Little Feat & Friends - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 6-10-1977

Here's a very interesting episode of the "Midnight Special" TV show. The main host of the episode was the band Little Feat. But Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, and Jesse Winchester were on the show too, and all four of these musical acts performed together in various combinations. 

If you've been paying attention at all to this blog in the last week or so (as I write this in late October 2025), you'll notice I've been posting a lot of albums based on Midnight Special episodes lately. So far, only the shows from 1973 to 1975 have been posted in high quality on YouTube, with a chronological rollout slowly continuing. But occasional shows from later years were already bootlegged. There aren't many cases of that, and most of them are incomplete and/or have lesser sound quality. But I found this one in full with excellent quality, so I've decided to post it already. No doubt it's survived as a bootleg when most other episodes didn't because of the special collaborations.

The musical acts mentioned above were not the only ones on the show. In addition, Neil Young appeared for one song, and Weather Report performed three songs. I didn't include the Young song, because it wasn't really from the episode, but it was a video of him performing "Like a Hurricane" at some unknown concert. Had he actually been there, I would have included it, and I'll bet he would have interacted with some of the others too. (Most likely Emmylou Harris, since she sang backing vocals on some of his songs right around this time.) As for Weather Report, I didn't include them because they didn't fit in musically with the others, and there was no collaboration between them and the others. This is another case where I feel less is more, by having musical cohesion to the album.

I took the music from a bootleg. But I patched in more applause at the ends of some songs to help smooth the transitions between songs. And there were edits to two songs. I edited Wolfman Jack's introduction to get rid of the mentions of Neil Young and Weather Report. "Rock and Roll Doctor" by Little Feat was more difficult. This was another case of the show ending in the middle of song. So I found a soundboard bootleg of a Little Feat from Kansas City in 1977, and used that version of "Rock and Roll Doctor" to finish off the last three minute or so.

This album is 48 minutes long. 

01 talk [Edit] (Wolfman Jack)
02 Queen of the Silver Dollar (Emmylou Harris with Little Feat)
03 Dixie Chicken (Little Feat with Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt & Jesse Winchester)
04 talk (Little Feat)
05 Runaway (Bonnie Raitt)
06 talk (Emmylou Harris)
07 Rhumba Man (Jesse Winchester)
08 Old Folks Boogie (Little Feat)
09 talk (Little Feat & Jesse Winchester)
10 I Can't Stand Up Alone (Jesse Winchester with Emmylou Harris & Bonnie Raitt)
11 talk (Jesse Winchester)
12 Home (Bonnie Raitt)
13 talk (Little Feat)
14 Nothing but a Breeze (Jesse Winchester with Emmylou Harris)
15 Rocket in My Pocket (Little Feat)
16 My Songbird (Emmylou Harris)
17 Sugar Mama (Bonnie Raitt)
18 talk (Little Feat)
19 Rock and Roll Doctor [Edit] (Little Feat)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fDdTEYhP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/B1Dw5Vdo0jkhFj3/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. It's actually a combination of two different screenshots. At one point in the YouTube video, the camera panned from Lowell George to Emmylou Harris, then to Bonnie Raitt. The three of them were never in the frame at the same time. But I was able to take the two screenshots and stitch them together to get all three of them together.

Bonnie Raitt & John Hammond Jr. with Lowell George - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, 10-17-1972

Here's a very good acoustic concert split between sets performed by Bonnie Raitt and John Hammond Jr., in 1972. But also, Lowell George, the lead guitarist for Little Feat, played on most of Raitt's songs and a couple of those by Hammond Jr., and even sang one song of his own.

This concert was part of a series of concerts hosted by the radio station WLIR on Long Island, in New York. From 1971 to 1975, they usually broadcast a live show from their Ultrasonic Recording Studios every Tuesday night. They had a really great selection of musical acts. And while these concerts took place in front of a studio audience, it was very small. I came across an article saying that no more than 60 people could fit in the small venue. So these concerts stand out because while there was an audience, the fact that it was a small one, and it was being professionally recorded by a radio station meant the sound quality was excellent.

I already have way too many albums I want to post at this blog. That said, I've decided to make a more concerted effort to post more of these WLIR Ultrasonic concerts. It turns out I've already posted five of them, concerts by: Fleetwood Mac, Lou Reed, Jonathan Edwards, the Doobie Brothers, and Dr. John. If you want to find them, I've made a new label called "WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series," so look for that at the side bar on any webpage at my blog. I just redid the album covers of all five of those albums I've posted already, so they all can share the same font type and color. In case you're curious, I've found 30 more concerts recorded for that radio show, and there's probably still more out there.

