Various Artists - Peace Sunday, Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA, 6-6-1982, Part 3: Stevie Wonder and Joan Baez & Bob Dylan

Here's the third out of five albums that make up the "Peace Sunday" concert in 1982. Musically, this concert is best known for the songs Bob Dylan sang with Joan Baez, and you'll find them in this part.

I'll just paste in a paragraph I wrote in my post for Part 2, since it still applies here:

If you want a full explanation of what the concert was about, please read my write-up for Part 1. In that, I also explained about the sound quality issue. In short, the only known source for the whole concert is an audience bootleg. It didn't sound very good, so this concert recording hasn't been shared that much. But I could tell there was potential there, if I could get rid of most of the much. As I explained in detail in my write-up, I think I did get rid of most of it. It still doesn't have excellent sound, but it's pretty good, and worthy of being posted at my blog, where I have pretty high sound quality standards.

Now, let's get to the music. This part of the concert started with some songs by Stevie Wonder. Just one month before this concert, he released a best of album called "Stevie Wonder's Original Musiquarium I." It contained four new songs, and he performed two of them here, "Front Line" and "Do I Do." He also had a new songs written for the occasion, but it seems he and his band couldn't practice the song enough in time to his satisfaction, so he simply spoke the lyrics instead. I don't know the actual name of the song/poem, but I made an educated guess of "Throw Down in the Name of Love." If anyone knows a better title, please let me know.

The rest of this part of the concert consists of a set by Joan Baez, capped by three songs where she was joined by Bob Dylan. The two of them had a long personal history together, especially since they were romantically linked for a couple of years in the 1960s. The two of them toured together in 1975 and 1976. But after that, they didn't appear on stage together again until this concert. Then they were stage some more in 1984. As far as I know, they have been on stage together again in the many years since then.

Dylan wasn't one of the scheduled performers, so his appearance here was a pleasant surprise. That was especially the case because he basically took all of 1982 off. He didn't release or record any music, and this was his one and only concert appearance. They dueted on two classic Dylan anti-war songs, which were ideal for the occasion. The third song they sang was a real surprise though: "A Pirate Looks at Forty," by Jimmy Buffett. I'm pretty sure that's the only time Dylan ever sang a Jimmy Buffett song in concert.

Unfortunately, Dylan's performance wasn't the best. If you listen, it's pretty clear he did little to no practice with Baez. He even got the lyrics to "Blowin' in the Wind" wrong, singing the same verse twice. But still, it was great to have his involved with this concert. Since the mid-1960s, he's rarely been overtly politically active, but he was making his voice heard on the issue of nuclear disarmament by singing these particular songs at this particular concert.

I mentioned in my write-up to Part 1 that I spent a long time fixing the sound quality issues with this concert. I could have put "[Edit]" on all the songs, since I edited every single one of them a lot. But since I did the same treatment to all of them, I've saved that for the most extreme edits. There's one case here, with "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man." On top of all the other problems I was fixing, the beginning of the song was missing. Probably, the taper was saving tape by stopping during long pauses between songs, and then was a little slow it hitting "record" again in this case. But luckily, the lyrics at the start of the song were repeated later in the song, so I was able to fill in the missing section. 

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

Note that, for all the parts, the track numbers continue from the numbers in the previous part. That way, you can put all the songs together and listen to the whole thing at once if you want. 

33 talk (Stevie Wonder)
34 Front Line (Stevie Wonder)
35 talk (Stevie Wonder)
36 Throw Down in the Name of Love [Spoken Lyrics] (Stevie Wonder)
37 Master Blaster [Jammin'] (Stevie Wonder)
38 Do I Do (Stevie Wonder)
39 We Demand World Peace Today (Stevie Wonder)
40 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man [Edit] (Joan Baez)
41 talk (Joan Baez)
42 Warriors of the Sun (Joan Baez)
43 Imagine (Joan Baez)
44 Diamonds and Rust (Joan Baez)
45 talk (Joan Baez)
46 With God on Our Side (Joan Baez & Bob Dylan)
47 A Pirate Looks at Forty (Joan Baez & Bob Dylan)
48 Blowin' in the Wind (Joan Baez & Bob Dylan)
49 talk (emcee)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rZFaw6jr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/XxOyn7vxXc2PzU7/file

The cover image of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Paul Simon, Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, CA, 2-15-2001

The good news is, I have another MusiCares tribute concert to post. The bad news is, this is the last one I can find. Hopefully, some others will show up eventually. But in the meantime, here's a tribute to Paul Simon, from 2001.

Before I say anything about this album, I want to mention the MusiCares tributes I still can't find (or don't exist). With this one included, I've posted nine of them. But there are 23 more that I would still love to hear. Here's the list of the missing ones:

2025: Grateful Dead    
2023: Berry Gordy & Smokey Robinson
2022: Joni Mitchell
2020: Aerosmith
2018: Fleetwood Mac    
2017: Tom Petty    
2015: Bob Dylan
2009: Neil Diamond    
2008: Aretha Franklin
2007: Don Henley    
2004: Sting    
2003: Bono
2002: Billy Joel    
2000: Elton John
1999: Stevie Wonder
1998: Luciano Pavarotti
1997: Phil Collins
1996: Quincy Jones    
1995: Tony Bennett
1994: Gloria Estefan
1993: Natalie Cole
1992: Bonnie Raitt
1991: David Crosby 

Getting back to this concert, this actually has an audience bootleg source. All the other MusiCares concerts I've posted come from DVDs or TV. But don't worry much about the source issue. This is an unusually good sounding audience boot. Plus, I made some big improvements. I used the MVSEP program to get rid of all the audience noise during songs while keeping the audience cheering at the ends of songs. Then I ran all the songs through MVSEP again, boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments. In my opinion, the end result is this sounds nearly as good as the other MusiCares concerts.

This followed the same formula as typical tribute concerts, with various guest stars singing cover versions, then an acceptance speech by Simon, and finally Simon played a couple of songs. But one thing that's a bit different is that Simon is friends with some professional comedians, so there was more comedy than normal for this kind of concert. In addition to Chevy Chase and Michael McKean acting as emcees, Steve Martin did about a five minute comedy routine while introducing Simon.

This unreleased album is an hour and 11 minutes long. 

01 talk (Chevy Chase)
02 You Can Call Me Al (Macy Gray)
03 talk (Chevy Chase)
04 Born in Puerto Rico (Ruben Blades & Danny Rivera)
05 talk (Chevy Chase & Gloria Estefan)
06 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Gloria Estefan)
07 talk (Chevy Chase)
08 Mother and Child Reunion (Ziggy Marley)
09 talk (Chevy Chase)
10 American Tune (Shawn Colvin)
11 talk (Chevy Chase & Stevie Wonder)
12 Loves Me like a Rock (Stevie Wonder & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
13 talk (Michael McKean)
14 Tenderness (Shelby Lynne)
15 talk (Michael McKean & Brian Wilson)
16 The Sound of Silence (Brian Wilson)
17 talk (Michael McKean)
18 Homeward Bound (Joan Osborne & the Chieftans)
19 talk (Steve Martin)
20 Graceland (Paul Simon)
21 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
22 talk (Paul Simon)
23 The Boxer (Paul Simon)
24 talk (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LydU3Q4g

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/EE3jBlACedR3V1o/file

The cover photo is from this exact event, though I think it was from backstage before or after the concert. There was some distracting stuff in the background, so I replaced that with blackness in Photoshop. From right to left: Tony Bennett, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, and Shelby Lynne.

Various Artists - 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 10-29-2009

Here's a really great concert filled with lots of big stars performing classic songs. It was a two-day concert in New York City, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm posting both days of the concert, and this is the first one. I highly recommend this.

This two-day long concert had an unusual and interesting format: eight major artists were chosen: Crosby, Stills and Nash, Paul Simon (with and without Art Garfunkel), Stevie Wonder, and Bruce Springsteen for the first day, and Aretha Franklin, Jeff Beck, Metallica, and U2 for the second day. Each of those major stars were hosts for one fourth of the days they were on. Then they invited other stars to join them, to play a song or two. For instance, the first major artist, Crosby, Stills and Nash, had Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor as their guests. The result was that, between the major stars and their guests, most of the major areas of rock and roll going back to the 1950s were represented. 

There were some key gaps though. For instance, although Mick Jagger was a guest on the second day to represent the Rolling Stones, there really wasn't any special representation of the Beatles, the most important musical act of all. (Although there were occasional covers of Beatles songs, at least.) Bob Dylan was also very missed. But then again, you can only do so much in two concerts containing about four hours each. 

