I've been wanting to post some music from Ray Charles in his 1950s and 1960s prime for a long time now. But there's so much released already, including tons of live stuff, that I didn't think I had anything really noteworthy. But I think this is noteworthy. It's not exactly from his best years, but it's pretty close.
What really blows me away though is that the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, was only a guest on this one show in the show's early years. Later, they seemed to realize they'd missed her, and she hosted the show three times, from 1976 to 1979. But this was her only appearance prior to that. She did just one song on her own, "A Brand New Me," and a duet with Charles, "Two to Tango." I put that duet from this exact performance on one of the Franklin stray tracks album I made.
The portion of the show with just Charles is a bit strange, because it involved a lot of talking, instead of just him singing. Track 3 actually should be about three minutes longer. I loped off a bunch of it because it was a conversation between Charles and comedian Bill Cosby. I cut that out because screw Bill Cosby! (In case you're not aware, he's been convicted of rape, and it turns out he did lots of horrible things to many women.) Also, frankly, it wasn't very funny or interesting. Cosby also apparently performed on the song "Every Saturday Night," but I can't hear him. But on top of that, Charles talked for about three minutes while introducing the duet with Aretha Franklin. And there's even more talking, about seven minutes, between him and comedian Carol Burnett. Most of that involved Burnett telling a story. So yeah, lots of talking.
All the songs here are from the episode hosted by Charles, which was broadcast on March 30, 1973, except for one. That's the last one, "Early in the Morning." That comes from the April 14, 1973 episode. I haven't checked, but it's possible that was an outtake from this hosted episode that was broadcast a bit later.
Charles hosted the show one more time, in 1976. So I look forward to posting that once that episode eventually gets released on YouTube.
In case you're curious, the only other acts in this episode were the comedy team of Freeman and Murray, plus music by the Earl Scruggs Revue.
This album is 50 minutes long.
01 talk (Ray Charles)
02 Eleanor Rigby (Ray Charles)
03 talk (Ray Charles)
04 Every Saturday Night (Ray Charles)
05 talk (Ray Charles)
06 A Brand New Me (Aretha Franklin)
07 Georgia on My Mind (Ray Charles)
08 talk (Ray Charles)
09 Takes Two to Tango (Ray Charles & Aretha Franklin)
10 talk (Ray Charles & Carol Burnett)
11 talk (Ray Charles)
12 Shake (Raelettes with Ray Charles)
13 I Can Make It through the Days (Ray Charles with the Raelettes)
14 What'd I Say (Ray Charles)
15 talk (Ray Charles)
16 What'd I Say [Reprise] (Ray Charles)
17 Early in the Morning (Ray Charles)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZAN535h4
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/5GrGgqIfNDz6H5U/file
The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact episode.
Thank you
ReplyDeleteThank you! Also, I heard herbie Hancock had an episode, is there any chance you have the full broadcast? I've only seen a few songs
ReplyDeleteYou can look things up here:
Deletehttps://thetvdb.com/series/the-midnight-special/allseasons/official
Hancock played a few episodes but never was an official host. I only have everything through the end of 1975, so I'm missing most of what he did. But one new episode gets posted every week on YouTube, so we're slowly getting there.
Hard to beat Ray Charles! Aretha is the cherry on top I guess.
ReplyDelete