Gladys Knight & the Pips with B.B. King - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 10-5-1973

At first glance, you might be wondering, "Wait, didn't he just post a Gladys Knight "Midnight Special" album from 1973 just a few days ago. And that's true, I did. But she was on that show enough for two albums. The first one I posted was from early 1973, and had Dr. John as a special guest. This is from late 1973 and early 1974, and has B.B. King as a special guest.

The first nine tracks come from the October 5, 1973 date mentioned in the title. Since B.B. King did a duet with Knight on his classic song "The Thrill Is Gone," I included the two other songs he did on his own. The other musical acts on that episode were Focus, Stories, Chris Smither, Earth, Wind & Fire, and a duet of Wolfman Jack and Monda. Hopefully, some of those will show up in later albums.

"Where Peaceful Waters Flow" is from a September 14, 1973 episode. It was the only song Knight performed in that episode. (It seems that was a teaser to help promote the fact she and her band would be hosting the show in a couple of weeks.) The remaining songs, tracks 11 through 15, are from a March 8, 1974 episode. 

Note that I've included two versions of "Midnight Train of Georgia." This song was released as a single in August 1973, and went all the way to Number One on the U.S. singles chart, becoming Knight's signature song. Normally, I don't include two versions of the same song on an album. But this is such a great song that I made an exception in this case. If you don't want it, it's easy to delete the second one, since it's the last song on the album.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. As usual for this TV show, I converted the YouTube video to audio, then broke it into mp3s. And I added in more applause to smooth transitions between songs. There are two talk tracks in a row for tracks two and three, because those are from different points in the concert. 

This album is 45 minutes long. 

01 Daddy Could Swear, I Declare (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
03 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
04 To Know You Is to Love You (B.B. King)
05 Heavy Makes You Happy (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
06 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
07 The Thrill Is Gone (Gladys Knight & B.B. King)
08 How Blue Can You Get (B.B. King)
09 Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 Where Peaceful Waters Flow (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
11 I've Got to Use My Imagination (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
12 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
13 Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
14 On and On (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
15 Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/htPuWyEy

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/wWthF5jPrVRa8mW/file 

The cover image is from this exact concert. But it's actually a combination of two images. I wanted a picture of Gladys Knight and B. B. King. So I looked through their duet song, "The Thrill Is Gone." The problem was, they never were standing right next to each other. So I took a screenshot of each of them, and then moved them close together in Photoshop. The red background with the lines of lights was the same, so lined that up to get them to match.

Gladys Knight & the Pips with Dr. John - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 5-25-1973

When I posted a poll yesterday about the "Midnight Special" TV show, I said I have a few things I've already prepared that don't figure into the poll question. Here's one of them, an album by Gladys Knight and the Pips. Actually, they appeared on the show enough for two albums. This is the first one.

Gladys Knight and the Pips had their first hit in 1961, and many followed. But they really hit their peak in the early 1970s. Their best year of all was 1973, with four big hit singles. So they appeared on the "Midnight Special" multiple times that year. The first nine tracks here come from the May 25, 1973 episode, which they hosted. But they also played a couple of songs each on the April 6th and May 4th episodes. I've only included the tracks from those that weren't also performed on May 25th. 

Furthermore, they also performed on the show in late 1973 and again in early 1974. But that will be the subject of a different album.

As was typical for the TV show, there were a number of other acts. The Staple Singers, John Stewart, Dr. John, and Skylark also played songs. Plus, there was a comedy segment by Robert Klein. I chose to include the two Dr. John songs, since I think they fit in well in terms of musical style. The Staple Singers would also fit, but I would like to eventually gather up all their appearances on the show for an album, after more from them gets posted on YouTube.

This band hasn't been bootlegged much at all, so this is nice to have. As usual for this TV show, I converted the YouTube video to audio, then cut it into mp3s.  

This album is 41 minutes long. 

