Monday, March 31, 2025

Journey with Albert King and Friends - PBS Soundstage, Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, IL, 7-9-1978

When I think of Journey, I think of a lot of good hit songs, but I also think of slick "corporate rock," and I'm not a big fan of the latter. However, I've recently discovered that Journey was way more interesting than I'd thought in their early years, especially 1978. That's because 1978 was the year they did the "Super Jam II" concert consisting almost entirely of unexpected cover versions, and it was also the year they did this "PBS Soundstage" concert. Parts of it were typical of Journey concerts from that year. But they also had Albert King as their special guest on a few songs. I certainly never would have expected a Journey and Albert King collection! So kudos to them.

And they didn't just have Albert King as their special guest. He was the main guest star, and sang a couple of songs. However, some other great blues musicians were included as well: Pinetop Perkins, Luther Allison, and Jerry Portnoy. King and the others came on stage and jammed on several songs, mainly tracks six through eight here. So double kudos to Journey for shining the spotlight on all these blues musicians, most of them who made their mark in an earlier era. For instance, Pinetop Perkins, one of the greatest blues piano players ever, was born way back in 1913, so he was a senior citizen at the time of this concert.

As an aside, this was one of the last concerts the band played with Ashley Dunbar on drums. His leaving was part of the band's transition from progressive rock to more corporate rock.

The one disappointment I have with this recording is that the last song, "I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town," is sung by Albert King, but it fades out after only a minute and a half. I looked at the video of this concert on YouTube, and there wasn't any more of it because the final credits from the TV were playing during that time. By the way, King sang "Sweet Little Angel" together with Journey lead vocalist Steve Perry. It seems this was the only time Journey ever played that song in concert.

This album is unreleased. There are videos of it for sale, but I suspect they're grey market releases.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Feeling That Way (Journey)
02 Anytime (Journey)
03 Winds of March (Journey)
04 Wheel in the Sky (Journey)
05 talk (Journey)
06 Overall Junction [Instrumental] (Journey with Albert King)
07 Sweet Little Angel (Journey with Albert King)
08 B Flat Blues Shuffle [Instrumental] (Journey with Albert King)
09 On a Saturday Night (Journey)
10 She Makes Me [Feel Alright] (Journey)
11 Lights (Journey)
12 I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town (Journey with Albert King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8feQK3dw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/M0T7rZxySCUAw0X/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. It shows Albert King on the left and Journey lead guitarist Neal Schon on the right.

Rod Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: In Concert, Festival in a Day, Hyde Park, London, Britain, 9-13-2015

Here's the sixth BBC album I'm posting of Rod Stewart performing for the BBC. It's probably the last, unless something I missed pops up. This time, it's a concert from 2015.

I have to be honest. I planned on posting this only due to wanting to be complete in posting the main BBC concerts I'd but I was pleasantly surprised, because it wasn't what I was expecting. For some reason, Stewart decided to avoid performing all of his biggest hits from his career. There's no "Maggie May" here, no "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy," no "You're in My Heart," no "The First Cut Is the Deepest," no "Tonight's the Night," and so on. In fact, the website setlist.fm lists the number of times he's played over the entire duration of his solo career. NONE of the top twenty most performed songs in his career were performed in this concert!

Instead, he chose to play hits, but lesser hits that he generally hadn't performed in concert in many years, sometimes decades. So this is an ideal complement to some of the other BBC concerts I've posted from him, with very little overlap. I think that was a great idea. It's too bad more musical acts don't do it. But then again, not many have so many hits that they could play so many songs familiar to the audience while avoiding the best known ones.

There were some interesting choices here. For instance, "In a Broken Dream" was a song by the band Python Lee Jackson, with Stewart singing lead vocals on it. It was released in 1970, and was a Number Three hit in Britain. It still gets played on the radio. However, according to setlist.fm, Stewart only ever performed it in concert three times, and this concert was one of those times. 

Jim Cregan was a special guest on the last song. Cregan was a guitarist and songwriter in many bands. He was a member of Stewart's band for most of the 1980s and 1990s, and co-wrote about 30 songs with him, including some hits.

This album is an hour and 19 minutes long.

01 talk by James Corden (Rod Stewart)
02 Every Beat of My Heart (Rod Stewart)
03 talk (Rod Stewart)
04 The Motown Song (Rod Stewart)
05 talk (Rod Stewart)
06 What Am I Gonna Do [I'm So In Love with You] (Rod Stewart)
07 talk (Rod Stewart)
08 [I Know] I'm Losing You (Rod Stewart)
09 talk (Rod Stewart)
10 You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything (Rod Stewart)
11 talk (Rod Stewart)
12 Gasoline Alley (Rod Stewart)
13 talk (Rod Stewart)
14 The Killing of Georgie [Parts I & II] (Rod Stewart)
15 talk (Rod Stewart)
16 Ooh La La (Rod Stewart)
17 talk (Rod Stewart)
18 Tom Traubert's Blues [Waltzing Matilda] (Rod Stewart)
19 talk (Rod Stewart)
20 Please (Rod Stewart)
21 talk (Rod Stewart)
22 Angel (Rod Stewart)
23 talk (Rod Stewart)
24 I'm Every Woman (Rod Stewart)
25 talk (Rod Stewart)
26 Rollin' and Tumblin' (Rod Stewart)
27 In a Broken Dream (Rod Stewart)
28 talk (Rod Stewart)
29 Love Is (Rod Stewart)
30 You Can't Stop Me Now (Rod Stewart)
31 talk (Rod Stewart)
32 I Was Only Joking (Rod Stewart with Jim Cregan)

https://bestfile.io/GdcVFa5XyR0a9ZI/file

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PaoK5rpb

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 5: 1981-1989

Here's Volume 5 in my "Covered" series highlighting the songwriting of Stevie Wonder. As with the other volumes in this series, this consists of other musical acts covering his songs.

Wonder was still very commercially successful in the early 1980s, but there was a slow decline as the decade went on. However, that isn't so important for this album, because many of the covers here are of songs he wrote earlier in his career.

Some songs here were written by Wonder but never officially released by him. Those are tracks 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, and 12. That's a lot of songs. It's too bad he didn't put more of those songs on his own albums. 

My usual rule is to only include one version of each song in this series. However, I couldn't resist with "Superstition," since it's one of the greatest songs of all time and I really like two covers of it. I included a version by Jeff Beck on an earlier volume, and a version by Stevie Ray Vaughan here.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Happy Birthday (Brotherhood of Man)
02 Betcha' Wouldn't Hurt Me (Quincy Jones)
03 Lately (Rudy Grant)
04 Buttercup (Carl Anderson)
05 Try Jah Love (Third World)
06 If You Really Love Me (Mary Wells)
07 You're Playing Us Too Close (Third World)
08 The Crown (Gary Byrd & G.B. Experience with Stevie Wonder)
09 Ribbon in the Sky (Nancy Wilson)
10 Superstition (Stevie Ray Vaughan)
11 Remembering the Sixties (George Duke)
12 Hold On to Your Love (Smokey Robinson)
13 Higher Ground (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SMBE8DsJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tBVPCnxrzfmeh4J/file

The cover photo is from 1985. That's all I know about it.

