Colin Blunstone - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1971-1973)

I'll bet you know Colin Blunstone's voice, even if you may not know his name. He has a distinctive strong yet whispery voice on classics by the Zombies, including "She's Not There" and "Time of the Season," plus "Old and Wise" by Alan Parsons Project, and some solo hits of his own. There's enough material for two albums of BBC sessions, so here's Volume 1.

The Zombies already broke up by the time they had a hit song and album in 1968 with "Time of the Season" and "Odessey and Oracle" respectively.  Weirdly, in 1969, Blunstone released three singles under the pseudonym "Neil MacArthur," and had a minor hit with a new version of the Zombies song "She's Not There" (even though he'd been the lead singer on the original!). In 1971, he released his first solo album, "One Year." It's regarded as a sleeper classic today and it did fairly well, with a hit single, "Say You Don't Mind." His second solo album, "Ennismore" in 1972, also was critically acclaimed and sold fairly well.

There's an official BBC album for him, called "Live at the BBC," but it's very incomplete. Only three of the songs here, the first three, are from that. But I found some other unreleased songs elsewhere, and musical associate Marley found more of them. The sound quality is generally very good.

Normally, I don't like having two versions of the same song on the same album, but I made an exception here with "Say You Don't Mind." Worse, the two versions are very close together, due to the way I organized this chronologically, as I usually do for these sorts of albums. But they're done in very different styles. One is more rocking and bluesy, while the other is softer, with lots of strings.

There are two songs, the first one and the fourth one, where they're the only songs from that particular BBC studio session. Those sessions almost always had two to three songs, sometimes even four, so it could be there are more songs out there - or they could be lost. If you have anything else, please let me know so I can add them in.

Most of these are BBC radio sessions. However, the second and third tracks are from the BBC TV show "Old Grey Whistle Test." And the last two songs aren't from the BBC at all, but are from a concert in Belgium that I think was shown on TV. 

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Say You Don't Mind [Blues Version] (Colin Blunstone)
02 Misty Roses (Colin Blunstone)
03 Say You Don't Mind (Colin Blunstone)
04 I Can't Live without You (Colin Blunstone)
05 Andorra (Colin Blunstone)
06 I Don't Believe in Miracles (Colin Blunstone)
07 How Wrong Can One Man Be (Colin Blunstone)
08 How Could We Dare to Be Wrong (Colin Blunstone)
09 Pay Me Later (Colin Blunstone)
10 She's Not There (Colin Blunstone)
11 Looking for Someone to Love (Colin Blunstone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904577/ColinBlun_1971-1973_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

I only know the cover photo is from the early 1970s.