01 talk by Wolfman Jack (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 Friendship Train (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
03 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
04 Instrumental (Dr. John)
05 Right Place, Wrong Time (Dr. John)
06 Daddy Could Swear, I Declare (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
07 I Don't Want to Do Wrong (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
08 Such a Night (Dr. John)
09 Neither One of Us [Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye] [Edit] (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 If I Were Your Woman (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
11 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vb5TAaHq

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/3tg1GnHyQtftH0J/file

The cover image is from this exact concert, on May 25, 1973. 

Various Artists - Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 9-7-2001

Given I've posted well over 3,000 albums by now, it surprises me I haven't posted anything starring Michael Jackson until now. But I only came across something worthy a few days ago, when I found this concert. I think it's a really interesting concert even if you're not a big Michael Jackson fan. It's got a lot of big stars singing classic songs.

Jackson's solo music career began in 1971, even as he continued to perform as part of the Jackson 5 (later renamed to the Jacksons) for many years. So someone came up with the idea of a concert to celebrate the first 30 years of his solo career. This concert was his first major concert appearance in the mainland U.S. since 1993, and in any country since 1997. (I say "major" because he occasionally sang a song or two for awards shows and the like.) It also would prove to be his last major concert appearance. (When he died in 2009 of cardiac arrest related to drug use, he was a few weeks away from starting his next major world tour.)

Before I go further, I need to explain that the title has this taking place on September 7, 2001, but that's not entirely true. There actually were two very similar concerts, one on September 7th, and the other on September 10th. A second concert was added because of the great ticket demand. Highlights from the concert were shown on CBS in the U.S. a couple of months later. They picked the best performances from the two nights. I don't know which songs is from which in most cases, so I'm just saying this took place on September 7th, for simplicity's sake, and because it was reported that most of the footage came from the 7th. 

However, in a few cases I do know which song is from which date, because some of the acts only performed in one of the two concerts. For instance, Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick, Gloria Gaynor, Missy Elliott, Nelly Furtado, and Aaron Carter all only performed on the 10th. Others, like Whitney Houston and Britney Spears, only performed on the 7th. But I'd say about 80 percent of the song list was the same both nights.

You can see the set list from both nights at the Wikipedia page about this concert event:

Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration - Wikipedia 

The vast majority of this album is from a DVD released from the concert, which is very similar to the TV broadcast. I guess there were some slight differences though, and maybe different songs in different broadcasts, because I was able to find a few more songs when I kept digging. For instance, the celebrated duet between Jackson and Britney Spears on the song "The Way You Make Me Feel" apparently wasn't shown on the original broadcast, but eventually did make it into a later rebroadcast.

After digging around, mostly on YouTube, I was able to find the vast majority of the songs, all in pretty good sound quality. However, a few remained elusive. For instance, Ray Charles and Cassandra Wilson performed a duet of the song "Crying Time" that I really would have liked to hear. But the only version I found was from some shaky audience video footage with pretty bad sound quality, so I skipped that one. A humanitarian speech by actor Marlon Brando also wasn't found, probably because it was reportedly booed by the crowd. A medley of "Never Never Land" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" Liza Minnelli wasn't found. I did find "My Baby" by Lil' Romeo and Master P, but I disliked the song so much that I couldn't bear to include it. It was just "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5 with rapping on top. Ugh! The original, performed at the concert, is a million times better.

Surprisingly, the finale song "We Are the World," the 1985 famine relief charity single co-written by Michael Jackson, was not included in the DVD or any of the TV broadcasts. I found a version from an audience bootleg that sounded pretty rough, but I decided to include it due to its key role in the concert, with everyone from earlier in the concert on stage and many of the big names singing individual lines. I tried to clean it up as best I could, running it through the MVSEP program two times for various reasons, but there was only so much I could do. That was the case with the talking track right after it as well. That's why those two have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Probably the biggest news of this concert, other than the rarity of Michael Jackson performing for the first time in several years, was the reunion of the Jacksons (a.k.a. the Jackson 5). This was the first time in 17 years they performed together, and it would be the last with Michael's inclusion. Actually, it was one of the rare times all six performed together. (In the mid-1970s, Jermaine Jackson left the group and was replaced by Randy Jackson.)    

