Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 5: 1981-2016

This is the last of five albums in the "Covered" series containing the best songs of Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David.

This one is very different from all the others. For starters, the Bacharach-David songwriting collaboration was effectively over. (They did write a couple of songs together in these later years, but none of them were hits and I didn't judge any of them good enough for inclusion.)

David was seven years older than Bacharach, and it seems he more or less retired from songwriting a lot earlier than Bacharach did. I believe only one new song here was co-written by David, without Bacharach. That's "To All the Girls I've Loved Before." This was a huge hit by Willie Nelson & Julio Iglesias in 1984. But in fact it was first done by Albert Hammond in 1975. That's another sign that David stopped being a songwriting force in the 1970s.

However, Bacharach had a career revival in the 1980s, and he's had some minor revivals since. (He's still alive at 91 years old as I write this. David died in 2012, also at 91 years old.) Bacharach found a new songwriting partner with lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, and had a few hits in the 1980s, but some of them were massive hits. For instance, "That's What Friends Are For" was the best selling song in 1986.

Unfortunately, Bacharach had hits in the "adult contemporary" and/or soul genres, and I have big issues with those genres after about 1980. I feel good songs were often ruined by too much use of synthesizers, drum machines, strings, and so on. The singing has been even worse. Whitney Houston and others became superstars in the 1980s with a showy style that I consider "oversinging."

So I've had to tread very carefully with this album to find cover versions that I actually enjoyed listening to. I've made some very unusual choices. For instance, I haven't included the big hit version of "That's What Friends Are For." Instead, I've gone for an acoustic version done decades later by a relatively obscure Dutch singer. I've used that same Dutch singer (Trijntje Oosterhuis) doing an acoustic version for another big hit, "On My Own," that I can't stand in its original version by Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald.

I've chosen to include the Naked Eyes 1982 version of "There's Always Something There to Remind Me" even though I included a different version on an earlier album in this series. That's because this is a drastically different arrangement, and I happen to like it a lot. It's the only song in this series that I've included twice.

A few of the other songs here were actually Bacharach-David hits back in the 1960s, except that the cover versions I liked best weren't recorded until this era. Those songs are: "In Between the Heartaches," "Paper Mache," and "Here I Am."

Bacharach had another popular revival from 1996 to 1998, when he found Elvis Costello as a new songwriting partner. They wrote the song "God Give Me Strength" together for a movie. They were so happy with that that they did an entire album together in 1998. "Toledo," This House Is Empty Now," and "Painted from Memory" were originally done for that album, though this version of "Painted from Memory" is from a different album.

In conclusion, if you enjoy the musical style of Bacharach-David's songs in the 1960s and are not a fan of production techniques for radio hits from the 1980s onwards, this album is for you. Bacharach especially did write a lot of great songs in his later years. It's just that most of them were ruined by bad production and performances. Hopefully, I managed to find enough gems so that this album is as strong as the others in this series.

01 Arthur's Theme [Best That You Can Do] (Christopher Cross)
02 In Between the Heartaches (Phyllis Hyman)
03 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Naked Eyes)
04 To All the Girls I've Loved Before (Willie Nelson & Julio Iglesias)
05 God Give Me Strength (Kristen Vigard)
06 Toledo (Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach)
07 This House Is Empty Now (Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach)
08 Painted from Memory (Bill Frisell & Elvis Costello with Cassandra Wilson)
09 Paper Mache (Rita Calypso)
10 That's What Friends Are For (Trijntje Oosterhuis)
11 Here I Am (Kat Gang)
12 On My Own (Trijntje Oosterhuis)
13 The Last One to Be Loved (Rumer)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5kZk85rk

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/nkPfDJy3XIG7Ynj/file

UPDATE: On May 12, 2026, I replaced the cover image. The previous one didn't have them looking at the camera. I found one from 2003 where they were both staring ahead. There was a woman standing between them, but I used Photoshop to remove her and bring them close together.

Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 4: 1969-1975

I'm going to go ahead and post the rest of my "Covered" series on the best songs of Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David today. So here's the fourth out of five albums.

In the time period at the start of this album, the Bacharach-David songwriting partnership was still going strong. Dionne Warwick was still their main vehicle for getting hits. Note that, as with the other albums in this series, I'm avoiding including Warwick versions of these songs on the assumption that fans of this type of music have those already. I did include two songs done by Warwick though, "The Green Grass Starts to Grow" and "Plastic City," because I couldn't find any other versions.

However, the glory days were coming to an end. Bacharach and David had a falling out with Warwick around 1971, though I don't know the reasons for it. Then Bacharach and David had a falling out with each other around 1973, when a musical score they worked on, "Lost Horizon," was a critical and commercial failure. They wrote a couple of songs together many years later, but none of those were good enough to be included.

Around this same time, the two of them seemed to lose their musical mojo. For the rest of the 1970s, both of them had very few successes, and their style fell out of fashion. "Plastic City" is a song recorded in 1974 by Warwick during a tentative reunion with Bacharach (but not David). However, the song (and two other Bacharach tunes she recorded that year) weren't released until decades later. "99 Miles from L.A." was co-written by David without Bacharach, and was a minor hit for Albert Hammond in 1975. After that, my next album in this series begins in 1981, which shows was a dry spell they had.

Clearly, the two of them did better when working together. Happily, the vast majority of this music still covers the last of their glory years as a songwriting team.

01 I'll Never Fall in Love Again (Bobbie Gentry)
02 Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (B. J. Thomas)
03 We Have All the Time in the World (Louis Armstrong)
04 Walk On By (Isaac Hayes)
05 In the Land of Make Believe (Dusty Springfield)
06 One Less Bell to Answer (5th Dimension)
07 The April Fools (Cilla Black)
08 Odds and Ends (Johnny Mathis)
09 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Carpenters)
10 The Green Grass Starts to Grow (Dionne Warwick)
11 A House Is Not a Home (Dusty Springfield & Burt Bacharach)
12 Something Big (Mark Lindsay)
13 Send a Little Love My Way (Anne Murray)
14 Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets (Stephanie Mills)
15 You'll Never Get To Heaven [If You Break My Heart] (Stylistics)
16 Plastic City (Dionne Warwick)
17 99 Miles from L.A. (Albert Hammond)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/78BPcNxo

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/iSq63Y62ImZtSSR/file

Yeay! Finally, I'm able to show a real, undoctored color photo of Bacharach and David together. The photo for the cover art is from the 1969 Academy Awards ceremony.

Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 3: 1965-1968

Here's the third of five volumes in the "Covered" series collecting the best songs written by Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David. The two of them wrote a remarkable number of classic songs, and they were at the peak of their creative powers around this time, from the mid to the late 1960s.

As with the other albums in this series, I've tried to avoid including any covers performed by Dionne Warwick, since most any fan of this type of music presumably has her 1960s greatest hits at least, which are basically all Bacharach-David songs. The time period of this album is again dominated by Warwick hits. So sometimes I've had to get creative to find alternates. I did include one Warwick performance, "Looking with My Eyes," because I couldn't find any alternate versions at all.

But Bacharach and David were so successful and prolific during this time that they had a bunch of hits even if you don't include the Warwick versions. I'd say this album is roughly half hits by Warwick where I've had to find alternates and half hits by others.

I'm not 100 percent sure, but I'm fairly sure that all the songs on this album were written by both Bacharach and David. I think that's the case with the last album in this series too. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Sadly, their collaboration would fall apart in the early 1970s.