Friday, March 28, 2025

Van Morrison - BBC Sessions, Volume 8: 1999-2005

Here's another volume of Van Morrison performing for the BBC. This time, it's a collection of BBC TV performances.

Everything here comes from different episodes of the BBC TV show "Later... with Jools Holland." That's just by chance, as these were all the BBC sessions from the time period that I could find. The first two songs are from a 1999 episode. The next five are from another 1999 episode, a special year end celebration one. The three after that are from a 2000 episode. The last song is from a 2005 episode.

On many of these songs, Morrison shared the stage with some special guests. For the 1999 year-end episode (tracks 3 through 7), Morrison sang duets with Lonnie Donegan on three songs. Donegan was the "King of Skiffle" in the 1950s. The skiffle was a form of folk music that was extremely popular in Britain for a few years. Note that on one of the songs, "Midnight Special," Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music also joined Morrison and Donegan in singing different verses. For the 2000 episode (tracks 8 through 10), Morrison was prominently backed on vocals by Linda Gail Lewis. A duet album starring Morrison and Lewis was released in 2000.

There's one song I chose not to include from the 2005 session: "They Sold Me Out." I was fine with it at first, until I clearly heard the lyrics. They sound suspiciously antisemitic to me, and I don't want to further spread them. Even if they're not, the whole conceit of the song, in which he likens himself to being persecuted just like Jesus, is both ridiculous and offensive. Here's an article if you want a hint of the controversy this song caused:

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/05/27/van-morrisons-lyrical-antisemitism/

In fact, this is basically when I reach the limit of what I can take from Morrison's declining career. Musically, he was repeating himself, and lyrically he was turning into a grumpy old man. Things would reach an all time low with his 2021 album "Latest Record Project: Volume 1," which has to be one of the worst albums of all time by a famous musical act. (At the crowd-sourced rateyourmusic.com, it gets a 1.77 on a 1 to 5 scale as I write this in 2025, which is a shockingly low number for that site.)

The music on this album I still like. He's helped a lot by the support of Lonnie Donegan and Linda Gail Lewis. But after this, I only plan on posting one more BBC album from him (although there are others), which is a concert from 2003.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Back on Top (Van Morrison)
02 When the Leaves Come Falling Down (Van Morrison)
03 Precious Time (Van Morrison)
04 Lost John (Van Morrison & Lonnie Donegan)
05 I Wanna Go Home [Sloop John B.] (Van Morrison & Lonnie Donegan)
06 Philosopher's Stone (Van Morrison)
07 Midnight Special (Van Morrison, Lonnie Donegan & Bryan Ferry)
08 Let's Talk about Us (Van Morrison with Linda Gail Lewis)
09 Real Gone Lover (Van Morrison with Linda Gail Lewis)
10 No Way Pedro (Van Morrison with Linda Gail Lewis)
11 Celtic New Year (Van Morrison)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/N4o2Wu5U

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/V8c1NTHQU6Y38dE/file 

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of one of these TV episodes.

Paul Weller - BBC Sessions, Volume 17: In Concert, BBC Radio Theatre, London, Britain, 5-14-2015

Here's yet another Paul Weller BBC album. This time, it's a full concert.

The previous full BBC concert I'd posted from him was from 2010, five years earlier. Since then, he's released the albums "Sonik Kicks" in 2012 and "Saturns Pattern" in 2015. Many of the songs performed here are from those, especially the more recent one.

This album is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.

This appears to be the full concert. Interestingly, Weller seemed to have been given a precise amount of time to perform, down to the minute, because before he played the last song he said he would make it a short version to make sure all of it got broadcast.

This album is an hour and ten minutes long. 

01 talk by Jo Whiley (Paul Weller)
02 White Sky (Paul Weller)
03 Sunflower (Paul Weller)
04 talk (Paul Weller)
05 Come On-Let's Go (Paul Weller)
06 talk (Paul Weller)
07 I'm Where I Should Be (Paul Weller)
08 When Your Garden's Overgrown (Paul Weller)
09 talk (Paul Weller)
10 The Attic (Paul Weller)
11 talk (Paul Weller)
12 Saturns Pattern (Paul Weller)
13 Going My Way (Paul Weller)
14 talk (Paul Weller)
15 Long Time (Paul Weller)
16 Friday Street (Paul Weller)
17 Porcelain Gods (Paul Weller)
18 talk (Paul Weller)
19 Broken Stones (Paul Weller)
20 You Do Something to Me (Paul Weller)
21 Peacock Suit (Paul Weller)
22 The Changingman (Paul Weller)
23 These City Streets (Paul Weller)
24 talk (Paul Weller)
25 From the Floorboards Up (Paul Weller)
26 talk by Jo Whiley (Paul Weller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8dyAMCYF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WyuQiEg1mYUyyYu/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Hyde Park, London, on June 26, 2015.

Thursday, March 27, 2025

Aretha Franklin - PBS Soundstage, Park West, Chicago, IL, 5-13-1985

The flood of "PBS Soundstage" shows continues with a 1985 concert by Aretha Franklin.

In 1985, Franklin was at the peak of a commercial revival, after having some tough years in the late 1970s especially. Her 1985 album "Who's Zoomin' Who?" sold over a million in the U.S. and was the best selling album of her career. This concert took place about two months before the release of that album. So some hit songs from that album weren't played, like "Who's Zoomin' Who?" and "Sisters are Doin' It for Themselves." However, the biggest hit from it, "Freeway of Love," was released in advance from the album, and that was performed here. It would reach Number Three on the U.S. singles chart. "Sweet Bitter Love" also appeared on that album.

This concert is officially unreleased. The sound quality is very good.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 talk (Aretha Franklin)
02 Love Is the Key (Aretha Franklin)
03 Love All the Hurt Away (Aretha Franklin)
04 Day Dreaming (Aretha Franklin)
05 I Say a Little Prayer (Aretha Franklin)
06 See Saw (Aretha Franklin)
07 Rock Steady (Aretha Franklin)
08 Something He Can Feel (Aretha Franklin)
09 Think (Aretha Franklin)
10 Ain't No Way (Aretha Franklin)
11 Respect (Aretha Franklin)
12 Sweet Bitter Love (Aretha Franklin)
13 It's My Turn (Aretha Franklin)
14 Freeway of Love (Aretha Franklin)
15 Didn't It Rain (Aretha Franklin)
16 Jump to It (Aretha Franklin)
17 Respect [Reprise] (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/P59kFyCT

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5zn13pdx5RTwTla/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from this exact concert. The video I took it from was rather low-res, so I ran it through Krea AI twice to get it looking better. Also, using Photoshop, I erased some distracting things in the background.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: Celtic Connections Festival, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Britain, 1-24-2014

Here's the fourth, and so far last, BBC album I have of Mary Chapin Carpenter. It's a concert one, but it's rather unusual in that she is backed by a full orchestra (specifically, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra).