This album is two hours and two minutes long. I checked, and Michael Jackson was on stage for slightly less than half of that.

01 talk (Samuel L. Jackson)
02 Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' (Whitney Houston, Mya & Usher)
03 Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight)
04 I'll Never Love This Way Again (Dionne Warwick)
05 I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor)
06 Get Ur Freak On (Missy Elliott & Nelly Furtado)
07 I Want Candy (Aaron Carter)
08 Home (Monica)
09 You Can't Win (Jill Scott)
10 Ease On Down the Road (Deborah Cox, Al Jarreau, Monica & Jill Scott)
11 Ben (Billy Gilman)
12 Angel - It Wasn't Me (Shaggy, Rayvon & Rikrock)
13 Heal the World (Deborah Cox, Rah Digga, Monica, Mya & Tamia)
14 She's Out of My Life (Marc Anthony)
15 Bootylicious (Destiny's Child)
16 You Are Not Alone (Liza Minnelli)
17 I Just Can't Stop Loving You (Gloria Estefan & James Ingram)
18 Man in the Mirror (98 Degrees, Usher & Luther Vandross)
19 talk (Elizabeth Taylor)
20 Can You Feel It (Jacksons)
21 ABC - The Love You Save (Jacksons)
22 I'll Be There (Jacksons)
23 talk (Jacksons)
24 I Want You Back (Jacksons)
25 Dancing Machine (Jacksons & NSYNC)
26 Shake Your Body [Down to the Ground] (Jacksons)
27 The Way You Make Me Feel (Michael Jackson & Britney Spears)
28 talk (Chris Tucker)
29 Black or White (Michael Jackson, Jason Paige & Slash)
30 Beat It (Michael Jackson, Jason Paige & Slash)
31 Billie Jean (Michael Jackson)
32 You Rock My World (Michael Jackson)
33 We Are the World [Edit] (Michael Jackson, Ray Charles & Everybody)
34 talk [Edit] (Michael Jackson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iBBo6SCr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/zGamSEAhq7LPvJS/file

There are two parts to the cover art. The top part was taken from promotional material from the concert, with some extra text added by me at the bottom. The main photo shows Michael Jackson and Britney Spears singing a duet during this exact concert.

Gladys Knight & the Pips - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, BBC Studios, London, Britain, 4-14-1981

I'm writing this in February 2025. I was only last month when I discovered a Gladys Knight and the Pips BBC concert, which took place in 1983. I thought that was the only one. But here I am, already renumbering that one to "Volume 2" to make room for this one, which I just discovered. Sorry about all the renumbering, folks! I assume that'll eventually settle down as I find most everything that's available.

This is from a BBC TV show, and is unreleased. It aired in two parts of about half an hour each. Luckily, there was one only song played in both shows: "Bourgie, Bourgie." The version for the first show was cut off right in the middle of the song, probably because the time slot given for the show ran out. So I just didn't use that version, since the version in the second show is complete. I also cut out a little bit of dialogue at the start of the second show that mentioned it was the beginning of the show. I thought it would be confusing to hear that halfway through the album.

In 1981, Gladys Knight and the Pips released the studio album "Touch." It was only a moderate hit, but it contain three minor hit singles: "Bourgie, Bourgie," "Landlord," and "Taste of Bitter Love." All three were performed here. Most of the other songs were classics from other albums or cover versions, like a slowed down version of the smash disco hit "I Will Survive."