01 What's New Pussycat (Tom Jones)
02 Looking with My Eyes (Dionne Warwick)
03 My Little Red Book (Love)
04 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Astrud Gilberto)
05 Alfie (Cher)
06 Promise Her Anything (Tom Jones)
07 After the Fox (Hollies & Peter Sellers)
08 Casino Royale (Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass)
09 The Look of Love (Dusty Springfield)
10 I Say a Little Prayer (Aretha Franklin)
11 Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Connie Francis)
12 Are You There [With Another Girl] (Buckinghams)
13 The Windows of the World (Bobbie Gentry)
14 Promises, Promises (Connie Francis)
15 Another Night (Dusty Springfield)
16 This Guy's in Love with You (Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4HFb65fT

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/v32I4DdJsrOdNOo/file

I have to admit I blatantly cheated with the album cover. I was so frustrated by the lack of good color photos with both Bacharach and David in them that I decided to make one myself. I took a photo of Bacharach (with the blue background included) and another of David, and put them together. Maybe it looks a little bit weird. The David picture is at a lower resolution, unfortunately.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.  Hopefully the problems mentioned above have gone away.

Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 2: 1963-1965

Here's the second of five albums of the best songs from Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David for the "Covered" series. Hopefully, I don't need to explain how many great songs came from their minds.

Note that, like all the albums in this series, I've tried hard to avoid including any cover versions by Dionne Warwick. It's not that I don't like her covers. In fact, it's the opposite. She had so many hits written by them that her 1960s greatest hits albums are like Bacharach-David greatest hits as well. I'm assuming any fan of this type of music already has those. It's more interesting to me to see what other artists did with their songs.

The collaboration between Warwick on one hand and Bacharach and David on the other really got going in 1963, and lasted for the rest of the 1960s. For the first album I posted, there was only one song that was a big hit for Warwick ("Don't Make Me Over"). But for this album, there's a bunch. That means I had to often try to find non-hit versions, although some songs were so good and popular that multiple people had hits with them. By the way, I think only five songs on this album weren't covered by Warwick.

01 Let the Music Play (Drifters)
02 Blue on Blue (Bobby Vinton)
03 I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (Dusty Springfield)
04 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Sandie Shaw)
05 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Cilla Black)
06 Wishin' and Hopin' (Dusty Springfield)
07 Wives and Lovers (Nancy Wilson)
08 A House Is Not a Home (Brook Benton)
09 Saturday Sunshine (Petula Clark)
10 Long After Tonight Is All Over (Jimmy Radcliffe)
11 Message to Martha [Kentucky Bluebird] (Lou Johnson)
12 This Empty Place (Searchers)
13 What the World Needs Now Is Love (Jackie DeShannon)
14 Make It Easy on Yourself (Walker Brothers)
15 Trains and Boats and Planes (Anita Harris)
16 A Lifetime of Loneliness (Jackie DeShannon)
17 Reach Out for Me (Nancy Wilson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CrpdMzou

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4Oh7wuYD5ebjaUC/file

As I mentioned with the first album in this series, it's easy to find photos of Bacharach by himself, but very hard to find one of him with the publicity-shy David. The photo I've chosen for this album cover seems to be the most popular photo of the two of them together when they were young. I'm not sure what year it's from, but I'm guessing its from before 1969, judging by David's receding hairline compared to other photos.

Note that I cheated a bit with this photo: I moved Bacharach and David closer together so that I could have both of them appear larger. In the actual photo, there's basically no visual overlap of their upper bodies. Also, months after the fact, I found out a way to easily colorize the photo, so I did.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 1: 1957-1963

Here's a big project. Continuing my "Covered" series, this is the first of five albums dealing with songs written by Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David.

I'd like to think that Burt Bacharach is a household name. If he isn't anymore, he should be. If you don't know him, you must know many of his songs. Hal David is much less known, because he avoided publicity while Bacharach has been a public performer and a hobnobbing celebrity. But, generally speaking, Bacharach created the melodies and David wrote the lyrics. Together, they were one of the greatest songwriting teams of all time.

As usual with this series, I don't want to go into great detail about their life stories. Instead, here are their Wikipedia pages if you want to know more:

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

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

I feel obliged to say some more, to make clear who wrote what. David was seven years older than Bacharach, and got started with songwriting much earlier. He began writing songs professionally in the early 1940s. I only listened to a few of those early efforts, and I didn't judge any of them worthy of inclusion. He didn't really get on a winning streak until he met up with Bacharach in 1957 and they began collaborating.

Thus, most of the songs on this album were co-written by the two of them. But not all, because sometimes they would collaborate with others. For instance, "Sea of Heartbreak," Broken-Hearted Melody" and "Johnny Get Angry" were all written by David with someone other than Bacharach.

There's a very important point I want to make clear: for all five albums in this series, I have not included any songs performed by Dionne Warwick, unless I simply couldn't find any other versions of a particular song. The reason for that is because Bacharach-David songs are so closely linked to Warwick that her 1960s greatest hits albums are like 90 percent songs by them. She did many albums where virtually every song was written by them. I figure that anyone who is even remotely a fan of Bacharach-David songs has a Warwick's greatest hits at the very least, so I wanted to try something different here and see how their music fared with other singers. (If you don't have that, then please get one now! She really was the best singer for their style of music.)

Generally speaking, I've tried to include the hit versions, unless I deem those not very good. Bacharach and/or David were such successful songwriters that almost all the songs here were hits.

That said, I didn't include all their hits. Sometimes, they could get dangerously close to "easy listening" or Muzak-styled music. I generally don't like that kind of music, and I make these albums mainly for my own listening enjoyment, so if there was something I didn't like, I didn't include it. One example for the time period of this album is "American Beauty Rose," a song co-written by David that was a hit for Frank Sinatra in 1961. It just seemed generic for that kind of music, and not worthy of making the cut.

Each album in this series is about 45 to 50 minutes long.

01 The Story of My Life (Michael Holliday)
02 Magic Moments (Perry Como)
03 Broken-Hearted Melody (Sarah Vaughan)
04 Mexican Divorce (Drifters)
05 Sea of Heartbreak (Don Gibson)
06 I Wake Up Crying (Chuck Jackson)
07 Baby, It's You (Shirelles)
08 Tower of Strength (Gene McDaniels)
09 Please Stay (Drifters)
10 [The Man Who Shot] Liberty Valance (Gene Pitney)
11 Only Love Can Break a Heart (Gene Pitney)
12 It's Love that Really Counts [In the Long Run] (Shirelles)
13 Any Day Now [My Wild Beautiful Bird] (Chuck Jackson)
14 Johnny Get Angry (Joanie Sommers)
16 Blue Guitar (Richard Chamberlain)
18 Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa (Gene Pitney)
19 Don't Make Me Over (Dee Dee Sharp)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gssdhFYx

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/FvEyH3EBYujZUvc/file

Photographs of Bacharach are easy to find, because he was a prominent public figure. But photos of Bacharach and David are very hard to find, because David was so low profile. The Bacharach photo is from 1964. I don't know about the David one, but I would guess the 1960s as well.

UPDATE: On May 12, 2026, I replaced the cover image. In the previous one, neither of them were looking at the camera. So I changed it to pictures where they were doing that.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 1: 1964-1965

So far, I've posted a lot of Pete Townshend music. I've created a bunch of albums mainly out of his demos, which often sound like finished, professional tracks. But I was careful not to include any songs that appeared on albums by The Who. I've been saving those for this series, which are all his solo demos of Who songs.

This just covers 1964 and 1965, the first two years of the Who (once they'd switched to that name). All but one of the songs are officially released. There aren't many surprises, except that "Call Me Lightning," which was released in 1968, and "Sunrise," which was released in 1967, actually date from these years.

