz Scaggs, Taj Mahal, and Elvin Bishop from this exact concert. It must be from the first two songs. That's Scaggs, Mahal, and Bishop from right to left. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. 

Various Artists - Peace Sunday, Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA, 6-6-1982, Part 2: Timothy B. Schmidt & Don Felder, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Stephen Stills & Dave Mason, and Taj Mahal

Here's the second out of five albums that make up the "Peace Sunday" concert in 1982.

If you want a full explanation of what the concert was about, please read my write-up for Part 1. In that, I also explained about the sound quality issue. In short, the only known source for the whole concert is an audience bootleg. It didn't sound very good, so this concert recording hasn't been shared that much. But I could tell there was potential there, if I could get rid of most of the much. As I explained in detail in my write-up, I think I did get rid of most of it. It still doesn't have excellent sound, but it's pretty good, and worthy of being posted at my blog, where I have pretty high sound quality standards.

Now, switching to the music here, most of this Part 2 section is dominated by Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN). Graham Nash already sang a song on his own in Part 1. Weirdly though, only two songs were performed by CSN here. Then Stephen Stills stayed on stage and performed three more songs on his own (with a back-up band), and then two more with Dave Mason joining in. (However, Mason could mostly be heard helping with lead guitar, not singing lead vocals.) The two songs with Mason weren't ones that Stills usually did with CSN. But the other three he did solo definitely were CSN standards. I would guess that CSN was going through tough times in the early 1980s, mainly due to David Crosby's excessive drug use. So Stills probably was more interested in his solo career. 

On a different note, the Eagles broke up around 1980. But two members of the Eagles, Timothy B. Schmidt and Don Felder, sang an Eagles hit, "I Can't Tell You Why." Most Eagles songs were written and sung by other band members, but that was one that was mainly written and sung by Schmidt.

This album is 49 minutes long. 

By the way, note that the track list numbering picks up where Part 1 left off. That way, you can easily listen to all of the songs from the entire concert in a row if you want to. 

17 talk (Graham Nash)
18 I Can't Tell You Why (Timothy B. Schmidt with Don Felder)
19 talk (Graham Nash)
20 Long Time Coming (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
21 Chicago (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
22 talk (emcee)
23 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills)
24 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills)
25 Dark Star (Stephen Stills)
26 talk (Stephen Stills)
27 Hoochie Coochie Man (Stephen Stills & Dave Mason)
28 Rocky Mountain Way (Stephen Stills & Dave Mason)
29 talk (emcee)
30 talk (Taj Mahal)
31 Going Up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue (Taj Mahal)
32 Stagger Lee (Taj Mahal)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2P8yiZNv

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/GHuHYJqbFPuA5TV/file

The cover photo of CSN is from this exact concert.

Taj Mahal - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, 10-15-1974

Here's an album from blues musician Taj Mahal, from 1974. It's part of my focus on posting albums from "Ultrasonic" radio show concerts.

I'm a fan of Taj Mahal's music. I've posted a couple of sets from him that were part of rock festivals, as well a concert from when he was with the band the Rising Sons in the 1960s, but this is the first time I've posted an entire concert just starring him. I had been meaning to do that for a long time, so I'm glad the Ultrasonic series gave me a good reason.

One thing I like about his music is that while he is mainly known as a blues musician, he hasn't been afraid to play songs from other genres sometimes.  His Wikipedia entry puts it well: "Mahal has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his more than 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, India, Hawaii, and the South Pacific." 

For instance, in this concert he played a couple of reggae songs, including "Johnny Too Bad," which was included on the classic "The Harder They Come" movie soundtrack in 1972. At the time of this concert, he was promoting his 1974 studio album "Mo Roots," which had a strong reggae influence on it.