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Come Back and Finish What You Started (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 I Feel a Song [In My Heart] (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
03 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
04 Baby Don't Change Your Mind (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
05 She Believes in Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
06 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
07 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
08 Try to Remember - The Way We Were (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
09 Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 I've Got to Use My Imagination [Edit] (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
11 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
12 Part Time Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
13 Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
14 Landlord (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
15 Bourgie, Bourgie (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
16 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
17 Help Me Make It through the Night (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
18 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
19 Free Again - I Will Survive (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
20 Taste of Bitter Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YuTfniZ2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/S8q38vwAas69bQa/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on the US TV show "American Bandstand" on August 15, 1981 in Los Angeles. I went with that instead of a screenshot from this exact concert due to an image quality difference.

Gladys Knight & the Pips - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Beverly Hills Theatre, Beverly Hills, CA, 11-12-1983

I had been under the impression that the only music Gladys Knight and the Pips did for the BBC was a few songs here and there. But then I came across two full BBC concerts from early 1980s. Here's the second one, from late 1983.

As I've mentioned previously, I think soul music in general had a big downturn in the 1980s for a variety of reasons, so this isn't the ideal time for a BBC concert for me. But this is what we've got. At least it came at a strong point for the group. The album they were supporting here, 1983's "Visions," was a commercial and critical comeback. It was their first album to reach Gold status (selling half a million copies) since 1975. That was largely due to the success of the song "Save the Overtime (For Me)," which hit Number One in the R&B singles chart.

This is entirely unreleased. The sound quality is good, though not outstanding.

This album is 56 minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 12, 2025, I renamed the album to "Volume 2" after finding an earlier BBC concert I'd missed.

01 Reach High (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 Taste of Bitter Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
03 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
04 Neither One of Us [Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye] (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
05 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
06 I Will Fight (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
07 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
08 Just Be My Lover (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
09 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 Save the Overtime [For Me] (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
11 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
12 You're Number One [In My Book] (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
13 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
14 Every Beat of My Heart - Friendship Train - If I Were Your Woman - Daddy Could Swear, I Declare (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
15 Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
16 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
17 She Believes in Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
18 On the Wings of Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
19 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
20 I Won't Last a Day without You (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
21 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UWWkFsvZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yPvm4NtOSp244Xf/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Chicago, on June 26, 1983. Unfortunately I didn't see one showing all three of the Pips.

Jamaica World Music Festival, Montego Bay, Jamaica, 11-25-1982, Part 3: Gladys Knight & the Pips

The third act from the first night of the 1982 Jamaica World Music Festival was Gladys Knight and the Pips.

This classic soul act has tons of hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But at the time of this concert, their last significant hit had been in 1975. Their most recent album, "Touch," had been released in 1981, and was run of the mill. Fortunately in my opinion, they only played a couple songs from their most recent albums ("Reach High," "Taste of Bitter Love," and "I Will Fight"), and instead concentrated on their earlier classics.

Like all the other albums I've posting from this festival, everything here is officially unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent. And I boosted the lead vocals relative to the instruments to further improve the sound quality.

This album is 44 minutes long.

27 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
28 Reach High (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
29 Taste of Bitter Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
30 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
31 Neither One of Us [Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye] (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
32 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
33 I Will Fight (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
34 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
35 Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
36 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
37 Every Beat of My Heart - Friendship Train (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
38 If I Were Your Woman - Daddy Could Swear, I Declare (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
39 Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
40 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
41 The Way We Were (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
42 Band Introductions (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
43 I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17314987/VA-JmicaWrldMsicFstvlMntgoByJmica__11-25-1982Prt03GldysKnghtnthePps_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hvbdaSFS

The cover photo is from this exact festival. However, it appears to be from a backstage interview. Also, while Gladys Knight is in the middle, only two of the three members of her backing band, the Pips, are shown with her.

Various Artists - Covered: Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, Volume 2: 1968-1970

This is Volume 2 of the Covered series, focusing on the songwriting team of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. This is the time period where their collaboration reached full flower and they had hit after hit after hit.