These demos sound a lot like what the Who would have been if Townshend had been the lead singer instead of Roger Daltrey. Of course, you miss some special Who elements, such as Keith Moon's drumming and John Entwistle's bass playing. But, generally speaking, these could have been officially released at the time and they would have fared very well compared to what other bands were doing then.

This album is a bit short at only 30 minutes long. Unfortunately, that's all from these years that have been made publicly available. No doubt, there are more of Townshend's demos in the vaults. Hopefully those will be released someday.

01 Call Me Lightning (Pete Townshend)
02 The Kids Are Alright (Pete Townshend)
03 A Legal Matter (Pete Townshend)
05 My Generation (Pete Townshend)
06 Much Too Much (Pete Townshend)
07 Circles (Pete Townshend)
08 It's Not True (Pete Townshend)
09 La-La-La-Lies (Pete Townshend)
10 The Good's Gone (Pete Townshend)
11 Sunrise (Pete Townshend)
12 My Generation [Version 3] (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3KnsMCyw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/QBk2X0dxpMbKG7Q/file

Normally, I hate to use black and white photos for the cover art. I could have easily found a good color photo of Townshend by himself. But I went with the photo I chose, because it shows him actually recording in a studio around this time period. Over a year later, I found a good colorizing program, so I colorized it. Then, in January 2025, I upgraded the image with the Krea AI program.

Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo - Jane Street Theater, New York City, 8-25-2000

I just posted a Ray Davies stray tracks album, and that got me thinking about this concert. I gave it another listen today and decided to post it here, because it's a fantastic concert. The sound is very good, the performance is solid, but what I most like about it is that it's kind of a dream concert for serious Kinks fans, because Davies didn't play many of his overplayed hits, and instead played lots of new songs and rarely played obscure gems.

Davies' solo career got off to a good start in 1998 with "Storyteller," a live acoustic album with lots of new songs. By 2000, he had enough songs for a solid new album, but apparently he had trouble getting a record contract. (He alludes to his lack of a record contract in this concert, in comments made before "The Deal".) Davies didn't have a band at the time, but he got together with Yo La Tengo, who are huge Kinks fans, so he could try out his new songs in front of an audience. They only played three shows together, all at Jane Street Theater in New York City. This is the final night.

All total, I count 10 then-unreleased songs, for a total of nearly one hour out of the two hours in this recording. This is the only time I know of when Davies ever played so many unreleased songs in concert, since he usually doesn't play any at all. Most of the songs would find their way onto his next solo album, "Other People's Lives," which strangely wouldn't get released until six years later. But one, "The Deal," wouldn't get released until the "Americana" album in 2017.Two more, "Americana (Hey Big Fat Cowboy)" and "Otis Riffs," still haven't been released. (Note that "Americana (Hey Big Fat Cowboy)" is not to be confused with "Americana," a song on the "Americana" album.)

Yo La Tengo pushed Davies to play some of their favorite obscure Kinks songs as well. Thus, he played great songs he'd rarely or never done in concert before, like "This Is Where I Belong," "No Return," "Animal Farm," "I Go to Sleep," and "Two Sisters." At one point, he joked that playing such songs was the price he had to pay the band in order for them to agree to back him.

Note that this recording is only an audience bootleg, not a soundboard. But sometimes audience recordings sound as good as or even better than a soundboard. This is one of those times. Admittedly, the recording had lots of volume problems, but I managed to fix them. For instance, the clapping at the end of each song was way too loud, so I lowered that. Also, the talking between songs was way too quiet, so I boosted that. The acoustic songs were too quiet compared to the full-band ones, so I boosted those as well. I made a number of other tweaks, including losing some tuning and other dead air between songs while keeping all of Davie's talking. The end result is one that sounds really good, in my opinion.

By the way, the first two songs aren't actually from the same concert, but they are from the same three night series with Yo La Tengo. "Village Green" is from two nights earlier, and "Two Sisters" is from one night earlier. The setlists were almost exactly the same all three nights, but these were the rare cases when different songs were played.

"Low Budget" was the last song played, but the recording got cut off only a minute or two into the song, so I didn't include that.

01 Village Green (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
02 Two Sisters (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
03 To the Bone (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
04 Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
05 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
06 Animal (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
07 My Next Door Neighbour (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
08 Creatures of Little Faith (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
09 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
10 Animal Farm (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
11 No Return (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
12 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
13 Things Are Gonna Change [The Morning After] (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
14 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
15 The Deal (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
16 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
17 Americana [Hey Big Fat Cowboy] (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
18 Empty Room (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
19 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
20 Stand Up Comic (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
21 All Day and All of the Night (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
22 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
23 Celluloid Heroes (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
24 I Go to Sleep (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
25 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
26 My Diary (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
27 I'm Not Like Everybody Else (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
28 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
29 This Strange Effect (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
30 Otis Riffs (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
31 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
32 Vietnam Cowboy (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
33 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
34 This Is Where I Belong (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
35 Where Have All the Good Times Gone (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
36 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
37 Thanksgiving Day (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
38 You Really Got Me (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
39 talk (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
40 I Need You (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)
41 Till the End of the Day (Ray Davies with Yo La Tengo)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CTfiK9xV 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Lgis5b0vsN0XtDw/file

I'm happy to say that although the photo used for the cover art isn't from the concert in question, it's close. It's from just two nights earlier, August 23rd, at the same location and with the same band. The first song actually comes from that show. I used the Krea AI program to sharpen the image a bit.

Ray Davies - Sane - Non-Album Tracks (2002-2012)

If you've been following this blog, you may have noticed that the Kinks are one of my favorites bands and I've been posting a lot of stuff from them. Not surprisingly, my interest extends to the solo career of Ray Davies, the band's main singer and songwriter. I'm going to make an effort to post more from his post-Kinks solo career too.

Unfortunately, he hasn't released as much material as one would expect. For instance, he went from 1998 to 2006 without releasing an album, apparently because he couldn't get a record deal on terms that he was happy with. This is a collection of stray tracks, but there aren't that many tracks, relatively speaking. He almost never plays unreleased songs in concert, and bootlegs of solo studio recordings haven't leaked. I had to stretch out over an entire decade to find enough songs to make up an album.

But, happily, what's lacking in quantity is made up for with quality. All these songs are solid. In fact, I'd say this is just as good a listen as his albums from around the same time. For instance, I'd consider "Thanksgiving Day" to be one of his very best solo songs, but it only was released as a bonus track for one of his albums.

I've kind of cheated a bit in that two of the songs here - "Vietnam Cowboys" and "The Voodoo Walk" - appear on one of those albums. But these are demo versions that were released as bonus tracks. I figure they're different enough to merit inclusion.

The last four songs are officially unreleased. One, "Sane," is a studio recording that somehow got released on the Internet, but never actually appeared on record. The other three are rare examples of unreleased songs that got played in concert. In his introduction to "Depressed I Am Not," he mentioned that song was one of many songs he wrote for Frank Sinatra (!) that remain unreleased. I suspect he has a large number of unreleased songs in the vaults. I hope he'll share more with us someday.

01 Yours Sincerely, Confused N10 (Ray Davies with Jools Holland)
02 Thanksgiving Day (Ray Davies)
03 Angola [Wrong Side of the Law] (Ray Davies)
04 I, The Victim (Ray Davies)
05 Vietnam Cowboys [Demo] (Ray Davies)
06 The Voodoo Walk [Demo] (Ray Davies)
07 Postcard from London (Ray Davies & Chrissie Hynde)
08 Depressed I Am Not (Ray Davies & the Leisure Society)
09 Be Happy (Ray Davies & The Leisure Society)
10 Sane (Ray Davies)
11 A Better Thing (Ray Davies)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Dv9cRHfi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/gUtfk6hVIF1iTf5/file

The covert art photo is of Davies in 2006.

