Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Live at Woodstock (Woodstock Festival, Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, NY, 8-18-1969)

A few days ago, an unnamed commenter pointed out that I'd posted a few Woodstock sets a while back, and suggested that I should post some more. I thought that was a good idea, so here's another one. The entire legendary 1969 Woodstock Festival concert was officially released in 2019. But there are a couple of problems with that. For one, it'll cost you a pretty penny, because the box set contains 38 discs! And for another, it was only on sale as a limited edition, with less than 2,000 copies available.

Most of the biggest names from the festival have put out their sets on more affordable single albums, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, and so on. But a few have not, and most of the lesser known acts have not. Here's one that I think has been overlooked.

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band was one of the best blues rock bands of the 1960s, lead by harmonica player and lead singer Paul Butterfield. However, they had a lot of personnel turnover. By the time of the Woodstock Festival in 1969, Butterfield was the only original member left. That said, the replacements were quite talented, including Buzz Feiten on lead guitar and David Sanborn on saxophone, and the band put on an excellent concert. 

Unfortunately, Woodstock didn't give the band a big career boost like it did for some other acts. One big factor was that they were filmed, but they weren't included in the Woodstock movie. The band's fortunes continued to decline, and they broke up in 1971. Butterfield died young, overdosing in 1987.

This album is an hour and eight minutes long, and contains the full set.

01 Born under a Bad Sign (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
02 No Amount of Loving (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
03 Driftin' and Driftin' (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
04 Morning Sunrise (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
05 All in a Day (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
06 talk (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
07 Love March (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
08 Everything's Gonna Be Alright (Paul Butterfield Blues Band)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15267211/PaulButter_1969_Woodstck__8-18-1969_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good photos of the band's Woodstock performance, a sign of how it has sadly been overlooked. But the video of the entire set is available on YouTube, so I took a screenshot of that. I couldn't find a good one of the whole band (there were a lot of them, spread out on stage), so I opted for a close up of Butterfield.

Sweetwater - Woodstock Festival, Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, NY, 8-15-1969

Last week, I posted a couple of performances from the famous 1969 Woodstock concert that otherwise are not widely available. I have a few more of those to post, and here's the next one.

Chances are you're never heard of Sweetwater. Here's their Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

Sweetwater (band) - Wikipedia

Let me give you a quick summary. The band put out their debut album in 1968. They were led by female vocalist Nancy Nivens. Many people likened them to the Jefferson Airplane, with Nivens sounding a bit like Grace Slick. Wikipedia calls their style "psychedelic folk." 

Their appearance at Woodstock was their big break. They started to get some TV appearances, and it seemed like they were going to become a major band. But then, just a few months after Woodstock, Nivens was severely injured when a car that was hit by a drunk driver. She was in a coma for ten days and she almost died. Her vocal chords were damaged when she had a tracheotomy surgery to help save her life. Afterwards, she could still sing, but she lost much of her vocal range and things were never the same. She only sang a few songs on their next album. Without Nivens' vocals, the band struggled and broke up a couple of years later.

In my opinion, this tragic series of events explains why Sweetwater isn't better known. But they were a very good band, and luckily we have an excellent recording of them at their full power at Woodstock. So if you like the music of that era and want to try something new, given this a listen, or their debut album (which is simply called "Sweetwater").

Sweetwater was one of the first full band to play at Woodstock. (Richie Havens and a couple of folk musicians came before them.) As a result, although this is a soundboard recording, I think the recorders were still working some kinks out. I had to make some adjustments that I didn't have to make for other artists who appeared later in the festival. One thing is that the audience applause was very quiet. So I boosted that somewhat when I could.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 talk (Sweetwater)
02 Motherless Child (Sweetwater)
03 talk (Sweetwater)
04 Look Out (Sweetwater)
05 talk (Sweetwater)
06 For Pete's Sake (Sweetwater)
07 talk (Sweetwater)
08 Day Song (Sweetwater)
09 talk (Sweetwater)
10 What's Wrong (Sweetwater)
11 talk (Sweetwater)
12 My Crystal Spider (Sweetwater)
13 Two Worlds (Sweetwater)
14 talk (Sweetwater)
15 Why Oh Why (Sweetwater)
16 Let the Sunshine In (Sweetwater)
17 Oh Happy Day (Sweetwater)
18 talk (Sweetwater)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15175659/Sweetwtr_1969_WoodstckFestivlMaxYasgursFarmBethlNY__8-15-1969_atse.zip.html

