Santana with Jose Feliciano - L.A. Forum, Los Angeles, CA, 3-22-1971

I've posted well over 2,000 albums on this blog by now, yet it staggers me to think of how much more I want to post that I haven't gotten to yet. For instance, I'm embarrassed by the fact that I've hardly posted any music by the Beatles (and none by solo John Lennon) yet, despite the fact they're my favorite group. And I have a mountain of BBC material I haven't even had a chance to listen to yet. Another artist that's been sorely lacking here is Santana. So here's something from them.

Santana the band has been in existence for over 50 years as a write this. But my favorite time period for the band was their first incarnation, which released three albums from 1969 to 1971. So I figured I should start with something from that time. I think they peaked in 1971 with the addition of Neal Schon as a second lead guitarist, so I looked for something from that year. I settled on this concert bootleg. It stands above other 1971 bootlegs for two reasons. For one, it's an excellent sounding soundboard recording. And for the other, Puerto Rican singer and guitarist Jose Feliciano was one of the opening acts for this show, and joined Santana for three songs at the end of their set. That makes it something a bit different from other Santana concerts from that year.

Regarding the sound quality, there was one flaw that perhaps has stopped this from being better known. Generally speaking, it sounds great, as good as official live albums of the time, but the vocals were rather low in the mix. That isn't that big of a deal since most of the songs are instrumentals, but still, it was less than ideal. So I used the audio editing program UVR5 to boost the vocals. This went without a hitch on all the songs with vocals until the last one, "Guajira." For that one, the vocals were buried so much that I had to do a lot of extra work on it to get them in shape. Even then, there are a few passages where the vocals were too low to be able to do anything.

Note that two of the last three songs are repeats from earlier in the show: "Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen" and "Oye Como Va." Clearly, they repeated them because Feliciano was the lead singer the second time on those, as well as the main singer for the last song, "Guajira." "Oye Como Va" and "Guajira" already were in Spanish. But it's interesting that he sang Spanish lyrics to "Black Magic Woman" as well.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.

01 Waiting [Instrumental] (Santana)
02 Ballin’ [Instrumental] (Santana)
03 Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen (Santana)
04 Oye Como Va (Santana)
05 Savor [Instrumental] (Santana)
06 Samba Pa Ti [Instrumental] (Santana)
07 talk (Santana)
08 Toussaint L'Ouverture [Instrumental] (Santana)
09 Evil Ways (Santana)
10 talk (Santana)
11 Incident at Neshebur [Instrumental] (Santana)
12 Jungle Strut [Instrumental] (Santana)
13 Everybody’s Everything (Santana)
14 Gumbo [Instrumental] (Santana)
15 talk (Santana)
16 Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen [Spanish Version] (Santana & Jose Feliciano)
17 Oye Como Va (Santana & Jose Feliciano)
18 Guajira (Santana & Jose Feliciano)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15168124/Santna_1971_LAFrumLosAngelsCA__3-22-1971_atse.zip.html

All I know about the cover photo is that it's from around 1970.

Also, I came across a poster for the show. I didn't use it for the cover because I find it kind of bland, but I'm including it here for anyone who is interested.