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/fwfd4urC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/LO5aYbzFLbroDuj/file

UPDATE: On May 12, 2026, I replaced the original picture. I don't know the details for this one. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. 

Chris Clark - Chris Clark - Selected Best Tracks (1968-1969)

I recently posted two albums of material from Chris Clark. This is the third and last, because she only had a relatively brief recording career, from 1965 to 1969. If you don't know who she is, she was a soul singer for the Motown label. But she didn't have much commercial success despite being very talented. The fact that she was a tall, platinum-haired white woman singing a type of music beloved mainly by black audiences at the time didn't help.

She put out an album in 1967 called "Soul Sounds," and my last post on her was my drastically changed version of that. She put out her second and last album in 1969, called "CC Rides Again." Unfortunately, it was a mess. Most of the songs were predictable covers of the biggest hit songs of the year. She gave good performances as usual, but clearly Motown wasn't giving her good material.

On top of that, many of the songs began with long instrumental passages from famous classical pieces that had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the song. Apparently, it was some kind of failed effort by the producers to appear hip or experimental. For the songs I've chosen from the album, I've lopped all those sections off.

But I didn't do that very much, because it turns out that only four of the 14 songs here come from "CC Rides Again." As I said, that just wasn't a very good album. She was recording much better material but it stayed in the vaults until decades later. Another eight songs are from 1968 or 1969, but not officially released at the time.

The last two songs are strange, because they come from much, much later. After 1969, she basically gave up on her music career, but stayed with Motown Records and moved her way up in the company until she was the head creative director. (She did record a few songs in the later 1970s, but they're disco tracks and not worthy of inclusion here.)

However, her reputation as a soul singer has grown over time, and in the 2000s she began performing some concerts, especially in Britain, where the classic Motown sound is more appreciated by the "Northern Soul" crowd. That led to her recording two new songs in 2011. I've added them at the end. If you didn't read this, you probably wouldn't notice the massive time gap, because they're good songs and they sound exactly as if they were recorded in the late 1960s instead. It's too bad she hasn't recorded more in recent years, because her voice hasn't lost any of its power.

By the way, I couldn't come up with a good name for this album, so I decided to simply call it "Chris Clark."  I was influenced by the cover art I chose, which has her name is massive letters, without really having room for more text.

01 Feelin' Good (Chris Clark)
02 I'm Gonna Be True (Chris Clark)
03 He's Good for Me (Chris Clark)
04 Bad Seed (Chris Clark)
05 Can I See You in the Morning (Chris Clark)
06 If You Let Me Baby (Chris Clark)
07 C. C. Rider (Chris Clark)
08 One (Chris Clark)
09 In the Ghetto (Chris Clark)
10 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Chris Clark)
11 My World Is Empty without You (Chris Clark)
12 The Last Thing on My Mind (Chris Clark)
13 Dream or Cry (Chris Clark)
14 Hang It Up (Chris Clark)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15100216/ChrisCrk_1968-1969_ChrisClrk_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover of an EP as the framework. But the lower half contained the names of four songs with a very tiny photo of Clark. I erased all that and replaced it with a much larger photo of her.  Good color photos of her in her late 1960s heyday are very few and far between. I actually found two different versions of the same photo that had been cropped to show only parts of her head. I stitched them together to show her full head. I'm happy at how that turned out.

Various Artists - Covered: Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, Volume 3: 1971-2008

Here's the third and last of the albums I've made of my favorite songs by Doc Pomus and/or Mort Shuman.

I'm careful to say "and/or" because the collaboration between Pomus and Shuman ended in the 1960s. All the songs here are by either Pomus or by Shuman, sometimes in collaboration with other songwriters. The only exceptions are songs that were written earlier. I think the only case of that is "Young Blood," which was a hit by the Coasters back in 1957. But I'm using this hit version by Bad Company instead, because I included the Coasters version elsewhere.

The vast majority of the songs on this album are associated with Pomus. Shuman was successful as well, but he spoke French and he increasingly directed his efforts to the French market. One song here, "My Death," is his English translation of a song by Jacques Brel. He had a fairly successful solo career in the 1970s. But the vast majority of the songs he did were in French, and most of his success was in France. I've also included "Sorrow," because it probably is his best known solo song that's sung in English.

Meanwhile, Pomus continued to live in New York City. He had given up on songwriting for about a decade after losing the songwriting partnership with Shuman. As the 1970s went on, he slowly returned to songwriting, but he didn't have much success at first because he was seen as someone from an earlier era that had fallen totally out of style.

However, he eventually found a new niche for himself writing for a more mature audience. He focused more on blues, which was his original musical love anyway. He didn't have any more hits, but he gained a lot of critical acclaim for his new style. For instance, he co-wrote all the songs for B. B. King's 1981 album "There Must Be a Better World Somewhere," and King won a Grammy for the album.

Both Pomus and Shuman died of cancer in 1991. The last four songs here date from after that. Either they are versions of songs that were recorded by others earlier, or they are songs that didn't get recorded until later, for whatever reason. Irma Thomas's version of "Be You" is actually the first released version of that song, even though it was done 17 years after Pomus died.

01 Get It While You Can (Janis Joplin)
02 Amsterdam (David Bowie)
03 My Baby (Janis Joplin)
04 Sorrow (Mort Shuman)
05 Young Blood (Bad Company)
06 There Must Be a Better World Somewhere (B. B. King)
07 I Underestimated You (Johnny Adams)
08 Pictures and Paintings (Charlie Rich)
09 I'm on a Roll (Dr. John)
10 Blinded by Love (B. B. King)
11 Imitation of Love (Dr. John)
12 Be You (Irma Thomas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qTodsFSL

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Aq2HagHqxqXRfyn/file

As I mentioned with the two previous albums in this series, I've had a heck of a time finding any photos of Pomus and Shuman together. I don't know when or where this one is from, but judging by their appearance it has to be well after their songwriting partnership ended. I would guess it's from the 1970s or even the 1980s. I don't know much about their relationship after their stopped writing songs together, but based on this photo it looks like they stayed friends, even though they usually were separated by the fact they lived on different continents.

This photo was originally in black and white but I've colorized it. 

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, Volume 2: 1962-1968

I just posted the first of three albums I've made that collect the best songs written by Doc Pomus and/or Mort Shuman. I'm posting all three at once, so here's the second one.

Pomus and Shuman worked with each other from about 1958 to 1964. That was the time of their greatest success, when they wrote a series of all-time classics. Like the songwriting team of Leiber and Stoller, their peak era pretty much ended in 1964, because that was the year the Beatles basically took over the musical world. One out of four of all records sold in 1964 were by the Beatles, a truly incredible fact that has never been equaled since.

Suddenly, the "British Invasion" was hot and the older type of music Pomus and Shuman was known for was yesterday's news. The biggest threat posed by the Beatles was that they wrote all their own songs, so they obviously didn't need the likes of Pomus and Shuman. Bob Dylan and others were doing the same.

Pomus and Shuman decided to meet this challenge head on. They actually moved to Britain and began writing songs for British Invasion bands. But their songwriting partnership broke up at this point, because Pomus soon returned to the US and Shuman permanently relocated to Europe. Most of the songs here after 1964 are written by Shuman alone, unless they're versions of earlier songs. Before long, Pomus gave up on songwriting and resorted to running gambling games and royalty checks from his earlier hits to get by. Happily, he would return to songwriting, but that's a topic for the next album in this series.

