I wish I knew more about this T.V. show, but I could find very little about it other than this audio recording, plus one photo. And even that photo, which I used for the cover art, was taken from a newspaper clipping. So apparently none of the film footage survives, at least not in the public domain.
The official Joni Mitchell website is normally extremely comprehensive about anything relating to her. But even that site has very little about this show. However, if you go to this link, you cansee the one photo I'm talking about (before I colorized it and used Krea AI to fill in some detail):
Joni Mitchell - 1970.10.18 | Gentle On My Mind KCOP-TV | Los Angeles
There are some nice surprises in this special. One is having Mitchell sing two songs with Seeger and one song with Hartford. "The Water Is Wide" was mostly Seeger, with Mitchell generally singing wordless backing vocals. But "Both Sides Now" was a proper duet. Seeger even wrote some nice new lyrics and sang those. And it was also great to hear Mitchell sing "Mr. Tambourine Man" with Hartford, especially since it's a Bob Dylan song that she very rarely sang.
Another nice surprise is that Mitchell performed "A Case of You" from her 1971 classic album "Blue" nearly a year before that album was released. So this was an early version, and it turned out a lot of the lyrics were changed by the time the album version came out. I actually prefer some of these lyrics (though some other changes were clear improvements). I particularly like "I'm frightened by the devil, and I'm scared to death by saints." (It was later changed to "I'm frightened by the devil, and I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid.")
Hartford also sang an original song he didn't release at the time, "Sunshine Lady, You Really Know How to Slow a Man Down." It eventually came out on an archival release, "Radio John," in 2002.
This recording sounds pretty good considering how long it's been since the broadcast, though I couldn't call it "excellent." But there was one big problem with the recording: the applause for many of the songs were cut off. Probably, that's how it was in the original broadcast, due to the usual practice of quickly cutting to commercial breaks. I fixed that by patching in extra cheering that I took from the ends of other songs.
Also, there's no banter included whatsoever. I'm sure there was some in the original broadcast. In fact, there were a few words said by Seeger before one of the songs, but I cut that out because it was literally just a few words, a mere sentence fragment. It would have been great to hear Hartford, Mitchell, and Seeger all talking to each other. But hey, at least we have the music.
The music is unreleased.
This album is 48 minutes long.
01 Frustrated Bird (John Hartford)
02 In Tall Buildings (John Hartford)
03 A Case of You (Joni Mitchell)
04 Bring Me Little Water (Pete Seeger)
05 Orange Blossom Special [Instrumental Version] (John Hartford)
06 Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell & Pete Seeger)
07 Willy (Joni Mitchell)
08 [He Played Real Good] For Free (Joni Mitchell)
09 A Simple Thing as Love (John Hartford)
10 Sunshine Lady, You Really Know How to Slow a Man Down (John Hartford)
11 The Water Is Wide (Joni Mitchell with Pete Seeger)
12 Mr. Tambourine Man (Joni Mitchell & John Hartford)
13 Letter to Eve [Edit] (Pete Seeger)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/jjUYyFhP
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/LImWqWn09DQyBVQ/file
As mentioned above, the image is the sole picture I could find that is actually from this exact performance. It's too bad Pete Seeger isn't shown as well. And, also as I mentioned above, I colorized it (using the Kolorize program) as well, and then increased the detail with the Krea AI program.
Any chance you have audio from The Roger Miller Show?
ReplyDeleteNo more than a few songs that show up on YouTube.
DeleteThanks
ReplyDelete