Anyway, getting back to this specific concert, Raitt's long music career had just begun at the time. It took place a month after she released her second studio album, "Give It Up." John Hammond Jr. is the son of John Hammond, a legendary record producer, who helped start the music careers of Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and many, many more. John Hammond Jr. has spent most of his music career playing the blues, especially by singing and playing the harmonica and slide guitar. At the time of this concert, he was already a music veteran having released about a dozen albums since 1963.

Fun fact about Hammond Jr.: in 1966, Jimi Hendrix was the lead guitarist in his band, for about a week, just before Hendrix left to try to make it big in England. Then, in 1967, after making it big there, Hendrix was back in the U.S. where he was still relatively unknown, and had some time off. So he sat in with Hammond Jr.'s band again for another week, and at the same time, Eric Clapton sat in with the band as well! Too bad nobody made any recordings of that. Here's the source of that story:

Tangled up in blues | AudioFile | Colorado Springs Independent 

For this concert, Raitt performed in acoustic mode for the first half. She was backed just by Freebo, a bassist, on all her songs. Plus, for all but two of her songs, she was also backed by Lowell George on lead guitar. Then George sang one of the songs he wrote for his band Little Feat, "Apolitical Blues." Hammond Jr. also played on two of Raitt's songs. At that point, Hammond Jr. took over for the second half of the concert. He played five songs by himself. Then, for the last two songs, he was joined by Raitt and George. The changing musicians are a bit confusing, so look to the names mentioned in the song list.

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

This album is an hour and 19 minutes long. 

01 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Love Me like a Man (Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George)
03 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
04 Under the Falling Sky (Bonnie Raitt)
05 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
06 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt)
07 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
08 Going Down to Louisiana - Rollin' and Tumblin' (Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George)
09 talk (Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George)
10 Can't Find My Way Home (Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George)
11 tuning (Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George)
12 Big Road (Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George & John Hammond Jr.)
13 You Got to Know How (Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George)
14 talk (Bonnie Raitt with Lowell George)
15 Apolitical Blues (Lowell George with Bonnie Raitt & John Hammond Jr.)
16 talk (John Hammond Jr. & Bonnie Raitt)
17 Riding in the Moonlight (John Hammond Jr.)
18 talk (John Hammond Jr.)
19 As the Years Go Passing By (John Hammond Jr.)
20 All Night Long (John Hammond Jr.)
21 talk (John Hammond Jr.)
22 I Can't Be Satisfied (John Hammond Jr.)
23 The Sky Is Crying (John Hammond Jr.)
24 talk (John Hammond Jr.)
25 Honest I Do (John Hammond Jr. with Bonnie Raitt & Lowell George)
26 talk (John Hammond Jr. with Bonnie Raitt & Lowell George)
27 It's Too Late (John Hammond Jr. with Bonnie Raitt & Lowell George)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RVd7h517

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/sq7mBENPRmetmhj/file

I found a photo of everyone involved here taken backstage at this exact concert. However, I decided not to use it for the album cover, for a couple of reasons. One is that the picture is in black and white, and is low-res. It would be hard to make it look good, and to colorize it. But the other problem is there are a bunch of people in the photo who I'd rather not be there. Still, it's an interesting photo, especially in showing Bonnie Raitt sitting in the lap of John Hammond Jr. Here it is, if you're curious.

As for the actual cover photo used, I wanted to find a photo of Raitt and Hammond together, but I couldn't find a good one. So I went with a photo of just Raitt in concert, in 1971. It was black and white, so I colorized it using the Kolorize program. (It's way easier to colorize a photo with just one person in it.)  

Various Artists - Lowell George Tribute Concert, The Forum, Los Angeles, CA, 8-4-1979

Lowell George was the lead guitarist and a key songwriter for the band Little Feat throughout the 1970s. In 1979, the band split up due to creative differences, and George released a solo album. He announced plans to restart the band with a slightly different line-up. But on June 29, 1979, while on tour to support his solo album, he died of a heart attack related to an accidental heroin overdose. He was only 34 years old. Only a couple of months after his death, a tribute concert was held in Los Angeles to celebrate his life and his music. Here is what remains available from that concert.

I'm posting this album almost entirely due to the efforts of musical friend Lil Panda. A couple of days ago (as I write this in August 2025), he sent me this concert out of the blue. He'd found a video from the concert on YouTube. The sound quality was fundamentally good, but had issues. I asked him what he did to fix it, and this was his reply: "Phase correction, azimuth adjustment, de-clicking, music rebalance (different for almost every song... trial and error), the repair assistant (vocal work), and spectral repair." So, thanks to his work, this should sound much better than ever before.

