Williams was on the show a bunch of a times. As a result, I was able to make two albums out of the currently available 1973-1975 material. Plus, he hosted the show again in 1976, so I should be able to make another album when that becomes available.
(By the way, I recently figured out the episodes are being posted at YouTube at a steady once a week rate. There are over 200 episodes still to be posted. So it could take four more years to get to them all!)
This first album of his is compiled from three appearances. The first three tracks come from the episode broadcast on February 9, 1973. The next four come from the episode broadcast on March 9, 1973. Then he was the host for the June 1, 1973 episode, so the rest of the tracks come from that. In case you're curious, the other musical acts on the episode he hosted were Slade, the Stylistics, Argent, the Statler Brothers, Gunhill Road, and Sydney Jordan.
In case you don't know about Williams, he was a very successful singer and songwriter in the 1970s. I plan on posting a "Covered" album highlighting covers of his songs along with those of his frequent songwriting partner Roger Nichols. But he also was probably even better known as an actor. I was a kid in the 1970s, and I remember seeing him as a guest star on practically every show, it seemed, especially musical variety shows. Here's a quote from Wikipedia: "He made numerous television appearances in the 1970s and 1980s, including on The Odd Couple, Hawaii Five-O, Match Game '79, Hollywood Squares, The Love Boat, Police Woman, Fantasy Island, The Hardy Boys, The Fall Guy, The Flip Wilson Special, Gimme a Break!, and The Gong Show."
His career petered out in the 1980s due to excessive drug use. However, he recovered from his addictions in the 1990s and has had continued success in the entertainment industry since then (as I write this in 2025). Here's his Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more:
Paul Williams (songwriter) - Wikipedia
Despite having show business charisma and a good voice, he never had any big hits of his own, though he wrote many hits for other. Perhaps that's the reason that I couldn't find any sign of concert recordings from him, bootleg or official, except for one official live album recorded much later, after 2000. So this could be the first concert recording from him in his 1970s ever made publicly available.
Williams sang "Drift Away" here. That was a very big hit for Dobie Gray at the time of this TV show, reaching Number Five in the U.S. singles chart in 1973. But while Paul Williams didn't write it, his brother Marion Williams did. I'm a bit surprised he didn't mention that before singing it. I checked, and it looks like Paul Williams never released a version of that song.
As usual with this TV show, I converted the YouTube video to audio then cut it into mp3s. I patched in extra applause to better link the songs together. So this should sound like a single concert instead of parts of three concerts frequently broken up by commercials.
This album is 37 minutes long.
01 talk by Johnny Rivers (Paul Williams)
02 Out in the Country (Paul Williams)
03 I Won't Last a Day without You (Paul Williams)
04 An Old Fashioned Love Song (Paul Williams)
05 talk (Paul Williams)
06 Drift Away (Paul Williams)
07 That's Enough for Me (Paul Williams)
08 My Love and I (Paul Williams)
09 talk (Paul Williams)
10 Let Me Be the One (Paul Williams)
11 We've Only Just Begun (Paul Williams)
12 talk (Paul Williams)
13 Rainy Days and Mondays (Paul Williams)
14 I Never Had It So Good (Paul Williams)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/hzyJpBcj
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/fLKia9NgLXHlwK3/file
The cover photo is from one of the appearances Williams made that have been compiled here. It's the first appearance, on February 9, 1973.
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