I spent a long time putting this together. It was quite tricky. I was able to find all the songs from this, the first night, but only two and a half hours from the second night, even though that one probably lasted about four hours as well. The main source I used was an officially released DVD. But the longest version of that was only about three hours for both concerts combined. Plus, many of those were bonus tracks, which meant they were out of order and often had the starts and ends cut off.

Luckily for me, Wikipedia came through for me particularly well, with a list of all the songs performed in the correct order, including lots of details. You can see that, and more info about the concert, here:

25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts - Wikipedia 

From that, I was able to figure out the songs I was missing, and try to find them. It turns out four hours of highlights were shown on HBO the year the concert happened. That was longer than the DVD, so I found some extra songs there. Then I found an audience bootleg of the entire first day. That's why I was able to include all the songs. However, the sound quality of the songs from the audience bootleg was significantly poorer than the songs from the DVD and the HBO broadcast. But, luckily, I was able to clean things up quite a lot, by putting a lot of effort into audio editing. I ran all the audience boot sourced songs through two processes that I use in cases like this. For one thing, I used the MVSEP audio editing program to raise the volume of the lead vocals in contrast to the instruments. (That is such a common problem for concert bootlegs.) Then I also used MVSEP to wipe out the crowd noise during the songs, while keeping the cheers at the beginnings and ends of songs. In my opinion, that made the quality gap between the different sources a lot smaller, though still noticeable. ("Marrakesh Express" is an example of one of the audience boot sourced songs, and the songs just before and after it are not, if you want to make a comparison.)

However, I still had a lot of work to do. Another problem with the audience boot-sourced song is that the cheering at the ends of songs sounded quite different, with the sound of clapping of individual people near the taper more prominent. I mostly fixed this by copying and pasting cheering from the ends of DVD-sourced songs, and slathering it over the cheering of the audience boot-sourced songs. I also had a lot of transition issues. It was rare to have two songs in a row from the same source. I generally fixed that by patching in more generic cheering. Yet another problem was the banter between songs. The ones from the audience boot-sourced songs sounded really weak. So I did extra editing to pull the actual talking out from the background noise. 

I could go on and on. There were lots of little tweaks. But I'm hoping that the end result is this will sound like one coherent concert from one source, more or less, and you won't notice the "making of the sausage" with all the editing to get it to sound that way. It would be really great if this whole thing gets officially released one day, in top quality. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that.

One thing that makes this concert special is all the collaborations. There are too many to count. Lots and lots of big names performing songs together, and usually the only time they ever did that for the songs. There were some interesting cover versions as well, as an attempt to have some inclusion of famous musician who died or otherwise didn't attend. Stevie Wonder singing the Michael Jackson song "The Way You Make Me Feel" and Paul Simon with Crosby and Nash singing "Here Comes the Sun" are just two examples of that.

This should particularly delight Bruce Springsteen fans. He dominated this first night, which his section of the concert lasting an hour and a half, easily the longest. And he assisted Jerry Lee Lewis on the first song of the night as well. (Plus, he showed up on the second night as well, as we shall see later.)

This album is four hours and eight minutes long.

01 talk (Tom Hanks)
02 talk (Jerry Lee Lewis)
03 Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On (Jerry Lee Lewis with Bruce Springsteen)
04 Woodstock (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Graham Nash)
07 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 talk (David Crosby)
09 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 Midnight Rider (Bonnie Raitt & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 talk (Graham Nash)
13 talk (Jackson Browne)
14 The Pretender (Jackson Browne & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (James Taylor)
16 Mexico (James Taylor & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 Love the One You're With (James Taylor & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 Rock and Roll Woman (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 talk (Graham Nash)
20 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash & Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne & James Taylor)
21 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (Paul Simon)
22 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)
23 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
24 talk (Paul Simon)
25 Here Comes the Sun (Paul Simon with Crosby & Nash)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 The Wanderer (Dion & Paul Simon)
28 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
29 talk (Paul Simon)
30 Two People in the World (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
31 The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
32 Mrs. Robinson - Not Fade Away (Simon & Garfunkel)
33 The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)
34 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
35 Cecilia (Simon & Garfunkel)
36 Blowin' in the Wind (Stevie Wonder)
37 talk (Stevie Wonder)
38 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Stevie Wonder)
39 I Was Made to Love Her (Stevie Wonder)
40 For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
41 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
42 Boogie On Reggae Woman (Stevie Wonder)
43 talk (Stevie Wonder)
44 The Tracks of My Tears (Smokey Robinson & Stevie Wonder)
45 talk (Stevie Wonder)
46 Mercy Mercy Me [The Ecology] (Stevie Wonder & John Legend)
47 The Way You Make Me Feel (Stevie Wonder with John Legend)
48 talk (Stevie Wonder)
49 The Thrill Is Gone (B.B. King & Stevie Wonder)
50 Living for the City (Stevie Wonder)
51 Higher Ground - Roxanne - Higher Ground (Sting & Stevie Wonder)
52 Superstition (Stevie Wonder & Jeff Beck)
53 10th Avenue Freeze-Out (Bruce Springsteen)
54 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
55 Hold On, I'm Comin' (Bruce Springsteen & Sam Moore)
56 Soul Man (Bruce Springsteen & Sam Moore)
57 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
58 The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
59 Fortunate Son (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
60 Proud Mary (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
61 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
62 Oh, Pretty Woman (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
63 Jungleland (Bruce Springsteen)
64 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
65 A Fine, Fine Boy (Darlene Love & Bruce Springsteen)
66 Do Run Run Run (Darlene Love & Bruce Springsteen)
67 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
68 London Calling (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
69 Badlands (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
70 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
71 You May Be Right (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
72 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
73 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
74 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
75 Born to Run (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
76 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QU2h1WV1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7oTCzzonspG0GVX/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: John Fogerty, Darlene Love, Bruce Springsteen, and Sam Moore.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Burt Bacharach & Hal David, White House, Washington, DC, 5-9-2012

I'm particularly psyched to post this album, because all the Gershwin Prize tribute concerts are nice, but most are very hard to find, and I want to post them all. Another tough one has been conquered. This one is a tribute to the great songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

By the way, with this one, I've posted ten of the Gershwin Prize concerts. That leaves four that I'm still missing. These four. If anyone has any of them, please let me know!: 

2013 Carole King
2016 Smokey Robinson
2017 Tony Bennett
2019 Gloria & Emilio Estefan 

The timing of this concert was fortuitous, because it turned out Hal David died only a few months later, in September 2012, at the ripe old age of 91. He was too ill to attend the concert, and had his wife Eunice David accept the award on his behalf. But at least he lived long enough to know that he and his songwriting partner won this prestigious award. Bacharach died in 2023 at the age of 94. As an aside, I've included them in the "Covered" songwriter series, with five albums of their music.

This one was a real challenge to put together, which is why I said up above I feel like I "conquered" it. At first, it seemed easy, and I found a download for it at a popular bootleg sharing site. But while that got me the first two thirds, the file for the last third was corrupted. I asked if anyone could fix it, and waited a couple of months, but nobody ever helped. So then I found a list of all the songs performed and went to find the missing ones on YouTube. After much digging, I found them all, including the speeches at the end. This was a lucky break, because YouTube didn't have some of the songs from earlier in concert. 

All's well that ends well. Everything should be here, and in excellent sound quality. I only cut out a couple of unimportant bits, such as a track at the start where the emcee named all the music acts that would perform in the concert.

This follows the usual pattern of various stars performing covers of songs by the prize winners, then an acceptance speech, then the prize winners performing a song or two. One surprise was that comedian and director Mike Myers performed. But instead of doing a comedy routine, he sang a song. He didn't embarrass himself, and he said some comments showing that he was huge Bacharach-David fan.