Furthermore, I made some additional changes, since I'm more willing to make changes to bootlegs if I think it improves the overall recording. I noticed some minor drop-outs here and there, usually only a second or less of silence. I patched those up when I found them. That's why three of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. 

In addition, the video did something strange with the songs "Running on Empty" and "All That You Dream." If you watch the video, they're edited to seem complete, but in fact both of them were edited way down, to less than two minutes long each. By sheer luck, the only officially released performance from this concert is "All That You Dream," from the Little Feat album "Hoy Hoy," and it's the entire song. So I used that instead. For "Running on Empty," most of the song except for the first verse and some of the end was missing. I used a different live version of this song, from the 1979 No Nukes concerts that I've posted elsewhere on this blog, to fill in the missing part of the song. But there are some differences between the versions, so you might notice the edits. Still, I prefer that over having a weirdly short version. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title too.

In addition, I made another edit to all the songs. That's because the video usually cut the cheering at the ends of the songs short, to just a couple of seconds. It didn't sound right to me. So I did some copying and pasting of cheering from one song to another until all the songs had a decent amount of applause. 

I found a 1979 New York Times article about the concert, so I know a little bit about it. Here's the article link (though it may not work for you if you don't have a subscription):

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/06/archives/pop-coast-tribute-to-lowell-george.html 

According to the concert, the proceeds from the concert were given to George's family. The concert lasted almost three hours. In addition to the big names included in this album, some others also took part, like Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, Eric Kaz, Craig Fuller, J. D. Souther, Ted Tempelman, and the Tower of Power. But the video here is less than an hour long, and a lot got cut out. Either their roles were cut entirely or they only had minor roles. For instance, Michael McDonald sang back up on one song here, and the Tower of Power horns played on a few of the songs. Generally speaking, Little Feat was the backing band. But I didn't include them in most of the song credits because that would have made the song names longer and I didn't know for sure who played on which song.

The article states that some big musical stars, like Bob Dylan and the Eagles, wanted to perform at the concert as well. However, the surviving Little Feat band members who organized the concert decided to keep it to just the other musicians who knew George well. There also was pressure to have more than one concert, since interest was extremely high, but they decided not to go that route either.

The concert was filmed and recorded with the idea of later releasing an album or film of it. But so far, only that one song mentioned above has been officially released, on a Little Feat album. I've read on social media that it is believed the rest of the film footage has been lost. So this is probably all we're ever going to get. I couldn't even find any information about what other songs were performed, though there must have been many since this is only about one-third of the entire concert.

Thanks again to Lil Panda for digging this up, improving it, and sending it to me. 

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Tears, Tears and More Tears (Nicolette Larson)
02 Rhumba Girl (Nicolette Larson & Linda Ronstadt)
03 Oh Atlanta [Edit] (Little Feat with Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt & Nicolette Larson)
04 Runaway [Edit] (Bonnie Raitt with Michael McDonald)
05 Here, There and Everywhere (Emmylou Harris)
06 For a Dancer [Edit] (Jackson Browne)
07 Running on Empty [Edit] (Jackson Browne)
08 talk (Jackson Browne)
09 Your Bright Baby Blues (Jackson Browne)
10 Poor, Poor Pitiful Me (Linda Ronstadt with Nicolette Larson)
11 Blowin' Away (Linda Ronstadt & Bonnie Raitt)
12 All That You Dream (Linda Ronstadt with Nicolette Larson & Rosemary Butler)
13 Willin' (Linda Ronstadt with Emmylou Harris, Rosemary Butler & Nicolette Larson)
14 Dixie Chicken (Little Feat & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bLDhuADx

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/dwuvGZGMKED7Jiy/file

I had difficulty finding any decent photographs from this concert. There's an entire video of it on YouTube, as mentioned above, but the image quality is very low-res. I eventually found one image I was okay with, which I used as the cover. From right to left, it shows Nicolette Larson, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, and Linda Ronstadt. Souther's prominent role is a bit ironic, since he doesn't feature in the actual music here, due to whatever songs he was in not making it to the video. It kind of looks like I edited the photo to squish everyone close together, but in fact that's how it was in the original.

The image was still in pretty poor shape, so I tried to use the Krea AI program to improve it. But I could only do so much, so it's still rough. I also couldn't change the lighting that turned most everything orange, though I tried to make it more colorful.