01 Suspicion (Elvis Presley)
02 Seven Day Weekend (Gary 'U. S.' Bonds)
03 Night Rider (Elvis Presley)
04 She's Not You (Elvis Presley)
05 Sweets for My Sweet (Searchers)
06 Can't Get Used to Losing You (Andy Williams)
07 Troubled Mind (Dion)
08 Here I Go Again (Hollies)
09 Little Children (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
10 Viva Las Vegas (Elvis Presley)
11 Sha-La-La-La-Lee (Small Faces)
12 Go Jimmy Go (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
13 Jackie (Scott Walker)
14 What's It Gonna Be (Dusty Springfield)
15 Mighty Cold (Fleetwood Mac)
16 Machines (Lothar & the Hand People)
17 Stop (Howard Tate)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/y5Gv1GHx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/SOqSg01h3ZtMU5D/file

As I mentioned for the first album in this series, I had trouble finding any photos of Pomus and Shuman together. The photo I've used here is very similar to the one I used for the first album. Clearly, they were taken at the same time, judging by the clothes they are wearing and the background. If anyone knows of other good photos of them together, please let me know because I don't like using two photos that are so similar to each other. However, I colorized this, and when I did so I changed the colors of their suits and also simplified the background, so hopefully that makes them look different enough.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, Volume 1: 1950-1962

A few days ago, I posted my first "Covered" series, which is made of three albums of songs written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. I plan to post a bunch more of these to highlight the works of great songwriters. Here's the next one.

I don't think the songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman is as famous as Leiber and Stoller. But I'd argue they were just as commercially successful and just as talented. I don't want to go into great detail about their personal histories, since these write-ups I write are probably too wordy already. Here are the relevant Wikipedia entries:

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

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

But I will say they were unusually colorful characters, especially Pomus. There's a fascinating documentary film about his life called "A.k.a. Doc Pomus," which I recommend you watch. He had an extremely eventful and interesting life. *By the way, both he and Shuman died in 1991.)

Pomus was hit with polio when a child, and it afflicted him the rest of his life to the point that he spent most of his life in a wheelchair. He also was a white Jewish guy. Yet as soon as he became an adult, he started a career as a blues singer. He wasn't that good a singer, to be honest, but he was able to make a modest living out of it doing concerts, probably due to the novelty factor of being a white Jewish guy singing the blues, and handicapped to boot. I have two songs here from his solo career, which petered out after a few years.

By about 1956, he switched his musical efforts to songwriting. He'd had some success with that already, especially the song "Chains of Love," which was a hit for Big Joe Turner. (Note that he's not credited for writing it through, because he sold his songwriting share for a small amount of money.) Starting around 1957, he began having a lot more success.

Around 1958, Pomus met Shuman through a family connection. Pomus was in his thirties and Shuman was only 18 and had no songwriting experience at all. But Pomus saw something in him, and figured it would be good to get a teenager's perspective since his songs were mainly aimed at teenagers. Shuman quickly learned the art of songwriting and they became a very successful team. Typically, Pomus wrote the lyrics and Shuman wrote the melody. But this wasn't always the case. This can be seen by the fact that both had hits writing songs all by themselves as well.

I've chosen the songs for this series mainly because I like listening to them. But I also have tried to include all the significant hits. Luckily, the hits are usually the best songs, so it's typically easy to include them.

For this album, the only major hit I'm missing is "Young Blood," a hit for the Coasters in 1957. The reason I didn't include it is because Pomus wrote it with none other than Leiber and Stoller, before he began working with Shuman, and I've included the Coasters version in my Leiber and Stoller collection. Instead, I'm including a different version of "Young Blood" here, but it goes on a later album. (Bad Company had a hit with the song in 1976.)

I've made three albums of Pomus and/or Shuman songs. Each one of them is about 45 to 50 minutes long.

01 Send for the Doctor (Doc Pomus)
02 Chains of Love (Big Joe Turner)
03 Heartlessly (Doc Pomus)
04 Lonely Avenue (Ray Charles)
05 Boogie Woogie Country Girl (Big Joe Turner)
06 Love Roller Coaster (Big Joe Turner)
07 A Teenager in Love (Dion & the Belmonts)
08 Hushabye (Mystics)
09 Turn Me Loose (Fabian)
10 A Mess of Blues (Elvis Presley)
11 Save the Last Dance for Me (Drifters)
12 This Magic Moment (Drifters)
13 Surrender (Elvis Presley)
14 I Count the Tears (Drifters)
15 [Marie's The Name] His Latest Flame (Elvis Presley)
16 Young Boy Blues (Ben E. King)
17 Little Sister (Elvis Presley)
18 First Taste of Love (Ben E. King)
19 Gonna Get Back Home Somehow (Elvis Presley)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/AcNAXLLd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/JbTS97qATJ1ozc6/file

I suspect the reason more people don't know about Pomus and Shuman is because they kept a very low public profile. One result of that is that I had a hard time finding any photos of them together. All the photos I could find are black in white. So I've colorized them to help distinguish them from each other. I'm not sure what year this photo was taken, but I'd guess it's from around 1960, give or take a couple of years.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Cream - Grande Ballroom, Detroit, MI, 10-15-1967

Ginger Baker, former drummer for Cream, died a few days ago (as I write this in October 2019). By all accounts, he was a jerk. (The interesting documentary "Beware of Mr. Baker" shows this in spades.) And yet, he was a towering musical talent on the drums. To mark his passing, I wanted to post something from Cream, and this live show came to mind.

In short, if you want one live concert from Cream, this is definitely it. This show is often on the list of best concert bootlegs of all time, for any musical act. It's the only soundboard from 1967, and when it comes to Cream concerts, the earlier the date, the better. As time passed during the band's short existence from 1966 to 1968, personality clashes, too much fame too soon, and other problems slowly killed the band's creative fire. Pretty much all the excellent sounding live recordings date from 1968 (except for this one!), including all the officially released material. But by that time, while they were still able to run circles around most bands of the time, they had lost a lot from what they had been in 1966 and 1967.

So the content here is stellar. But even though the sound quality is the best from 1967, it had some problems. I say "had" because I believe I've pretty much fixed them. The bootleg I own has some liner notes that note the vocals sometimes aren't heard well, and that was true. But luckily it turns out there's a lot of stereo separation on the recording, and one of the stereo tracks has nearly all the vocals. That enabled me to do some tinkering. For instance, for songs where the vocals were noticeably low, I painstakingly increased the volume for the vocals, doing so line by line.

I also fixed some obvious flaws. For instance, the first few seconds of the intro to one of the songs was cut off. But luckily, it was a riff that was repeated a few seconds later, so I was able to patch in a fix. Another song had a big sound glitch where a couple of seconds were missing, but it was another case of a repeated intro riff, so I was able to fix that too. Additionally, the band members didn't speak much before songs, but when they did the volume was so low as to be almost inaudible. I upped the volume so their words could be easily heard. I also cut out some dead air between songs, such as guitar tuning time. On top of that, the audience was nearly inaudible too, due to the recording being a soundboard that picked up mainly what was happening on stage. I markedly increased the cheering after each song, so it wouldn't seem like the band was playing to a nearly empty room.

But wait, there's more! ;) I believe the recording captured the entire show. But I was disappointed they didn't play "Sunshine of Your Love." The album that's from, "Disraeli Gears," would be released a couple of weeks after this concert. But the band had been playing the song at almost every concert since January, so it's surprising it wasn't played this time too. I "fixed" that by adding two songs - "Sunshine of Your Love" and "Lawdy Mama" - at the end from another concert earlier in 1967 (at the Ricky Tick in London in April). The sound quality of these two songs are nearly good as the rest, especially because I made some edits to make the vocals more audible in that case as well, especially for "Lawdy Mama."