This album is 53 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 I'll Never Fall In Love Again (Sheryl Crow & Lyle Lovett)
03 talk (Stevie Wonder)
04 Make It Easy on Yourself (Stevie Wonder with Arturo Sandoval)
05 talk (emcee)
06 talk (Diana Krall)
07 The Look of Love (Diana Krall)
08 talk (emcee)
09 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Shelea & Arturo Sandoval)
10 talk (emcee)
11 What's New Pussycat (Mike Myers)
12 talk (Mike Myers)
13 talk (emcee)
14 A House Is Not a Home (Rumer)
15 talk (emcee)
16 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Lyle Lovett)
17 talk (emcee)
18 Walk on By (Sheryl Crow)
19 talk (emcee)
20 talk (Michael Feinstein)
21 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Michael Feinstein)
22 talk (emcee)
23 Alfie (Stevie Wonder)
24 talk (Stevie Wonder)
25 talk (Barack Obama)
26 talk (Eunice David)
27 talk (Burt Bacharach)
28 What The World Needs Now Is Love (Burt Bacharach & Everybody)
29 talk (Barak Obama)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rHCqVPqb

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/MaAmDxJqb4273cL/file

The cover photo of President Obama giving the award to Bacharach is from this exact concert. 

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Barbra Streisand, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2-11-2011

I have to be honest: I've never been a fan of Barbra Streisand's music. It's too show tune theatrical for me. But I'm planning to post all the MusiCares tributes I could find, and this was the next one to randomly get chosen for posting. And hearing the likes of Seal, Stevie Wonder, and Beck perform her songs help make this more palatable for me.

As with virtually all the MusiCares tribute concerts I post, the only reason we have worthy sound quality recordings of them is because some of them were released on DVD (but not in any audio format). This is another one of those lucky ones. I converted it from video to audio, then broke it into mp3s.

Unfortunately, in this case, it seems to have been edited down, though I don't know how much is missing. One thing that was definitely missing here though was her acceptance speech. I figured there had to have been one, so I did some searching. I couldn't find it, but I did find a few snippets from it, with some of her songs loudly playing in the background (which obviously wasn't played like that in the concert). I used MVSEP to remove the music but keep the talking and the applause. Then I arranged what I had. Clearly, that's not all of it. But I figure some of it is better than nothing. Hopefully more of it will emerge, plus whatever else was left off the DVD.

By the way, it was interesting that Prince, of all people, was the one to introduce her before her acceptance speech. That same recording of her speech included him saying a few words, so I put that in here as well, after removing the background music. However, I don't know if his short comments are complete or not. So that's why the Streisand's speech and Prince's introduction both have "[Edit]" in their titles.

As is typical for these things, the recipient of the award performed a couple of songs at the end of the concert. That's exactly what Streisand did here.  

Oh, one more thing. An unusual track here is from comedian and talk show host Bill Maher, since it was just comments about her instead of music. He also had some political jokes, but they were only relevant in 2011 politics, and they didn't have anything to do with Streisand anyway, so I cut those out. That's why that track has "[Edit]" in its title. 

Here's a Rolling Stone Magazine link with very little text but lots of photos from the event:

2011 MusiCares Person of the Year Tribute to Barbra Streisand 

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 talk (Diana Krall)
02 Down with Love (Diana Krall)
03 Guilty (Seal)
04 Somewhere (Leona Lewis)
05 My Man (Lea Michele)
06 On a Clear Day [You Can See Forever] - Lazy Afternoon (Herbie Hancock & Nikki Yanofsky)
07 talk [Edit] (Bill Maher)
08 Come Rain or Come Shine (LeAnn Rimes, Jeff Beck & BeBe Winans)
09 Send in the Clowns (Faith Hill)
10 One Less Bell to Answer - A House Is Not a Home (Kristin Chenoweth & Matthew Morrison)
11 Memory (Barry Manilow)
12 Smile (Tony Bennett)
13 People (Stevie Wonder & Arturo Sandoval)
14 talk [Edit] (Prince)
15 talk [Edit] (Barbra Streisand)
16 Windmills of Your Mind (Barbra Streisand)
17 The Promise [I'll Never Say Goodbye] (Barbra Streisand) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ndNRYeAj

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/Bxx0HNXUQhayQxK/file

The cover image is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Stevie Wonder, White House, Washington, DC, 2-25-2009

Here's another "Gershwin Prize for Popular Song" concert, honoring Stevie Wonder in 2009. It was the first one with President Barack Obama's direct involvement, and the second one overall.

This concert followed a typical format of a number of guest stars performing songs made famous by the winner, Stevie Wonder, then a short induction ceremony, then a short set by the winner. The one bummer in my opinion is that the concert was rather short. This one is a half hour shorter than the concert honoring Paul McCartney a year later. One nice bonus though is not only President Obama's involvement, but also a short introduction by First Lady Michelle Obama. 

This album remains unreleased. I got lucky and found an mp3 of the entire show. Then I broke it into individual mp3s for each song. (I could still use help from anyone who has a PBS pass that allows them to watch PBS shows on the Internet in order to get some of the other Gershwin Prize concerts!)

This album is 54 minutes long. 

01 talk (Michelle Obama)
02 Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder)
03 talk (emcee)
04 Overjoyed (Esperanza Spalding)
05 talk (emcee)
06 For Once in My Life (Tony Bennett)
07 talk (emcee)
08 Blame It on the Sun (Diana Krall)
09 talk (emcee)
10 Higher Ground (Mary Mary)
11 talk (emcee)
12 Summer Soft (India.Arie)
13 talk (emcee)
14 You and I (Martina McBride)
15 talk (emcee)
16 Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer (Anita Johnson)
17 talk (emcee)
18 If It's Magic (Paul Simon)
19 talk (Barack Obama)
20 talk (Stevie Wonder)
21 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
22 Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
23 talk (Barack Obama)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZbWEnVNS

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/0Yh30jfYQR6JITn/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Paul Simon, Warner Theatre, Washington, DC, 5-23-2007

Here's another "Gershwin Prize for Popular Song" concert. This one honors Paul Simon.

This was the very first Gershwin Prize to be awarded. In 1998, some entertainment producers and promoters came up with the idea of having an award for comedians, which resulted in the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, connected to the Library of Congress and with an annual concert broadcast on PBS TV stations. That idea turned out to be a big success, so in 2003 the same group came up with the same idea, but for musicians. Then I guess it took a few more years before the first prize was awarded in 2007. You can read more about the prize and its history here:

Gershwin Prize - Wikipedia 

In this concert, there weren't that many guest stars performing Simon's songs. But that meant that most of the bigger names there (Lyle Lovett, James Taylor, Alison Krauss, Marc Anthony, and Stevie Wonder) got to perform two songs instead of the usual one.

As is usually the case with such concerts, it ended with a short set by the honoree, Paul Simon. Given the huge role Art Garfunkel had in Simon's music career as part of Simon and Garfunkel, I feel he got kind of dissed here, being only involved in one song, "Bridge Over Troubled Water." But the two of them had a turbulent relationship for decades. Their last tour together would take place in 2009, and their last performance together in 2010. After that, they had a more severe and prolonged falling out, though I was glad to see it reported that by 2024 they had reconciled as friends again.

This albums in unreleased in audio format. However, a DVD of it has been released. Strangely, it seems to be the only Gershwin Prize concert released on DVD. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 36 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 talk (Bob Costas)
03 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Lyle Lovett)
04 The Boxer (Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin & Jerry Douglas)
05 Mother and Child Reunion (Stephen Marley)
06 Homeless (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
07 Slip Slidin' Away (James Taylor & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
08 Sunday Morning with the Sensational Nightingales (Billy Collins & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
09 That Was Your Mother (Lyle Lovett with Buckwheat Zydeco)
10 Still Crazy After All These Years (James Taylor)
11 El Condor Pasa (Marc Anthony)
12 Late in the Evening (Marc Anthony)
13 Gone at Last (Yolanda Adams & Jessy Dixon)
14 Something So Right (Dianne Reeves)
15 The 59th Street Bridge Song [Feelin' Groovy] (Grover & Elmo of the Muppets)
16 Graceland (Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas)
17 talk (emcee)
18 talk (James H. Billingston)
19 talk (Paul Simon)
20 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (Paul Simon & Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
21 talk (Paul Simon)
22 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
23 talk (Paul Simon)
24 Father and Daughter (Paul Simon)
25 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon with Stevie Wonder)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 Loves Me like a Rock (Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
28 The Sound of Silence [Instrumental Version] (Philip Glass)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/C2ct9sek

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3k0vX3n5GD90SUE/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Simon with Stevie Wonder and some members of the Dixie Hummingbirds when they performed "Loves Me like a Rock" together.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Paul McCartney, White House, Washington, DC, 6-2-2010

I've recently discovered the annual "Gershwin Prize for Popular Song" tribute concerts. Here's probably the best known one, because it honors arguably the most successful songwriter of all time, Paul McCartney.