In January 2014, a couple of weeks before this album, Carpenter released the studio album "Songs from the Movie." Instead of being new material, it consisted of older songs, but redone with orchestral backing. In this way, it was similar to a couple of Joni Mitchell albums from around 2000 in which she redid some of her songs with an orchestra. This is basically the live version of that album. Nearly all the songs here come from that album. This definitely has a mellow feel, since rocking songs usually don't fit well with orchestral backings.

This album is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 On and On It Goes (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 I Am a Town (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 Between Here and Gone (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 The Dreaming Road (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 Mrs. Hemingway (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 Only a Dream (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Where Time Stands Still (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Come On Come On (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Goodnight America (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iiCMnFCc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/9rNK4fU0VSkNclN/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. I used the Krea AI program to improve the image some.

Jim Croce - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 8-13-1973

I'm extra happy to be posting this, because excellent sounding Jim Croce concert recordings are very rare, due to him dying shortly after becoming famous. This is another "PBS Soundstage" concert. Note however, that technically the program at the time was called "Made in Chicago." It would change titles a year later and keep the new title until the apparent final cancellation in 2018.

Jim Croce died in a plane crash on September 20, 1973. This concert was recorded a month before his death. By the time it aired, he had already died. Due to his death, his music career got a sudden surge of attention. So PBS put together an hour long TV special about his life. The Soundstage episode about him was less than half an hour long. However, I noticed that there were scenes in the hour-long special that were outtakes from the Soundstage show. I could tell due to the same clothes for Croce and his lead guitarist Maury Muehleisen, as well as the same lighting and stage design. So I took those bits and added them in to the concert. It wasn't a whole lot. In fact, there was only one new song ("Speedball Tucker"). However, there was some interesting banter before other songs. All in all, it added about eight minutes to the length of this album.

This album is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I hope there's even more in the archives from this show and it'll all get released someday.

This album is 36 minutes long.

01 Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy] (Jim Croce)
02 talk (Jim Croce)
03 Working at the Car Wash Blues (Jim Croce)
04 Operator [That's Not The Way It Feels] (Jim Croce)
05 talk (Jim Croce)
06 Roller Derby Queen (Jim Croce)
07 talk (Jim Croce)
08 You Don't Mess Around with Jim (Jim Croce)
09 talk (Jim Croce)
10 Lover's Cross (Jim Croce)
11 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)
12 talk (Jim Croce)
13 Five Short Minutes (Jim Croce)
14 The Hard Way Every Time (Jim Croce)
15 talk (Jim Croce)
16 Speedball Tucker (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CYH8qPSf

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Aa6FrY6koyQNuKe/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. I used the Krea AI program to improve the image quality.

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Humble Pie - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Reseda Country Club, Los Angeles, CA, 5-17-1981

Here's another album of the British band Humble Pie performing for the BBC. It's a BBC concert, from 1981.

As far as I can tell, the only previous BBC concert by this band took place in 1970. I find it kind of strange that there were no other BBC concerts in the early 1970s, when the band was at a commercial peak. By 1981, the band was having a hard time. It broke up in 1975, then got back to make a new album in 1980. But musical tastes had changed, and the band's style of boogie rock was no longer in vogue. The band put out albums in 1980 and 1981, but both albums sold poorly, with neither of them even making the U.S. charts at all. In July 1981, only a couple of months after this concert, the band's lead singer and lead guitarist Steve Marriott developed an ulcer, which forced the cancellation of a tour. The band broke up at that point. Just one year later, Marriott formed an all-new band, but due to commercial reasons he was obliged to call it Humble Pie. That only lasted for about a year before the band was retired for good, at least as far as any Marriott version went.

Marriott had gone through a lot of things since the early 1970s, and it could be argued that he was a shadow of his former self creatively, especially when it comes to songwriting. At once point in the late 1970s, he was so hard up for money that he took to collecting empty bottles to redeem them for spare change. He frequently had big issues with drugs and alcohol. But despite all that, if you listen to this recording, he was still singing and playing lead guitar at a top level. I checked out a forum of Humble Pie fans, and this is considered one of the band's best concert recordings, period, in terms of both sound quality and performance.

The music here has been officially released, but in an obscure way. A box set of five CDs called "The Official Bootleg Box Set, Volume 2" came out, consisting of five different Humble Pie concerts, and this was one of them. But in terms of sound quality alone, this one deserves more attention, since it sounds better than most of the other material in that set.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 I Don't Need No Doctor (Humble Pie)
02 Infatuation (Humble Pie)
03 30 Days in the Hole (Humble Pie)
04 Tin Soldier (Humble Pie)
05 Fool for a Pretty Face (Humble Pie)
06 [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66 (Humble Pie)
07 Be-Bop-A-Lula (Humble Pie)
08 Tulsa Time (Humble Pie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YPG5JBky

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ZAsYh76vroOngpH/file

The cover photo of Steve Marriott is from a concert at the Park West, in Chicago, Illinois, on April 15, 1981.

Dr. John and Friends - New Orleans Swamp, PBS Soundstage, Park West, Chicago, IL, 10-30-1974

Here's a special episode of "PBS Soundstage." It was one of very few that got a special name - "New Orleans Swamp" - because it was a collection of musical acts instead of just one. The main star here was Dr. John. But he was joined by other pivotal musical acts from New Orleans: Professor Longhair, Earl King, and the Meters. All of these were key to the New Orleans sound. Due to the passage of time, there's no doubt a collection of talent like this will never be seen on stage together.

I've already post music by Dr. John, and he's a famous figure anyway. But here are Wikipedia links to the others, in case you want to know more:

Professor Longhair - Wikipedia 

Earl King - Wikipedia 

The Meters - Wikipedia

Dr. John served as the emcee. First, Professor Longhair played a short set, then Earl King did, then the Meters did. Dr. John stayed on stage the entire time, usually playing keyboards. Then Dr. John did an extra long set. Everyone was on stage for the finale, "Big Chief," an Earl King song.

To be honest, many times with these PBS Soundstage shows, I'm not entirely sure where they took place. I try to find out, but when I can't find any definitive information, I assume it took place in Chicago. (As usual, I'm open to corrections.) In this case, I thought the odds were pretty good the show took place in New Orleans, since it was such a gathering of talent all from that city. But I actually found a social media thread on it by other people who had been wondering the same thing, and I was able to find some definitive information about the location and date.

The music here remains unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. If you want authentic New Orleans music, don't miss this! 