As usual, Cream really stretched things out with their soloing. So the concert is nearly two hours long, if you include the two extra songs. The only downside is that the bass is a bit low in the mix sometimes. But if want to listen to live Cream, I'd say this is better than anything else I've heard, including the officially released live tracks.

01 Tales of Brave Ulysses (Cream)
02 N.S.U. (Cream)
03 Sitting On Top of the World (Cream)
04 Sweet Wine (Cream)
05 Rollin' and Tumblin' (Cream)
06 Spoonful (Cream)
07 Steppin' Out [Instrumental] (Cream)
08 Traintime (Cream)
09 Toad [Instrumental] (Cream)
10 I'm So Glad (Cream)
11 Lawdy Mama (Cream)
12 Sunshine of Your Love (Cream)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dZp9i

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/21kqGrwi

second alternate:

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

For the cover art, I was unable to find any photos from the concert in question. However, I got lucky and found the concert poster for that very show, and it's a nice one. I used that for the album cover, except for the central photo of the band. I also had to squish the art horizontally to get it to fit. Also, I completely changed the color scheme, because the original used some colors that didn't work well together, in my opinion. I removed all the text from the bottom and replaced it with new text, since the old text didn't say what I wanted to be said.

For the central photo, I found a color photo of the band in concert at the Fillmore in August 1967. It was just about the only good color photo I could find of the band playing live in 1967 at all. I'm surprised such a well known band wasn't photographed on stage more often. If anyone knows of a better one, please let me know.

Looking for Songs

In putting together music for this blog, I have to track down a lot of hard-to-find songs. There are some songs I've been looking for for at least a year, sometimes much longer, and I've never been able to find. This blog is totally free; I don't ask for any sort of compensation (although feedback comments are very much appreciated!). However, if you can help find any of these songs, it would be very appreciated.

Aimee Mann - "Swanee River" (a bonus track to the Mental Illness album)
Camera Obscura - "Not Got a Title Yet"
Camera Obscura - "Ultimate Summer Preview" (both songs from the 1997 Camera Obscura EP)
Kim Weston - "Title Song from Motion Picture 'Changes'" (A-side from 1969)
Imelda May - "Rock Around with Ollie Vee" (bonus track to "Listen to Me: Buddy Holly" tribute album)
The Pretenders - "Day Tripper" (unreleased, played live in 1981)

That's it, for now. My "want list" is constantly changing, but these all have been bothering me for a while. Most of them are officially released, so they should exist somewhere. Again, any help would be appreciated. If you have one or more of these and want to share, just leave a comment.

The Grateful Dead - Bird Song - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1971)

Robert Hunter, who wrote most of the lyrics for the Grateful Dead, died last week. In tribute to his legacy, I'm posting more from the Dead.

From about 1970 to 1972, the Grateful Dead had a tremendous burst of creativity. Yet the band only released two studio albums during that time, both in 1970: "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty." They should have put out a lot more. Instead, the band's two main singer-songwriters, Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, each put out solo albums in 1971 that were filled with songs that would become standards for the band. Plus, a lot of new songs were put on live albums, especially "Skulls and Roses" and "Europe '72."

I've given myself the goal of compiling all those original songs onto studio albums in a similar vein to "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty." Like those albums, I've tried to create albums that are about 40 minutes long each, with short versions of songs compared to the band's usual live standards.

On the downside, there are very few publicly available studio outtakes. Also, I've avoided using the recordings from the two solo albums unless there's no other option, because I figure most Dead fans should have those albums already. But on the upside, there are mountains of officially released live recordings from that time in pristine sound quality. They can easily be made to sound like studio takes by removing the crowd noise. Besides, the Dead were played better live anyway, which is why they favored live albums at the time.

I've come up with so much original material from 1970 to 1972 that I was able to make four stray tracks albums! This is the first one. Well, almost all original material. For each of those four albums, I've allowed myself to include one cover song, if it's a song so closely identified with the band that many people assume they wrote it. In this case, it's "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad."

Note that in addition to all those new originals, the band also played a ton of cover songs in those years. I plan to do something with the best of those later. Furthermore, the band played even more interesting songs in an acoustic format, mostly in 1970. I have plans for that too. But I want to deal with the original stray tracks first.

In order to figure out which songs to put on which of these four albums I'm making from that era, I consulted a list detailing the exact dates each song was played live for the first time. Then I divided those into four groups, one for each album. However, in some cases I moved a song from one group to another in order to have a good balance of songs sung by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Ron 'Pigpen' McKennan.

Note that two of the recordings - "Deal" and "Greatest Story Ever Told" - date from 1972. But that's just a matter of finding the best live recordings. Both songs had their debuts in February 1971.

By the way, "Tastebud" is a very little known and rarely played original song by McKennan. It was first done in 1966, and I had a version of it on a stray tracks album covering that time period. But it was only played live a few times, and no version of it was released at the time. The band then brought it out of mothballs and tried it again in the studio in early 1970 with the idea of putting it on "Workingman's Dead," only to leave it unreleased again. I've included that version.

01 Bird Song (Grateful Dead)
02 Mason's Children (Grateful Dead)
03 Tastebud (Grateful Dead)
04 To Lay Me Down (Grateful Dead)
05 Greatest Story Ever Told (Grateful Dead)
06 Deal (Grateful Dead)
07 Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Grateful Dead)
08 Playing in the Band (Grateful Dead)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/H9bg9jhx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/aCjmO7k8yyamCEx/file

For the cover art, I used some nice fan art. Unfortunately, it's been a while since I found it, and I don't remember who did it or where it came from. I do remember that I added the wood in the background, in imitation of the look of the "American Beauty" cover.

Various Artists - Covered: Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Volume 3: 1962-1978

Here's the third and last of three "Covered" volumes containing the best songs from the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

If you look at the mp3 tags, the first nine songs are from 1962 or 1963. The last eight songs cover a much greater time range, 1964 to 1978. What happened? For one thing, the Beatles hit it big in early 1964, totally changing the music scene. But also, most successful songwriters tend to have a "golden age" or a decade or two, followed by a long, slow decline. This follows that pattern.

In putting this series together, I haven't limited myself to songs co-written by Leiber and Stoller. If either of them were credited, or if there were others as well, I figure those songs are fair game too. One example of that is the country classic "Jackson," which was co-written by Leiber, but not Stoller.

An unusual song from a songwriting point of view is another all-time classic, "On Broadway." It was originally written by the great team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. However, they showed it to Leiber and Stoller, and they made major changes, so all four of them were credited. I'll post a "Covered" series for Mann and Weil later, and I would prefer not to put the exact same version of the same song on both. So I'm putting the Drifters' version on the Mann and Weil series, and I'm putting George Benson's version on this one. Both artists had big hits with the song. The same exact thing happened with "Only in America," so I'm putting different versions on this volume and the Mann and Weil series.

01 Ruby Baby (Dion)
02 I [Who Have Nothing] (Ben E. King)
03 Bossa Nova Baby (Elvis Presley)
04 My Heart Said [The Bossa Nova] (Irene Reid)
05 Searchin' (Hollies)
06 I'm a Woman (Peggy Lee)
07 Only in America (Drifters)
08 Poison Ivy (Rolling Stones)
09 Drip Drop (Dion)
10 Down Home Girl (Alvin Robinson)
11 Past, Present and Future (Shangri-Las)
12 Jackson (Johnny Cash & June Carter)
13 D. W. Washburn (Monkees)
14 Is That All There Is (Peggy Lee)
15 Some Cats Know (Peggy Lee)
16 Pearl's a Singer (Elkie Brooks)
17 On Broadway (George Benson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jRpL4FHX

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/9BpohlROYvHYGpL/file

As I did with Volume 2, in order to use a good color photo, I had to resort to a photo that's outside the time period in question. I believe this photo is from 1987. Leiber is on the right.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - Covered: Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Volume 2: 1959-1962

I've put together three albums of the best of the songwriting team Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. I feel like posting all three at once, so here's the second one in the "Covered" series.