The album cover is another one I made before my recent computer troubles. The photo is less than ideal, but I used it because it's from their Woodstock performance. If anyone has a better one, please let me know. Nancy Nivens is the one female shown.

Blood, Sweat and Tears - Woodstock Festival, Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, NY, 8-17-1969

I just posted the Band's performance from the famous 1969 Woodstock Festival. I mentioned in that post that the sets of most of the famous artists at Woodstock have been officially released as individual albums, but a few have slipped through the cracks. I'm posting the skipped ones that I like. The Band was one, and Blood, Sweat and Tears is another.

In my opinion, the first two Blood, Sweat and Tears albums are excellent. Their second album, simply called "Blood, Sweat and Tears," was hugely commercially successful in 1969. But for whatever reason, they quickly declined in both critical and commercial popularity after that. I'm mainly interested in what they did in 1968 and 1969. But there haven't been any official live albums from that time period, Even the bootlegs from that time are few in number and just average sounding audience recordings. So this Woodstock recording is very welcome, since it's in great soundboard quality.

The concert is 53 minutes long. Their set was a fine performance, containing all their best known songs from that time.

01 talk (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
02 More and More (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
03 Just One Smile (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
04 Somethin' Comin' On (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
05 I Love You More than You'll Ever Know (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
06 Spinning Wheel (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
07 Sometimes in Winter (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
08 Smiling Phases (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
09 talk (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
10 God Bless the Child (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
11 talk (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
12 And When I Die (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
13 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Blood, Sweat & Tears)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15252599/BloodSweatT_1969_Woodstck_Festival__8-17-1969_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo is from the concert in question. Not all of the many band members are seen.

The Band - Woodstock Festival, Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, NY, 8-17-1969

In 2019, all the music from the famous three-day-long 1969 Woodstock Festival was officially released.  It was called, "Woodstock - Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive." That's great, but it was a huge box set, containing a few dozen CDs, and it was only made available in limited numbers for one time only. Apparently, exactly 1969 copies were officially available to be sold, to mark the year of the concert. Of course, all of those were sold, and it's been out of print since then.

In the years prior to that, the complete Woodstock sets of some famous artists were officially released on a wider basis, and even more came out around the time of that box set. Here are the artists that I believe have had their performances released on individual albums:

Santana
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Janis Joplin
Sly and the Family Stone
Jefferson Airplane
Joe Cocker
Johnny Winter
Butterfield Blues Band
Jimi Hendrix

I don't want to post the sets from any of those artists, since they are easy to get. But the rest of the festival is very hard to find, and now that it's been a year since the release of that already out of print box set, it seems that's all that is likely to come out. So I want to post the sets of some other artists that I like. (I've already posted the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young set.) One great thing about that festival is that the whole thing was recorded in soundboard quality, so we have excellent recordings from a time we might not otherwise have them.

So here's another Woodstock performance, from the Band. There is one really great live album by the Band from relatively early in their career, "Rock of Ages." But even that comes from concerts at the very end of 1971. In mid-1969, their set list was very different. Their second album - "The Band" - was due to be released only a few weeks after this concert, but they didn't play any songs from it. So their concert set list was largely based on their landmark 1968 album "Music from Big Pink," plus a couple of Motown covers ("Don't Do It" and "Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever"). But most intriguingly, they did a couple of songs from "The Basement Tapes," recorded in 1967, that wouldn't get released until 1975: "Don't Ya Tell Henry" and "Ain't No More Cane." (Note that I included both of those exact performances on my Band stray tracks album "The Basement Tapes.")