This concert happened to take place during the presidency of Barack Obama. That was lucky, because he took more of a hands-on approach to concerts like this. He hosted this at the White House and gave McCartney's induction speech. I've seen from other Gershwin Prize concerts that I've found that Obama was the only president to get directly involved in them.

The concert started with a song by McCartney. Then a bunch of musical stars played his songs, with a brief stand-up routine by Jerry Seinfeld included in there. Then McCartney took the stage again. He performed "Ebony and Ivory" with Stevie Wonder, just as they did on the original version in 1981. Apparently, that was the first time McCartney had played that song since 1991. After an induction speech by Obama, McCartney finished the concert with a short set of songs.

This album remains unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I only had one problem. This concert was broadcast on TV. Near the end of "Hey Jude," there was a voiceover near the end of song, briefly mentioning the next TV show. In order to get rid of it, I had to edit out one round of "na na's," which is why that song has "[Edit]" in its title.

By the way, I stumbled across a Time Magazine article about this concern from way back then. It concluded with the line, "The White House has never hosted a cooler evening." Here's the link if you want to read the whole thing: 

Sir Paul McCartney Performs for Barack Obama | TIME.com 

This album is an hour and 19 minutes long. 

01 talk (Paul McCartney)
02 Got to Get You into My Life (Paul McCartney)
03 We Can Work It Out (Stevie Wonder)
04 Drive My Car (Jonas Brothers)
05 talk (Jerry Seinfeld)
06 Mother Nature's Son - That Would Be Something (Jack White)
07 The Long and Winding Road (Faith Hill)
08 Blackbird (Herbie Hancock & Corrine Bailey Rae)
09 talk (Elvis Costello)
10 Penny Lane (Elvis Costello)
11 For No One (Emmylou Harris)
12 Celebrations [Instrumental] (Lang Lang)
13 talk (Dave Grohl)
14 Band on the Run (Dave Grohl)
15 talk (Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder)
16 Ebony and Ivory (Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder)
17 talk (Barack Obama)
18 talk (Paul McCartney)
19 Michelle (Paul McCartney)
20 talk (Paul McCartney)
21 Eleanor Rigby (Paul McCartney)
22 talk (Paul McCartney)
23 Let It Be (Paul McCartney)
24 talk (Paul McCartney)
25 Hey Jude [Edit] (Paul McCartney & Everyone)
26 talk (Paul McCartney)
27 Yesterday (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/awLAgw3Z

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/hwjtq0xoqe98Z4K/file

The cover photo of McCartney and Obama is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute to the Songs of Paul Simon, Hollywood Pantages Theater, Los Angeles, CA, 4-6-2022

I've recently discovered a bunch of tribute concerts. I find these really interesting, but they seem to often slip through the cracks in terms of being shared bootlegs. So I'm going to try to make posting these a higher priority. Here's a Grammy-related tribute to Paul Simon from 2022. It took place just three days after the annual Grammy Awards ceremony that year, and in the same city, so many of the stars who attended that could attend this one as well.

It goes without saying that Simon is one of the greatest songwriters of all time, so he deserves a tribute like this. In fact, I've found a MusiCares tribute concert from 2001 and a Gershwin Prize tribute concert from 2007 both celebrating his songs that I plan on posting too. Like those, this one features many big stars playing his most beloved songs.

It also features Simon performing a couple of songs of his own at the end of the concert. This is especially significant because he was 80 years old at the time of this concert, and his voice was noticeably weakening with age. He announced a farewell tour in 2018, so this seemed like one of his last public performances. Since then, though, he decided to have one more tour in 2025, with about 20 concerts. Be that as it may, one can hear the change in his voice in this performance. Thankfully, he realized his limitations and had another singer tackle the vocally challenging song "American Tune" while he just played guitar on it.

The music here remains officially unreleased. However, it was broadcast on television, so there are video files of it. I took a high quality version, converted it to audio format, and broke it into mp3s. The sound quality is excellent. I kept most everything, except I cut out some talk from the unnamed female emcee every time there was a commercial break, which happened every few songs. Hopefully this now sounds seamless, without any hints of those commercial breaks.

Some of the banter between songs were little speeches by famous non-musicians, such as Woody Harrelson, Dustin Hoffman, and Oprah Winfrey. Famous rock star Elton John also only talked. In his case, his talk was a video broadcast, so he probably didn't sing as well because he wasn't there in person.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.

01 talk (emcee)
02 Kodachrome (Brad Paisley)
03 talk (Woody Harrelson)
04 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Jonas Brothers)
05 talk (Garth Brooks)
06 The Boxer (Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood)
07 talk (Elton John)
08 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
09 A Hazy Shade of Winter (Susanna Hoffs)
10 talk (Herbie Hancock)
11 talk (Sting)
12 America (Sting)
13 talk (Billy Porter)
14 Loves Me like a Rock (Billy Porter)
15 talk (Dustin Hoffman)
16 talk (Stevie Wonder)
17 Mrs. Robinson (Stevie Wonder with Sheila E. & the Jonas Brothers)
18 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Something So Right (Bonnie Raitt & Brad Paisley)
20 talk (Stevie Wonder)
21 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Stevie Wonder & Ledisi)
22 talk (Sofia Carson)
23 Mother and Child Reunion (Jimmy Cliff & Shaggy)
24 Take Me to the Mardi Gras (Trombone Shorty & Irma Thomas)
25 talk (Eric Church)
26 Homeward Bound (Eric Church)
27 Slip Slidin' Away (Little Big Town)
28 talk (Folake Olowofoyeku)
29 Homeless (Take 6)
30 Under African Skies (Angelique Kidjo with Dave Matthews)
31 You Can Call Me Al (Dave Matthews with Angelique Kidjo)
32 talk (Oprah Winfrey)
33 Graceland (Paul Simon)
34 talk (Paul Simon)
35 American Tune (Rhiannon Giddens with Paul Simon)
36 The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5j4GUcC1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Vz5ALstXCYeahHB/file 

The cover shows Paul Simon about to receive a hug from Oprah Winfrey. It's from this exact concert.

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 7: 2005-2018

Here is the seventh and last volume of Stevie Wonder's "Covered" series. Just as a reminder, like all the "Covered" albums I post, the emphasis is on the songwriting. So these are all songs written or co-written by Wonder, but performed by others.

By the time period of this album, 2005 to 2018, Wonder's songwriting had slowed way down. In fact, writing this in 2025, Wonder still hasn't released a new studio album since 2005. So all the songs here are covers from earlier years, especially from his golden era of the 1970s. "You Met Your Match" is the oldest song here, from 1968.

Finally, with this volume, the full scope of Wonder's songwriting genius can be seen. Some of his best songs don't show up until this volume. So all seven volumes should be seen as a whole. 

Just by chance, I didn't find any covers that I liked best from after 2018. But I'm sure more great covers will emerge in the years to come.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 I'm Going Left (Eric Clapton)
02 You Haven't Done Nothin' (Joe Cocker)
03 Village Ghetto Land (Jen Chapin)
04 You Met Your Match (Tower of Power)
05 Sir Duke (Devon Allman)
06 Do I Do (Cuban Jazz Combo)
07 True to Your Heart (Wailing Souls)
08 Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer (Phil Collins)
09 Part-Time Lover (Hyannis Sound)
10 Jesus Children of America (Michele Thomas)
11 Master Blaster [Jammin'] (Minnie Driver)
12 Happier than the Morning Sun (Venice)
13 Another Star (Denise King & Massimo Farao Trio)
14 He's Misstra Know It All (Beverley Knight)
15 I Just Called to Say I Love You (John Prine)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hHACZWCK

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/h1RStCF8XSMhnvi/file

The cover photo is from 2003.

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 6: 1994-2005

It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted the last volume of Stevie Wonder's "Covered" series. There are two left to go. So I'm posting both of them today to finish them off. Here's Volume 6.

The time period of this album is 1994 to 2005. But note that's the time frame for when cover versions were released, not necessarily when the originals were released. By this time, Wonder's songwriting had slowed down, so most of the songs here are from earlier, usually from the 1970s. 

Wonder was still writing songs for others during this time period. However, in my opinion, they weren't up to snuff compared to the other songs on this album, so I didn't include any of them here.

One song I feel needs a little explaining is "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio with L.V. This is based on Wonder's 1976 song "Pastime Paradise." But Coolio significantly changed it with rap lyrics added. Normally, I'm not a big fan of rap, and I'm especially not a fan of songs where rap lyrics are added over classic songs. But in this case, I think Coolio did a really good job, keeping the heart of the original while adding something worthwhile and new. The general public thought so too, since it was the best selling single of 1995. So I've included this version here, but also I also included a more standard version of "Pastime Paradise" in Volume 4 in this series.

