Derek & the Dominos - Live and Rare (1970)

If you want to listen to the best live Derek & the Dominos, check out their albums "Live at the Fillmore," or "In Concert." Both of them cover two nights at the Fillmore East on October 23 and 24, 1970. Better yet, listen to the versions posted here that contain full sets from both nights. Those were the only two nights the band was ever recorded live at soundboard quality.

But, assuming you're a big fan of the group and you already have that material, you should get this too. Unfortunately, the band was only in existence for a short period of time, and most of their live shows that got recorded by bootleggers don't have great sound quality. What I've done is try to select the "best of the rest" based both on song selection and sound. The band had a lot of great songs that they rarely performed in concert, such as "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Keep on Growing."

Furthermore, they occasionally did some unusual covers and/or played with special guests. One song here is sung by Delaney Bramlett of Delaney and Bonnie fame. A member of the group, Bobby Whitlock, sings the blues classic "Call It Stormy Monday."

However, probably the most interesting thing here are two songs with sometimes band member Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band. He joined the band for a couple of concerts, but only one, in Tampa, Florida, was recorded with anything approaching decent sound quality. Unfortunately, it's not that decent, IMHO. Some people really like it, but most of it is too muddy for me to want to listen to repeatedly. However, the song "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" is done in a sparse arrangement that sounds surprisingly clear compared to the rest of the show, so I included that here. The sparks really fly as Clapton and Allman wail away on their guitars. 

I also included the song "Layla" from the same show. The sound isn't so good on that one, but it was one of only about three times the band ever played the song live, and it also has Allman on it.

So, overall, while the sound on this album isn't soundboard quality, it's still generally pretty good, and the song selection and/or the special guests make this something any fans of the band should hear.

The length is an hour and a half, which would have been an ideal length for a double album in that era. The songs are from seven different shows, and they're ordered chronologically.

I found a little known bootleg and included three songs from that: "Roll It Over," "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," and "Bad Boy." The reason it's little known is because it only contains four songs, and its location is unknown. It is known it comes from one of the August 1970 concerts in England, but that's it. I decided to include songs from this source because the sound quality is unusually good, by the modest bootleg standards for this band. I didn't include the fourth song, "Blues Power," because the vocals went into the red too much and didn't sound good. 

All three of the songs from this source ended badly. It seems the bootlegger was worried about running out of tape, so turned the tape off the moment the song ended. Thus, I used audience applause from a different bootleg by the band and added them to the ends of these songs. In the case of "Roll It Over," I found a song in the same key ending on the same chord, so I was able to let the final notes ring out while the applause started. 

I edited the songs "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Layla" using the X-Minus sound editing program to boost the vocals.

01 Crossroads (Delaney & Bonnie with Eric Clapton)
02 Don’t Know Why (Delaney & Bonnie with Eric Clapton)
03 Roll It Over [Edit] (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Have You Ever Loved a Woman [Edit] (Derek & the Dominos)
05 Bad Boy [Edit] (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Bell Bottom Blues [Edit] (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Keep on Growing (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Call It Stormy Monday (Derek & the Dominos)
09 All Night Long (Derek & the Dominos with Delaney Bramlett)
10 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos [Including Duane Allman])
11 Layla [Edit] (Derek & the Dominos [Including Duane Allman])
12 Crossroads (Derek & the Dominos)

https://www.imagenetz.de/jtkZJ

The cover photo comes from a concert in Detroit on December 3, 1970. I adjusted the brightness and contract to make the picture look better.