Jimmy Webb - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Arts Theatre, Belfast, Britain, 3-22-1998

Jimmy Webb is a great songwriter. He's written many hits for others. I've documented this by posting two volumes of people covering his songs as part of my "Covered" series. But he's never had a hit of his own, despite being a fine singer and performer, and his many solo albums haven't gotten a lot of attention. A big reason for that is that he's generally given his best songs for others to covers, and rarely even did his own versions on his albums. But in the late 1990s, he did some tours in which he mostly did his most famous songs in acoustic mode. This BBC recording documents one such concert.

Note that in 1996, Webb released the studio album "Ten Easy Pieces," in which he finally performed many of those hits he wrote for others, but in an acoustic mode. So this concert is fairly similar to that album, as it seems he was still promoting it over a year after it was released. But about half the songs here are different, plus there's a big difference between a studio album and a live one, especially the banter between songs. 

Note that I previously posted a BBC concert he did in 1971. Now that I have a second one with this one, I've just renamed that earlier one "Volume 1." Here's the link it you want to get the updated version, which includes an improved cover image:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/06/jimmy-webb-bbc-in-concert-london.html

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 Shattered (Jimmy Webb)
02 talk (Jimmy Webb)
03 The Highwayman (Jimmy Webb)
04 talk (Jimmy Webb)
05 Galveston (Jimmy Webb)
06 talk (Jimmy Webb)
07 By the Time I Get to Phoenix (Jimmy Webb)
08 talk (Jimmy Webb)
09 All I Know (Jimmy Webb)
10 talk (Jimmy Webb)
11 Didn't We (Jimmy Webb)
12 talk (Jimmy Webb)
13 Nobody Likes to Hear a Rich Boy Sing the Blues (Jimmy Webb)
14 Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb)
15 talk (Jimmy Webb)
16 MacArthur Park (Jimmy Webb)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HmuzrEwW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/PLHvMs2s3qjGQCu/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Jazz Cafe, wherever that is, in 1998. I improved it somewhat with the help of the Krea AI program.

Covered: Jimmy Webb: Volume 2, 1972-2013

This is the second and last album in the Covered series for songwriter Jimmy Webb.

As I mentioned in Volume One, Webb was on fire in the late 1960s, writing a handful of the best songs all time, by anybody. Unfortunately, by the start of the time period on this album, his hot streak had cooled. Virtually every song on Volume One was a big hit, while there are only a few hits here. That said, the songwriting quality is still very high. A few of the songs here are considered classics. For instance, both "The Moon's a Harsh Mistress" and "Highwayman" have been covered dozens of times, and "All I Know" was a big hit for Art Garfunkel.

I'm not sure what happened exactly, but I suppose Webb's songwriting style changed. Instead of writing overtly poppy hits, he began writing more confessional singer-songwriter stuff. The same thing happened to others around the same time. For instance, Carole King's songwriting style changed drastically from the 1960s to the 1970s. I could have included many more worthy songs here, but I wanted to keep the emphasis on the stuff with obvious popular appeal, so I generally only included hits or songs that I thought should have been hits.

The lack of massive success for Webb's own albums is curious. Certainly he had the requisite talent, both with his singing voice as well as songwriting chops. It seems to me that he didn't do the obvious things to be popular. For instance, by 1970, the year of his first solo album ("Words and Music"), he had written at least a dozen really big hits for others. But on that album, he included exactly none of them. That was a huge missed opportunity, in my opinion. After that, his albums were typically critically acclaimed but little noticed by the public. It didn't help that he did almost no touring whatsoever until the 1990s, and even since then only very intermittently. He also had a really big drug problem until the 1990s.

In any case, some of these songs were written before when they appear chronologically on this album. For instance, "P.F. Sloan" first appeared on that 1970 album I mentioned above but the version here is from 2012. "Highwayman" first appeared on one of his albums in 1977, but wasn't a hit by the Highwaymen (a country supergroup consisting of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson) until 1985. But other than that, these generally were the first versions of each song, or close to it.

If there are any great songs of his that I've failed to include, please let me know and I'll consider adding them.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Song Seller (Paul Revere & the Raiders)
02 Mixed Up Girl (Dusty Springfield)
03 Cheap Lovin' (Supremes)
04 All I Know (Art Garfunkel)
05 The Moon's a Harsh Mistress (Judy Collins)
06 Crying in My Sleep (Art Garfunkel)
07 Easy for You to Say (Linda Ronstadt)
08 Highwayman (Highwaymen)
09 I Keep It Hid (Linda Ronstadt)
10 If These Walls Could Speak (Shawn Colvin)
11 Gauguin (Judy Collins)
12 P.F. Sloan (Rumer)
13 Postcard from Paris (Glen Campbell) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/17271155/COVRDJIMMYWBB1972-2013Vlum2_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/T8MqGQrP

I don't know the details on when and where the cover photo was taken. But clearly he's significantly older than in the photo for Volume One.

