Earthquake Relief Benefit, Cow Palace, Daly City, CA, 11-26-1989, Part 1 - America, Aaron Neville, Eddie Money, the Dynatones, and the Chambers Brothers

It's time for me to start posting another big collection of albums from a major rock festival. This time, it's from the Earthquake Relief Benefit, held in the San Francisco Bay Area in late 1989. I've found enough music to make 19 different albums! This actually was three concerts, all held on the same day, November 26, 1989. This is the first of six albums I'm posting that took place at the Cow Palace in Daly City, just south of San Francisco. 

This album gathers all the musical acts where I only had short sets. For the other five I have from this venue, each musical act gets their own set. The acts here are: the Dynatones, the Chambers Brothers, America, Aaron Neville, and Eddie Money.

These concerts were a reaction to the Loma Prieta earthquake, which happened on October 16, 1989, at 5:04 P.M. (I know the time well, because I was just getting out of a college class in the area when the earthquake hit. We were all okay, but the building suffered structural damage and was later closed for retrofitting.) Famously, a game of the baseball World Series was just minutes from starting at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. It had to be cancelled, but tens of millions of people around the world found out about the earthquake as it happened due to the T.V. broadcast. Although the epicenter was about ten miles northeast of Santa Cruz, there was a lot of damage in San Francisco and Oakland, due to poor construction there. 63 people died, most of them in Oakland. The earthquake registered 6.9 on the Richter Scale. 

There was lots of damage throughout the Bay Area, and thousands of injuries. It so happened the Bay Area had a vibrant music scene, and probably the most altruistic (and well known) concert promoter in the country, Bill Graham. Graham leaped into action, and got these three benefits concerts to take place only about forty days after the earthquake. They ended up raising about two million dollars to relief efforts. That was just a small amount compared to the billions needed, but it's nice to see that so many musical acts wanted to help out just the same. I would bet that even more would have liked to take part, but were tied up with concert tours or other obligations they couldn't get out of on such short notice.

Here's a Wikipedia entry about the earthquake:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake

I understand about five hours of highlights from the different concerts were shown on a local T.V. station that night. The main way funds were raised was by people watching on T.V. and donating over the phone. But, for some reason, we have a lot more than just five hours of highlights. I'm posting about 15 hours of music in total. All of it has the excellent sound quality of a soundboard or FM radio bootleg. I think that's because a lot of it became part of Bill Graham's music archive, which later was made public through the company Wolfgang's Vault, then spread to various bootleg sites. You can find video footage of most of the acts on YouTube, although sometimes one has to dig deep.

However, I couldn't find all of the music acts. Some that were billed to perform at Cow Palace included Maria Muldaur, Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, Joe Louis Walker, Narada Michael Walden, the Solid Senders, and the Brass Band. I'm pretty sure some or even all of these actually did perform, since I found some mentions of them. Maria Muldaur actually sings a duet with Aaron Neville on this album, but I believe she got her own set as well. And Paul Kantner later performed a song with Crosby, Stills and Nash, so it stands to reason he got his own set too, perhaps with former bandmate Grace Slick. If anyone knows for sure about these acts, and/or actually has the recordings, please let me know. However, according to the promotional material I found, at least I was able to find all of the best known acts.

In case you're curious, the act that performed the longest in this album was Eddie Money. His portion lasts 21 minutes. Also, I'm only guessing about the order of the acts. The exception is the Dynatones. One can tell they were the first act since the emcee introduced them that way.

This album is an hour and 21 minutes long.

01 talk by emcee (Dynatones)
02 When I Think about Love (Dynatones)
03 Shoot Your Shot (Dynatones)
04 Hard Way to Go (Dynatones)
05 talk (Chambers Brothers)
06 People Get Ready (Chambers Brothers)
07 Love, Peace and Happiness (Chambers Brothers)
08 Tin Man (America)
09 I Need You (America)
10 Ventura Highway (America)
11 talk (America)
12 Sister Golden Hair (America)
13 A Horse with No Name (America)
14 Gypsy Woman (Aaron Neville)
15 Arianne (Aaron Neville)
16 Danny Boy (Aaron Neville)
17 Don't Know Much - Mickey Mouse Club Theme (Aaron Neville)
18 Amazing Grace (Aaron Neville & Maria Muldaur)
19 Two Tickets to Paradise (Eddie Money)
20 talk (Eddie Money)
21 If I Could Walk on Water (Eddie Money)
22 I Think I'm in Love (Eddie Money)
23 Take Me Home Tonight (Eddie Money)
24 Shakin' (Eddie Money)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JKXrynpt