The concert is 48 minutes long. It's well performed, and as I said, the sound quality is great. The only odd thing, in my opinion, is there was virtually no talking from anyone in the Band, except for a couple of "thank yous" at the ends of songs. There doesn't seem to be the usual emcee announcement at the start or the end either, though there is one before their encore.

01 Chest Fever (Band)
02 Don't Do It [Baby Don't Do It] (Band)
03 Tears of Rage (Band)
04 We Can Talk (Band)
05 Long Black Veil (Band)
06 Don't Ya Tell Henry (Band)
07 Ain't No More Cane (Band)
08 This Wheel's on Fire (Band)
09 I Shall Be Released (Band)
10 The Weight (Band)
11 talk (Band)
12 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Band)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700631/TBND1969a_WodstckFestivlNY__8-17-1969_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from the concert in question. Unfortunately, it only shows four of the five members of the Band.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Live at Woodstock - Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, NY, 8-18-1969

This album is a strange case. I had posted a version of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) playing at the famous 1969 Woodstock festival. In 2019, their performance was officially released, so I took the album down. But now I'm thinking I was hasty. Although it has been officially released, it's only been as part of a massive box set, containing 35 CDs, and even then it was a limited release that has already run out. So I've changed my mind and I'm posting it here again.

One reason I'm posting it is because it's such a great performance, and there aren't a lot of good alternatives. I'm a very big CSN(Y) fan. I like all their stuff, even from their later years. But I also think that they were at their very best right at the beginning, in late 1969, just after Neil Young joined up. At that point, they were thrilled to be playing with each other, and it showed. (CSNY only played  in Chicago two nights earlier, and CSN never played in public before Young joined, so this was about as brand news as it could get.) It wasn't long before drugs and ego got in the way. Even by 1970, the situation changed dramatically and they were torn apart for the first time (though definitely not the last!).

The problem is, if you look at CSNY's live recordings in 1969, there isn't much with excellent sound quality. There's one bootleg floating around that had to stitch together parts of three different concerts to try to make up one good concert. CSNY's Woodstock performance not only is historic and justifiably famous, but it's the only full concert recording of them at their peak with top sound quality.

Since I'm using the version released in 2019, the recording is flawless. It has some performances from the concert never available before, even on bootleg, such as the rare Neil Young song "Wonderin'" and the "49 Bye-Byes" finale. All I did was break the between song banter into their own tracks, and boost the volume on some of the quieter comments.

The concert is split in two in two different ways. The first half is without Neil Young, since CSN mostly play songs from their 1969 album that Young wasn't a part of. The first half is also acoustic, while the second half is electric. But the Young-less and acoustic portions aren't exactly the same, because Young did play on the last three songs of the acoustic set.

This recording is an hour and ten minutes long. That's not as long as their typical concerts of the time, which were an hour and a half or longer. But it's not far off. And, as I said, in terms of sound quality, it towers over all their other publicly available 1969 recordings.

01 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
03 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 4 + 20 (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
14 Mr. Soul (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
16 Wonderin' (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
18 You Don't Have to Cry (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
20 Pre-Road Downs (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
21 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
22 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
23 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
24 Bluebird Revisited (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
25 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
26 Sea of Madness (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
27 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
28 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
29 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
30 Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
31 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
32 49 Bye-Byes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363403/CROSBSTLLSNSHYNG1969LveatWodstckMaxYsgursFrmBthelNY__8-18-1969_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MCjhaWu8

There are lots of photos of CSN playing at Woodstock, but almost none of CSNY at Woodstock. This is because Young didn't want to be filmed at the concert, for whatever reason. I've only been able to find one good photo of the four of them at the concert, which is the one I've used. Using Photoshop, I moved Stills a few feet closer to the three others, so I could zoom in more on all four.