Covered: Jimmy Webb: Volume 1, 1966-1971

In the past few days, I've been really getting into my Covered series highlighting the best songs of the best songwriters. I already had a bunch of albums basically reading for posting, but I keep thinking or coming across songwriters that would be fitting for the series. Keep in mind that I'm generally focusing on those who were songwriters for others instead of those who became famous stars performing their own music, although there will be some of the latter when their songs were widely covered. (For instance, one can find a million covers of Bob Dylan songs, but very few of Pink Floyd songs.)

One person who is a must for this series is Jimmy Webb. He's an usual case of someone who became a household name for being a songwriter. He did have his own music career, releasing many studio albums, but it never achieved much success, at least not in comparison to the songs he wrote that were hits for others. In my opinion, some of the songs he wrote are not just classics, but all-time classics. For instance, if I had a Top 50 Greatest Songs list, I think both "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston" would be on it.

Webb has great success right from the start. I read an account from songwriter P. F. Sloan (who will be featured in this series later), who was also a producer in the mid-1960s. He met Webb around 1965, when Webb was under 18 and trying to get anyone to record his songs. Webb played him "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Up, Up and Away," "Wichita Lineman," "MacArthur Park," and more. Sloan was floored. He told Webb that he'd played him about five future Number One songs, which pretty much proved to be true. That golden era when it seemed every song Webb was writing turned into a hit is the basis on this volume. (I'll be posting a second volume of the rest of his career.)

If you like intelligent yet very catchy pop songs, this album is a must have. Yeah, he gets dinged for some silly lyrics in "MacArthur Park" ("Someone left a cake out in the rain..."). But overall, he's a songwriter's songwriter. He's even written a popular book about the art of songwriting (which I have, and have been reading lately, by the way).

As I said in another post recently, I'm going to try to keep my Covered write-ups short so I'll post more music faster. So if you want to know more about Webb, here's his Wikipedia page:

Jimmy Webb - Wikipedia

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 By the Time I Get to Phoenix (Johnny Rivers)
02 Up, Up and Away (5th Dimension)
03 Love Years Coming (Strawberry Children)
04 Paper Cup (5th Dimension)
05 Wichita Lineman (Glen Campbell)
06 Do What You Gotta Do (Nina Simone)
07 MacArthur Park (Richard Harris)
08 The Magic Garden (Dusty Springfield)
09 Carpet Man (5th Dimension)
10 Worst that Could Happen (Brooklyn Bridge)
11 Galveston (Glen Campbell)
12 Where's the Playground, Susie (Glen Campbell)
13 Didn't We (Dionne Warwick)
14 Honey Come Back (Jr. Walker & the All Stars)
15 See You Then (Roberta Flack)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17271156/COVRDJIMMYWBB1966-1971Vlum1_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GtYWDuwj

The cover photo of Webb is probably from 1968.

Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb - In Session (CHCH-TV Studios, Hamilton, Canada, 12-1988)

Although I'm done with the "VH-1 Storytellers" series, here is something very similar in content and length. 

Jimmy Webb is a talented singer-songwriter who never had any hits of his own, but wrote many hit songs for others. In particular, Glen Campbell has covered many of his songs, and had big hits with some of them, such as the all-time classics "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Galveston," and "Wichita Lineman." In 1974, he even released an album consisting entirely of Jimmy Webb songs. In 1988, he released the album "Light Years," which included a couple more songs written by Webb. As part of the promotion for that album, Campbell and Webb appeared together on a Canadian radio show. Not only did they perform a bunch of Webb's songs together, they talked some about the songs as well. So that was more or less exactly like a Storytellers episode, except there was no studio audience and it took place about a decade earlier. The length of about 45 minutes was exactly the same for Storytellers episodes too.

It was rare for Campbell and Webb to perform together like this. So eventually, in 2012, an album of this radio show was released as an audio album, as well as a video. However, this album is very obscure. It took me months before I could even find a copy. So I decided to post it here to give it greater exposure.

Furthermore, I improved the album in two ways. Firstly, I added some songs that weren't on the official album. These come from the video of the same concert. In terms of music from that video, I didn't add much, just "Honey Come Back." It's really only a snippet that's less than a minute long, which probably explains why it didn't make the album. But I found several chunks of banter that were only on the video. One of these talked about the song "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," but then the song just barely started before it faded out. So I found a version of Campbell doing it in concert within a couple of years of this performance, and added it in.