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 Maybe Your Baby (Prince)
02 Gangsta's Paradise (Coolio with L.V.)
03 You and I (Joe Cocker)
04 Knocks Me Off My Feet (Luther Vandross)
05 As (George Michael & Mary J.Blige)
06 I Wish (Lady Gaga)
07 Isn't She Lovely (Keb Mo)
08 I Ain't Gonna Stand for It (Eric Clapton)
09 Love's in Need of Love Today (Joan Osborne)
10 Too High (Michael McDonald)
11 Overjoyed (Mary J. Blige)
12 If It's Magic (Caetano Veloso)
13 Send One Your Love (Vanessa Williams)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oNS96AJx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/5qkLrQoBsrCXuF2/file

The cover photo is from 1993.

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 5: 1981-1989

Here's Volume 5 in my "Covered" series highlighting the songwriting of Stevie Wonder. As with the other volumes in this series, this consists of other musical acts covering his songs.

Wonder was still very commercially successful in the early 1980s, but there was a slow decline as the decade went on. However, that isn't so important for this album, because many of the covers here are of songs he wrote earlier in his career.

Some songs here were written by Wonder but never officially released by him. Those are tracks 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, and 12. That's a lot of songs. It's too bad he didn't put more of those songs on his own albums. 

My usual rule is to only include one version of each song in this series. However, I couldn't resist with "Superstition," since it's one of the greatest songs of all time and I really like two covers of it. I included a version by Jeff Beck on an earlier volume, and a version by Stevie Ray Vaughan here.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Happy Birthday (Brotherhood of Man)
02 Betcha' Wouldn't Hurt Me (Quincy Jones)
03 Lately (Rudy Grant)
04 Buttercup (Carl Anderson)
05 Try Jah Love (Third World)
06 If You Really Love Me (Mary Wells)
07 You're Playing Us Too Close (Third World)
08 The Crown (Gary Byrd & G.B. Experience with Stevie Wonder)
09 Ribbon in the Sky (Nancy Wilson)
10 Superstition (Stevie Ray Vaughan)
11 Remembering the Sixties (George Duke)
12 Hold On to Your Love (Smokey Robinson)
13 Higher Ground (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SMBE8DsJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tBVPCnxrzfmeh4J/file

The cover photo is from 1985. That's all I know about it.

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 4: 1976-1981

Here we are again with another "Covered" album consisting of songs written or co-written by Stevie Wonder. This volume deals with the years 1976 to 1981.

I my opinion, the peak of Wonder's music career was from about 1972 to 1981. So this represents the latter half of that. But keep in mind that covers always come after the original versions, sometimes decades later. So many of the songs he wrote during this time don't show up until later volumes.

However, just like with previous sessions, there are some songs here that Wonder didn't release himself. This time, those are tracks 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 Boogie On Reggae Woman (Slickers)
02 Creepin' (Herbie Mann feat. Cissy Houston)
03 You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Ella Fitzgerald)
04 Love Having You Around (First Choice)
05 The Real Thing (Sergio Mendes & New Brasil 77)
06 Stick Together (Minnie Riperton)
07 Don't Make Me Wait Too Long (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway)
08 I Can't Help It (Michael Jackson)
09 I'm Wondering (Amy Holland)
10 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Syreeta Wright)
11 Let's Get Serious (Jermaine Jackson)
12 Pastime Paradise (Ray Barretto)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Psmhz2QD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4WAUE3LanH8uQY8/file

All I know about the cover image is that it's from 1982.

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 3: 1974-1976

Stevie Wonder was on fire creatively for all of the 1970s, but I'd argue that the peak of his peak were the years 1974 to 1976. Even the Grammy Awards couldn't deny his genius: he won Album of the year in 1973 for "Innervisions," in 1974 for "Fulfillingness' First Finale," and in 1976 for "Songs in the Key of Life." It's the only time a musical artist won Grammies for three albums in a row. The double album "Songs in the Key of Life" in particular is such a strong work that Rolling Stone Magazine put it at Number Four in its list of the top 500 albums of all time.

So, given all that, it's no surprise that this is a particularly strong album in Wonder's "Covered" series. Everyone wanted to cover his songs. That was especially the case since he was giving away lots of songs that he couldn't fit on his albums. The songs on this volume that he didn't release himself are tracks 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 14. So, in other words, nine out of 14! 

Note that, in my opinion, the last song, "Don't Be Sad 'Cause Your Sun Is Down," sounds exactly like a stereotypical song written by James Taylor. I had to double check the credits that it was co-written by Wonder, but it was. He also played harmonica on it. Most of the others here were written by Wonder alone.

This album is one hour long.

01 Living for the City (Ray Charles)
02 Your Kiss Is Sweet (Syreeta Wright)
03 Perfect Angel (Minnie Riperton)
04 All in Love Is Fair (Cecilio & Kapono)
05 I Can See the Sun in Late December (Roberta Flack)
06 If You Don't Love Me (G.C. Cameron)
07 Take a Little Trip (Minnie Riperton)
08 Keep On Running (Snafu)
09 I Believe [When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever] (Art Garfunkel)
10 Visions (Marion Brown)
11 Just a Little Piece of You (Betty Everett)
12 Sleeping Alone (Pointer Sisters)
13 Harmour Love (Syreeta Wright)
14 Don't Be Sad 'Cause Your Sun Is Down (James Taylor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wkuv4NSi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UHV55FlBbAXnaGa/file

The cover photo is from 1976. I don't know more about it than that.

Covered: Henry Crosby: 1963-1978

The vast majority of the classic Motown songs from the 1960s and 70s were written by a relatively small group of songwriters. So with all the Motown-related "Covered" series albums I've posted, I should have nearly all those classic songs on at least one of those albums. Nearly all, but not all. There are some key ones I realized I'm missing, such as "Fingertips, Part 2." So here's yet another behind-the-scenes Motown songwriter, Henry Crosby. He doesn't have that many songs here, but he fills some important gaps.

Crosby was born in Detroit in 1928. That made him older than most of the other Motown songwriters and singers he worked with. He served in the U.S. army in the Korean war, then began playing saxophone in jazz clubs in Detroit. He joined Motown when the company was founded in 1959, and became part of the backing band later known as the Funk Brothers, playing on hundreds of hit songs. But he didn't stop there. He became a jack-of-all-trades for the company, branching out as an arranger, producer, and songwriter as well. 

His first big success as a songwriter was "Fingertips, Part 2," which he co-wrote with another Motown songwriter, Clarence Paul. Stevie Wonder took it to the top of the U.S. singles chart in 1963. That led to Crosby developing particularly close musical ties with Wonder. If you look at the song list below, a majority of them were first hits by Wonder, even if I used versions by others.

The reason why I'm using versions other than that by Wonder is because Crosby usually co-wrote song with other key members of the Motown songwriting team. The other songwriters have their own Covered albums, and I have often already posted albums with versions of those co-written songs on them. So for instance, "The Tears of a Clown" was co-written by Crosby, Wonder, and Smokey Robinson. I put the Robinson version on a Wonder Covered album, and the hit English Beat version on a Robinson Covered album. So I chose a more obscure version by Petula Clark for this album.

Crosby was involved in co-writing many great Motown hits until about 1971. That's when Motown head Berry Gordy stupidly decided to move the company from Detroit to Los Angeles to in order to get more involved with movies and TV. In the process, many very talented people like Crosby were fired or chose to stay behind, and Crosby was one of them. 

Crosby continued to be involved in the music industry. For instance, he produced albums by Blood, Sweat and Tears, Martha Reeves, and the Originals. However, he wasn't involved in writing any more hit songs. The songs here are in chronological order, but all the ones from after 1970 are covers of earlier hits. He died in 2002 at the age of 72.

I've come across conflicting information if Crosby helped write the Supremes hits "Love Child" and "I'm Living in Shame" or not. For instance, the Wikipedia entry on "Love Child" only lists him as a producer, not a songwriter. But the Wikipedia entry for Crosby lists him as a songwriter for that song too. And there were other conflicting sources like that. I ultimately left those two out, since both songs already had at least four other co-writers anyway, and they're included on other Covered albums I made. But if anyone knows if he really helped co-write those songs or not, I'd be curious to hear the answer.

