The Steampacket (Rod Stewart, Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & Long John Baldry) - Dear Lord Remember Me - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1966)

Have you ever heard of the Steampacket? If you have, then kudos to the depth of your musical knowledge, because few people still remember them. They were a British R&B band that existed for about a year, from 1965 to 1966. The band was made up of vocalists Rod Stewart, Long John Baldry, Julie Driscoll, and Brian Auger, supported on instruments by Vic Briggs, Ricky Fenson, and Micky Waller. At the time, the band members were relatively unknown, with Long John Baldry probably being the best known member. But after the band broke up, some of them would go on to much greater fame. Rod Stewart, in particular would become a superstar, but Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger would end up famous as well, especially in Britain, and Long John Baldry maintained a music career for decades. As a result, the band has been called "the world's first musical supergroup," but that's only true with 20/20 hindsight.

The Steampacket was unusual because it consisted of not one, not two, not three, but FOUR lead singers! It was less a band and more like a "musical revue." Some black R&B concert tours in the US at the time had this revue format where a band would back up an alternating series of lead singers in one concert, in order to keep things interesting for the audience. The Steampacket was an attempt to bring this format to Britain. Apparently it worked well in concert. The problem was that the four lead singers were signed to different labels, so it was a legal nightmare to get permission to record an album, or even a single. As a result, the band never did officially release any music while it still existed. Rod Stewart left first in frustration over this problem, in early 1966, followed by Long John Baldry a few months later. Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger stayed together, but by late 1966 they changed their name to "Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity." They had lots of success with that new name from 1967 to 1969.

Unfortunately, it was rare to record concerts in 1965 and 1966, and no such recordings of the band apparently have survived (other than video footage of one song where they were on stage for an encore with some other bands). After Rod Stewart became famous, some official recordings of the Steampacket did come out, usually deceptively presented with Stewart's name in big letters and the Steampacket name a small afterthought. Apparently, these were demos the band made in late 1965. They had plans to tour the US (though I don't think that actually happened), and the demos were made to show concert bookers there the band's talent. Many archival albums appeared from the 1970s onwards, generally consisting of the same bunch of songs repackaged in different ways, with different titles. The ones that happened to be the most widespread only had one or two songs sung by Stewart, and the rest were instrumentals dominated by organist Brian Auger, so they were only a pale shadow of what the band was capable of.

After digging around, I found some more recordings of the band that are much less well known. Most importantly, in 2019, a double album called "The Definitive Steampacket Recordings" came out, but it's only available through Brian Auger's website. It has lots of songs sung by Driscoll, Auger, and/or Baldry. But despite the title, it's not "definitive." It includes some songs that aren't by the Steampacket (but involve Auger from the same time period), and leaves off others that are. I found a whole other batch of songs that were all sung by Stewart. So I've combined those two sources, and mixed them together in order to prevent a long string of Stewart-sung songs. That said, he still sings the majority of the songs here, overall. So if you're a Stewart fan, you should definitely enjoy this. Note that many songs on that "Definitive" album are organ-based instrumentals by Auger. I'm not a fan of that style at all, so I left those off. All the songs here have vocals.

In my opinion, this is the first time one can make a strong case for the Steampacket as the musical revue it was meant to be and not just as a backing band for some early Rod Stewart performances. This is probably as close as we're going to get to the Steampacket studio album that should have been, but never was. 

The vast majority or maybe all of the songs here are covers, usually of American soul music. By the way, note that I've given the song "Baby Take Me" the subtitle "The Real Thing." That's because this song has the exact same melody and arrangement of "The Real Thing" - a song written by Ashford, Simpson and Armstead which was a minor hit for Tina Britt in 1965 - except this version has totally different lyrics and a different title.

Note that I don't think I've ever posted an album at this blog while knowing so little about its contents. All I know for sure is that these songs were recorded by the Steampacket in 1965 or 1966. Were they all part of that demo tape made for the planned US tour, or were there other recording sessions? I have no idea. I'm putting "1966" in the mp3 tags as a guess that this music would have been released in that year, but I could just have easily put "1965." If you have any more info about these songs and when and where they were recorded, please let me know. And if you know of songs I'd missed (other than Auger's instrumentals), please let me know that too.

I do know of some other songs the band recorded that I'm not including here, by the way. I'm referring to two BBC sessions the band did, one in 1965 and one in 1966. Most of the songs on those are different than the songs here. I plan on posting their BBC sessions eventually, despite the fact that it's less than 20 minutes of music. I'd like to save those from obscurity, since they remain unreleased.

This album is 44 minutes long. I've titled it "Dear Lord Remember Me" after one of the song titles, but also as a kind of commentary on how obscure the band is and how their music shouldn't be forgotten.

01 Bright Lights, Big City (Steampacket)
02 Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby (Steampacket)
03 Baby, Baby (Steampacket)
04 Baby Take Me [The Real Thing] (Steampacket)
05 Just Got Some (Steampacket)
06 Can I Get a Witness (Steampacket)
07 Dear Lord Remember Me (Steampacket)
08 Shake (Steampacket)
09 You're a Wonderful One (Steampacket)
10 Baby Don't You Do It [Don't Do It] (Steampacket)
11 In the Midnight Hour (Steampacket)
12 Don't You Tell Nobody (Steampacket)
13 Up Above My Head (Steampacket)
14 Mopper's Blues (Steampacket)
15 Keep Your Hands Off Her (Steampacket)

https://www.imagenetz.de/b5FDh

Given how forgotten this band is, it didn't surprise me to find that very few photos of the band exist, and all of those that do exist are black and white. I took the one I liked the best and colorized it. From left to right, that's Rod Stewart, Long John Baldry, Julie Driscoll, and Brian Auger.