Barry Gordy, the owner and leader of Motown Records, was known to be very conservative in his decision making. He didn't like being on the cutting edge musically, because that's not what was most commercially successful. But around 1968, Norman Whitfield, as the producer for a few big Motown groups, especially the Temptations, helped innovate what was dubbed "psychedelic soul." It took parts of psychedelic music popular in rock and roll in 1967 and applied it to soul music, expanding the possibilities of what soul music could be. Some of this was influenced by Sly and the Family Stone, which was doing a similar thing at the same time, but much of the innovation was original. This resulted in many more hit songs, all written by Whitfield and Barrett Strong, and a surge of popularity for the Temptations in particular.

I just have a few comments on the songs here. I included a version of "I Heard It through the Grapevine," even though there's a version of that song by Gladys Knight and the Pips on Volume One. Both versions were big hits, and different from each other, so I couldn't pick just one.

I picked the extended (album) version of "Runaway Child, Running Wild" to show off more of Whitfield's "psychedelic soul" production. The single version was five minutes long, but this one is nine and a half minutes long.

All of the songs were hits at the time for Motown artists, except one. That exception is "I Can't Get Next to You." That was a Number One hit in the US by the Temptations in 1969. But since I have a bunch of Temptations songs here, I chose the 1970 version by Al Green, which also was a hit.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 The End of Our Road (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Marvin Gaye)
03 Cloud Nine (Temptations)
04 Friendship Train (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
05 That's the Way Love Is (Marvin Gaye)
06 Runaway Child, Running Wild [Extended Version] (Temptations)
07 Gonna Give Her All the Love I've Got (Marvin Gaye)
08 Don't Let the Joneses Get You Down (Temptations)
09 Too Busy Thinking about My Baby (Marvin Gaye)
10 Psychedelic Shack (Temptations)
11 I Can't Get Next to You (Al Green)
12 Message from a Black Man (Derrick Harriott)
13 Ball of Confusion [That's What the World Is Today] (Temptations)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17181193/COVRDWhtfildStrng1968-1970Volum2_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/W7Syoqpr

As with Volume 1, I had a hard time finding material for the cover image. I found a good color photo of Whitfield from 1972, so I used that. He's the one on the right with the big, wide afro hairdo. For Strong, I found a photo of him from 1970 that was in black and white, so I colorized it.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

B. B. King and Friends - A Night of Blistering Blues, Ebony Showcase Theater, Los Angeles, CA, 4-15-1987

Hopefully, if you're a fan of the blues, you'll take a look at the list of artists mentioned on the cover art, say, "Wow!" and download this immediately. This concert mainly features B. B. King, who does all the talking, but his special guests are: Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Dr. John, Etta James, Albert King, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Billy Ocean, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Why did all of these big names of soul and blues get together for this concert? I don't know if there was some special occasion or anniversary, but this show was filmed for a TV special shown on Cinemax, alternately called "A Night of Blistering Blues" or "A Blues Night." I've gone with the former name because it's more interesting.

Generally speaking, King did the lion's share of lead vocals. But he shared vocals with Albert King, Etta James, Billy Ocean, Gladys Knight, and Chaka Khan. I believe Phil Collins played drums on all the songs, along with another drummer. Paul Butterfield did all the harmonica playing. Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan played lead guitar, and on more songs than just the ones they're credited on below. B. B. King and Albert King played lots of lead guitar as well.