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/dmLzXRfeF7CQTte/file

The cover image shows Aaron Neville at this exact concert, from a screenshot I took of a video. I picked an image of him simply because the image quality was better than the screenshots I could have taken of the other acts here.

Maria Muldaur - Sprague Hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 12-2-1972

I recently posted a couple of Maria Muldaur albums. Based on some comments, it looks like those got a pretty good reaction. So when I stumbled across this concert the other day, I decided to post it right away.

One other reason I posted this is because it turns out that it was the opening act for a Bonnie Raitt concert I posted at this blog ages ago. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/09/bonnie-raitt-sprague-hall-yale.html

Given that Muldaur was the opening act, it now makes sense that she joined Raitt for the last three songs in Raitt's set. I have the impression that Muldaur and Raitt are friends, and their musical paths have crossed many times over the years. Also note that she was backed by two musicians, with David Nichtern on guitar and Freebo on bass. I believe Freedo played bass in Raitt's set as well. 

This concert took place near the very start of Muldaur's solo career. She had been a professional singer since the early 1960s, mostly as part of Jim Kweiskin and the Jug Band. Then she married Geoff Muldaur in 1969, and put out two albums with him. However, they got divorced in 1972, around the time their second album came out. So Maria launched her solo career with some touring in late 1972, then released her first solo album in 1973. That would contain the big hit "Midnight at the Oasis." At this time, she must have been relatively unknown.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 talk (Maria Muldaur)
02 Me and My Chauffeur Blues (Maria Muldaur)
03 talk (Maria Muldaur)
04 Richland Woman Blues (Maria Muldaur)
05 talk (Maria Muldaur)
06 Earl's Crab Shack (Maria Muldaur)
07 talk (Maria Muldaur)
08 Lover Man [Oh, Where Can You Be] (Maria Muldaur)
09 talk (Maria Muldaur)
10 My Blues (Maria Muldaur)
11 talk (Maria Muldaur)
12 When I Was a Cowboy (Maria Muldaur)
13 talk (Maria Muldaur)
14 I Never Did Sing You a Love Song (Maria Muldaur)
15 talk (Maria Muldaur)
16 The Day Is Past and Gone (Maria Muldaur)
17 talk (Maria Muldaur)
18 Nobody's Fault but Mine (Maria Muldaur)
19 talk (Maria Muldaur)
20 Honey Babe Blues (Maria Muldaur)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RgxDcdPW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/kAGz63H1ZAJegiu/file

The cover image is from an unknown concert in 1974. For the cover at the top, I decided to try something I've never done in Photoshop before, which is having that program turn a daytime photo into a nighttime one. This is because I figure this concert must have taken place at night, since this was the opening act of the late show. But in case you don't like that effect, or just want to stick with the original, here's the daytime version as well.

Maria Muldaur - The Bottom Line, New York City, 3-23-1976

Up until about a year ago (as I write this in August 2026), I only knew of Maria Muldaur from her hit single "Midnight at the Oasis." But in the process of posting material for this music blog, I discovered there was a lot more to her music career than just being a one-hit wonder. (Although she actually had a second Top Forty hit in the U.S. with "I'm a Woman, but I digress.) Take for instance the Great American Music Band concert I posted a few days ago, where she played in a band with Jerry Garcia, Taj Mahal, David Grisman, and others. So, now that I'm turned on to her music, when I found a very rare concert recording by her, it went straight to the top of my "albums to be posted" pile. Here it is.

Oh, and as a bonus surprise, on one songs here, Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band played lead guitar, and Mike Finnegan sang lead vocals.

At the time of this concert, Muldaur had recently released her album "Sweet Harmony." So naturally there are a lot of songs from that. I'm surprised though that this doesn't include her biggest hit, "Midnight at the Oasis."

