Paul Williams with Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 6-29-1973

Here's another episode of Paul Williams on the "Midnight Special" TV show. This time, he was joined by Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge.

I already posted an album of Williams hosting this show in 1973. That episode aired at the start of June 1973. Remarkably, he was back to host the show again at the end of June. I've looked over a lot of these show episodes, and I have yet to see another case of the host being the same twice in one month.

Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge were married from 1973 to 1980. During that time, they did a lot of musical collaboration, so it's not surprising they were both on the same episode of this show, even though they mostly did their own songs. I've included their songs because they joined Williams on a version of "Me and Bobby McGee," a song written by Kristofferson. In case you're curious, here are the other music acts on the June 29th show hosted by Williams: the Electric Light Orchestra, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, King Harvest, and Brewer and Shipley.

All the songs here are from the June 29, 1973 episode, except for the last two. Those two are from an episode aired on July 19, 1974. Williams also hosted another episode in 1976, so I'll probably post that once it becomes available. And he performed two other songs in 1974, but I plan to put that on a different album where he was a guest of the Righteous Brothers, and sang a song with them.

As usual for this show, everything is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. I started with the YouTube video, converted it to audio, and broke it into mp3s. Then I added in audience noise between some songs to help link them together.

This album is 41 minutes long. 

01 Someday Man (Paul Williams)
02 talk (Paul Williams)
03 talk (Paul Williams)
04 Loving Her Was Easier [Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again] (Kris Kristofferson)
05 talk (Paul Williams)
06 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (Rita Coolidge)
07 That's What Friends Are For (Paul Williams)
08 I Never Had It So Good (Rita Coolidge with Kris Kristofferson)
09 Out of Mind, Out of Sight (Kris Kristofferson)
10 My Crew (Rita Coolidge)
11 talk (Paul Williams & Kris Kristofferson)
12 Me and Bobby McGee (Paul Williams, Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge)
13 Look What I Found (Paul Williams)
14 You Know Me (Paul Williams)
15 Driftwood (Paul Williams)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NzzyfFbw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/BrjeHxt1qzKC38b/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. It's a screenshot I took during the one song done with Williams, Kristofferson, and Coolidge. Williams is in the middle, and Kristofferson is the one with the beard.

Paul Williams - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 6-1-1973

When I posted a poll about which "Midnight Special"-based live albums would be most wanted, singer-songwriter Paul Williams did much better than I had expected. So, to honor that, here's a Midnight Special album from him already.

Williams was on the show a bunch of a times. As a result, I was able to make two albums out of the currently available 1973-1975 material. Plus, he hosted the show again in 1976, so I should be able to make another album when that becomes available. 

(By the way, I recently figured out the episodes are being posted at YouTube at a steady once a week rate. There are over 200 episodes still to be posted. So it could take four more years to get to them all!)

This first album of his is compiled from three appearances. The first three tracks come from the episode broadcast on February 9, 1973. The next four come from the episode broadcast on March 9, 1973. Then he was the host for the June 1, 1973 episode, so the rest of the tracks come from that. In case you're curious, the other musical acts on the episode he hosted were Slade, the Stylistics, Argent, the Statler Brothers, Gunhill Road, and Sydney Jordan.

In case you don't know about Williams, he was a very successful singer and songwriter in the 1970s. I plan on posting a "Covered" album highlighting covers of his songs along with those of his frequent songwriting partner Roger Nichols. But he also was probably even better known as an actor. I was a kid in the 1970s, and I remember seeing him as a guest star on practically every show, it seemed, especially musical variety shows. Here's a quote from Wikipedia: "He made numerous television appearances in the 1970s and 1980s, including on The Odd Couple, Hawaii Five-O, Match Game '79, Hollywood Squares, The Love Boat, Police Woman, Fantasy Island, The Hardy Boys, The Fall Guy, The Flip Wilson Special, Gimme a Break!, and The Gong Show."

His career petered out in the 1980s due to excessive drug use. However, he recovered from his addictions in the 1990s and has had continued success in the entertainment industry since then (as I write this in 2025). Here's his Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more:

Paul Williams (songwriter) - Wikipedia 

Despite having show business charisma and a good voice, he never had any big hits of his own, though he wrote many hits for other. Perhaps that's the reason that I couldn't find any sign of concert recordings from him, bootleg or official, except for one official live album recorded much later, after 2000. So this could be the first concert recording from him in his 1970s ever made publicly available.

Williams sang "Drift Away" here. That was a very big hit for Dobie Gray at the time of this TV show, reaching Number Five in the U.S. singles chart in 1973. But while Paul Williams didn't write it, his brother Mentor Williams did. I'm a bit surprised he didn't mention that before singing it. I checked, and it looks like Paul Williams never released a version of that song.

As usual with this TV show, I converted the YouTube video to audio then cut it into mp3s. I patched in extra applause to better link the songs together. So this should sound like a single concert instead of parts of three concerts frequently broken up by commercials.  

This album is 37 minutes long. 

01 talk by Johnny Rivers (Paul Williams)
02 Out in the Country (Paul Williams)
03 I Won't Last a Day without You (Paul Williams)
04 An Old Fashioned Love Song (Paul Williams)
05 talk (Paul Williams)
06 Drift Away (Paul Williams)
07 That's Enough for Me (Paul Williams)
08 My Love and I (Paul Williams)
09 talk (Paul Williams)
10 Let Me Be the One (Paul Williams)
11 We've Only Just Begun (Paul Williams)
12 talk (Paul Williams)
13 Rainy Days and Mondays (Paul Williams)
14 I Never Had It So Good (Paul Williams) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hzyJpBcj

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/fLKia9NgLXHlwK3/file

The cover photo is from one of the appearances Williams made that have been compiled here. It's the first appearance, on February 9, 1973.