Here's his Wikipedia entry: 

Taj Mahal (musician) - Wikipedia 

Note that it was usual in this radio series to have an interview in the middle of the concert. I'm less interested in that, so I moved the interview to the end as a mere bonus track. However, I did keep a bit of that section in the concert itself, where he mentioned the names of his backing band. That's why there are two talking tracks in row in the song list, because they're from either end of the interview track.

If anyone know the name of the instrumental that makes up track 15 here, please let me know so I can give it a proper title. 

The music here is unreleased (although I noticed a "grey market" bootleg that looks like a legit release), and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 59 minutes long, not including the interview bonus track. 

01 talk (Taj Mahal)
02 Going Up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue (Taj Mahal)
03 talk (Taj Mahal)
04 Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl (Taj Mahal)
05 talk (Taj Mahal)
06 Black Jack Davey (Taj Mahal)
07 talk (Taj Mahal)
08 Why Did You Have to Desert Me (Taj Mahal)
09 talk (Taj Mahal)
10 talk (Taj Mahal)
11 Further On Down the Road (Taj Mahal)
12 talk (Taj Mahal)
13 Stealin' (Taj Mahal)
14 talk (Taj Mahal)
15 Instrumental (Taj Mahal)
16 talk (Taj Mahal)
17 Johnny Too Bad (Taj Mahal)
18 talk (Taj Mahal)
19 Take a Giant Step (Taj Mahal)

Interview (Taj Mahal) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CFf3jVPK

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/jTA3YhLH6MHzqrE/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on an ABC TV show in 1973. 

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to James Taylor, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2-6-2006

Here's another MusiCares tribute concert. I only have a couple more of these after this one, and I want to post them in the next days. This one honors James Taylor.

This concert followed the usual format for these kinds of things: a bonus of famous musical acts sang covers of his songs, then he accepted an award and gave a speech, and finally he played a couple of his songs. If you look at the song lists, a lot of big names showed up to perform his songs, including Bruce Springsteen. 

Another big name also played one of his songs at the concert: Paul Simon sung "Sweet Baby James." But unfortunately, this is sourced from a DVD, but that song wasn't included, and I couldn't find any version of it anywhere. If anyone has it, please let me know so I can add it in.

I know Simon played that song in this concert, because it's mentioned in this article, which is a good summary of the concert in general:

MusiCares Honors Singer James Taylor - CBS News 

Also, while trying to find a good photo for the cover art, I went through a stash of hundreds of photos from the concert, and noticed that other big names like Neil Young and Brian Wilson attended. But I doubt they performed, or they probably would have been mentioned in that news article I just linked to. 

As mentioned above, this is sourced from an official DVD, so the sound quality is excellent. No version is any audio format has been released. As I sometimes do, I converted the video to audio, then broke it into mp3s.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long. 

01 talk (Bill Clinton)
02 talk (emcee)
03 talk (Dixie Chicks)
04 Shower the People (Dixie Chicks)
05 talk (emcee)
06 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
07 Rainy Day Man (Bonnie Raitt)
08 talk (emcee)
09 talk (India.Arie)
10 Secret o' Life (India.Arie)
11 talk (emcee)
12 talk (Jackson Browne, David Crosby & Sheryl Crow)
13 Mexico (Jackson Browne, David Crosby & Sheryl Crow)
14 talk (emcee)
15 talk (Sting)
16 You Can Close Your Eyes (Sting)
17 talk (Dr. John & Taj Mahal)
18 Everybody Has the Blues (Dr. John & Taj Mahal)
19 talk (Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas)
20 Carolina in My Mind (Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas)
21 talk (emcee)
22 talk (Keith Urban)
23 Country Road (Keith Urban)
24 talk (emcee)
25 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
26 Millworker (Bruce Springsteen)
27 talk (Carole King)
28 You've Got a Friend (Carole King with James Taylor)
29 talk (Neil Portnow)
30 talk (James Taylor)
31 Shed a Little Light (James Taylor)
32 talk (James Taylor)
33 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] (James Taylor)
34 Fire and Rain (James Taylor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/T6dgDM1s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5ezYaz8DOi7Zc9L/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Taylor receiving the award from Neil Portnow, the head of MusiCares at the time. 