Here's his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

Henry Cosby - Wikipedia

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Fingertips, Part 2 (Stevie Wonder)
02 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Nancy Wilson)
03 Lucky Lucky Me (Marvin Gaye)
04 Nothing's Too Good for My Baby (Stevie Wonder)
05 I'm Wondering (Stevie Wonder)
06 Home Cookin' (Jr. Walker & the All Stars)
07 No Matter What Sign You Are (Supremes)
08 My Cherie Amour (Jon Lucian)
09 I Should Be Proud (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas)
10 Never Had a Dream Come True (Stevie Wonder)
11 The Tears of a Clown (Petula Clark)
12 With a Child's Heart (Michael Jackson)
13 Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Dah-Day (Linda George)
14 I Was Made to Love Him [I Was Made to Love Her] (Chaka Khan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cp4JZ7Ws

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Ei7qTGglXhJbnwG/file

I found a couple of decent photos of Crosby when he was much older, but I preferred one when he was young and writing these songs. The cover photo is taken from a group photo of the Motown backing band "the Funk Brothers" in the early 1960s. It was in black and white, but I colorized it with the Kolorize program. Then I improved it with the Krea AI program. Crosby was looking away, but I moved his eyes to look at the camera using Photoshop. 

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 2: 1972-1974

Here's the second volume out of seven in my Covered series for Stevie Wonder.

The time period of this album, 1972 to 1974, is when Wonder went from being a mere star to being a superstar. He'd had a lot of hits dating back to 1963, but a majority of them had been written by others. He had still been growing into his talent (he was 13 years old in 1963) and his creative direction had been largely controlled by the Motown record company. But he signed a new contact with Motown in 1971 that gave him total creative control over his music. From the release of his album "Music of My Mind" in early 1972, his sales steadily grew, and so did his reputation.

Thus, it's not too surprising to see that the number of covers of his songs blossomed as well. Note Volume 1 in this series covers an eight year time period, and this one covers only a two year time period. Creatively, Wonder was on fire, writing more quality songs than he knew what to do with. Many songs apparently still sit in the vaults, unreleased, but he also gave some songs away. 

The songs here that Wonder didn't record himself are tracks 5, 7, 10, and 11. Out of those, the best known has to be "Tell Me Something Good," by Rufus featuring Chaka Khan. It hit Number One on one of the U.S. singles charts in 1974. 

But even more famous than that is "Superstition," another Number One song, and a song Rolling Stone Magazine put on their top 500 songs on all time. In fact, for the 2021 version of that list, it holds the 12th spot! Originally, that was going to be a song Wonder planned to give away to guitarist Jeff Beck. Wonder actually wrote it while in a recording studio with Beck. Beck came up with the drum beat, and Wonder improvised the song to it on the spot. Beck soon recorded his own version and planned to release it on his next studio album. But various delays pushed back the release of that album many months, into 1973. In the meantime, higher-ups at Motown heard the song and thought it was so fantastic that they insisted Wonder put out his own version. 

In 1970, Wonder married Syreeta Wright. She was a singer signed to the Motown label as well, but Motown hadn't done much to push her career. Wonder and Wright divorced in 1972, just two years later. However, they remained close friends, and collaborated a lot musically. Wright sometimes co-wrote songs from Wonder's albums, including the huge hit "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours" in 1970. 

But more often, many of Wonder's songs wound up on Wright's albums. In particular, for her 1974 album "Stevie Wonder Presents: Syreeta," he wrote or co-wrote with her every single song on the album. Most of them were never put on his own albums. I've selected one song from that album here, "Cause We've Ended as Lovers." I also could have chosen the excellent Jeff Beck cover, but I went with this one because it's the original and it has lyrics, while the Beck version is an instrumental. I put another Wright cover from that album on the next volume in this series. 

But if you want even more Wonder covers from his classic period, check out that album in particular. It's almost like another classic Wonder album that happens to be sung by an excellent female vocalist instead of him. I concur with the allmusic.com review of that album, which states: "All in all, 'Stevie Wonder Presents: Syreeta' is the shining moment of Syreeta's solo career and a lost highlight of 1970's soul in general. Any fans of Stevie Wonder owe it to themselves to track this album down because it makes a worthy companion to albums like 'Talking Book' and 'Innervisions.'"

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 I Love Every Little Thing about You (Syreeta Wright)
02 Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day (Michael Jackson)
03 Superstition (Jeff Beck)
04 Superwoman (Main Ingredient)
05 Bad Weather (Supremes)
06 You've Got It Bad Girl (Quincy Jones)
07 To Know You Is to Love You (B. B. King)
08 Until You Come Back to Me [That's What I'm Gonna Do] (Aretha Franklin)
09 Blame It on the Sun (Jose Feliciano)
10 Tell Me Something Good (Rufus featuring Chaka Khan)
11 Cause We've Ended as Lovers (Syreeta Wright)
12 Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing (Main Ingredient)
13 Golden Lady (Jose Feliciano)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/o69AW1bL

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/XKATnEKbTv2D0uR/file

The cover photo is from 1974. I don't know any details.

Covered: Ron Miller: 1966-1993

I decided that before I post any more of Stevie Wonder's "Covered" albums, I should post this one, featuring the songwriting of Ron Miller. In writing the write-up for "Volume 1" of Wonder's "Covered" albums, I tried to explain that many of his 1960s hits weren't actually written by him. It turns out that a bunch of them were written by Miller. So even though he wasn't that prolific, this album is kind of a companion piece to the Steve Wonder "Volume 1" album I posted earlier today.

Miller was born in Chicago in 1932. After working some odd jobs, including selling washing machines, he was discovered by Motown head Berry Gordy while playing songs in a bar. Although he was signed to Motown around 1963, he didn't seem like an obvious good fit. His daughter later wrote that he was "a young, Jewish songwriter with a very Rodgers and Hammerstein musical theater writing style." But Gordy wanted some of his musical acts to move into the supper club circuit that catered to the tastes of mainstream white audiences. For instance, in 1967, the Supremes released an album consisting entirely of Rodgers and Hart covers - the same Rodgers who was part of the Rodgers and Hammerstein duo.

At first, Miller wrote a couple of songs for faux Broadway albums for Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. (Gaye's album was actually called "Hello Broadway.") These songs weren't that good, and not in the typical Motown style, so I didn't include them. One of Miller's apparently failed early songs was "For Once in My Life." Co-written by Orlando Murden, who had no other songwriting success worth noting, it was first released by the obscure Jean DuShon in 1966, and went nowhere. About 15 more musical acts covered it over the next two years, including the Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, Tony Bennett, Nanci Wilson, and even Wayne Newton, but none of those versions were hits either.

Then Stevie Wonder gave the song a try in 1967. The song had been written as a slow ballad, and everyone who covered it at first played it that way. However, Wonder gave the song a drastically different upbeat arrangement. Motown head Berry Gordy didn't like it, and vetoed releasing it. But after a full year, he was finally talked into releasing it. It went on to hit Number One in one of the U.S. singles charts, and was a massive hit. It also has become one of the most covered songs of all time, with an estimated 700 versions. 

I mentioned above that Miller wasn't that prolific, at least when it came to conventional soul, pop, or rock songs. He had a whole other career writing songs for musicals, but I didn't really investigate that since he didn't have obvious hits. He generally wrote lyrics, and relied on a variety of co-writers for the melodies. 

If "For Once in My Life" was his only success, there wouldn't have been enough material for even a short album by him. But he had a couple of other massive hits, as well as several minor ones. "Touch Me in the Morning" by Diana Ross seems to have sold even more than "For Once in My Life," also reaching Number One in the U.S., though it hasn't become widely covered. "I've Never Been to Me" was first released as a single by Charlene in 1977, and barely scraped the bottom of the Top 100. But it was rereleased by her in 1982, and for some reason it became a huge smash at that time, reaching Number Three in the U.S., and Number One in Britain and several other countries.

Miller's songwriting successes mostly petered out by the end of the 1970s. However, some of his songs have had long legs with different cover versions. For instance, "If I Could" was first released in 1988, but many big name artists later covered it, such as Celine Dion, who put it on her greatest hits album. He died in 2007 at the age of 74. 