The music here is unreleased. And, as I mentioned above, this seems to be a rare bootleg. I didn't find it on any of the bootleg sharing sites and services I use. However, the sound quality is excellent. It must either be a soundboard or an FM radio broadcast.

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 I'm a Woman (Maria Muldaur)
02 talk (Maria Muldaur)
03 Sweet Harmony (Maria Muldaur)
04 talk (Maria Muldaur)
05 Sisters and Brothers (Maria Muldaur)
06 talk (Maria Muldaur)
07 Sad Eyes (Maria Muldaur)
08 talk (Maria Muldaur)
09 My Tennessee Mountain Home (Maria Muldaur)
10 talk (Maria Muldaur)
11 Back by Fall (Maria Muldaur)
12 talk (Maria Muldaur)
13 We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye (Maria Muldaur)
14 talk (Maria Muldaur)
15 Rockin' Chair (Maria Muldaur)
16 talk (Maria Muldaur)
17 Part Time Love (Maria Muldaur with Mike Finnegan & Dickey Betts)
18 My Blues Man (Maria Muldaur)
19 I Can't Stand It (Maria Muldaur)
20 talk (Maria Muldaur)
21 As an Eagle Stireth in Her Nest (Maria Muldaur)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/AGXE9PP9 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/KVijVCV8hpGXOkD/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, California, on November 19, 1975. 

The Great American Music Band with Maria Muldaur - Pilgrimage Theater, Hollywood, CA, 4-20-1974

Back in May 2026, I posted a concert by the Great American Music Band. Here's how I described it in my write-up back then: "This band was a collaboration between David Grisman, Jerry Garcia, Taj Mahal, and others. It was a mostly instrumental and acoustic band that combined folk, bluegrass, and jazz. It was a loose association, with people coming and going." 

Unfortunately, for the Ebbets Field concert I posted then, Jerry Garcia didn't take part in that particular concert. His involvement in this music project was one of the most interesting things about it, so I was interested to find a concert where he did take part. Nothing from this band has ever been officially released. But I did find this concert with great soundboard sound quality, and it does have Garcia playing on all the songs. 

Plus, this concert has a guest vocalist: Maria Muldaur sang lead or backing vocals on many songs. Interestingly, this came right around the time her song "Midnight at the Oasis" reached the Top Ten in the U.S. singles chart. (It was released as a single in November 1973, made a slow climb, peaking in June 1974.) 

It seems this band was basically a bunch of musical friends experimenting with musical collaboration on stage. Perhaps that's why nothing from the band has ever been released. For instance, Garcia played banjo instead of guitar on all the songs, and he rarely played banjo, relatively speaking. He also didn't sing at all, and kept a low profile. Taj Mahal played stand-up bass, an instrument he also rarely played. However, he did sing some, although about half of the songs are instrumentals.

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Great American Music Band)
02 talk (Great American Music Band)
03 Limehouse Blues [Instrumental] (Great American Music Band)
04 talk (Great American Music Band)
05 Dawg's Bull [Instrumental] (Great American Music Band)
06 talk (Great American Music Band)
07 My Plastic Banana Isn't Stupid [Instrumental] (Great American Music Band)
08 talk (Great American Music Band)
09 Swing '42 [Instrumental] (Great American Music Band)
10 talk (Great American Music Band)
11 Coloured Aristocracy [Instrumental] (Great American Music Band)
12 talk (Great American Music Band)
13 Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's Arms (Great American Music Band)
14 talk (Great American Music Band)
15 Dawg's Rag [Instrumental] (Great American Music Band)
16 talk (Great American Music Band)
17 I'll Be a Gambler If You Deal the Cards (Great American Music Band)
18 talk (Great American Music Band)
19 Midnight at the Oasis (Great American Music Band)
20 talk (Great American Music Band)
21 Sweet Georgia Brown (Great American Music Band)
22 talk by emcee (Great American Music Band)
23 talk (Great American Music Band)
24 Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Great American Music Band)
25 talk by emcee (Great American Music Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1gNENLpH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/x6UZLnVagHrp0F5/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: David Grisman, Jerry Garcia, Maria Muldaur, Taj Mahal and David Nichtern. As an aside, Nichtern is the person who wrote "Midnight at the Oasis." Another band member, Richard Greene, is not shown. Bob Gurland guested on trumpet on some songs in this concert, and he also isn't shown.