This volume covers the years of their commercial and creative peak. So it only deals with four years, a lot less than for the other two volumes. The first volume was dominated by Elvis Presley songs, with nine. There are only two songs performed by him this time.

There are five song by the Coasters. There would have been one more, but I went with a version of "Three Cool Cats" by the Beatles. The Coasters had a minor hit with the song, while the Beatles were nobodies at the time. In fact, their recording comes from an early audition to try to win a record contract. But of course, they're the Beatles. ;)

01 Kansas City (Wilbert Harrison)
02 Along Came Jones (Coasters)
03 Dance with Me (Drifters)
04 That Is Rock and Roll (Coasters)
05 Love Potion No. 9 (Clovers)
06 There Goes My Baby (Drifters)
07 Charlie Brown (Coasters)
08 Smokey Joe's Cafe (Buddy Holly)
09 Saved (LaVern Baker)
10 Dirty, Dirty Feeling (Elvis Presley)
11 Shoppin' for Clothes (Coasters)
12 Stand by Me (Ben E. King)
13 Don Juan (LaVern Baker)
14 Little Egypt [Ying-Yang] (Coasters)
15 Spanish Harlem (Ben E. King)
16 Your Old Lady (Isley Brothers)
17 Some Other Guy (Richie Barrett)
18 She's Not You (Elvis Presley)
19 I Keep Forgettin' (Chuck Jackson)
20 Three Cool Cats (Beatles)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sifCTkB1

alternate link:

https://bestfile.io/en/mv3DhjRTLea2O2O/file

As I mentioned in my write-up for volume 1, I don't like using black and white photos for the cover art. Luckily, I figured out a way to colorize such photos, so that's what I did for this one.

UPDATE: On May 15, 2026, I made a change to the picture. Leiber (the one with the clean shaven face) had his head down in the original. I found another photo taken in the same photo session that had his head up. I used Photoshop to swap the heads.

Various Artists - Covered: Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Volume 1: 1952-1958

So far with this blog, I'm been prioritizing posting stray tracks compilation albums for individual artists, since those usually can't be found elsewhere. But there are other things I want to post, and one major category is various artists compilations. So far, I've posted a little bit of that, especially my series of "Nuggets" compilations sorted by country. I still plan on posting the US and Britain compilations in that series, but I have to figure out how to organize it into manageable pieces. In the meantime, I'm going to start this new series, which I call "Covered."

In my opinion, songwriters are drastically underappreciated. I believe that, in the long run, the quality of the song matters more than the performance. But of course the performer gets nearly all the fame and glory, in the same way that movie stars are usually much better known than directors, producers, or screenwriters. In this series, I want to highlight some of the greatest songwriters, or songwriting teams, of all time. Some in this series, such as Carole King or Smokey Robinson, have been major performing stars as well, but I plan on looking exclusively at songs performed by others.

Sometimes, there have been various artists collections along these lines. For instance, there have been a couple of pretty good box sets dealing with the music of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. But even with the best official efforts, there are licensing problems that mean key songs are left out. On the flip side, there usually are many songs included that aren't that good. I'm making exactly what pleases me. I'm trying to include all the big hits, but if there's one I don't like, I'll probably resort to using a version of that song by someone else, or maybe not include it at all. And there usually are rarities that I do like and weren't hits at all.

The first in this series is the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, because their success goes way back to the early 1950s. I'm not going to recount their story. If you don't know who they are, check out their Wikipedia entry as a starting point to learn more:

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

In short, they wrote over 70 hits, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, and are undoubtedly one of the best songwriting teams of all time. They produced a great number of hits as well, and ran their own record company. They especially fed a lot of hits to the Coasters and to Elvis Presley. I've usually selected the original hit, but sometimes I went with an alternate, especially because I didn't want to overload this with Coasters and Elvis performances. So, for instance, I went with Big Mama Thornton's version of "Hound Dog" instead of Presley's. Also, my rule is to only include one version of a particular song, even if two or more artists had big hits with it.

As I mentioned above, I try to include the hits, but not if I don't like them. For this album, probably the only controversial choice is that I don't like "Loving You" by Presley. I find it slow, it a boring and overdone manner. But it was a huge hit. So I found a rare fast version that I like much better, and I've included that instead.

I've broken up this collection into three albums of about 50 minutes of music each. This is the first. For all albums in this "Covered" series, the songs are ordered chronologically by year. But I don't go into enough detail to figure out the release order within each year.

01 Hard Times (Charles Brown)
02 Nosey Joe (Bull Moose Jackson)
03 Hound Dog (Big Mama Thornton)
04 Riot in Cell Block No. 9 (Robins)
05 I Smell a Rat (Big Mama Thornton)
06 Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots (Cheers)
07 Down in Mexico (Coasters)
08 Love Me (Elvis Presley)
09 Jailhouse Rock (Elvis Presley)
10 Fools Fall in Love (Drifters)
11 [You're So Square] Baby I Don't Care (Elvis Presley)
12 Lucky Lips (Ruth Brown)
13 Loving You [Fast Version] (Elvis Presley)
14 Santa Claus Is Back in Town (Elvis Presley)
15 Young Blood (Coasters)
16 Treat Me Nice (Elvis Presley)
17 Framed (Ritchie Valens)
18 Trouble (Elvis Presley)
19 King Creole (Elvis Presley)
20 Yakety Yak (Coasters)
21 Don't (Elvis Presley)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/n4AurRn8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/kHOyhCGjJ3lYClc/file

As usual, I don't like using black and white photos for the cover art. But I couldn't find any color photos of Leiber and Stoller from the 1950s, so I colorized this one. I believe it dates from 1959. Leiber is on the left.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Van Morrison - Real, Real Gone - Non-Album Tracks (1978-1981)

I love all of Van Morrison's music all the way through the end of the 1970s. But that comes to a sudden halt for me with his 1980 album "Common One." He drastically changed his style to more of a jazzy, new age-y mood music. Then he kept to that style for the next ten years or so. Some people really like it, but I only like the occasional song until his 1990 album "Enlightenment," when he got back to more of a rootsy style.

Anyway, this is the last of the stray tracks albums I've made to cover his golden era from the late 1960s through the 1970s. (I should have posted this earlier, but I was trying to find a couple of songs for it, and I finally found them.) The music continues into 1981, but the songs from 1980 and 1981 generally keep to his earlier style.

The first song here, "Real, Real Gone," was one of the highlights of the 1990 album I mentioned above, "Enlightenment." But as can be seen here, it actually dates from much earlier, but he just sat on it for some reason. Perhaps it was due to that shift of styles, especially since he returned to it when his style shifted back.

Three songs - "I'm Ready," "John Brown's Body," and "Sax Instrumental No. 1" - were released as B-sides to various versions of Morrison's "Back on Top." This is odd, because "Back on Top" was released in 1999, and all these songs are from 1978. But it makes more sense if you consider that he had recently released the archival compilation "The Philosopher's Stone," and these songs apparently had just missed making the cut for that.

"Dead Girls of London" is a very strange song for Morrison. He's done soul, jazz, blues, country, folk, and in various combinations, but he's pretty much never done straight rock and roll, at least not since his days with "Them." And yet this song rocks. It was written by Frank Zappa and one of his band members, L. Shankar, but somehow Zappa talked Morrison into singing the lead vocals. (I'm guessing they were recording in the same recording studio at the time.) Zappa wanted to release the Morrison version, but Morrison was on a different record label and that label wouldn't give permission. So a shorter version without Morrison was released instead. The Morrison version didn't come out until a 2011 Zappa archival release.

