Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, Varsity Stadium, Toronto, Canada, 9-13-1969, Part 2: Bo Diddley - Tony Joe White - Cat Mother and the All Night News Boys

This second album from the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival is kind of a catch-all, consisting of the scraps I could find, of partial sets. I was only able to find one song by Bo Diddley, two songs by Tony Joe White, and three songs by Cat Mother and the All Night News Boys.

Bo Diddley is one of the founders of rock and roll, known especially for the "Bo Diddley beat" used in countless songs. He had a lot of hits between 1955 and 1962. 

There's a reason why only one song from Diddley's set is included here. D.A. Pennebaker, who had already made two successful music documentaries, wanted to make a documentary out of the festival. But financial negotiations were still going on when the festival started. Pennebaker was a big fan of 1950s rock and roll, and mainly wanted to film the 1950s stars. So he was taken aback when Diddley appeared on stage as one of the first acts, before a final contract about the documentary was signed between Pennebaker and the festival's promoters. He quickly scrambled to get a camera and start filming, but initially the camera didn't have sound. But then some of his assistants joined in and started filming too. However, they only really got everything together in time for Diddley's final encore, which is the song here. I only have the recording of it because it was included in Pennebaker's documentary.

When I first posted these albums from the festival, I had an entire album of Diddley's music, taken from a bootleg. But after just a couple of hours, an alert commenter wrote to me that most of the album was fake: someone took studio versions of a bunch of his songs, slathered audience cheering over them, and presented them as his performance from this festival! I was snookered. But I double checked, and sure enough, that bootleg was bonus. That's why you'll only see one song here, even though you can find a bootleg with a lot more. 

Tony Joe White was a fairly big star at the time. He'd had a hit that summer with "Polk Salad Annie," which made the Top Ten in the U.S. singles chart. So I'm sure he performed many more songs, including that hit. But for whatever reason, only these two songs seem to be publicly available. Apparently for this concert he was backed by Booker T. and the MG's.

Cat Mother and the All Night News Boys were similarly popular, though their popularity didn't endure as well as White's. They also had a hit in the summer of 1969, with "Good Old Rock 'n' Roll." It reached Number 21 on the U.S. singles chart, and almost made the Top Ten in Canada. They also had the very rare privilege of having their debut album produced by none other than Jimi Hendrix. Their hit single was a tribute to 1950s rock and roll, so that made them a good fit for the theme of this festival. Unfortunately, we only get three songs from their set, and that doesn't include their hit. What we do have include a couple of 1950s cover songs, so that was a good fit for the festival a well.

I've already posted music by Tony Joe White at this blog, so I don't feel the need to say much more about him. Here's the Wikipedia entry for Cat Mother, if you want to know more about that band:

Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys - Wikipedia 

Everything here is unreleased. The Bo Diddley song, the two White songs, and the first two Cat Mother songs sound excellent. However, the sound quality for the last Cat Mother song is pretty dire. I've only included it because I'm trying to include everything from the festival I can find. That's why it's a bonus track here. You might want to delete that one altogether. 

The vocals for most of the songs here were low in the mix. I boosted them using the UVR5 audio editing program. 

It's too bad we don't have more of White's set, because it sounds like it was a very good one. Producer Kim Fowley was hired to be the emcee for the festival. Later, when asked what he thought the best musical act of the festival was, he replied, "It was Tony Joe White backed by Booker T. and the MG's at that stadium... They blew everybody off. Seeing Tony Joe White with that Stax band was like if Elvis (Presley) had stayed at Sun Records in 1969 and had a better version of Credence Clearwater Revival behind him. With keyboard." 

Note that I don't know the exact order of when these three acts went on stage; I only know the order of most of the big name acts. They certainly didn't go on back to back, since I know Bo Diddley was one of the first acts, White went on some time later, and Cat Mother went on still later, after Chuck Berry. But I put these three acts together since I only have a small amount of music from each one.  

This album is 23 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 talk (Bo Diddley)
02 Bo Diddley (Bo Diddley)
03 Hard to Handle (Tony Joe White)
04 Jammin' (Tony Joe White)
05 Along Came Jones (Cat Mother & the All Night News Boys)
06 Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu (Cat Mother & the All Night News Boys)

Wherever There's a Party (Cat Mother & the All Night News Boys)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1ULSK2ZZ

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/A0OriTFhD8E977c/file

The cover photo of Bo Diddley is from this exact concert. It's a screenshot I took from one of the two documentaries about this festival. (It's rather fortunate these three acts were packaged together here, because I couldn't find any photos of Tony Joe White or Cat Mother from the festival.)