Maria Muldaur - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 1-30-1974

Here's another concert from the Ebbets Field radio broadcasts. This one stars Maria Muldaur.

Muldaur is best known for the song "Midnight at the Oasis," which was written by David Nichtern, a member of her band. It reached Number Six on the U.S. singles chart in 1974. But actually, in terms of sales it should have been a Number One, because it was the 13th biggest single of the year. It was a slow grower, and stayed on the chart a long time. It was released as a single in November 1973, but didn't reach its peak chart position until June 1974. The reason I mention all that is because this concert took place right when that song was starting to climb the charts. So, while it was performed in this concert, probably neither she nor anyone in the audience realized yet what a massive hit it would be.

This concert came a few months after the release of her debut solo album, the cleverly titled "Maria Muldaur." But she'd had two albums prior to that as a duet with her husband at the title Geoff Muldaur.

 

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

This album is an hour long.

01 talk (Maria Muldaur)
02 Chauffeur Blues (Maria Muldaur)
03 talk (Maria Muldaur)
04 Any Old Time (Maria Muldaur)
05 talk (Maria Muldaur)
06 Midnight at the Oasis (Maria Muldaur)
07 talk (Maria Muldaur)
08 In My Tennessee Mountain Home (Maria Muldaur)
09 talk (Maria Muldaur)
10 Sweet Potato (Maria Muldaur)
11 talk (Maria Muldaur)
12 Three Dollar Bill (Maria Muldaur)
13 talk (Maria Muldaur)
14 I Never Did Sing You a Love Song (Maria Muldaur)
15 talk (Maria Muldaur)
16 Walkin' One and Only (Maria Muldaur)
17 talk (Maria Muldaur)
18 The Work Song (Maria Muldaur)
19 talk (Maria Muldaur)
20 Earl's Crab Shack (Maria Muldaur)
21 talk (Maria Muldaur)
22 Georgia on My Mind (Maria Muldaur)
23 talk (Maria Muldaur)
24 I'm a Woman (Maria Muldaur)
25 talk by emcee (Maria Muldaur) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Yt4QwXuG

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/KGJjNvv5Rt9fZ0r/file

The cover photo is from a 1974 concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Maria Muldaur - BBC In Concert, Cambridge Folk Festival, Cherry Hinton Hall Grounds, Cambridge, Britain, 7-28-1983

Here's a BBC concert by American singer Maria Muldaur.

Muldaur is considered a "one-hit wonder," because her song "Midnight at the Oasis" went to the Top Ten in 1973 in the U.S., and in fact was one of the best selling singles that year, yet she didn't have any other hits. However, that song is only a very small part of her musical legacy, as this concert shows.

Although this concert was recorded at the Cambridge Folk Festival, Muldaur's music couldn't simply be called folk. As her Wikipedia entry puts it, she "has recorded albums in the folk, blues, early jazz, gospel, country, and R&B traditions." There's a lot of different styles mixed together here.

Note that this is another album I never would have found had it not been for musical friend Progspog, who shared this with me. It's another extremely obscure one. I've found reference to her doing at least one other concert for the BBC, in January 1976. If anyone has that, or other BBC stuff from her, please share it with me and I'll post it here. (And then this one will get renamed to "Volume 2.") 

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 55 minutes long. 