Bonnie Raitt - I Feel So Damn Good - Non-Album Tracks (2007-2012)

I started posting Bonnie Raitt stray tracks albums in 2019. I've posted nine of them so far, and I'm still at it. Here's the tenth, with two more to go.

This is the usual mix of released and unreleased tracks, with an unusual amount of duets. The first five songs are officially released, along with track 9, "Ain't Nothin' in Ramblin'." They're the usual mix of songs from soundtracks, tribute albums, appearances on other artists' albums, and the like.

The unreleased songs all have excellent sound quality. "Done Changed My Way of Living" is from a TV show appearance with no studio audience, and "A Sunday Kind of Love" is from a TV show appearance with an audience. The other two are from concert bootlegs. Since this is a mix of live and studio tracks, I used audio editing programs to wipe out the crowd noise on the live ones.

The bonus track is just a bonus track for two reasons. One, the sound quality is rough. (It's from an audience bootleg.) But also, it's a Marc Cohn that had Cohn singing most of it, and Raitt only on backing vocals. Still, it has a lot of good slide guitar work from Raitt, so I figured it was worth bonus track status, at least.

This album is 40 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Bartender's Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Walking the Dog (Bonnie Raitt & Weepin' Willie Robinson)
03 Separation Blues [Mama's Gone, Goodbye] (Maria Muldaur & Bonnie Raitt)
04 Premature (Toots & the Maytals & Bonnie Raitt)
05 Yes We Can, Can (Maria Muldaur, Bonnie Raitt & Linda Tillery)
06 Done Changed My Way of Living (Taj Mahal & Bonnie Raitt)
07 She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride (Taj Mahal & Bonnie Raitt)
08 A Sunday Kind of Love (Alicia Keys & Bonnie Raitt)
09 Ain't Nothin' in Ramblin' (Bonnie Raitt)
10 I Feel So Damn Good [I'll Be Glad When I Got the Blues] (Bonnie Raitt with Mike Finnigan)

29 Ways (Marc Cohn with Bonnie Raitt)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16182058/BONNRITT2007-2012_IFelSoDmnGod_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from 2007. I don't know any details.

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 8 - Kaleidoscope (US) & Taj Mahal

Next up at the 1968 Newport Folk Festival were Kaleidoscope (U.S.) and Taj Mahal. 

I say "Kaleidoscope (U.S.)" and not just "Kaleidoscope," because in the late 1960s, there were two fairly well known bands with the name Kaleidoscope, one in Britain and one in the U.S. I've already posted a few albums by the British Kaleidoscope. I like them a lot, and in my biased mind they are THE Kaleidoscope, so that's why I clarify that this is the U.S. band by putting "U.S." in their name. That said, Kaleidoscope (U.S.) had a lot going for them. They had a very unique sound that has been described as "psychedelic folk." Retrospectively, they're probably best known for the fact that their guitarist was David Lindley, who would go on to have a long and successful music career after the band broke up before the end of the 1960s.

In fact, I would say the Kaleidoscope set was the big deal here, much more so than Taj Mahal's. That's not to knock Taj Mahal at all, but instead it's a matter of scarcity. There are lots of Taj Mahal concert recordings, both bootleg and official, but I only know of one Kaleidoscope official live album and no bootlegs. So this is a key addition to their pretty small recorded legacy.

Also, their set was quite interesting and even provocative. They started out with a short and simple cover of the country song "Hello Trouble." Then they took a cover of another cover, "Oh Death" - made famous by Ralph Stanley, who had played earlier in the festival - and totally transformed it. Normally a short song, they stretched it to twelve minutes, mostly by adding a spoken word section in the middle with very harsh words about the Vietnam War, a hot, controversial topic at the time. They followed that with "Taxim," a long instrumental with strong "world music" elements.