Here's his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

Ron Miller (songwriter) - Wikipedia

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 A Place in the Sun (Stevie Wonder)
02 Travelin' Man (Stevie Wonder)
03 Gotta See Jane (R. Dean Taylor)
04 For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
05 Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday (Stevie Wonder)
06 Someday at Christmas (Jackson 5)
07 Heaven Help Us All (Stevie Wonder)
08 Touch Me in the Morning (Diana Ross)
09 Don't Burn Down the Bridge (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 I've Never Been to Me (Charlene)
11 Used to Be (Charlene & Stevie Wonder)
12 If I Could (Ray Charles)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VFN2Zy4Z

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/ZJAMemYYFi0fC2W/file

I found several color photos of Miller. I don't know the details of the one I picked, such as what year it's from. I used Krea AI to improve and enlarge it. I just have to say, if there was a contest for the Motown songwriter who looked most like Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies, he would have been the easy winner!

Covered: Stevie Wonder, Volume 1: 1966-1972

Generally speaking, my Covered series is meant to highlight the songs of songwriters who weren't big stars with their own records. But I make exceptions for those who inspired lots of cover versions, especially of songs they didn't record themselves. (Someday, eventually, I plan on posting Covered albums for Bob Dylan, Lennon and McCartney, Ray Davies, and other big names.) Stevie Wonder is definitely someone who is a big star for his own recordings, but also has inspired hundreds of cover songs, many of them he hasn't recorded himself. So here's the first of no less than seven albums featuring covers of his songs.

Additionally, with many of the Covered albums I've posted in the last six months or so, I've tried to concentrate on the songwriters responsible for the brilliant Motown singles of the 1960s and 1970s. Most of those songwriters had little to no success being stars themselves, but there are a few exceptions, such as Smokey Robinson and Ashford and Simpson. 

The musical genius of Stevie Wonder is hard to dispute. The introductory paragraph of his Wikipedia entry says "He is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Wonder is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include R&B, pop, soul, gospel, funk, and jazz. " He's sold over 100 million records, and has had dozens of hit singles. But I think what most people don't appreciate is just how often he's written songs for others that he's never released on record himself. I found an article that lists 130 such songs, and even that is probably incomplete. 

Every song Stevie Wonder wrote for other musicians 

He would still merit inclusion in my Covered series if those 130 songs were the only ones he ever wrote or co-wrote, and he'd never released any music under his own name, because they include some classic hits, such as "Tears of a Clown," "Tell Me Something Good," and "It's a Shame." But of course he did do all those great songs and albums on his own. So this series is a mix of covers of songs Wonder made famous with his own versions, as well as songs he never recorded himself. But I've tried to emphasize the latter, since even serious fans of his music probably aren't family with many of those.

In this series of albums, I've tried hard to avoid including any versions performed by Wonder himself. So often the best version I found comes a long time after the original version by Wonder. So if you notice a song you think should be included is missing, the odds are very good I've chosen a version that appears on a later album. As an example, "You Met Your Match" was a hit for Wonder in 1968, the time frame of this first album. But the version I chose is from 2009, so it appears on "Volume 7." 

Wonder also had hits with many songs he had no role in writing, so they're not included in this series at all. That was especially true of the 1960s. For instance, his first really big hit, "Fingertips, Part 2" in 1963, was written by others. That was also the case for "Castles Made of Sand," "Nothing's Too Good for My Baby," "Blowin' in the Wind," "A Place in the Sun," "For Once in My Life," "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday," "Heaven Help Us All," "We Can Work It Out," and more. But while you won't find any of those here, most of them can be found on "Covered" albums I've posted by other songwriters in the Motown stable, or will be with future posts.

Wonder was a child prodigy, having his first hit, "Fingertips, Part 2," when he was only 13 years old. It took a few more years before he started to really impress with his songwriting. His breakout year in that respect was probably 1966. As usual for these albums, the songs are in chronological order by year (you can see the details in the mp3 tags), and the first six songs here are from 1966. Already, his songs were being covered by the biggest names in Motown, and beyond.

With each of these albums, I'm going to try to point out the songs I've chosen that Wonder never released himself. For this album, that's tracks 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 14, 16, and 17. In retrospect, it's a shame he didn't release most of these himself, since his 1960s albums generally weren't that strong. That would change drastically in the 1970s, when his albums were consistently solid and yet he still had dozens of additional good songs to give away.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Nancy Wilson)
02 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Four Tops)
03 All I Do Is Think about You (Tammi Terrell)
04 Let's Talk It Over (Marv Johnson)
05 Just a Little Misunderstanding (Contours)
06 You're the One for Me (Marvin Gaye)
07 I Was Made to Love Her (Beach Boys)
08 The Tears of a Clown (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
09 I'm in Love [And I Know It] (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas)
10 Hey Love (Bettye LaVette)
11 I Don't Know Why [Don't Know Why I Love You] (Rolling Stones)
12 It's a Shame (Spinners)
13 Never Had a Dream Come True (Jackson 5)
14 Make My Water Boil [Loving You Has Been So Wonderful] (David Ruffin)
15 My Cherie Amour (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
16 We'll Have It Made (Spinners)
17 Keep Him like He Is (Syreeta Wright)
18 Heaven Help Us All (Ray Charles)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ec7DEwVR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uQLkWairwCrN2ak/file

The cover photo is from 1966. I don't know more about it.

Stevie Wonder - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-27-2010

Here's a third, and probably final, album of Stevie Wonder performing for the BBC. This is a full concert.

Some musical stars have aged better than others. I think few would disagree that Wonder's songwriting has taken a step down since the 1970s. But when it comes to performing, he seems to have defied Father Time. As I write this in February 2025, I just posted a benefit concert that took place mere days ago in which Wonder take part, and even at the age of 74, he sounded great. In this 2010, he was "merely" 59, and sounded even better.

At the time of this concert, he hadn't released a new studio album in five years. He didn't play any songs from it. This was strictly his classic hits, to appeal to the massive Glastonbury Festival crowd.

This concert is officially unreleased. I could only find a video file for it, so I converted it to audio and broke it into mp3s. The sound quality is great. The first song, "My Eyes Don't Cry," has "[Edit]" in the title because a BBC DJ spoke over the music. As I usually do, I got rid of the talking with the UVR5 editing program.

This album is an hour and 33 minutes long.

01 My Eyes Don't Cry [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
02 Master Blaster [Jammin'] (Stevie Wonder)
03 We Can Work It Out (Stevie Wonder)
04 As If You Read My Mind (Stevie Wonder)
05 If You Really Love Me (Stevie Wonder)
06 talk (Stevie Wonder)
07 If You Really Love Me [Reprise] (Stevie Wonder)
08 All I Do (Stevie Wonder)
09 talk (Stevie Wonder)
10 Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder)
11 Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing (Stevie Wonder)
12 Living for the City (Stevie Wonder)
13 Human Nature (Stevie Wonder)
14 talk (Stevie Wonder)
15 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Stevie Wonder)
16 For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
17 talk (Stevie Wonder)
18 Fingertips, Part 2 (Stevie Wonder)
19 talk (Stevie Wonder)
20 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
21 Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder)
22 I Just Called to Say I Love You (Stevie Wonder)
23 Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
24 Free (Stevie Wonder)
25 talk (Stevie Wonder)
26 Another Star (Stevie Wonder)
27 Happy Birthday (Stevie Wonder)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/b46X7AVW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/BX7PeivK2wAaQRk/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - FireAid, Intuit Dome, Inglewood, CA, and Kia Forum, Inglewood, CA, 1-30-2025

Here's something surprisingly timely from me. I mostly post music from decades ago, but as I write this in early 2025, this concert took place only three days ago! It's a big concert - five hours long - with lots of big name artists.

I like posting big rock festivals and benefit concerts, because I've noticed they tend to get overlooked. But I tend not to post many from the 2000s because I don't like many of the musical acts on the bills. However, I looked at the list of performers here and I liked most of them, and could at least tolerate the rest. If you frequently come to this blog, your musical tastes are probably pretty similar to mine. You might want to give this a listen even if you don't like some of the acts. I think it's better than the vast majority of these kinds of concerts.

The concert was a surprisingly fast response to a series of fires that burned parts of the Los Angeles region earlier that same month. Millions were raised that would go to a charity to help the victims of the fires. There are lots of natural disasters that don't result in big benefit concerts. But this disaster hit very close to home for many famous musicians and or the people they know. For instance, Billy Crystal, one of the presenters here, lost his house to one of the fires, and Stevie Nicks came very close to losing hers. So it's not surprising that so many artists wanted to take part in a benefit concert.