01 talk (Maria Muldaur)
02 I'm a Woman (Maria Muldaur)
03 talk (Maria Muldaur)
04 Walkin' One and Only (Maria Muldaur)
05 talk (Maria Muldaur)
06 Any Old Time (Maria Muldaur)
07 talk (Maria Muldaur)
08 Rio de Janeiro Blues (Maria Muldaur)
09 talk (Maria Muldaur)
10 Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love (Maria Muldaur)
11 talk (Maria Muldaur)
12 It's in the Book (Maria Muldaur)
13 talk (Maria Muldaur)
14 There Must Be a Better World Somewhere (Maria Muldaur)
15 talk (Maria Muldaur)
16 Lover Man [Oh, Where Can You Be] (Maria Muldaur)
17 Midnight at the Oasis (Maria Muldaur)
18 talk (Maria Muldaur)
19 What about the Price (Maria Muldaur)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4j35ydmo

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WYs3CucvhKPyb0j/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

Randy Newman with Dr. John & Maria Muldaur: The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 9-27-1974

Here's another episode of the "Midnight Special" TV show. The host of this episode was singer-songwriter Randy Newman. He was one of the top vote getters in the poll I posted asking for most desired episodes from this show, getting the sixth most votes. But this show is shared with Maria Muldaur and Dr. John as well, with both of them getting nearly as much time as Newman.

This 1974 episode was nearly the only time Newman appeared live on the show. (He would perform one more song in 1978.) He was allowed to play eight songs, which is more than usual for this show, but then again, his songs tend to be rather short. Normally, with these shows, I just post the music from the host, plus sometimes one other guest, sometimes not, and ignore the rest. But for this one, I chose two include two guests. That's because Dr. John and Muldaur played a song together, "Three Dollar Bill," as can be seen on the cover image, and I thought their musical styles fit well with Newman's. 

All the songs come from this concert, except for two. It turns out the only other time Muldaur performed for the show was in the February 22, 1974 episode, when she played two songs, including her Number One hit "Midnight at the Oasis." So I slipped those two into the show near the end, tracks 20 and 21. Dr. John also performed two songs for the show in 1973, but I've included them on a Gladys Knight and the Pips album already. He would return to the show later as a guest in 1977 and 1979. Hopefully, I'll post those songs when they become available.

In case you're curious, the only other musical acts on this episode were Flo and Eddie of the Turtles, and Ry Cooder. Flo and Eddie performed four songs, but I didn't think they made a good fit with Newman and the others, so I didn't include them. Cooder only performed one song.   

Unfortunately, as often happens with this show, the last song, "Louisiana 1927," was cut off due to the broadcast coming to an end. The cut off happened during the last chorus in the song. So I was able to patch in the rest of the chorus from earlier in the song. But still, the song needed a proper ending for its last few seconds. I resorted to using a few seconds from a Newman concert on the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show in 1974. (I plan on posting all of that radio show episode eventually.) So that's why this one song has "[Edit]" in its title. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. As usual with episodes from the TV show, I did a lot of editing by adding more applause to smooth the transitions between songs. 

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 Mama Told Me Not to Come (Randy Newman)
02 talk (Randy Newman)
03 Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear (Randy Newman)
04 talk (Randy Newman)
05 Political Science (Randy Newman)
06 Davy and the Fat Boy (Randy Newman)
07 Sweetheart (Maria Muldaur)
08 talk (Randy Newman)
09 Let's Make a Better World (Dr. John)
10 talk (Dr. John)
11 Desitively Bonnaroo (Dr. John)
12 I Think It's Going to Rain Today (Randy Newman)
13 Three Dollar Bill (Dr. John & Maria Muldaur)
14 Lover Man [Oh, Where Can You Be] (Maria Muldaur)
15 Squeeze Me (Maria Muldaur)
16 Rolling (Randy Newman)
17 Mos' Scocious (Dr. John)
18 He Gives Us All His Love (Randy Newman)
19 Mama Don't Allow [Edit] (Dr. John)
20 Don't You Feel My Leg (Maria Muldaur)
21 Midnight at the Oasis (Maria Muldaur)
22 talk (Randy Newman)
23 Louisiana 1927 [Edit] (Randy Newman) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4Ctrgf88

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/d7IVkVT0hXDttHL/file

For the cover image, I could have taken a screenshot of Randy Newman singing and playing the piano. But I figure there are plenty of those. Whereas there probably aren't any publicly available images of Maria Muldaur and Dr. John together. So I took a screenshot of that from this exact concert.

Kate & Anna McGarrigle with Linda Ronstadt & Maria Muldaur - In Concert, Red Creek Cabaret, Rochester, NY, 6-12-1984

I stumbled across this the other day, and thought it interesting enough to post it straight away. I've been wanting to post something from Kate and Anna McGarrigle for some time. The fact that this prominently features Linda Ronstadt and Maria Muldaur made it extra appealing to me.

This comes from a TV special called "Kate and Anna McGarrigle in Concert." (I shortened it to just "In Concert" for the title because extra long titles can cause problems sometimes.) It was held in a small club in the out of the way town of Rochester, New York, for some reason. I took this from a video, converted it to audio, and broke it into mp3s. If you look at the video, only a couple hundred of people filled the club.

Most of the songs just featured Kate and Anna McGarrigle and their band. But on some songs, Linda Ronstadt and/or Maria Muldaur joined in. Sometimes they sang lead, and sometimes backing vocals. You can get the gist of what they did on each song by looking at the song list.  

Kate and Anna McGarrigle were a talented singing and songwriting duo, as well as sisters. (Kate died in 2010 at the age of 63, but Anna is still alive as I write this in 2025.) They never had any hit albums or singles per se, but they were consistently critically acclaimed. Other musical acts liked covering their songs. That's probably why Linda Ronstadt and Maria Muldaur were here, as a kind of thank you since both of them put songs written by McGarrigle on their albums. (And in a better world, "Love Over and Over" should have been a hit - I love that song. I'm glad to see it was included here.)

Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Wikipedia 

01 As Fast as My Little Feet Can Carry Me (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
02 talk (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
03 Complainte pour Ste. Catherine (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
04 talk (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
05 NaCl [Sodium Chloride] (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
06 talk (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
07 The Work Song (Maria Muldaur with Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
08 talk (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
09 Heart like a Wheel (Linda Ronstadt with Kate & Anna McGarrigle & Maria Muldaur)
10 Travellin' On for Jesus (Kate & Anna McGarrigle with Linda Ronstadt & Maria Muldaur)
11 Dig My Grave (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
12 talk (Maria Muldaur)
13 The Lying Song (Maria Muldaur)
14 talk (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
15 [Talk to Me Of] Mendocino (Linda Ronstadt with Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
16 Go Leave (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
17 talk (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
18 Tu Vas M'Accompagner [You'll Accomp'ny Me] (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
19 talk (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
20 Going Out Looking (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
21 Love Over and Over (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
22 talk (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
23 You Tell Me that I'm Falling Down (Linda Ronstadt, Maria Muldaur, Kate & Anna McGarrigle)
24 Parlez-nous a Boire (Kate & Anna McGarrigle)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9gQY7WJq

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/d30oooswLOBZKpu/file

I have a difficult time coming up with the cover. The video footage from this concert is very low-res and blurry. So any picture with multiple people in it looked pretty bad. I decided to take screenshots of the heads of Kate McGarrigle and Linda Ronstadt when they were reasonably close to each other. Then I used Photoshop to move them closer still. I also used the Krea AI program to flesh out some more detail. 

Maria Muldaur - King Biscuit Flower Hour, Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA, 12-22-1974

I have to admit I don't know much about Maria Muldaur and her music beyond her one hit, "Midnight at the Oasis," which reached the U.S. Top Ten in 1973. But I stumbled across this concert, and I thought it was intriguing because in 1974 she was performing mostly swing songs from decades earlier with a jazz band. I gave it a listen, and I liked it enough to post it. 

One album I really enjoy is "Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive," in which Joe Jackson did a kind of tribute album to jump blues from decades earlier. This is a similar sort of tribute to music that was way out of style in the early 1970s. What's even more interesting is that there isn't much overlap with her studio albums. I checked the two albums she released at the time of this concert. From her first album, "Maria Muldaur," released in 1973, she played two songs: "Any Old Time" and "Don't You Feel My Leg (Don't You Make Me High)." And from 1974's "Waitress in a Donut Shop," she played three songs: "Squeeze Me," "I'm a Woman," and "It Ain't the Meat (It's the Motion)." Also, there are no songs from the album she'd release in 1975. So about half of the songs here were not put on her albums.

It seems this concert  was not part of her usual tour at the time with her usual backing musicians. Instead, it was one of only a handful where she performed with the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars, which led to the different set list. Benny Carter had a very respected and long career as a composer, musician and bandleader. In fact, his career was so long that he first recorded in the 1920s, and ended up recording in eight different decades! (He died in 2003 at the age of 95.)

I don't know if or when I'm going to post more Maria Muldaur albums. "Midnight at the Oasis" wasn't included in this concert, though I don't know if this recording is incomplete or she just chose not to play it. But since I associate that song so strongly with her, and it was a hit the year before this concert, I stuck a live version of it at the end as a quasi bonus track. It's from a concert at Ebbets Field, Denver, Colorado, on January 30, 1974.

Everything here is unreleased, and sounds great, including the song at the end from the other source. 

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 talk (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
02 Squeeze Me (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
03 talk (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
04 Any Old Time (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
05 talk (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
06 Ain't I Good to You (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
07 talk (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
08 Sweetheart (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
09 talk (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
10 Doozy [Instrumental] (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
11 It Don't Mean a Thing [If It Ain't Got That Swing] (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
12 talk (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
13 Lover Man [Oh, Where Can You Be] (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
14 talk (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
15 Walking One and Only (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
16 talk (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
17 Don't You Get Me High [Don't You Feel My Leg] (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
18 talk (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
19 I'm a Woman (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
20 talk (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
21 It Ain't the Meat [It's the Motion] (Maria Muldaur & the Benny Carter Jazz All-Stars)
22 Midnight at the Oasis (Maria Muldaur)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Lh9xtDcC

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/6X1fS1wLxMgFHVy/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Montreux, Switzerland, on July 20, 1975. I used the Krea AI program to clean it up and sharpen it a bit.

Bonnie Raitt - I Feel So Damn Good - Non-Album Tracks (2007-2012)

I started posting Bonnie Raitt stray tracks albums in 2019. I've posted nine of them so far, and I'm still at it. Here's the tenth, with two more to go.

This is the usual mix of released and unreleased tracks, with an unusual amount of duets. The first five songs are officially released, along with track 9, "Ain't Nothin' in Ramblin'." They're the usual mix of songs from soundtracks, tribute albums, appearances on other artists' albums, and the like.

The unreleased songs all have excellent sound quality. "Done Changed My Way of Living" is from a TV show appearance with no studio audience, and "A Sunday Kind of Love" is from a TV show appearance with an audience. The other two are from concert bootlegs. Since this is a mix of live and studio tracks, I used audio editing programs to wipe out the crowd noise on the live ones.

The bonus track is just a bonus track for two reasons. One, the sound quality is rough. (It's from an audience bootleg.) But also, it's a Marc Cohn that had Cohn singing most of it, and Raitt only on backing vocals. Still, it has a lot of good slide guitar work from Raitt, so I figured it was worth bonus track status, at least.

This album is 40 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Bartender's Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Walking the Dog (Bonnie Raitt & Weepin' Willie Robinson)
03 Separation Blues [Mama's Gone, Goodbye] (Maria Muldaur & Bonnie Raitt)
04 Premature (Toots & the Maytals & Bonnie Raitt)
05 Yes We Can, Can (Maria Muldaur, Bonnie Raitt & Linda Tillery)
06 Done Changed My Way of Living (Taj Mahal & Bonnie Raitt)
07 She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride (Taj Mahal & Bonnie Raitt)
08 A Sunday Kind of Love (Alicia Keys & Bonnie Raitt)
09 Ain't Nothin' in Ramblin' (Bonnie Raitt)
10 I Feel So Damn Good [I'll Be Glad When I Got the Blues] (Bonnie Raitt with Mike Finnigan)

29 Ways (Marc Cohn with Bonnie Raitt)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16182058/BONNRITT2007-2012_IFelSoDmnGod_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from 2007. I don't know any details.

Bonnie Raitt - Sprague Hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 12-2-1972

In deciding what music to post at this blog, I've generally been prioritizing my stray tracks collections, because I figure those usually are unique. But I have lots of unreleased full concerts, and I plan on posting a lot more of those once my stray tracks albums start to run out. I figure there are tons of ways one can get full concerts from the Internet these days.

In some cases though, I'm able to offer something that's different from the usual concert recordings that float through cyberspace. The Kinks 1974 concert I just posted is one example, where I found some extra songs and made some sonic adjustments. This is another example, where my version of the concert is different.

First off, I should mention that this is one of the best Bonnie Raitt bootlegs of all time. It may well be my personal favorite. Both sets on one night were recorded as a soundboard, because it all was played live over the radio. So it stands out in terms of length and sound quality. Also, for the first couple of years of Raitt's career, she played her concerts acoustically (usually just herself and a bassist, though this concert also has a piano player join in), so it's neat to hear the songs done quite differently than the full band album arrangements. On top of that, she played lots of songs that never made any of her albums. (I'm including those on my stray tracks collections, including using a few songs from this very show.)

To make a long story short, if you like Bonnie Raitt's music, especially from her early years when she was more folky and bluesy and less poppy and commercial, you should listen to this.

Now, as to what I've changed, this is another case of "less is more." I've removed all the songs from the second set that were played in this first set. I generally dislike having two versions of the same song on one album, but that's especially true here where the songs only occasionally have solos to distinguish them. Additionally, all through the concert, Raitt was bedeviled by her guitar getting out of tune, so she had to tune it up at length after nearly every song. At once point, she was so exasperated that she asked out loud why her guitar was getting out of tune so quickly, and at another point she apologized to the crowd for all the time wasted with the tuning.

But you don't have to waste time listening to Raitt endlessly tuning her guitar between songs. I lopped off about twenty minutes of that in total. But I still kept all of the between song banter, of which there is a lot. If she was talking while tuning, I generally kept that, so you do get some tuning, but not much. Also, she sometimes spoke quietly between songs. I adjusted the volume so you can better hear those bits. I suspect she had a cold (she mentioned it was cold and snowy outside), because she coughed between songs some too. I removed most of the coughing.

I was able to make some other changes too. For instance, the version of "Bluebird" in the first set was bad due to the recording being wavery, so I simply used the version from the second set instead. I think it makes for a much better listen. There were still other fixes, but I think you get the gist. The bottom line is, I've cut out the fat and made some changes so you can focus on the songs and the entertaining between song banter. I think that if this concert was readied to be an official release (and it should be!), the producers would make the same kinds of edits that I did.

By the way, one curious aspect to this recording is that Raitt pretty much appears in one stereo channel, and all the other musicians (the bassist, piano player, and Maria Muldaur singing back-up vocals on the last three songs) are on the other stereo channel. It's extreme separation. I didn't make any changes (except to tweak the stereo balance for a couple of songs), but I thought I'd mention it.

After all the changes mentioned above, the concert is an hour and 46 minutes long. The unedited version is two and a half hours long.

01 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Love Me like a Man (Bonnie Raitt)
03 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
04 That Song about the Midway (Bonnie Raitt)
05 Going Down to Louisiana - Rollin' and Tumblin' (Bonnie Raitt)
06 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
07 You Got to Know How (Bonnie Raitt)
08 Nothing Seems to Matter (Bonnie Raitt)
09 Big Road (Bonnie Raitt)
10 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
11 Write Me a Few of Your Lines - Kokomo Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
12 Special Delivery Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
13 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
14 Too Long at the Fair (Bonnie Raitt)
15 Women Be Wise (Bonnie Raitt)
16 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
17 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt)
18 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Walk On By (Bonnie Raitt)
20 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
21 Blender Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
22 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
23 Can't Find My Way Home (Bonnie Raitt)
24 Any Day Woman (Bonnie Raitt)
25 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
26 Under the Falling Sky (Bonnie Raitt)
27 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
28 I Ain't Blue (Bonnie Raitt)
29 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
30 Bluebird (Bonnie Raitt)
31 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
32 Walking Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
33 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
34 Since I Fell for You (Bonnie Raitt)
35 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)
36 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
37 Baby What You Want Me to Do (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)
38 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
39 I Know (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SYFyxDzX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/ESW3IJFsfaZSzdM/file

The cover art photo is from 1973, from Los Angeles in the summer of 1973.