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 talk (Dr. John)
02 She Walks Right In - Shake, Rattle and Roll (Dr. John with Professor Longhair)
03 Tipitina (Dr. John with Professor Longhair)
04 Whole Lotta Lovin' (Dr. John with Professor Longhair)
05 Everyday I Have the Blues (Dr. John with Professor Longhair)
06 talk (Dr. John)
07 Mama and Papa (Dr. John with Earl King)
08 Those Lonely, Lonely Nights (Dr. John with Earl King)
09 talk (Dr. John)
10 Looka Py Py [Instrumental] (Dr. John with Meters)
11 Jungle Man (Dr. John with Meters)
12 Call a Doctor (Dr. John)
13 Qualified (Dr. John)
14 talk (Dr. John)
15 Quitters Never Win (Dr. John)
16 Such a Night (Dr. John)
17 Right Place, Wrong Time (Dr. John)
18 Big Chief (Dr. John & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ta2ATSJt

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4LcpIp1VB0T15Ud/file

The cover photo of Dr. John is from this exact concert.

Monday, March 24, 2025

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 4: 1976-1981

Here we are again with another "Covered" album consisting of songs written or co-written by Stevie Wonder. This volume deals with the years 1976 to 1981.

I my opinion, the peak of Wonder's music career was from about 1972 to 1981. So this represents the latter half of that. But keep in mind that covers always come after the original versions, sometimes decades later. So many of the songs he wrote during this time don't show up until later volumes.

However, just like with previous sessions, there are some songs here that Wonder didn't release himself. This time, those are tracks 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 Boogie On Reggae Woman (Slickers)
02 Creepin' (Herbie Mann feat. Cissy Houston)
03 You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Ella Fitzgerald)
04 Love Having You Around (First Choice)
05 The Real Thing (Sergio Mendes & New Brasil 77)
06 Stick Together (Minnie Riperton)
07 Don't Make Me Wait Too Long (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
08 I Can't Help It (Michael Jackson)
09 I'm Wondering (Amy Holland)
10 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Syreeta Wright)
11 Let's Get Serious (Jermaine Jackson)
12 Pastime Paradise (Ray Barretto)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Psmhz2QD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4WAUE3LanH8uQY8/file

All I know about the cover image is that it's from 1982.

Huey Lewis & the News with Sam Moore and Lloyd Price - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 6-2-1994

The flood of "PBS Soundstage" concerts. This one is a concert by Huey Lewis and the Lewis, with special guests Sam Moore and Lloyd Price.

First off, note this isn't technically an episode of "PBS Soundstage." The program ran from 1974 to 1985 in its initial run. It would be revived in 1992 to 1993 under the name "Center Stage," but otherwise identical, and then revived again from 2003 to 2018. This concert is an anomaly, because it's the only one from 1994. I found an article in an old newspaper archive that explained what happened. Basically, Huey Lewis liked the old show, and wanted to do a concert on the show when it was revived for a season in 1992 to 1993, but the show had been cancelled again by the time he went to tour to support his next album. But he talked the producers of the show to make a single special episode called "Four Chords Live," which is this. Other than the name, it's exactly like a typical "Soundstage" episode, including the venue, length, and the appearance of special guests.

That name references his 1994 album, "Four Chords and Several Years Ago." It consists entirely of covers of R&B covers from the 1950s and 60s. So most of the songs performed here are covers, with just three songs that were hits for Huey Lewis and the News sprinkled in: "The Heart of Rock and Roll," "The Power of Love," and "I Want a New Drug." Given the emphasis on covers from that earlier era, it makes sense that the two special guests were Sam Moore and Lloyd Price. Moore was half of the famous 1960s R&B music duo Sam and Dave. Price had some R&B hits in the 1950s, especially "Lawdy Miss Claudy" and "Personality."

The episode began with about 30 seconds of Lewis and his band rehearsing a song. I cut that out since it wasn't part of the concert. I also had to make some edits between a few songs, when the applause after a song was immediately cut off. Probably those were where commercials were inserted. I patched in more applause from elsewhere to make those transitions sound natural.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 The Heart of Rock and Roll (Huey Lewis & the News)
02 talk (Huey Lewis & the News)
03 Stagger Lee (Huey Lewis & the News)
04 Blue Monday (Huey Lewis & the News)
05 Some Kind of Wonderful (Huey Lewis & the News)
06 talk (Huey Lewis & the News)
07 I Thank You (Huey Lewis & the News with Sam Moore)
08 Little Bitty Pretty One (Huey Lewis & the News)
09 talk (Huey Lewis & the News)
10 Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl (Huey Lewis & the News)
11 Shake, Rattle and Roll (Huey Lewis & the News)
12 Searching for My Love (Huey Lewis & the News)
13 talk (Huey Lewis & the News)
14 Personality (Huey Lewis & the News with Lloyd Price)
15 talk (Huey Lewis & the News)
16 Don't Ever Break My Heart (Huey Lewis & the News with Lloyd Price)
17 The Power of Love (Huey Lewis & the News)
18 I Want a New Drug (Huey Lewis & the News)
19 Function at the Junction (Huey Lewis & the News)
20 But It's Alright (Huey Lewis & the News)
21 Better to Have and Not Need (Huey Lewis & the News)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/911mJvYW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4W5XyHEcUa47QPm/file 

The cover is from this exact concert.

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 10-29-2009

Here's an unusual episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show. It's the only episode I've found that follows the same format as the "Songwriters' Circle" BBC TV show episodes I've been posting: four singer-songwriters took turns presenting their songs. In this case: Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller.

However, the BBC TV show put together different artists for a single concert. In this case, the four singer-songwriters had joined forces on their own, calling themselves "Three Girls and Their Buddy." They never released any music that I know of, but they toured together for most of 2009.

The four of them had previous ties. Buddy Miller led the Buddy Miller Band back in the early 1980s. Shawn Colvin, just starting her music career, was a member of that band. Miller was the lead guitarist in Emmylou Harris's band in the late 1990s. Then, in 2004, a similar group to this one was formed, called the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue. It starred Harris, Miller, Patty Griffin, and the duo of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. But that group, like this group, never officially released any music.

Generally speaking, each of the singer-songwriters performed acoustically on their own. But sometimes they were assisted by others, especially by Miller on guitar. They came together to sing on the last song.

I was very familiar with the careers of Harris and Colvin, but I'd missed Griffin and Miller. I was pleasantly surprised. I thought all four of them impressed with their singing and songwriting, and they worked well as a group. I liked them so much that I found another concert by the same foursome and I plan on posting that here eventually. It's too bad they only toured together in 2009.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
02 Blackhawk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
03 Love Throws a Line (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
04 Poloroids (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
05 Shelter Me (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
06 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
07 Michelangelo (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
08 Heavenly Day (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
09 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
10 Summer Dress (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
11 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
12 Poison Love (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
13 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
14 Love and Happiness (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
15 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
16 Get Ready Marie (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
17 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
18 Hold On (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
19 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
20 Gasoline and Matches (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/M9ryEscs

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/AwB6wr9loL6ttAz/file

I found the cover photo by Googling the names of all four of these musicians together. I don't know exactly where or when it's from, but it must be from their 2009 tour. It was a small and low-res picture though, so I enlarged it then used the Krea AI program to improve the picture quality. It worked pretty well, but I thought Harris's face didn't look like her. So I found a different face at the same angle and pasted it in.

