Muddy Waters with B.B. King - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 6-19-1974

If you like listening to the blues, what a remarkable concert recording this is! It started out as a concert starring blues legend Muddy Waters and his band performing in a small club in Denver. But then, halfway through, blues legend B.B. King came on stage, playing lead guitar and also singing a couple of songs. I don't know of any other recordings of these two absolute legends performing together like this, so this is a special treat.

I did a little research on this. It turns out King happened to perform at a different venue in Denver that evening. When his show was over, he went to the Waters concert and joined in. At the time, even though Ebbets Field was only a small venue holding a maximum of about 200 people, many of its concerts were broadcast live on a local radio station, and this was one such concert. So that's why we have this recording with excellent sound quality. One can find various "grey market" releases of this, meaning they are put on the market in Europe due to legal loopholes. But none of them are legit, with profits going to the performers (or the performers' estates).

I have to admit there are two instrumentals at the start, before Waters joined the stage, that I cut out. I didn't find them that interesting, and I wanted to get to the "good stuff" with Waters and King. If you're interested in those, check out one of those grey market releases I mentioned.

At the time of this concert, Waters was 61 years old, and already nearing the end of his career. Pretty much all of his classic recordings were behind him, but he was far from done as a performer. In fact, he had a bit of a career renaissance in the late 1970s, thanks to some albums he made with the help of blues musician Johnny Winter. Waters kept performing pretty much right until his death in 1983. By contrast, King was ten years younger, and in the middle of an exceptionally long career. He also kept playing almost until his death, much, much later, in 2015, at the age of 89.

I came across this concert after discovering that there were a whole bunch of great radio broadcasts from this venue in the mid-1970s. In recent days, I posted two other concerts that took place there (Gene Clark and Dan Fogelberg). At some point, I'd like to get around to posting more, but it might be a while until that happens.

By the way, if anyone knows the names of either or both of the instrumentals (tracks 1 and 14), please let me know so I can fix the titles. 

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 Introduction (Muddy Waters)
02 talk (Muddy Waters)
03 My Sweet Little Baby (Muddy Waters)
04 talk (Muddy Waters)
05 Rock Me (Muddy Waters)
06 talk (Muddy Waters)
07 Can't Get No Grindin' [What's the Matter with the Meal] (Muddy Waters)
08 I Got My Mojo Working (Muddy Waters)
09 Forty Days and Forty Nights (Muddy Waters)
10 talk (Muddy Waters)
11 I Know You Didn't Want Me (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
12 talk (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
13 The Thrill Is Gone (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
14 Instrumental (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
15 talk (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
16 Caldonia (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)
17 talk by emcee (Muddy Waters & B.B. King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tPHFQ1Kk

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/VwIIVVfR6jDAhEL/file

The cover photo is a real photo of Waters and King. However, I drastically edited it. The full photo actually shows James Cotton standing between Waters and King, as well as Johnny Winter off to the side. I cropped out Winter, and then used Photoshop to bring Waters and King closer together, cutting out Cotton along the way. It's from a concert at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, on June 29, 1979. Also, it was in black and white. I used the Kolorize program to colorize it.