James Taylor - Benefit for Gerry Studds, Cape Cod Coliseum, South Yarmouth, MA, 8-30-1975

Here's a great concert from James Taylor that seems to be surprisingly little known. What makes it stand out is that it was a solo acoustic concert in 1975, and he almost never performed in that mode after 1971, until decades later. It sounds much like Taylor playing to a small group of friends on his front porch (even though the venue actually held about 5,000 people).

This was a benefit concert for Gerry Studds, a Democrat, who was in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997. The concert took place a couple of months before the next election for Studds.

This actually consisted of two concerts. First, Taylor performed for about an hour, with a break halfway through. Then Studds gave a speech. Then Taylor performed for another hour, with another halfway break. I assume there were different crowds for the two sets, because Taylor played almost the exact same songs in the same order for both. This recording is based on the late show. There were only two songs exclusively performed in the early show: "Walking Man" and "Rainy Day Man." I put those at the start. Then the late show follows, in full. However, he sometimes made comments between songs in the early show that were different from comments he made in the late show. So I added those in as well. That means this is kind of a mix of both shows, due to some early show banter sprinkled in to the late show. But hopefully from a listener's point of view, it should sound like one seamless show.

The concert took place a few months after the release of Taylor's hit album "Gorilla." He played a couple of songs from the album, "Gorilla" and "Lighthouse," as a well as a B-side, "I Can Dream of You," written by his brother Livingston Taylor. But surprisingly, he didn't play either of the two big hits from the album, "Mexico" and "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)." I strongly suspect that for some songs here, this is the only recording of them being performed in solo acoustic mode, but I don't know for sure. 

This concert is unreleased. There were no sound problems. However, I used some noise reduction on the banter to remove some hiss and background noise. But I didn't use any of that for the actual music. 

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. 

01 talk (James Taylor)
02 Walking Man (James Taylor)
03 Rainy Day Man (James Taylor)
04 You Can Close Your Eyes (James Taylor)
05 talk (James Taylor)
06 Sunny Skies (James Taylor)
07 talk (James Taylor)
08 One Man Parade (James Taylor)
09 Brighten Your Night with My Day (James Taylor)
10 talk (James Taylor)
11 Things Go Better with Coke (James Taylor)
12 talk (James Taylor)
13 I Can Dream of You (James Taylor)
14 talk (James Taylor)
15 Anywhere like Heaven (James Taylor)
16 talk (James Taylor)
17 Mud Slide Slim (James Taylor)
18 talk (James Taylor)
19 Baby, It's Cold Outside (James Taylor)
20 talk (James Taylor)
21 talk (James Taylor)
22 Hello Old Friend (James Taylor)
23 talk (James Taylor)
24 Riding on a Railroad (James Taylor)
25 talk (James Taylor)
26 Blossom (James Taylor)
27 Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight (James Taylor)
28 Gorilla (James Taylor)
29 Circle Round the Sun (James Taylor)
30 Lighthouse (James Taylor)
31 talk (James Taylor)
32 Migration (James Taylor)
33 Fire and Rain (James Taylor)
34 talk (James Taylor)
35 Steamroller (James Taylor)
36 talk (James Taylor)
37 Sweet Baby James (James Taylor) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pXmTf5wb 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/Aqi04KxiJDsvnLZ/file

Listening to the banter between songs, I heard Taylor complain about the great heat. So that means this concert must have taken place in the middle of the day. Based on that, I wanted to use a photo of him outside. I couldn't find any photos of him in concert outside in the mid-1970s. I ended up using a screenshot taken from a movie he starred in in 1971 called "Two Lane Blacktop." The hair blowing in the wind on the right side was cropped off in the original photo, but I used the AI powers of Photoshop to extend the image on that side.