Lyle Lovett with Randy Newman - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 12-18-2002

Here's another "PBS Soundstage" concert. I'm prioritizing posting the ones with key guest stars. This one is mainly a Lyle Lovett concert, but Randy Newman sings two songs with Lovett, and sings two more songs on his own.

Mark Isham is also a guest on two songs. He plays trumpet and keyboards, but he's mainly known for composing hundreds of movie and TV scores.

In February 2003, Lovett released an album called "Smile: Songs from the Movies." It was a compilation of songs he'd done for various movies in the previous ten years. This concert took place two months prior to the release of that album, but was timed to be broadcast on TV after the release. Lovett took the theme of the album seriously, because most of the songs he performed in this concert are from movie soundtracks.

Note by the way that "Mack the Knife" is a song originally written in German in 1928 by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, under the title "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer." It was later translated into English and became a huge hit for Bobby Darin in 1959. However, the translation was a loose one, shortening the song and taking out a lot of the gruesome violence. In 1976, a new translation was done that's much longer. This version is typically called "Moritat." That's the version Lovett did for a 1994 movie soundtrack, and performed in this concert. I've included both "Moritat" and "Mack the Knife" in the title.

By the way, Newman had his own Soundstage episode in 1974, but I can't find any recording of it. If anyone has it, please let me know. 

This episode is unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent.

This album is an hour and 21 minutes long.

01 talk (Lyle Lovett)
02 Blue Skies (Lyle Lovett)
03 talk (Lyle Lovett)
04 Straighten Up and Fly Right (Lyle Lovett)
05 talk (Lyle Lovett)
06 Smile (Lyle Lovett)
07 Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You (Lyle Lovett)
08 talk (Lyle Lovett)
09 Summer Wind (Lyle Lovett)
10 talk (Lyle Lovett)
11 Mack the Knife [Moritat] (Lyle Lovett with Mark Isham)
12 talk (Lyle Lovett)
13 Walking Tall (Lyle Lovett)
14 talk (Lyle Lovett)
15 You've Got a Friend in Me (Lyle Lovett & Randy Newman)
16 talk (Lyle Lovett & Randy Newman)
17 Political Science (Lyle Lovett & Randy Newman)
18 talk (Lyle Lovett & Randy Newman)
19 I Think It's Going to Rain Today (Lyle Lovett & Randy Newman)
20 If I Had a Boat (Lyle Lovett)
21 talk (Lyle Lovett)
22 That's Right, You're Not from Texas (Lyle Lovett)
23 talk (Lyle Lovett)
24 Long Tall Texan (Lyle Lovett with Randy Newman)
25 talk (Lyle Lovett)
26 What Do You Do (Lyle Lovett with Francine Reed)
27 Church (Lyle Lovett)
28 talk (Lyle Lovett)
29 What'd I Say (Lyle Lovett)
30 talk (Lyle Lovett)
31 I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord (Lyle Lovett)
32 talk (Lyle Lovett)
33 I'm Gonna Wait (Lyle Lovett with Mark Isham)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/48GxFzYj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/znJifglgHgeuWSQ/file

The cover is a screenshot from this exact concert, with Newman at the piano and Lovett singing into a microphone. Actually, it's three screenshots. The video I took this from was really low-res. So I took screenshots of different sections, for instance one of just Lovett's head. Then I resized them and used Photoshop to merge them into one. After that, I used Krea AI to improve the image quality overall.

Saturday, March 22, 2025

Rod Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: In Concert, BBC Radio Theatre, London, Britain, 5-16-2013

Here's another BBC album by Rod Stewart. This time, it's a concert from 2013.

The last BBC album I'd posted by Stewart is from 2004. Since that time until 2013, he'd put out more covers albums, especially those of the Great American Songbook. But in 2013, he finally released a studio album in which he wrote or cowrote nearly all of the songs, called "Time." It was the first such album in about 20 years. He said that he'd lost the creative inspiration to write songs for many years, but found it again while he was writing his autobiography. The album did surprisingly well in Britain, especially considering it didn't contain any big hit singles. In fact, it was the seventh best selling album in Britain that year.

As you'd expect, this album consists of songs from that album, plus his greatest hits. There's no sign of the Great American Songbook songs he'd recorded five albums of during the previous decade.

This album is unreleased. But the sound quality is excellent, as you'd expect from the BBC. 

This album is an hour and 22 minutes long.

01 talk by Jo Whiley (Rod Stewart)
02 You Can't Stop Me Now (Rod Stewart)
03 talk (Rod Stewart)
04 You Wear It Well (Rod Stewart)
05 Forever Young (Rod Stewart)
06 talk (Rod Stewart)
07 It's Over (Rod Stewart)
08 talk (Rod Stewart)
09 Rhythm of My Heart (Rod Stewart)
10 talk (Rod Stewart)
11 Finest Woman (Rod Stewart)
12 talk (Rod Stewart)
13 Some Guys Have All the Luck (Rod Stewart)
14 talk (Rod Stewart)
15 Soul Girl [Soul Man] (Rod Stewart)
16 talk (Rod Stewart)
17 Have I Told You Lately (Rod Stewart)
18 talk (Rod Stewart)
19 Brighton Beach (Rod Stewart)
20 talk (Rod Stewart)
21 She Makes Me Happy (Rod Stewart)
22 talk (Rod Stewart)
23 Sweet Little Rock and Roller (Rod Stewart)
24 talk (Rod Stewart)
25 I Don't Want to Talk about It (Rod Stewart)
26 talk (Rod Stewart)
27 The First Cut Is the Deepest (Rod Stewart)
28 talk (Rod Stewart)
29 Sexual Religion (Rod Stewart)
30 Maggie May (Rod Stewart)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hnYcYQCu

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3VLzw7wwcQS7Phx/file

The cover photo is from another concert in London later in 2013. Specifically, it's from the 02 Arena on September 21, 2013.

Friday, March 21, 2025

Bob Dylan - Toad's Place, New Haven, CT, 1-12-1990

I'm excited to present this Bob Dylan concert, especially since it sounds better than ever before. Some say this is the greatest concert Dylan ever did, or at least the most interesting. It can't be denied it's the longest, by a good margin. The concert was over four hours long! For the first time in many years, Dylan performed in a club (Toad's Place), with a crowd of only 750 people. He basically did a live rehearsal to get warmed up before going on a world tour, trying out lots of rarities.

However, I never even had this in my music collection until a couple of days ago, due to poor sound quality. All that has emerged from the concert is an unreleased audience bootleg. But things changed in mid-March 2025 when Captain Acid posted an upgrade to it. He did phase and level correction, and new equalization. I listened to the result, and I was impressed. 