This really was a once in a lifetime gathering of musical greats, and they rose to the occasion. I don't know why this has never been officially released as an album. The only flaw is that the last song was a blues jam with all the lead guitarists: B. B. King, Albert King, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. But unfortunately, it fades out after only a minute of guitar soloing from B. B. King. If you watch the video of this on YouTube, you'll see the credits are rolling and the recording ends when the show finishes.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Why I Sing the Blues (B. B. King, Albert King, Etta James, Billy Ocean, Gladys Knight & Chaka Khan)
02 talk (B. B. King)
03 Please Send Me Someone to Love (B. B. King & Gladys Knight)
04 talk (B. B. King)
05 The Thrill Is Gone (B. B. King with Eric Clapton & Phil Collins)
06 talk (B. B. King)
07 I'd Rather Go Blind (B. B. King, Dr. John & Etta James)
08 talk (B. B. King)
09 When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (B. B. King, Chaka Khan & Billy Ocean)
10 talk (B. B. King)
11 The Sky Is Crying (B. B. King, Paul Butterfield, Albert King & Stevie Ray Vaughan)
12 talk (B. B. King)
13 Something's Got a Hold on Me (B. B. King & Etta James)
14 talk (B. B. King)
15 In the Midnight Hour (B. B. King & Billy Ocean with Paul Butterfield & Stevie Ray Vaughan)
16 talk (B. B. King)
17 Ain't Nobody's Business (B. B. King, Etta James, Chaka Khan & Gladys Knight)
18 talk (B. B. King)
19 Let the Good Times Roll (B. B. King, Albert King & Etta James)
20 Take My Hand, Precious Lord (B. B. King, Etta James, Chaka Khan & Gladys Knight)
21 talk (B. B. King)
22 Blues Jam [Instrumental] (B. B. King)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687605/BBKNG1987_NghtofBlistrinBlusEbnyShwcseThetr__4-15-1987_atse.zip.html

I haven't seen any good photos from this concert. So I took a screenshot from the YouTube video. The quality is rather low-res, but this is all there is. From right to left, you can see: Stevie Ray Vaughan, B. B. King, Albert King, Eric Clapton, and Etta James.

Gladys Knight & the Pips - SOUL!, WNET Studios, New York City, 2-9-1972

Here's something I recently stumbled across, so it's gone to the top of the pile of stuff to get posted. 

Gladys Knight and the Pips were an excellent soul act. In my opinion, their peak years were the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, there's almost no live music available from them from that time. There is one official archival live album called "The Lost Live Album." But that features a concert from 1974. Although that was only two years after this concert, the band changed record companies and had a bunch of new hits, so the song list was almost entirely different.

As far as I could tell, there aren't even any concert bootlegs from before 1974, not even this one (until now). The reason this exists is because it comes from the public TV show "Soul!" I found a video of that and converted it to audio. Thanks to this unique TV show that exclusively highlighted black entertainers at a time when most of them didn't get much extensive TV exposure, we have great concert recordings of artists that otherwise didn't get bootlegged at all. I've already posted "Soul!" concerts from Al Green, Stevie Wonder, and Merry Clayton. I hope more will follow, although unfortunately many of the TV show's episodes have been lost.

The "Soul!" show was an hour long, without commercials (since it was on PBS stations). This episode focused on Gladys Knight and the Pips, but there was a short interview with Knight and an unrelated section featuring some poets. So I have 40 minutes of music from the show. 

The recording sounds very good, as you'd expect from a professionally recorded TV show in front of a small studio audience. (If you look at the video, which is available on YouTube, there are only a few dozen people there.) However, some of the audience responses to songs were cut off, probably due to quickly cutting to an emcee or station identification or something like that. In those cases, I took applause from the ends of other portions of the video and patched them in. Plus, at the very end of the last song, the emcee loudly said the word "soul" right over the final chord. I used the audio editing program X-Minus to erase his voice but keep the underlying music. 

In addition to the songs from "Soul!," I've added two songs at the end. The first, "Every Beat of My Heart," comes from the band's appearance on the British TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test" later in 1972. The second one, "You're All I Need to Get By," is from a Canadian TV show called "Rollin' On the River." This show was hosted by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. Knight sang a duet with Kin Vassy, who was a member of the First Edition at the time. The two of them sang live (and there's official recording of them doing this song anywhere), but there was no sign of any backing band on stage, so I'm guessing they sang to a backing track.

