Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers - Volume One - Extended Version (1984-1986)

In my last post, I said I would post more from Robert Plant and the Honeydrippers soon. Here were are, already! :)

As I said with that last post, I was inspired by a recent post at the "Albums Back from the Dead" blog to come up with more Honeydrippers music. The Honeydrippers only released one EP in 1984 called "Volume One" that had just five songs on it, for a total of 19 minutes. The "Albums Back from the Dead" took the approach of looking later in Robert Plant's career for more similar music to create a "Volume Two." I tried a different approach of sticking close to the time the EP came out, 1984 to 1986, to see if I could find more music done in a similar style.

I also commented on my last post that one needs to think of the Honeydrippers as Robert Plant and a bunch of other musicians playing rockabilly and other 1950's-styled music. That's because the big name musicians on the EP like Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck rarely played this type of music with Plant again.

(The Honeydrippers did play on Saturday Night Live shortly after the EP came out, but even then, the big name guitarist was Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats instead of Page or Beck. I've included one of the songs from that performance here, "Santa Claus Is Back in Town." The other song played was one of the songs from the EP that wasn't so different from the EP version, so I didn't include it.)

It turns out that Plant really loves this sort of music, and his history with the Honeydrippers name goes well beyond the EP, from 1981 to the 2000s. If you're interested in the whole story, I suggest reading this newspaper article about it:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/robert-plant-birthday-70-led-zeppelin-the-honeydrippers-a8499176.html

The rest of the songs here come from a grab bag of sources, two officially released and the rest from bootlegs. However, I was careful to only use bootlegs that are of the highest sound and performance quality. I got lucky in that there is a soundboard recording of Plant doing some rehearsals for a Honeydrippers segment of his 1985 concert tour. I selected all the songs that weren't on the EP. Additionally, Plant did a handful of concerts in 1986 playing this type of music in small clubs, but unfortunately I could only find two songs done live at that time in sufficiently high enough quality to be included here.

I hope you'll agree that the end result is 46 minutes of music just as good as the EP, instead of the mere 19 minutes of the EP. (A much later rerelease of the EP did add a bonus track, but it's just a live version of one of the songs from the EP, so I didn't include it because it isn't that different.)

I'm still far from done with Plant and the Honeydrippers, but that's enough for now.

Note that on September 27, 2019, I finally posted a "Volume Two." You can find a link to that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/09/robert-plant-honeydrippers-volume-two.html

01 I Get a Thrill (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
02 Sea of Love (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
03 I Got a Woman (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
04 Young Boy Blues (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
05 Rockin' at Midnight (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
06 Santa Claus Is Back in Town (Robert Plant & the Honeydrippers)
07 Philadelphia Baby (Robert Plant)
08 Git It (Robert Plant)
09 [Everytime I Hear] That Mellow Saxophone (Robert Plant)
10 Honey Hush (Robert Plant)
11 She Walks Right In (Robert Plant)
12 Come On (Robert Plant)
13 Mess O' Blues (Robert Plant & Fairport Convention)

https://www.imagenetz.de/b753K

I made the cover from a photo of Robert Plant and Brian Setzer (with guitar) playing as the Honeydrippers in the Saturday Night Live show in 1984.