I want to kick off the month of April 2025 with a special album posting. This album is the one and only concert recording of Derek and the Dominos with Duane Allman taking part. This has been bootlegged many times. But I'm proud to say this version has noticeably better sound quality than any previous version!
The classic album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" was by the band Derek and the Dominos, with Eric Clapton the main star. However, one thing that made that album special was that Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band played his distinctive slide guitar all through the album. That kind of made him one of the Dominos, but only partially because he already had a full time job with the Allman Brothers Band, and they were touring constantly. It turned out during the couple of months that Derek and the Dominos went on tour, in late 1970, Duane Allman only took part in two concerts: this one, in Tampa, Florida, and one the next day in Syracuse, New York.
Only this one of the two got recorded, and only an average sounding audience bootleg. But due to the unique presence of Allman playing guitar for the entire show, this is probably the most traded Derek and the Dominos bootleg, despite the sound quality issue. Personally, I had this in my music collection for years, but I almost never listened to it, due to the sound. But I noticed last week that a person named Goody posted a new version that adjusted the speed and the pitch. So I downloaded that. Then I tried to see what I could do to improve upon it.
I used two tricks that I often use. First, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the vocals relative to the instruments. There were some places in particular where the vocals were extra quiet. For instance, I went through parts of "Got to Get Better in a Little While" line by line. Probably, Clapton had his head too far from the microphone at times. I also got rid of most vocals that weren't actually by the band members. For example, in the middle of "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," a sad blues song, a woman in the audience could be heard laughing loudly for a few seconds. I didn't get rid of all of that, but I got most of it. I made a lot of other little changes like that.
Then I used the MVSEP audio editing program to get rid of most of the crowd noise, except at the very beginnings and ends of songs. Since this is an audience boot, there was a low level of crowd noise all through the songs. Sometimes, one could even hear snippets of conversation. I got rid of most of that.
I also cut down on the dead air between songs. There was quite a bit, for instance, guitar tuning. That probably shortened the album by a couple of minutes.
However, my audio editing skills are quite limited. So I then handed the files off to my musical associate MZ. Here's what he said he did to the file: "anomalies repaired, EQ rationalised, compressed (loud parts lowered, quiet parts made louder), etc... Numerous details fixed." When I listened to the music after he sent it back to me, I noticed a difference.
Mind you, one can only do so much with the source material. This is still an audience boot, not a soundboard or FM boot. But if you compare this with previous versions, I'm confident you'll notice that this sounds better. Let's hope the powers that be who own the rights to this material do a professional job and officially release it, since this is a truly historic concert. There's so much that can be done these days due to improving audio editing technology.
Note that I previously included two songs from this concert, "Layla" and "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," on a Derek and Dominos live compilation album called "Live and Rare." I have now removed those, since they're here, and with better sound. Here's the link if you want to get the revised version:
https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/04/derek-dominos-live-and-rare-1970.html
Also note that in recent days I updated most of the Derek and the Dominos album covers with better versions, using the Krea AI program. They were generally pretty rough images due to the lack of many good photos of the band.
Finally, a big thanks to both Goody and MZ!
This album is an hour and 34 minutes long.
01 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
02 Layla (Derek & the Dominos)
03 Got to Get Better in a Little While (Derek & the Dominos)
04 Key to the Highway (Derek & the Dominos)
05 talk (Derek & the Dominos)
06 Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad (Derek & the Dominos)
07 Blues Power (Derek & the Dominos)
08 Have You Ever Loved a Woman (Derek & the Dominos)
09 Bottle of Red Wine (Derek & the Dominos)
10 Let It Rain - Drum Solo - Let It Rain (Derek & the Dominos)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/68ZtMkmG
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/C1iKYwbanNr5xa6/file
There are two parts to the cover art. The top part is a photograph of a genuine ticket from this historic concert. (That's Clapton on the left, Allman on the right, and bassist Carl Radle in the middle background.) I figured it contained all the important information needed, so I didn't add any text to the cover. The bottom is a photograph from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, and was quite dark. I colorized it using the Kolorize program. I also lightened it some, and used the Krea AI program to improve the quality a bit.