Then I decided to do what I could to improve that version still more. I'm willing to make more drastic edits than most people. When it comes to audience bootlegs, my one big trick is to use the MVSEP audio editing program to remove the crowd noise. The taper had to be standing in the middle of a packed audience that was very excited to see Dylan do such a special show in a small venue. That meant there was a constant ambient noise of people talking and hollering through the songs. I basically got rid of all that, while keeping the crowd noise at the ends of songs and between songs. This technique more or less can make an audience boot sound like a soundboard instead. 

After that, I ran all the songs through the UVR5 audio editing program, to adjust the balance between the vocals and everything else. I boosted Dylan's vocals a little bit overall. But I also made extra little boosts here and there when some of his singing was harder to hear. This also allowed me to get rid of more crowd noise that had been missed by the MVSEP program. For instance, at the start of "Everything Is Broken," someone standing near the taper could be heard saying over the music, "get down to her level... can't see anything." I got rid of that entirely, and other little bits like that. 

I could have put "[Edit]" in the titles to many songs, due to the extra editing work I did. But I only put that in the titles of the two songs I did the most work on, "Across the Borderline" and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry." The latter was the biggest pain in the butt, because some excited fan kept shouting "Woo!" noises through the song. I had to get rid of each of those individually. There's only a couple that remain, when the "Woo" noises overlapped with Dylan's vocals. I also got rid of some dead air between songs, but there wasn't much of that.

I wouldn't say this sounds as good as an excellent soundboard now, but there certainly some soundboards that sound worse than this. It's still rather rough, but I think that's part of its charm, capturing a small club atmosphere, where you can hear individual people clapping and cheering. 

Here's some more information on the concert and how it came to be. In late 1989, Dylan's career was revitalized with the release of the studio album "Oh Mercy," his best album in many years. However, his concerts didn't seem inspired... until this one. Rolling Stone Magazine wrote an entire article about this concert, entitled "Bringing It All Back Home: Dylan Thrills With Exhaustive Show." It read: "The January 12th show was a striking contrast to Dylan's recent lackluster, perfunctory performances, at which he has appeared so indifferent that the audience has been lucky if he acknowledged its presence, much less invested any of himself in his songs. But at Toad's, he rose to the challenge of his first scheduled club date in countless years with a brilliant marathon show."

Here's a link if you want to read the entire article. I highly recommend giving it a read:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bringing-it-all-back-home-dylan-thrills-with-exhaustive-show-71301/

Before Dylan, other musical acts had started using Toad's Place for secret open rehearsals. The most famous of these was the Rolling Stones, who gave a legendary performance there just five months prior to this concert. (I've thought about posting that concert too, but the audience bootleg for that one sounds much worse than this one.) Probably, Dylan heard about the Stones doing that, and decided he wanted to give that a try as well. He demanded 100 percent of the ticket sale profits, which the club happily gave him. No doubt, they more than made up for that with alcohol sales during the extremely long concert. Plus, the credibility it gave the venue was priceless. Since then, many other musical acts have done similar open rehearsal type shows there.

Dylan was backed by G.E. Smith on lead guitar (who was in the Saturday Night Live band), Tony Garnier on bass, and Christopher Parker on drums. The band came onstage shortly before 9 P.M., and played for an hour, then left the stage. Brian Phelps, the owner of the club, was later interviewed about the concert. Here's what he said happened next: 

"Dylan asked me if he could play another set. And we said sure, go ahead! You know, and they asked again, and played a third. Can I play another? You know what? Yeah! Go ahead! There's no problem!  He wasn't sure what he was going to play, it was like a practice session, because he was going on this theater tour. I think most of the theaters were 5,000 seats on up, and our show was like a practice session... Well for him anyways, but for the people that were there, they were just loving it, and they really couldn't believe it."

Dylan's fourth and final set began around 1:00 A.M. Phelps had to shut the bar down at that time due to state law. But instead of stopping the show, staffers just collected all of the drinks from the crowd so the show could go on. Dylan finally finished at 2:20 A.M.! He threw his harmonica into the adoring crowd, and walked off after 4 hours, 20 minutes. 

He ended up performing 50 songs in total. But what's really interesting in that he generally avoided playing most of his best known, most frequently played songs in favor of rarities. Many of the songs had never been performed by him before. All of these were done in concert for the first time: "Trouble No More," "I've Been All Around This World," "Political World," "Where Teardrops Fall," "What Was It You Wanted," "Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie," "Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)," "Wiggle Wiggle," "Key to the Highway," and "Dancing in the Dark." And yes, you read that right, that last song mentioned was "Dancing in the Dark," as in the huge 1984 hit by Bruce Springsteen. It was the one and only time Dylan played it in concert. If you listen carefully to the recording, it's clear Dylan didn't remember most of the words to it, but he was having a fun time winging it anyway.

In addition to all those debuts, there were lots of rarities played. For instance, he did the Traveling Wilburys song "Congratulations," apparently after someone in the audience shouted for it. That was only one of three times he ever performed that. A bunch of the debuts I mentioned were covers: "Trouble No More," "I've Been All Around This World," "Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie," "Key to the Highway," and "Dancing in the Dark." But he played many other covers too: "Walk a Mile in My Shoes," "Everybody's Movin'," "Across the Borderline," "Paid the Price," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "Lonesome Whistle," "Confidential," "So Long, Good Luck and Goodbye," "Peggy-O," "When Did You Leave Heaven," "In the Pines," and "Precious Memories." That's a lot of covers, 18 in all.

Unfortunately, because this concert was a kind of open rehearsal, Dylan repeated some songs to make sure the band played them to his satisfaction. "I've Been All Around This World" and "Where Teardrops Fall" were played twice. That wasn't so bad, but "Political World" was played three times. I decided I didn't want to hear all those repeats every time I listen to this. But some other people might, so I'm including the extra versions, but only as bonus tracks. I kept the last versions in the main song list, assuming they improved as they played the songs more.

This really was a remarkable concert for Dylan. It seems to have been the only one he ever did like this, where he let it all hang out and played whatever the hell he wanted for as long as he wanted. He even warmed up enough to chat some with the audience and take requests, which he basically never did. It's not just the longest Dylan concert by a mile, it's also one of a handful of the longest concerts by any famous rock musician, period. He even beat the longest Bruce Springsteen concert ever by a few minutes, and Springsteen is famous for his long concerts.

Here's one more anecdote from Brian Phelps, the owner of Toad's Place:

"[Many years later,] I actually gave the whole rundown to his son Jakob, from the Wallflowers, who have played Toad's a number of times, and I told him about his father's show. He started peppering me with questions about it, and he really enjoyed the whole story about how it happened, and the length of the show, and everything that went on that night. He was a great great guy too. Jacob enjoyed the history of the club, and the history of playing in the same place where his father played his longest show in."