The second big change I made is that the banter often was overdubbed over instrumental sections of the songs. Most of these were at the beginnings of songs, but occasionally, as in "MacArthur Park," they took place in the middle of the songs. I used the UVR5 audio editing program to get take these talking bits out of songs. But instead of trashing them, I generally put them as more banter before the songs.

I suspect there were more songs played, and especially more banter, but this is all I could find. Generally speaking, Campbell sang the lead vocals and played guitar while Webb played keyboards. On some songs, they were backed by a full band. On a couple, it was just Campbell and his acoustic guitar.

All in all, this is a really interesting album. Even if you're not a big fan of either Campbell or Webb as performers, you should hear this because virtually every song performed is a classic.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 talk (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
02 By the Time I Get to Phoenix (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
03 talk (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
04 Light Years [Edit] (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
05 If These Walls Could Speak (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
06 talk (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
07 Galveston [Edit] (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
08 talk (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
09 Where's the Playground, Susie (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
10 talk (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
11 MacArthur Park [Edit] (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
12 talk (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
13 Wichita Lineman [Edit] (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
14 talk (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
15 The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress [Edit] (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
16 talk (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
17 Honey Come Back (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
18 talk (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
19 Sunshower (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
20 talk (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)
21 Still Within the Sound of My Voice (Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VV2CKjjw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/rqGuv2VQYt27S3x/file

The cover of the official "In Session" album looks very amateurish, so I ignored that. I took the "In Session" graphic at the top from a YouTube video of this concert. However, that video was too low-res for good photos of the duo. Instead, I found this photo. I don't know when or where it's from exactly, but their ages seem to be in the right ballpark. (Webb is at the keyboards and Campbell is standing with the microphone.)

Jimmy Webb, Chip Taylor & Nick Lowe - Songwriters' Circle, Subterania Club, London, Britain, 7-16-1999

For a few years, the BBC had a musical TV show alternately called "Songwriters' Circle" or "In the Round." In it, they would bring three singer-songwriters together and have them take turns playing songs. I particularly like it because in most cases the artists would participate with each others' songs, creating some interesting moments.

I've posted some of these shows already. Use the "Songwriters' Circle" label on the side of the blog to find the others.

I hope to post more, when I find good versions. Unfortunately, I've found only a few, so if you have any, please let me know.

This particular show brought together Jimmy Webb, Chip Taylor and Nick Lowe. I'll bet you know Jimmy Webb, or at least know many of his songs. Although he never had a big commercially successful solo career, he wrote many classics, like "Up, Up and Away," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston," and "MacArthur's Park." Chip Taylor is much less of a famous name. But he also wrote some classic songs, such as "Wild Thing," "Angel of the Morning," "I Can't Let Go," and "Any Way that You Want Me." Nick Lowe I consider a songwriter's songwriter. He hasn't had many big hits, but he seems incapable of writing a bad song. His hits include "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass," and "Cruel to Be Kind."

For the duration of this concert, Webb played the piano while Taylor and Lowe played guitar. Generally speaking, they played on each others' songs most of the time. For instance, Taylor commented how surprised and delighted he was to hear Webb play a piano solo to his song "Wild Thing." However, I've only included more than one name in the song credits when there was some shared lead vocals near the end of the show. 

One interesting facet of this show is that both Webb and Taylor played an original song that they apparently never have officially released. I'm pretty confident about the names of these songs because the YouTube video of this show has the names of the songs at the bottom of the video for a few seconds when they start. The original song by Webb is "Rich Kids Can't Play the Blues." The one by Taylor, "Talking the President," is commentary about US President Bill Clinton's sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky, which was very big news at the time the show was recorded.  

This concert is 48 minutes long.

01 Highwayman (Jimmy Webb)
02 talk (Chip Taylor)
03 I Can't Let Go (Chip Taylor)
04 talk (Nick Lowe)
05 What's Shakin' on the Hill (Nick Lowe)
06 talk (Jimmy Webb)
07 Galveston (Jimmy Webb)
08 talk (Chip Taylor)
09 Angel of the Morning (Chip Taylor)
10 talk (Nick Lowe)
11 Without Love (Nick Lowe)
12 talk (Jimmy Webb)
13 Rich Kids Can't Play the Blues (Jimmy Webb)
14 talk (Chip Taylor)
15 Talking the President (Chip Taylor)
16 Man That I've Become (Nick Lowe)
17 talk (Jimmy Webb)
18 Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb with Chip Taylor)
19 talk (Chip Taylor)
20 Wild Thing (Chip Taylor with Jimmy Webb & Nick Lowe)
21 talk (Nick Lowe)
22 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Nick Lowe with Chip Taylor & Jimmy Webb)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5Y4dPkRp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qJdb02zPDtMYB70/file

The cover is a screenshot I took from the video of this show. I actually put it together in Photoshop from three different shots, since they were rather far apart from each other. From left to right: Jimmy Webb, Chip Taylor, and Nick Lowe.