Taj Mahal had already performed a set earlier in the festival. I included that in the first album in this series. The set he did here wasn't terribly different. It included two of the same songs: "She Caught the Katy (And Left Me a Mule to Ride)" and "EZ Rider." But only this one ended with "Ain't That a Lot of Love," which is one of my favorite songs from him, and one of his most upbeat ones.

This album is 54 minutes long. The Kaleidoscope set is 32 minutes long, and the Taj Mahal set is 21 minutes long.

101 talk by Pete Seeger (Kaleidoscope (US))
102 Hello Trouble (Kaleidoscope (US))
103 talk (Kaleidoscope (US))
104 Oh Death (Kaleidoscope (US))
105 talk (Kaleidoscope (US))
106 Taxim [Instrumental] (Kaleidoscope (US))
107 talk (Taj Mahal)
108 Dust My Broom (Taj Mahal)
109 talk (Taj Mahal)
110 She Caught the Katy [And Left Me a Mule to Ride] (Taj Mahal)
111 Diving Duck Blues (Taj Mahal)
112 talk (Taj Mahal)
113 EZ Rider (Taj Mahal)
114 talk (Taj Mahal)
115 Ain't That a Lot of Love (Taj Mahal)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205341/VA-NEWPRTFLKFESTIVL196808Kleidoscpe_TajMhal.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/dJxygCZb

For the cover, that's Kaleidoscope on the left and Taj Mahal on the right. Both photos are from this exact festival. However, I don't know if Taj Mahal's picture is from this set, or the one he played earlier in the festival. And the Kaleidoscope picture was originally in black and white, because that's all I could find of them from this show. But I colorized it with the help of the Palette computer problem. Also, unfortunately, I had to crop out the drummer to get it to fit. Since good photos of the band in concert are very few and far between, and it took some work to colorize it, here's the full picture.

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

Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 1 - Taj Mahal & Elizabeth Cotten

I write this in December 2023. For the past few months, I've put a special effort into posting big rock festivals, since it seems to me those often get overlooked. I just reorganized the "labels" sidebar a bit: if you look under "Various Artists," you'll see eight such festivals I've posted already. Here's the ninth. In my opinion, it's an extra special one, because many of the artists here have few if any publicly available live recordings to their names.

The festival I'm posting this time is the "Newport Folk Festival 1968." At the time, there was a confusing number of Newport festivals. There was a yearly Newport Folk Festival and Newport Jazz Festival. Both were held in Newport, Rhode Island, and both had been happening since the 1950s. But there also was a Newport Pop Festival that only took place in 1968 and 1969. These were held in Southern California, and had no connection with the more established Newport festivals on the East Coast, except maybe they were taking advantage of the name.

Anyway, as you can imagine, the "Newport Folk Festival" tried to focus on folk music. But that was increasingly difficult in 1968, because the folk music movement had largely died out around 1965 and morphed into folk rock. Folk music would make a comeback in the early 1970s with the singer-songwriter movement, but that hadn't happened yet. So in 1968, the organizers of this festival tried to broaden their appeal by including some musical artists who weren't really folk music at all, such as B. B. King, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, and Janis Joplin's band, Big Brother and the Holding Company. As a result, it was the most popular Newport festival yet, with about 17,000 people attending over several days. However, the crowd was an uneasy mix of folk purists wanting to see the more traditional acts, and rock fans especially there to see Janis Joplin. 

If you want to know more about the festival as a whole, I highly suggest this Rolling Stone Magazine article, which was written shortly after the festival ended:

The Newport Folk Festival: 1968 (rollingstone.com)

The conflict I speak of was even mentioned in the article's subtitle: "Torn Between Two Worlds."

