Gerry Rafferty (with the Humblebums and Stealers Wheel) - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1970-1972

Here's a collection of BBC studio sessions by singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty. During this time, he was in two bands, the Humblebums and Stealers Wheel, while also putting out music as a solo artist. So this includes material from all of those bands.

Today, Rafferty is best known for the songs "Stuck in the Middle with You," "Right Down the Line," and "Baker Street." (You might not recognize the title "Baker Street," since it's only mentioned once in the song, but I'll bet you recognize the saxophone riff. Weirdly, the song didn't reach Number One in the U.S. despite being a massive hit in 1978, but it stayed at Number Two for six weeks!) But he was a very talented singer and songwriter who deserves to be known for a lot more than just those three songs. (I use the past tense, because he died in 2011 at the age of 63.)

 In 1969, Rafferty joined the band the Humblebums. The band had already existed for a few years, and was led by Billy Connolly. Connolly wouldn't have great success as a musician, but he would transition to becoming a world famous comedian and actor. When Rafferty joined, the Humblebums split between songs written and sung by Connolly and songs written and sung by Rafferty. The songs here generally are the Rafferty ones. By Connolly's own admission, Rafferty was leagues ahead of him musically, while Connolly excelled in comedic stage banter, which is missing here.

The Humblebums split in 1971. That same year, Rafferty put out his first solo album, "Can I Have My Money Back?" It was largely ignored due to poor record company support, but got good reviews. However, by the start of 1972, Rafferty joined another band, Stealers Wheel. This was a collaboration with singer-songwriter Joe Egan, with both of them writing and singing songs. I'll have more songs from Stealers Wheel in Volume 2. But for now, that band is represented by the last four songs on this album.

The songs here come from a variety of BBC sources, all of them unreleased. The first nine songs come from four different BBC radio shows in 1970. Four of those songs have "[Edit]" in their titles due to the common problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. As I usually do, I used the UVR5 program to wipe the talking while keeping the music.

Track 10, "Can I Have My Money Back," is from an appearance on the "Old Grey Whistle Test" in 1971. Then the last four tracks are from an appearance on the "Top Gear" BBC radio show in early 1972.

Two songs, "A Little of Your Time" and "Oh No," have been bumped down to mere bonus track status, due to poor sound quality. Both of those are from the same BBC studio session in 1970.

This album is 47 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

01 Rick Rack [Edit] (Humblebums)
02 Everybody Knows That [Edit] (Humblebums)
03 Mother [Edit] (Humblebums)
04 Please Sing a Song for Us [Edit] (Humblebums)
05 Mary of the Mountains (Humblebums)
06 Cruising (Gerry Rafferty)
07 Keep It to Yourself (Gerry Rafferty)
08 My Singing Bird (Gerry Rafferty)
09 All the Best People Do It (Humblebums)
10 Can I Have My Money Back (Gerry Rafferty)
11 We're on the Right Track (Stealers Wheel)
12 I Get By (Stealers Wheel)
13 Jose (Stealers Wheel)
14 Mary Skeffington (Stealers Wheel)

A Little of Your Time (Humblebums)
Oh No (Humblebums)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UzwqhSKE 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Tp6dht2NBwqFrDT/file

The cover photo was taken in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1972. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Songwriters' Circle Redo

Earlier in 2025, I posted an episode of the BBC TV show "Songwriters' Circle," that had the singer-songwriters Graham Gouldman, Ron Sexsmith, and Fran Healy take turns performing their songs. Unfortunately, I had to piece that together from various YouTube videos, and a couple of songs (plus spoken intros to other songs) were missing. But recently, a kind person named Alan sent me the entire show, with excellent sound quality. So I redid the album from scratch.

Here's the link to the updated version: 

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2025/02/graham-gouldman-fran-healy-ron-sexsmith.html

And thanks to Alan. I love it when these sorts of flaws get fixed. 

John Fogerty - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-23-2007

Here's John Fogerty, formerly of Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), performing at the massive annual Glastonbury Festival in 2007.

Note that he also performed at the 2025 Glastonbury Festival, and I've posted that album already. Both of his performances were broadcast by the BBC, since they broadcast most of that festival every year. So I've made this one "BBC Sessions, Volume 1" and renamed the 2025 one to be "BBC Sessions, Volume 2." If you want to get the renamed version of that other one, with updated cover art and mp3 tags, here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2025/08/john-fogerty-bbc-in-concert-glastonbury.html

This concert was in a very big pile I have of BBC concerts I want to post here eventually. But recently, a volunteer named Ed said he wanted to help get albums ready. He picked this one as one of the first ones he wanted to help with, so it moved up to the top of the pile. He worked on improving the sound balance and such.

Fogerty released the studio album "Revival" in 2007. I consider it one of his best solo albums, so I was surprised and disappointed to see that he didn't include a single song for it. But then I realized that this concert took place in June 2007, and "Revival" wasn't released until October. So he probably wasn't ready to play those in concert until after the album came out.

But it also was a bit strange that he practically played nothing but CCR songs, or cover songs associated with CCR, like "Cotton Fields" and "I Heard It through the Grapevine." The only song from his solo career was the last one, "Rockin' All Over the World." That's a bit unfortunate, because while he wrote many great CCR songs, he wrote many great solo career songs as well.

Weirdly, this concert is missing just one song, according to the setlist.fm song list. "Travelin' Band" was the first song performed. Two songs, "Green River" and "Ramble Tamble," came from a different source than the usual BBC broadcast, but essentially had the same sound quality. 

This album is an hour and 10 minutes long. 

01 talk (John Fogerty)
02 Green River (John Fogerty)
03 talk (John Fogerty)
04 Who'll Stop the Rain (John Fogerty)
05 Sweet Hitch-Hiker (John Fogerty)
06 Lookin' Out My Backdoor (John Fogerty)
07 Born on the Bayou (John Fogerty)
08 Ramble Tamble (John Fogerty)
09 Midnight Special (John Fogerty)
10 I Heard It through the Grapevine (John Fogerty)
11 Lodi (John Fogerty)
12 Cotton Fields (John Fogerty)
13 Have You Ever Seen the Rain (John Fogerty)
14 Up Around the Bend (John Fogerty)
15 Keep On Chooglin' (John Fogerty)
16 Down on the Corner (John Fogerty)
17 Good Golly, Miss Molly (John Fogerty)
18 Bad Moon Rising (John Fogerty)
19 Fortunate Son (John Fogerty)
20 Rockin' All Over the World (John Fogerty)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3kHEWe6F 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/O34rtLaq6qCZFSL/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.