Alan Price - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Alan Price, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Britain, 12-1-1980

Once upon a time, back in 2022, I started posting BBC albums for Alan Price. I had plans to post two such albums for him, which seemed about right for his level of popularity. Then I found two more, and posted those. And I found two more BBC albums with him and Georgie Fame as a duo, and posted them as well. I thought that was a lot, more than expected. But now, I've found FOUR more BBC volumes for him! Here's the first of those four.

The reason I found four more albums from him all at once is that it turns out he was the star of a four part T.V. series for the BBC in 1980, and good copies have survived until today. Each episode consisted of a half an hour-long concert and nothing else. Furthermore, each of the episodes had specific musical themes. So Price played songs that fit those themes instead of his own songs. I believe that, between the four episodes, he only sang one of his songs. I don't know when the episodes were filmed exactly (I'm using the broadcast dates, since that's all I know), but they were broadcast on consecutive weeks.

This first episode had the theme of "Black music." That's pretty damn broad and vague, but hey, I didn't come up with the themes. In any case, it gave Price an excuse to sing some of his favorite songs from various genres, so that's what he did here. And one feature of these episodes is that each one featured at least one other guest singer. Madeline Bell was the choice this time, singing prominently on two of the songs.

The last song, "The House of the Rising Sun," isn't actually from this concert. But I found a version of Price singing the song on another BBC T.V. show ("Jeremy Taylor"), earlier in 1980. I stuck it on this album, instead of some of the other episodes, because I have other bonus tracks for some of them, and it fits the theme... maybe. I say "maybe" because nobody knows who actually wrote "House of the Rising Sun" or where it came from. The earliest versions go back to the 1920s, but apparently those are based on still earlier versions from the 1800s. So we don't know if it was originally written by a Black person or not. But it fits into the general Black blues tradition, in any case. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 33 minutes long. 

01 Introduction [Instrumental] (Alan Price)
02 Sir Duke (Alan Price)
03 talk (Alan Price)
04 A Stranger's Lament (Alan Price)
05 talk (Alan Price)
06 Beat Out a Rhythm on a Drum (Alan Price & Madeline Bell)
07 talk (Alan Price)
08 Cherry Red (Alan Price)
09 talk (Alan Price)
10 Go Where I Send Thee (Alan Price & Madeline Bell)
11 talk (Alan Price)
12 What'd I Say (Alan Price)
13 Keep a-Knockin' (Alan Price)
14 The House of the Rising Sun (Alan Price)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UfKvgz3Y

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/MzMWzLg9hJuATOT/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact concert.