I don't know how or why, but for some reason it seems the vast majority of this festival was professionally recorded, and has been available in bootleg form for many years. (As far as I can tell, only Joan Baez's set has been officially released, along with a few other songs that have gone on various artists compilations.) It seems previous festivals were recorded too, but all that's in the public domain are the little bits that have made into onto official albums. But while one can find these more extensive 1968 performances here and there if you dig deep, I've never seen them put together in a coherent way until now.

I've taken what I consider the best and most popular sets and made ten albums out of them. (The artists I've leaving out are obscure folk acts you've probably never heard of them, many of them doing gospel music.) Some of the sets were rather short, so in several cases I'm putting two sets onto one album.

This is one such album featuring sets from two musical acts. The first one, Taj Mahal, is a well known blues musician today. But at the time of this concert, his solo career was just getting started. (He'd been in the band the Rising Sons for a couple of years prior to this.) At the time of this concert, he'd only released one solo album, simply called "Taj Mahal," earlier in the year. Some of the acts actually played more than one set at the festival, though generally only one set was recorded. However, Taj Mahal is a rare case where two sets were recorded, so I'll present his set set later, on a different album, since it happened a few days later.

One of his songs, "EZ Rider" got cut off after only about a minute. It so happens that he also played this song in his other set later in the festival. So I used that version to fill in the missing portion. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title. That was the last song from his set that we have here, so it's fairly likely there was more to his set that didn't get recorded.

Elizabeth Cotten is an extremely unlikely musical figure. Here's her Wikipedia entry:

Elizabeth Cotten - Wikipedia

She played guitar when she was a teenager, and that's when she wrote her most famous song, "Freight Train." But poverty forced her to begin working as a maid at the age of nine. Eventually, she got married and had children, and gave up playing music altogether. It was only in her sixties that her musical talent was rediscovered, due to the fact that she was working as a housekeeper for the family of famous folk singer Pete Seeger. She finally put out some records, and did some touring. She won a Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording in 1984, and died in 1987 when she was ninety-four years old.

Here's what her Wikipedia entry has to say: "She was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down. This position meant that she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as 'Cotten picking.' NPR stated 'her influence has reverberated through the generations, permeating every genre of music.'"

So Cotten is very musically influential, and two of her songs, "Freight Train" and "Shake Sugaree," have been covered by dozens of famous musicians. However, she didn't record or tour that much. Two official live albums have been released, but I believe this is the only bootleg recording of her. I have to warn you that she lived most of her life up to this point as a maid, not a musician, and her vocals here were sometimes off key. The last song though is sung by her granddaughter Brenda Evans, who has a more conventionally trained voice.

This album is 41 minutes long. The Taj Mahal set is 25 minutes long, and the Elizabeth Cotten one is 16 minutes long.

By the way, note that the songs are numbered 001, 002, 003 and so on instead of 01, 02, 03, etc... That's because there are over 100 songs from this festival as a whole, and the numbering of each subsequent album in this series continues where the last one left off.

001 Dark Dusty Road [Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad] (Taj Mahal)
002 The Cuckoo (Taj Mahal)
003 Checkin' Up on My Baby (Taj Mahal)
004 talk (Taj Mahal)
005 She Caught the Katy [And Left Me a Mule to Ride] (Taj Mahal)
006 talk (Taj Mahal)
007 EZ Rider [Edit] (Taj Mahal)
008 Do Lord Remember Me (Elizabeth Cotten)
009 Bye and Bye (Elizabeth Cotten)
010 Freight Train (Elizabeth Cotten)
011 talk (Elizabeth Cotten)
012 Shake Sugaree (Elizabeth Cotten & Brenda Evans)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16038899/NewprtFlkFestivl_1968_01TajMahl_ElizabthCottn.zip.html

The two photos on the cover come from this exact concert. I don't know if the Taj Mahal photo is from this set or the other one he did later in the festival, but I'm guessing it's from this one due to it taking place in the day time. (I think his other set was at night, though I'm not entirely sure.)

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.