Bonnie Raitt - Special Delivery Blues - Non-Album Tracks (1972-1974)

Recently, I posted several albums from early in Bonnie Raitt's career. One, which I titled "Blender Blues," is a stray tracks album covering 1970 to 1972. This is the sequel to that, with more stray tracks from 1972 to 1974. The other albums are complete live concerts from 1971 and 1972. I have many more stray tracks compilations to come, since she's had a long and successful career.

With these stray tracks albums, my goal is to gather all the good songs not on the studio albums of that time. That means that the exact versions of the first four songs here come from one of those concerts I posted in full. I wish I could have used different versions, but there aren't many bootlegs from Raitt's early years, so we're lucky to have these songs at all.

The rest of the songs are not on anything else I've posted. All of them are unreleased versions from concerts. Some of them are exceedingly rare, even for bootlegs. For instance, I've never seen  her version of the Rolling Stones' "Under My Thumb" on any bootleg. Instead, I found it as a free download from an online music magazine. "The Spider and the Fly," another early Rolling Stones song, is similarly rare.

For the first few years of Raitt's career, she didn't make enough money to be able to hire a full band to back her in concerts. As a result, the first few songs here are done acoustically, with just a bassist and some other instrumentation occasionally. But by 1973 she did start performing with a full band, so this album transitions to a fuller sound as it proceeds chronologically.

Although Raitt can and does write very good songs, she's only done so occasionally, and the vast majority of her repertoire is made up of covers. I believe all the songs here are cover versions. 

I've included "Big Road" even though a version of it is on her 1971 album "Bonnie Raitt." That's because this version is very different. Three well known blues musicians joined her in concert for this version, and they all take turns soloing.

I've only included "I Almost Lost My Mind" as a bonus track because it's mostly a performance by another blues musician, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. The difference with "Big Road" is that Raitt does all the singing for "Big Road," but Crudup dominates on this song, with Raitt, basically reduced to backing vocals.  But still, it's interesting, so it makes it here as a bonus track.

01 Special Delivery Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Can't Find My Way Home (Bonnie Raitt)
03 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)
04 Baby What You Want Me to Do (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)
05 Under My Thumb (Bonnie Raitt)
06 The Spider and the Fly (Bonnie Raitt)
07 Baby, I Love You (Bonnie Raitt)
08 Big Boy Pete - Function at the Junction (Jackson Browne & Bonnie Raitt)
09 Don't Fight It (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Don't Talk Now (Bonnie Raitt)
11 Big Road (Bonnie Raitt with Junior Wells, Buddy Guy & A. C. Reed)

I Almost Lost My Mind (Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup & Bonnie Raitt)

https://www.imagenetz.de/aMVLp

I don't remember where I found the cover art photo, but I believe it's from around 1972.