This concert is three hours and forty minutes long, without the bonus songs. Including those, it's four hours and two minutes long. The actual concert was still longer than that, due to some short breaks between sets.

 01 Walk a Mile in My Shoes (Bob Dylan)
02 One More Cup of Coffee [Valley Below] (Bob Dylan)
03 Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35 (Bob Dylan)
04 Trouble No More (Bob Dylan)
05 Tears of Rage (Bob Dylan)
06 I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine (Bob Dylan)
07 It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
08 Everybody's Movin' (Bob Dylan)
09 Watching the River Flow (Bob Dylan)
10 What Was It You Wanted (Bob Dylan)
11 Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie (Bob Dylan)
12 talk (Bob Dylan)
13 Lenny Bruce (Bob Dylan)
14 I Believe in You (Bob Dylan)
15 talk (Bob Dylan)
16 Man of Peace (Bob Dylan)
17 Across the Borderline [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
18 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob Dylan)
19 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan)
20 talk (Bob Dylan)
21 Tight Connection to My Heart [Has Anybody Seen My Love] (Bob Dylan)
22 What Good Am I (Bob Dylan)
23 Wiggle Wiggle (Bob Dylan)
24 Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again (Bob Dylan)
25 Paid the Price (Bob Dylan)
26 Help Me Make It through the Night (Bob Dylan)
27 Man in the Long Black Coat (Bob Dylan)
28 Congratulations (Bob Dylan)
29 Dancing in the Dark (Bob Dylan)
30 Lonesome Whistle Blues (Bob Dylan)
31 Confidential (Bob Dylan)
32 In the Garden (Bob Dylan)
33 Everything Is Broken (Bob Dylan)
34 talk (Bob Dylan)
35 So Long, Good Luck and Goodbye (Bob Dylan)
36 Where Teardrops Fall (Bob Dylan)
37 talk (Bob Dylan)
38 Political World (Bob Dylan)
39 Pretty Peggy-O (Bob Dylan)
40 I'll Remember You (Bob Dylan)
41 Key to the Highway (Bob Dylan)
42 talk (Bob Dylan)
43 Joey (Bob Dylan)
44 Lay Lady Lay (Bob Dylan)
45 I Don't Believe You [She Acts like We Never Have Met] (Bob Dylan)
46 When Did You Leave Heaven (Bob Dylan)
47 Maggie's Farm (Bob Dylan)
48 I've Been All Around This World (Bob Dylan)
49 In the Pines (Bob Dylan)
50 Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)
51 Precious Memories (Bob Dylan)
52 Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan)

I've Been All Around This World [First Version] (Bob Dylan)
Political World [First Version] (Bob Dylan)
Political World [Second Version] (Bob Dylan)
Where Teardrops Fall [First Version] (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/c3pudHMC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/3lYIq83WpMHkgLV/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. In the original, his eyes couldn't be seen due to the shadow from his hat. But thanks to the magic of AI art, I was able to make an adjustment there while keeping the rest of the image the same. I also found a photo of one of the tickets from this concert, and I thought that was nice, so I added that in at the top left.

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Dionne Warwick - PBS Soundstage, Park West, Chicago, IL, 10-12-1980

Here's another "PBS Soundstage" show. This one is a concert from Dionne Warwick in 1980.

Warwick was very commercially successful in the 1960s, but the 1970s were much more uneven for her. She largely lost her source of seemingly endless classics from the Burt Bacharach and Hal David songwriting team. She did have a Number One hit in 1974 with "Then Came You," but that was almost her only big hit of the decade. Until 1979, that is. She rebounded that year with the hits "I'll Never Love This Way Again" and "Deja Vu." 

So at the time of this concert, she was in the middle of a comeback. Naturally, she performed both of those songs in this concert. However, the vast majority of the concert was made up of what is probably the biggest medley I've ever come across. She did a medley of over twenty songs (she said 23 in her banter, but I count 21), that lasts for over half of the whole concert! During the medley, she just played sections, never complete songs. I broke it into shorter tracks, because otherwise the length of the song title would have been unworkable.

I found a video of this concert, converted it to audio, and chopped it up into mp3s. There are very few audio bootlegs of Warwick concerts, especially from when she was younger. I'm glad to put another one into circulation.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 With One More Look at You (Dionne Warwick)
02 Watch Closely Now (Dionne Warwick)
03 Deja Vu (Dionne Warwick)
04 talk (Dionne Warwick)
05 Don't Make Me Over - Anyone Who Had a Heart (Dionne Warwick)
06 You'll Never Get to Heaven [If You Break My Heart] - A House is Not a Home (Dionne Warwick)
07 Message to Michael - Trains and Boats and Planes (Dionne Warwick)
08 The Look of Love (Dionne Warwick)
09 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Dionne Warwick)
10 I Say a Little Prayer - Alfie (Dionne Warwick)
11 Do You Know the Way to San Jose - [Theme From] Valley of the Dolls (Dionne Warwick)
12 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Dionne Warwick)
13 This Girl's in Love with You - The April Fools (Dionne Warwick)
14 You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling - I'll Never Fall in Love Again (Dionne Warwick)
15 Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head - Promises, Promises (Dionne Warwick)
16 What the World Needs Now - Then Came You (Dionne Warwick)
17 The Letter (Dionne Warwick)
18 I'll Never Love This Way Again (Dionne Warwick)
19 Finale (Dionne Warwick)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6fP94G7R

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tFX6q8MAOfzFLXh/file

The cover image is a screenshot from a video of this exact concert.

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 3: 1974-1976

Stevie Wonder was on fire creatively for all of the 1970s, but I'd argue that the peak of his peak were the years 1974 to 1976. Even the Grammy Awards couldn't deny his genius: he won Album of the year in 1973 for "Innervisions," in 1974 for "Fulfillingness' First Finale," and in 1976 for "Songs in the Key of Life." It's the only time a musical artist won Grammies for three albums in a row. The double album "Songs in the Key of Life" in particular is such a strong work that Rolling Stone Magazine put it at Number Four in its list of the top 500 albums of all time.

So, given all that, it's no surprise that this is a particularly strong album in Wonder's "Covered" series. Everyone wanted to cover his songs. That was especially the case since he was giving away lots of songs that he couldn't fit on his albums. The songs on this volume that he didn't release himself are tracks 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 14. So, in other words, nine out of 14! 

Note that, in my opinion, the last song, "Don't Be Sad 'Cause Your Sun Is Down," sounds exactly like a stereotypical song written by James Taylor. I had to double check the credits that it was co-written by Wonder, but it was. He also played harmonica on it. Most of the others here were written by Wonder alone.

This album is one hour long.

