Various Artists - Dave Edmunds' All Star Rock 'n' Roll Revue, Warfield Theater, San Francisco, CA, 4-7-1990

The world lost another musical great last week (as I write this in early December 2025). Lead guitarist Steve Cropper died on December 3, 2025. He was 84 years old. I wanted to post something to celebrate his music. But that was a bit tricky, since he was mostly a session musician and songwriter. While he did put out some album under his own name, that was just a small part of his musical legacy. And when he toured, he almost always was part of bands supporting other stars.

I looked around, and found this concert, which I'd never known of before. Cropper was part of the backing band, along with Terry Williams (ex-Rockpile), Phil Chen (ex-Rod Stewart), the Memphis Horns, and others, so he played on every song.

This tour probably happened thanks to Ringo Starr of the Beatles. In 1989, Starr put on the first of many "His All-Starr Band" concert tours. These consisted of Starr plus a rotating group of other musical stars who weren't big enough of their own to play big concert venues. But when they were packaged together, along with an ex-Beatle, they were. Dave Edmunds looked at that formula and immediately decided to try the same thing. He brought together Kim Wilson, former lead vocalist of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Graham Parker, and Dion. Each of them played about a half an hour set, with Edmunds playing both at the start of the concert and at the end.

The shows were successful, it seems. But Edmunds only attempted this for this one tour. In fact, he joined the "His All-Starr Band" tours in 1992 and 2000. Perhaps that's because Edmunds went into semi-retirement after 1990. He only put out one more album of new material, in 1994. And he only did one more significant tour, in 2007, before retiring from music for good in 2017.

This concert was the last show of the tour. I read that a double album of this exact concert was released, but only in Japan. However, if that's true, it would only be a minority of this recording, since this is a very long concert, at nearly three hours! This concert was also broadcast for the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio show, which is why we have it with excellent sound quality.

One last thought. A while back, I made two "Covered" album for Steve Cropper. So if you want to remember all the great songs he helped write, that's probably an even better way to do it. Here are the links to those:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/05/various-artists-covered-steve-cropper.html

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/05/various-artists-covered-steve-cropper_30.html

This album is two hours and 47 minutes long. 

01 talk (Dave Edmunds)
02 Last Night [Instrumental] (Dave Edmunds)
03 Fallin' through a Hole (Dave Edmunds)
04 Feel So Right (Dave Edmunds)
05 Closer to the Flame (Dave Edmunds)
06 Don't Talk to Me (Dave Edmunds)
07 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Dave Edmunds)
08 talk (Dave Edmunds)
09 Wrap It Up (Kim Wilson)
10 It Comes to Me Naturally (Kim Wilson)
11 Wasted Tears (Kim Wilson)
12 I Believe I'm in Love with You (Kim Wilson)
13 There Is Something on Your Mind (Kim Wilson)
14 Tuff Enuff (Kim Wilson)
15 talk (Kim Wilson)
16 Nervous Fella (Kim Wilson)
17 talk (Dave Edmunds)
18 Get Started, Start a Fire (Graham Parker)
19 Under the Mask of Happiness (Graham Parker)
20 talk (Graham Parker)
21 Local Girls (Graham Parker)
22 talk (Graham Parker)
23 My Girl (Graham Parker)
24 Slash and Burn (Graham Parker)
25 talk (Graham Parker)
26 Lady Doctor (Graham Parker)
27 talk (Graham Parker)
28 My Love's Strong (Graham Parker)
29 Soultime (Graham Parker)
30 Heat Treatment (Graham Parker)
31 talk (Dave Edmunds)
32 King of the New York Streets (Dion)
33 talk (Dion)
34 The Night Stood Still (Dion)
35 talk (Dion)
36 Ruby Baby (Dion)
37 talk (Dion)
38 Written on the Subway Wall (Dion)
39 Runaround Sue (Dion)
40 The Wanderer (Dion)
41 talk (Dion)
42 Abraham, Martin and John (Dion)
43 From Small Things [Big Things One Day Come] (Dave Edmunds)
44 I Hear You Knocking (Dave Edmunds)
45 talk (Dave Edmunds)
46 Ju Ju Man (Dave Edmunds)
47 King of Love (Dave Edmunds)
48 talk (Dave Edmunds)
49 Crawling from the Wreckage (Dave Edmunds)
50 Paralyzed (Dave Edmunds)
51 talk (Everyone)
52 [Sitting On] the Dock of the Bay (Everyone)
53 I'm Ready (Everyone)
54 Keep A-Knockin' (Everyone) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/w4EEsJQM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4B7YTBcfLApwM51/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Marlboro Blues Festival, in Chicago, Illinois, on March 24, 1990. From right to left: Steve Cropper, Dave Edmunds, Graham Parker, and Dion.