Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 5: December 1968 to January 1969

Here's the fifth volume of the episodes I compiled of the "Playboy After Dark" TV show. There are 11 in all. 

Just the first three songs were recorded in 1968. The rest date from 1969. As usual with the albums I post, check out the mp3 tags for more detail. I organized these by recording date. The broadcast dates usually took place a few months later.

Probably the most notable thing about the music here is the performance of the Grateful Dead. As I've mentioned previously, most of the music from this T.V. show has languished in obscurity (though I hope these posts are starting to change that). However, the Dead's performance has gotten around some, especially among Deadheads. As it should, because it's a rare treat to see them on T.V. all the way back in early 1969. Three of their songs are included here. "Mountains of the Moon" is special, because it was only performed 15 times by the band, and this was just the second time. The version of "St. Stephen" was very good too. The only disappointment is that the makers of the show faded the song out while the band was jamming on it. I also included what I could of a third song, "Turn On Your Lovelight." But this is less than half a minute. Basically, it was just a snippet that played as the credits rolled at the end of that episode.

An interesting fact is that the Dead's sound engineer, Owsley "Bear" Stanley, secretly put L.S.D. in the coffee that everyone on the set was drinking! So everyone from Hugh Hefner to the stagehands was tripping on acid during the taping of this episode. You can read more about this incident here:

https://www.openculture.com/2021/01/when-the-grateful-dead-performed-on-hugh-hefners-playboy-after-dark.html

That article also contains a link to the Dead's performance, if you want to see it and not just hear it. And there's another link to a later interview of drummer Bill Kreutzmann in which he talked about the spiking of the coffee. 

While that was probably the most interesting musical performance, there are many other good performances on this episode, with lots of rock and soul. Note, by the way, two songs with "[Edit]" in their titles. Sometimes, for this show, there were other people talking over parts of the music. In the second season this would get much worse, to the point that brief advertisements were even spoken over the end of the last song of each episode. So when you see "[Edit]" in this series, that's usually why.

I would also like to point out how odd it was that the Clara Ward Singers performed for this show. Consider that they exclusively sang gospel songs in churches. I wonder if they were appalled at all the "heathen" appearances and behavior all around them. But kudos to Hefner and Playboy for putting a wide variety of musical styles on this T.V. show. 

This album is 56 minutes long. 

01 River Deep, Mountain High (Bobby Doyle)
02 Blowin' in the Wind (Bobby Doyle)
03 Wear It on Our Face [Edit] (Checkmates, Ltd.)
04 Mountains of the Moon (Grateful Dead)
05 St. Stephen (Grateful Dead)
06 The Great Electric Experiment Is Over (Noel Harrison)
07 Hello Sun (Noel Harrison)
08 Turn On Your Lovelight [Edit] (Grateful Dead)
09 Turpentine Moan (Canned Heat)
10 On the Road Again (Canned Heat)
11 Mendocino (Sir Douglas Quintet)
12 She's about a Mover (Sir Douglas Quintet)
13 Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho (Clara Ward Singers)
14 Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Clara Ward Singers)
15 Chicken Wolf (Steppenwolf)
16 Don't Cry (Steppenwolf)
17 Get Out My Life Woman (Joe Williams & Joanne Vent)
18 Hurry On Down (Joe Williams)
19 That Face (Joe Williams)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fQopeFf6

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/RMT1XE2rfHHhYnF/file

The cover photo shows Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. This is a screenshot I took from the video of one of the episodes here.