01 Living for the City (Ray Charles)
02 Your Kiss Is Sweet (Syreeta Wright)
03 Perfect Angel (Minnie Riperton)
04 All in Love Is Fair (Cecilio & Kapono)
05 I Can See the Sun in Late December (Roberta Flack)
06 If You Don't Love Me (G.C. Cameron)
07 Take a Little Trip (Minnie Riperton)
08 Keep On Running (Snafu)
09 I Believe [When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever] (Art Garfunkel)
10 Visions (Marion Brown)
11 Just a Little Piece of You (Betty Everett)
12 Sleeping Alone (Pointer Sisters)
13 Harmour Love (Syreeta Wright)
14 Don't Be Sad 'Cause Your Sun Is Down (James Taylor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wkuv4NSi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UHV55FlBbAXnaGa/file

The cover photo is from 1976. I don't know more about it than that.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Bonnie Raitt with Buddy Guy & Junior Wells - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 12-17-1974

Here's another one of the "PBS Soundstage" shows that had an interesting guest star. In this case, the main star was Bonnie Raitt, and the guest star was the blues duo of Buddy Guy and Junior Wells.

Raitt's first album came out in 1971. For her first few albums, she leaned more heavily into the blues than she did with her later albums. So it's not too surprising that when she was allowed to pick guest stars for her Soundstage episode, she chose the likes of Guy and Wells. Even long after her more bluesy phase of her career, she's frequently made sure to pay tribute to her musical roots. 

Guy and Wells had a musical partnership that lasted decades, with Guy playing lead guitar and Wells playing harmonica, and both of them singing. The concert started with just Guy as the star, singing "Man of Many Words," a song from the 1972 album "Play the Blues" by Guy and Wells. Then Wells joined him on stage and sang the next two songs. 

After that, Guy and Wells left and most of the show was devoted to a fairly typical Bonnie Raitt set for the time. Note that she did a version of "Don't Fight It," a Wilson Pickett song she never put on album. But for the second to last song, "Everybody's Crying Mercy," Wells returned to the stage and sang the song with her. Then Guy also got back on stage and the three of them finished the concert with "Long Lonesome Road."

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

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Man of Many Words (Buddy Guy)
03 talk (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
04 Little by Little (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
05 talk (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
06 I Wouldn't Have to Sing the Blues (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
07 talk (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
08 Mystery Train (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
09 Love Me like a Man (Bonnie Raitt)
10 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
11 Any Day Woman (Bonnie Raitt)
12 Under the Falling Sky (Bonnie Raitt)
13 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
14 Write Me a Few of Your Lines - Kokomo Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
15 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
16 Women Be Wise (Bonnie Raitt)
17 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
18 Angel from Montgomery (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Don't Fight It (Bonnie Raitt)
20 talk (Bonnie Raitt with Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)
21 Everybody's Crying Mercy (Bonnie Raitt & Junior Wells)
22 Long Lonesome Road (Bonnie Raitt with Buddy Guy & Junior Wells)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pkU5F8m2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/U6yPVcbWMGXDmVP/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. That's Raitt with Junior Wells on harmonica. I wish I could have found a picture with Buddy Guy in it too, but this was the best one I could find.

Covered: Henry Crosby: 1963-1978

The vast majority of the classic Motown songs from the 1960s and 70s were written by a relatively small group of songwriters. So with all the Motown-related "Covered" series albums I've posted, I should have nearly all those classic songs on at least one of those albums. Nearly all, but not all. There are some key ones I realized I'm missing, such as "Fingertips, Part 2." So here's yet another behind-the-scenes Motown songwriter, Henry Crosby. He doesn't have that many songs here, but he fills some important gaps.

Crosby was born in Detroit in 1928. That made him older than most of the other Motown songwriters and singers he worked with. He served in the U.S. army in the Korean war, then began playing saxophone in jazz clubs in Detroit. He joined Motown when the company was founded in 1959, and became part of the backing band later known as the Funk Brothers, playing on hundreds of hit songs. But he didn't stop there. He became a jack-of-all-trades for the company, branching out as an arranger, producer, and songwriter as well. 

His first big success as a songwriter was "Fingertips, Part 2," which he co-wrote with another Motown songwriter, Clarence Paul. Stevie Wonder took it to the top of the U.S. singles chart in 1963. That led to Crosby developing particularly close musical ties with Wonder. If you look at the song list below, a majority of them were first hits by Wonder, even if I used versions by others.

The reason why I'm using versions other than that by Wonder is because Crosby usually co-wrote song with other key members of the Motown songwriting team. The other songwriters have their own Covered albums, and I have often already posted albums with versions of those co-written songs on them. So for instance, "The Tears of a Clown" was co-written by Crosby, Wonder, and Smokey Robinson. I put the Robinson version on a Wonder Covered album, and the hit English Beat version on a Robinson Covered album. So I chose a more obscure version by Petula Clark for this album.

Crosby was involved in co-writing many great Motown hits until about 1971. That's when Motown head Berry Gordy stupidly decided to move the company from Detroit to Los Angeles to in order to get more involved with movies and TV. In the process, many very talented people like Crosby were fired or chose to stay behind, and Crosby was one of them. 

Crosby continued to be involved in the music industry. For instance, he produced albums by Blood, Sweat and Tears, Martha Reeves, and the Originals. However, he wasn't involved in writing any more hit songs. The songs here are in chronological order, but all the ones from after 1970 are covers of earlier hits. He died in 2002 at the age of 72.

I've come across conflicting information if Crosby helped write the Supremes hits "Love Child" and "I'm Living in Shame" or not. For instance, the Wikipedia entry on "Love Child" only lists him as a producer, not a songwriter. But the Wikipedia entry for Crosby lists him as a songwriter for that song too. And there were other conflicting sources like that. I ultimately left those two out, since both songs already had at least four other co-writers anyway, and they're included on other Covered albums I made. But if anyone knows if he really helped co-write those songs or not, I'd be curious to hear the answer.

Here's his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

Henry Cosby - Wikipedia

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Fingertips, Part 2 (Stevie Wonder)
02 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Nancy Wilson)
03 Lucky Lucky Me (Marvin Gaye)
04 Nothing's Too Good for My Baby (Stevie Wonder)
05 I'm Wondering (Stevie Wonder)
06 Home Cookin' (Jr. Walker & the All Stars)
07 No Matter What Sign You Are (Supremes)
08 My Cherie Amour (Jon Lucian)
09 I Should Be Proud (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas)
10 Never Had a Dream Come True (Stevie Wonder)
11 The Tears of a Clown (Petula Clark)
12 With a Child's Heart (Michael Jackson)
13 Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Dah-Day (Linda George)
14 I Was Made to Love Him [I Was Made to Love Her] (Chaka Khan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cp4JZ7Ws

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Ei7qTGglXhJbnwG/file

I found a couple of decent photos of Crosby when he was much older, but I preferred one when he was young and writing these songs. The cover photo is taken from a group photo of the Motown backing band "the Funk Brothers" in the early 1960s. It was in black and white, but I colorized it with the Kolorize program. Then I improved it with the Krea AI program. Crosby was looking away, but I moved his eyes to look at the camera using Photoshop.