Before I say anything else, note that the crisis caused by the fires is very much still ongoing, and donations are still being accepted. If you want to donate, here's the link:

Homepage - FireAid

I'm posting this because the entire concert has been put out there for free all over the place, including on literally at least ten TV streaming services, Tik Tok, YouTube, and more. So I'm just helping to spread it. If you want to watch it instead of just listen, YouTube is an easy way to find it. (That said, I wouldn't at all be surprised if this gets taken down due to some copyright issue or another, so grab it fast!)

The Wall Street Journal put out an interesting article before the concert took place that explained how it came to be. It's a worthwhile read:

Archive Buttons | Free Paywall Remover

I'll spare the details, since you can read about everything there. But I want to note that famous musical acts were falling over each other to take part, so many were turned down. The ones that were included generally were ones who lived in Los Angeles or otherwise had close ties to the area. 

Also note that the concert was rather strange in that it actually two place in two different venues on the same night. This is similar to what happened with Live Aid in 1985, except that consisted of concerts in North America and Europe, whereas this was two concerts both in the two of Inglewood. The thinking was that one of the concerts was mainly for pop music and the other for rock music. While there was down time between acts in one concert, they would show a set from the other concert, keeping both audiences entertained almost all the time. I thought about splitting this into two album, one for each venue. But I ultimately decided on making one big one, with all the songs in the order they occurred.

Now, let's get to the music. I found high quality videos of each set at a bootleg sharing site, then I converted them to audio and broke them into mp3s. The videos were already almost entirely free of the frequent begging for money typical of these types of concerts. I kept nearly everything. However, there were some sequences highlighting the fires and the resulting homelessness that I cut out, mostly because those were videos meant to be seen, not just heard. But I did keep speeches by Billy Crystal and Jimmy Kimmel talking about the fires.

As I mentioned above, I liked most of the musical acts. The vast majority of them have been featured in albums I've posted at this blog already. The ones who haven't are: Anderson Paak, Dawes, Gracie Abrams, Tate McRae, Jelly Roll, Nirvana, Katy Perry, Olivia Rodrigo, Peso Pluma, Billie Eilish, and Lady Gaga. Some of those were merely okay, but a lot of them only played a song or two, and often did a cover of a famous song, so it didn't matter much. There was only one musical act I couldn't stand, and that was Lil Baby. Gawwwd, the Autotune on that is sooo awful! So that was the only act I didn't include.

I mentioned Nirvana above. It's hard to imagine Nirvana without Kurt Cobain, who died long ago. The set here featured the three surviving members, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear. To fill Cobain's shoes as lead vocalist, different female singers sang each of the four songs performed: St. Vincent, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, and Violet Grohl (the last being the daughter of Dave Grohl). 

Generally speaking, the sound quality was excellent. But I noticed the lead vocals seems quite low during the Nirvana set, as well as the subsequent Red Hot Chili Peppers set. An analysis of those songs in an audio editing program confirmed that. So I boosted the vocals relative to the instruments for just those two sets, using the UVR5 audio editing program.

One other problem was that there often were abrupt sonic transitions between each set. So I would carefully look at the last song of one set and the first song of the next one. If it didn't sound smooth, I made some edits until it did. Typically, I'd merge audience applause together so it just sounds like lots of cheering until the next act got started.

This album is five hours long exactly. The actual concert was more like six hours long, but there was some dead air between sets, plus the video presentations about the fires that I cut out, as well as the Lil Baby set I couldn't stand.

001 Last Night on Earth (Green Day & Billie Eilish)
002 talk (Green Day)
003 Still Breathing (Green Day)
004 When I Come Around (Green Day)
005 talk (Billy Crystal)
006 Hand in My Pocket (Alanis Morissette)
007 talk (Alanis Morissette)
008 Thank U (Alanis Morissette)
009 talk (Anderson Paak)
010 Put Me Thru (Anderson Paak with Sheila E.)
011 talk (Anderson Paak)
012 Come Down (Anderson Paak with Sheila E.)
013 Still D.R.E. (Dr. Dre & Anderson Paak with Sheila E.)
014 talk (Anderson Paak)
015 California Love (Dr. Dre & Anderson Paak with Sheila E.)
016 talk by Alanis Morissette (Joni Mitchell)
017 Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)
018 talk (Dawes)
019 Time Spent in Los Angeles (Dawes)
020 talk (Stephen Stills with Dawes)
021 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills with Mike Campbell & Dawes)
022 talk (Graham Nash with Stephen Stills & Dawes)
023 Teach Your Children (Graham Nash with Stephen Stills & Dawes)
024 talk (Pink)
025 What about Us (Pink)
026 talk (Pink)
027 Me and Bobby McGee (Pink)
028 talk (Pink)
029 Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You (Pink)
030 talk by Samuel L. Jackson (Rod Stewart)
031 Forever Young (Rod Stewart)
032 talk (Rod Stewart)
033 Maggie May (Rod Stewart)
034 talk (Rod Stewart)
035 People Get Ready (Rod Stewart)
036 talk by Pink (John Mayer)
037 Neon (John Mayer)
038 Gravity (John Mayer)
039 Free Fallin' (John Mayer)
040 That's the Way of the World (Earth, Wind & Fire)
041 Shining Star (Earth, Wind & Fire)
042 September (Earth, Wind & Fire)
043 talk by Graham Nash (Black Crowes)
044 Remedy (Black Crowes)
045 talk (Black Crowes)
046 Have You Ever Seen the Rain (John Fogerty with the Black Crowes)
047 talk (Black Crowes)
048 Going to California (Black Crowes with Slash)
049 talk by Philip Bailey (Gracie Abrams)
050 I Love You, I'm Sorry (Gracie Abrams)
051 talk (Gracie Abrams)
052 A Long December (Gracie Abrams)
053 talk by John Meyer (No Doubt)
054 Just a Girl (No Doubt)
055 Don't Speak (No Doubt)
056 Spiderwebs (No Doubt)
057 talk (Tate McRae)
058 You Broke Me First (Tate McRae)
059 talk (Tate McRae)
060 Don't Dream It's Over (Tate McRae)
061 I Am Not Okay (Jelly Roll)
062 talk (Jelly Roll)
063 Hollywood Nights (Jelly Roll with Travis Barker)
064 talk by Gwen Stefani (Stevie Nicks)
065 Stand Back (Stevie Nicks)
066 talk (Stevie Nicks)
067 Landslide (Stevie Nicks)
068 talk (Stevie Nicks)
069 Edge of Seventeen (Stevie Nicks)
070 talk (Stevie Nicks)
071 talk by Jelly Roll (Katy Perry)
072 Rise (Katy Perry)
073 Roar (Katy Perry)
074 talk (Katy Perry)
075 California Gurls (Katy Perry)
076 Breed (Nirvana & St. Vincent)
077 School (Nirvana & Kim Gordon)
078 talk (Nirvana)
079 Territorial Pissings (Nirvana & Joan Jett)
080 talk (Nirvana)
081 All Apologies (Nirvana & Violet Grohl)
082 talk by Stevie Nicks (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
083 Dani California (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
084 Californication (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
085 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
086 Black Summer (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
087 Under the Bridge (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
088 talk (Olivia Rodrigo)
089 Drivers License (Olivia Rodrigo)
090 talk (Olivia Rodrigo)
091 Deja Vu (Olivia Rodrigo)
092 talk by Olivia Rodrigo (Sting)
093 Message in a Bottle (Sting)
094 Driven to Tears (Sting)
095 Fragile (Sting)
096 talk by Lil Baby (Peso Pluma)
097 La Bebe (Peso Pluma)
098 talk by Sting (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
099 talk (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
100 Wildflower (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
101 The Greatest (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
102 talk (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
103 Birds of a Feather (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
104 talk (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
105 talk (Stevie Wonder)
106 Love's in Need of Love Today (Stevie Wonder)
107 Superstition (Stevie Wonder with Sting)
108 Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder & Sting)
109 talk (Jimmy Kimmel)
110 Shallow (Lady Gaga)
111 talk (Lady Gaga)
112 Always Remember Us This Way (Lady Gaga)
113 talk (Lady Gaga)
114 Time Is a Healer (Lady Gaga)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZQXR1WV7

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/1MTEuDFXIW31ySS/file

I had hundreds of photos to choose from for the cover art. Unfortunately, there was no big encore with lots of famous people on stage together. So I decided to go with a photo of the stage and a bit of the audience, with John Mayer playing guitar and looking quite small on the huge stage. Then I added a huge version of the FireAid logo to the top half of the image.