Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1969-1970

I'm currently prioritizing the posting of Deep Purple BBC albums so I can get to other BBC albums by other artists, so here's another one of those from them.

My favorite Deep Purple line-up by far is the Mark II one, which is the one responsible for "Smoke on the Water" and most of their other best known songs. This is mostly made by that line-up. However, the first two songs were done by the Mark I line-up, since they were recorded in June 1969 and the Mark II line-up had their first concert in early July 1969. (The different between the line-ups is very noticeable, since they had different lead singers.)

All but three of the songs here come from the official album "BBC Sessions 1968-1970." Of those three, "Paint It Black" comes from a Dutch radio show, and is the only officially unreleased performance here. "Hallelujah" was done for the German TV show "Beat Club," and comes from an obscure compilation of Beat Club performances. "Kentucky Woman" was played in concert, and comes from the official live album "Live in Montreux 69." I included that one because the song was played for the BBC but the recording was lost, and the sound quality is on par with the rest of the album.

Note that three of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. In the first two cases, that was because BBC DJs were talking over part of the songs. For the third case, "Hallelujah," a German DJ talked over part of the song during the "Beat Club" TV show. In all cases, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music.

By the way, the song "Jam Stew" needs a bit of explanation. This was done as an instrumental in the studio, and that version was later released as a bonus track to the "In Rock" album. But this version actually does have lead vocals and lyrics, so this particular version is also known as "John Stew."

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Hush [Edit] (Deep Purple)
02 The Painter [Edit] (Deep Purple)
03 Ricochet [Early Version of Speed King] (Deep Purple)
04 The Bird Has Flown (Deep Purple)
05 Paint It Black - Drum Solo - Paint It Black [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
06 Hallelujah [Edit] (Deep Purple)
07 Kentucky Woman (Deep Purple)
08 Speed King (Deep Purple)
09 Jam Stew [John Stew] (Deep Purple)
10 Hard Lovin' Man (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109449/DeepP_1969-1970_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

I believe the cover art photo dates from 1970. I had a hard time finding a really good photo of the band from 1969. But this is the Mark II version of the band in the photo, featured on all but two tracks here.