Jimmy Webb - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, London, Britain, 12-11-1971

Today, I was searching the Internet for a 1971 James Taylor BBC concert. While doing that, I stumbled across a mention of a 1971 BBC concert by singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb. That sounded interesting, so I went looking for more, but found almost no mentions of it whatsoever. I couldn't even find a list of the songs played at this concert. But I did find one person on YouTube who had videos of most of the songs from the concert. So I put this together from those videos. Then, to make a long story short, I posted the album that way, but within hours a kind commenter named "cgm" came forward with the full version, in the correct running order. So I used that.

Before I say more about this concert, here's some info on Jimmy Webb. In the late 1960s, he became famous due to his songs being hits for others, including "Up, Up and Away" by the 5th Dimension, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," and "Galveston" all by Glen Campbell, "MacArthur Park" by Richard Harris, "Worst That Could Happen" by the Brooklyn Bridge, and "All I Know" by Art Garfunkel.

He's put out over 15 albums since the 1960s until today, yet they've sold very poorly compared to when others have sung his songs. Some blame his voice, but I think he has a fine voice. (It certainly is a better voice than that of Richard Harris, an actor who could barely sing yet had a number one hit with Webb's "MacArthur Park" in 1968.) I suspect it's more that he wasn't particularly interested in success as a solo artist. His studio albums have often been experimental, with a wide range of styles and production techniques, while he often didn't record his own versions of the hit songs he wrote until years after the hit, if at all. He also rarely played concerts or did any promotional work. I'm guessing he felt he didn't have to do all that drudge work, since he made millions from his songwriting.

Given all that, this concert is a real find, with very good sound quality. There are barely any Jimmy Webb bootlegs, and only two official live albums. One is from 2007, and the other is from 1972 ("Live at the Royal Albert Hall"), but is only available as part of a box set. Furthermore, that 1972 concert was done with a full band and orchestra, whereas this recording is just Webb's voice and his piano. In 1996, Webb released the album "Ten Easy Pieces," in which he (finally!) played his most famous songs, and with just his voice and piano. It's probably his most successful and acclaimed album. This is very much like that, except from 1971 when he was still writing his most famous songs, instead of decades later.

You're probably familiar with many of Webb's songs done by others. But odds are you've never delved into his versions of his own songs, since not many have. If that's the case, you should check this out. His voice isn't great, but it's better than many singer-songwriters who made it big on their own. And frankly, I'm not a fan of that 1972 live album and his other albums because I'm not interested in the orchestration. But he's a very good piano player, and the stripped down format allows the songs to shine.

The eighth song here has apparently never been officially released by Webb. At least I couldn't find any mention of it. I made a logical guess at the song title, coming up with "Hollywood Cross," but I have no idea if that's correct.

Although the official 1972 live album mostly uses a full band and orchestra, I noticed the version of "Galveston" on it features just his voice and guitar. Since that's an all-time classic, I decided to throw that on as a quasi bonus track. True, it's voice and guitar instead of voice and piano, but at least it's solo acoustic.

But wait, there's more! ;) While I was looking around for other Webb videos from that time period, I found a YouTube video of Webb playing the song "One of the Nicer Things" in 1968 for the TV show "Playboy After Dark." It's the only other live recording of any type I can find from the time period, and it was done with just his voice and piano, so I added that in as another quasi bonus track.

The BBC concert is 45 minutes long. But this album is 52 minutes total, adding in the two extra songs at the end.

UPDATE: On February 26, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same, but I changed the album title after discovering another BBC concert he did. That meant changing the cover art and mp3 tags too.

01 All My Love's Laughter (Jimmy Webb)
02 By the Time I Get to Phoenix (Jimmy Webb)
03 P. F. Sloan (Jimmy Webb)
04 Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb)
05 When Can Brown Begin (Jimmy Webb)
06 Didn't We (Jimmy Webb)
07 Whistletown (Jimmy Webb)
08 Hollywood Cross (Jimmy Webb)
09 MacArthur Park (Jimmy Webb)
10 Pocketful of Keys (Jimmy Webb)
11 Galveston (Jimmy Webb)
12 One of the Nicer Things (Jimmy Webb)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uqCPBiJV

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bjdh8bKBKZW4hD2/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from the exact concert in question. In February 2025, I upgraded the image thanks to the Krea AI program.