Charlie Rich with Anne Murray - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 4-26-1974

Here's another album I made from the trove of "Midnight Special" TV episodes I recently discovered. This one is particularly interesting, in my opinion, because Charlie Rich was a big country music star, but he never released a live album, and there aren't even any live bootlegs from his 1970s peak period. (At least not that I can find.) But now there's one with excellent sound, and a great song list.

Rich, who died in 1995, was unusual for country stars in that he sometimes made music in other genres, including jazz and rock. There actually is a section of this concert where he shows off songs he did in different genres. But from the late 1950s onwards, his career was only moderately successful. Then came 1973. He had two massive hits that year. "Behind Closed Doors" and "The Most Beautiful Girl" both hit Number One, not only in the country singles chart, but in the main singles chart as well. More hits followed, leading to the Country Music Awards to name him "Entertainer of the Year" in 1974. Unfortunately though, he began drinking heavily in response to all this success, and his career suffered as a result. He did have some more hits, but essentially retired from music entirely in the early 1980s, with only one album after that.

Here's his Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more:

Charlie Rich - Wikipedia 

Given all that, 1974 was a pretty ideal time for a concert recording. (His drinking would already become a big problem in 1975.) The approach I'm taking with these Midnight Special episodes is focusing on just one musical act, and removing the other ones from the episode. In this case, the other acts in the episode were the Staple Singers, Dobie Gray, the Treasures, and Anne Murray. However, I kept Murray's songs, because she sang a duet with Rich, and there was a good stylistic overlap.

The last three songs actually come from a different episode, on August 22, 1975. That one was hosted by Helen Reddy (who hosted many episodes), and Rich only had three songs. One of them, "Behind Closed Doors," is a repeat from the other concert. But I've included it here because that version had him doing it solo, and this one was done as a duet with Reddy.

Everything here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. As I'm doing with all of these Midnight Special episodes, I'm adding more crowd noise between songs to link them together. The only problem came with the song "Dance of Love." Near the end of the song, the shows main emcee, Wolfman Jack, spoke over the music for about ten seconds. I used the MVSEP program to wipe out his talking. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title.

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 Lonely Weekends (Charlie Rich)
02 talk (Charlie Rich)
03 Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs (Charlie Rich)
04 talk (Charlie Rich)
05 You Won't See Me (Anne Murray)
06 Break My Mind (Charlie Rich & Anne Murray)
07 talk (Charlie Rich)
08 Don't Put No Headstone on My Grave (Charlie Rich)
09 talk (Charlie Rich)
10 Jazz Instrumental (Charlie Rich)
11 talk (Charlie Rich)
12 Break-Up (Charlie Rich)
13 talk (Charlie Rich)
14 Behind Closed Doors (Charlie Rich)
15 The Most Beautiful Girl (Charlie Rich)
16 A Love Song (Anne Murray)
17 A Very Special Love Song (Charlie Rich)
18 Big Boss Man (Charlie Rich)
19 talk (Charlie Rich)
20 Dance of Love [Edit] (Charlie Rich)
21 Midnight Blues (Charlie Rich)
22 Behind Closed Doors (Charlie Rich & Helen Reddy)
23 Every Time You Touch Me [I Get High] (Charlie Rich)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VvnDTH1u

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/J23u5Oe0d4rwosJ/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert.