Foghat and Friends - New York Library Benefit Concert, The Palladium, New York City, 9-30-1977

Here's a very unique concert. It has less to do with Foghat and more their special guests, who were blues and R&B legends like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Johnny Winter, and Otis Blackwell.

Foghat is a rock band best known for their 1970s hits "Slow Ride" and "I Just Want to Make Love to You." But the band members were students of the blues. So when the band put together this benefit concert to be broadcast on national TV, they used it as kind of a way to educate the public about blues music. Only the first two songs were performed just by Foghat. After that, the guest stars generally took over, with Foghat only being the backing band. 

All we have of this concert is what made it onto the hour-long TV broadcast. That included some short voice-overs that introduced the guest stars. I just wanted to hear the concert with that, so I cut those bits out whenever possible. When the voice-overs went over the music, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to remove the talking while keeping the underlying music. That's why a few songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

As the show went on, some of the guests stayed on stage. By the last song, "I Just Want to Make Love to You," pretty much everyone was on stage. The song was originally performed by Muddy Waters, and he dominated the performance. But John Lee Hooker, Foghat, and some others had turns singing some of the lead vocals.

I believe everything from this concert remains officially unreleased. But if you want to see it was well as heard it, you should be able to find the video of it on YouTube.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Sweet Home Chicago (Foghat)
02 talk (Foghat)
03 It Hurts Me Too (Foghat)
04 My Baby's Gone [Edit] (Foghat & David 'Honeyboy' Edwards)
05 talk (Foghat)
06 Done Somebody Wrong [Edit] (Foghat & Eddie Kirkland)
07 Love Light [Instrumental] (Foghat & Eddie Kirkland)
08 talk (Foghat)
09 Shake Your Money Maker [Edit] (Foghat & Paul Butterfield)
10 Crawling King Snake (Foghat & John Lee Hooker)
11 talk (Foghat)
12 All Shook Up [Edit] (Foghat & Otis Blackwell)
13 talk (Foghat & Otis Blackwell)
14 Don't Be Cruel (Foghat & Otis Blackwell)
15 talk (Foghat & Johnny Winter)
16 Last Night (Foghat & Johnny Winter)
17 talk (Foghat & Muddy Waters)
18 Hoochie Coochie Man (Foghat & Muddy Waters)
19 I Just Want to Make Love to You (Foghat, Muddy Waters & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/etpduLpH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5biynw2DBpUZmMR/file

The cover comes from this exact concert. I believe that's Dave Peverett, lead vocalist of Foghat, with Muddy Waters looking at him.

Various Artists - Covered: Otis Blackwell: 1955-1983

Who the heck is Otis Blackwell, you ask? He's not exactly a household name. But he's written some of the greatest songs of all time, including "Don't Be Cruel," "Return to Sender," "Fever," and "Great Balls of Fire." I'm continuing my "Covered" series with my personal favorites of the songs he wrote.

I don't want to recount his entire life story, so here's the Wikipedia link on him if you want to learn more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis_Blackwell

I've only made one album's worth of songs from him because although he wrote many songs over the years, in my opinion only a relatively small number were special. But boy were they special! It's estimated that over 150 million records sold have his name in the songwriting credits.

Blackwell tried being a professional singer before turning all of his attention to songwriting. The first song here is sung (and written) by him. He put out a bunch of singles from 1953 to 1958, but he had very little success despite being a good singer. In fact, he recorded demos for the songs Elvis Presley turned into hits. On a rare later song from 1970, "It's All Over Me," you can see he sounds very Elvis-esque.

As with the case with many other songwriting who found success in the 1950s, that success came to a drastic half around 1964, when the Beatles and Bob Dylan drastically changed the music industry. It seems he had almost no new songs after about that time, though I've included one, "Back Trail," that was first recorded by him in 1977.

As a general rule for this Covered series, I don't like to include two versions of the same song. But I couldn't resist in this case. I put a version of "Breathless" by X at the very end of the album even though I included the original version by Jerry Lee Lewis, because I love the X version so very much.

Blackwell died in 2002 after a long life. I hope putting this album together and presenting it here will help him get a tiny bit more recognition, which he very much deserves.

This album is 48 minutes long.

UPDATE: On May 20, 2025, I added a song, "My Pidgeon's Gone." I found it while investigating another Black songwriter from this era, Jesse Stone. Though written by Blackwell (under an alias), it's actually performed by Stone under an alias, Charles Calhoun.

01 Let the Daddy Hold You (Otis Blackwell)
02 Don't Be Cruel (Elvis Presley)
03 My Pidgeon's Gone (Charles Calhoun [Jesse Stone])
04 Paralyzed (Elvis Presley)
05 Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis)
06 All Shook Up (Elvis Presley)
07 Fever (Peggy Lee)
08 Breathless (Jerry Lee Lewis)
09 Hey Little Girl (Dee Clark)
10 Please Mister Mayor (Roy Clark)
11 Let's Talk about Us (Jerry Lee Lewis)
12 Brace Yourself (Ben E. King)
13 Handy Man (Jimmy Jones)
14 Livin' Lovin' Wreck (Jerry Lee Lewis)
15 Return to Sender (Elvis Presley)
16 Home in Your Heart (Solomon Burke)
17 Daddy Rolling Stone (Who)
18 It's All Over Me (Otis Blackwell)
19 Back Trail (Lonnie Brooks)
20 Breathless (X)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/y6e8L9Mg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/cGlgWtliw8h7Fpl/file

This is the third songwriter or songwriter team I've deal with so far in this series. As with the other two, I've had a heck of a time finding any color photos, unless they're from much later in life. But I'm really happy with this pic used for the cover art, because it shows Blackwell sitting at the piano in the process of writing a song.

Note that, months later, I figured out how to colorize the pic, and did so.