I added applause at the end of "Every Beat of My Heart." But I didn't do so with "You're All I Need to Get By," since the song faded out so quickly that I would have had to overlap the applause with more of the music to make it sound natural. 

With the two extra songs at the end included, this album is 45 minutes long.

01 Intro (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 The Nitty Gritty (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
03 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
04 Make Me the Woman You Go Home To (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
05 Friendship Train (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
06 If I Were Your Woman (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
07 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
08 Intro to Help Me Make It through the Night (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
09 Help Me Make It through the Night (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 Intro to I Don't Want to Do Wrong (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
11 I Don't Want to Do Wrong (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
12 Every Beat of My Heart (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
13 You're All I Need to Get By (Kin Vassy & Gladys Knight)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693217/GLADYSKNGT1972_SOULWNETStdios__2-9-1972_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I took a screenshot of Knight singing "Help Me Make It through the Night" on a TV show in 1972. But it was a different performance than the one included here.

Gladys Knight & the Pips & Ray Charles - Together at the Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 9-22-1977

I really like soul music from the 1960s and 1970s, and I wish I could post more of that type of music here, but it's not often that I find that kind of album that's worthy of the "albums that should exist" label. However, this one definitely is: it's a one-of-a-kind concert featuring two soul music greats, Gladys Knight (and the Pips) and Ray Charles.

To be honest, this is more of a Gladys Knight and the Pips concert: it's an hour long, and 37 minutes pass before Ray Charles shows up. But it's quite good just as a Knight concert, because there's only one of those from her prime 1960s and 1970s years, and it's not that good and is long out of print. In my opinion, it's a lucky thing that this concert took place in 1977 and not more recently, because 1977 was the tail end of soul music's golden era. Already in that year, disco was taking over, and disco destroyed or compromised the music of nearly every major soul figure. (I'm not against all disco, but there was a time when basically everyone "went disco" when they shouldn't have, including the likes of Ethel Merman!) Luckily, there are no traces of disco here. Had this been recorded a year or two later, I'll bet a lot of the songs would have been "disco-fied."

Anyway, we have an album of a very solid Gladys Knight and the Pips concert, where she played most of her biggest hits. Then Ray Charles joined in and played two songs on his own. For the last three songs, Knight and Charles sang together. As far as I know, this is the only time the two of them collaborated like this on stage, although they did a couple of duets in the studio towards the end of Charles' life.

The reason we have a recording of this concert, and in very good sound quality, is because it was professionally filmed and then shown on HBO a year later. Many years after that, that film was released on video, and then on DVD in 2008. I was able to find a version of that on YouTube and convert it to mp3 format. The sound quality isn't awesome, like you'd expect of a music DVD from decades later, but it's akin to a soundboard bootleg, which is still really good.

Unfortunately, we only get what was included on the DVD. Newspaper reports from the time indicate that more songs were played. For instance, we know Charles also played "Mack the Knife," Knight played "Daddy Could Swear, I Declare" (with Charles on piano), and the concert ended with "What I'd Say" as a finale. So that's a bummer, but we do get the vast majority of the concert, and hopefully someday the rest will be released.

01 How Can You Say That Ain't Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
03 Every Beat of My Heart (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
04 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
05 So Sad the Song (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
06 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
07 On and On (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
08 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
09 Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
11 Evergreen - The Way We Were (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
12 I've Got to Use My Imagination (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
13 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
14 talk (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
15 I Can See Clearly Now (Ray Charles)
16 America the Beautiful (Ray Charles)
17 talk (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
18 Georgia on My Mind (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
19 talk (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
20 Neither One of Us [Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye] (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
21 talk (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
22 Hit the Road, Jack (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cVuAbgKe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/44SrXzW3r7vjdbe/file

For the cover art photo, I used a screenshot from the exact concert in question, thanks to the DVD of it (which has been posted on YouTube). Unfortunately, the picture quality wasn't good. But in February 2025, I used the Krea AI problem to significantly improve the image.