In my opinion, "Wonderful Remark" is one of the great Morrison songs. It wasn't officially released until 1983, when it showed up on the "King of Comedy" soundtrack. But in fact it was written much earlier. I've included an early version on a 1972 stray tracks album. Even the "King of Comedy" version was actually recorded in 1981, which is why I've included it here.

Also, for sticklers like me, note that Morrison's song "Street Theory," which is from 1980, is almost exactly the same as "Come On Out Child," a song he did in 1975. I didn't realize the similarity until I was listening again to this album before posting it here, and I had a "Hey! That sounds familiar!" moment. "Come On Out Child," is unreleased, but I posted it on my stray tracks album "Not Working for You." "Street Theory" is from the official archival release "The Philosopher's Stone." I've added "Come On Out Child" to the subtitle, since it's the same lyrics and melody.

I've included two songs only as bonus tracks, "Bright Side of the Road" and "Cleaning Windows." That's because both are songs that were officially released on albums in that era, but these are different versions. "Bright Side of the Road" has a very different arrangement, and "Cleaning Windows" has somewhat different lyrics.

01 Real, Real Gone [First Version] (Van Morrison)
02 Stepping Out Queen, Part 2 (Van Morrison)
03 I'm Ready (Van Morrison)
04 John Brown's Body (Van Morrison)
05 Sax Instrumental No. 1 [Affirmation] (Van Morrison)
06 Dead Girls of London (Van Morrison & Frank Zappa)
07 Street Theory [Come On Out Child] (Van Morrison)
08 Down the Road I Go (Van Morrison)
09 Wonderful Remark (Van Morrison)
10 Mona (Van Morrison)

Bright Side of the Road [Alternate Version] (Van Morrison)
Cleaning Windows [Alternate Version] (Van Morrison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15853456/VanMrsn_1978-1981_RealRelGne_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of Morrison waiting around back stage in 1980.

Various Artists - Nuggets 8: Other Countries (1965-1971)

If you've been following this blog, you may have noticed that I've been posting a series of various artists "Nuggets' compilations. Basically, I really liked the two Rhino Records "Nuggets" box sets of garage rock from the 1960s and early 1970s, but I figured there was a lot of good music they'd left off for various reasons, and I tried my best to expand on them.

I organized things into eight collections of my own, organized geographically. This is the eighth. Here's how I did it:

1: United States
2: Britain
3: Netherlands
4: Australia & New Zealand
5: Canada
6: Scandinavia
7: European Continent
8: Other Countries

I've posted all of that here, except for the first two. I've been waiting on those because they're huge. The US one has over 400 songs and the British one has over 200. If there's interest, I could try to figure out how to subdivide that into more manageable album-sized chunks, so I could post it here. Frankly, I find the music outside the US and Britain more interesting, because it's just as good yet far less known.

Anyway, what "Other Countries" means is it's a grab bag dealing with all the countries not included in the previous seven compilations. Seven of the 16 songs here come from South Africa, which makes sense because it's a country with a big English speaking population culturally tied to the rock music culture of the US and Britain.

The rest of the selections are generally more strange. There are songs from India, Uruguay, Peru, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Japan. (I've included the countries of origin in the "comment" field of the mp3 tags for those who are curious.) I must admit that I have a strong bias in favor of English language songs, so I can understand what they're about. But a couple of songs I enjoyed so much that I included them even though they're in other languages.

A good example of this is "Jaan Pehechaan Ho" by Mohammed Rafi, which is kind of a Beatles knock off, but put through a very Indian filter. I recommend you watch the YouTube video for it. It's a hoot, and understandably has had over five million views. The video was even prominently featured in the 2001 movie "Ghost World."

A couple of the artists here are much more deserving than the song or two included here. That's especially the case for "Os Mutantes," a Brazilian band I adore. There's a ton of great Brazilian music in general, but that's beyond the scope of the "Nuggets" series, as it's mostly different genres of music. I only included one song from them because it was on one of the original Rhino "Nuggets" box sets. Los Shakers are also an interesting band. They were slavish Beatles clones in Uruguay, but they happened to be very good at it, with real songwriting ability (despite a limited grasp of English). I have a best of album from them. But I only put two of their songs here, to give a taste of what they were about.

I'm sure there are tons of great songs out there that I've missed. The further one goes from the US and Britain, the harder it is to pluck "nuggets" from obscurity. For instance, I know almost nothing about garage rock type music from India, but if "Jaan Pehechaan Ho" is any indication, there must be some other gems out there. If anyone has recommendations of songs I should add, please let me know.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Hungry for Love (A-Cads)
02 Jaan Pehechaan Ho (Mohammed Rafi)
03 Break It All (Los Shakers)
04 Inside Your Eyes [En Tu Mirada] (Los Vidrios Quebrados)
05 Always You (Los Shakers)
06 Bat Macumba (Os Mutantes)
07 Changing the Colors of Life (Los Chijuas)
08 Daughter of the Sun (Sharon Tandy & Les Fleur de Lys)
09 Hold On (Sharon Tandy & Les Fleur de Lys)
10 I Wish I Was Five (John Kongos & Scrugg)
11 I'm Just a Mops (Mops)
12 Master Jack (Four Jacks & a Jill)
13 Meshkalina (Traffic Sound)
14 It's a Sin to Go Away (We All Together)
15 See the Light (Flame)
16 He's Gonna Step on You Again (John Kongos)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376841/VA-Nggts8OthrCuntris_atse.zip.html

A Soulseek Option

Some people have been complaining about difficulties in downloading the Zippyshare files. I know Zippyshare has issues, especially with pop-up ads as well as not working in some countries, especially Britain. I keep telling people to try downloading using different browsers or computers, installing ad blocker plug-ins, and using a VPN (virtual private network). I still recommend that. Having ad blockers and using a VPN is just smart for using the Internet in general, to reduce your hassles and protect your privacy.

I was hoping the Zippyshare problem in Britain (which started after I began this blog) would be resolved eventually, but it's been many months and I haven't heard of any change. Plus, some people outside of Britain are having trouble too. I still don't want to move on from Zippyshare, because it's easy and free for me to use, and most people are satisfied with it. But I now have an alternate way to access some of the music I've been posting here through the file sharing program Soulseek.

If you're not familiar with Soulseek, it's awesome. It's a key way I'm able to find some of the really rare music I post here. Basically, it's a file sharing program, much like how Napster used to be, but even better. It's free and easy to use. Here's the Wikipedia entry on it if you want to know more:

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

I have an account there, under the name "albumsthatshouldexist," and lately I've been posting a lot of the music I share here over there. So if you're having trouble with Zippyshare or just prefer the ease of use of Soulseek, you have a different option. I'm not posting my entire music collection there yet for a variety of reasons. One is that I'm a precise kind of person, and I don't want to offer something until I have it prepared with cover art and a write up and so forth. But if I've posted something here, there's no reason I couldn't make available over there too.

So far, I've shared on Soulseek all the albums I've created and posted here so far for the following artists:

Aretha Franklin
Beck
Belle & Sebastian
Bonnie Raitt
Carole King
CSNY
Derek & the Dominos
Dusty Springfield
Elliott Smith
Indigo Girls
Jackie DeShannon
Kinks
Kirsty MacColl
Larkin Poe
Led Zeppelin
Nick Drake
Nikki Bluhm & the Gramblers
Norah Jones
Paul Weller
Petra Haden
Ray Davies
Rockpile
Van Morrison

The reason I haven't shared more so far is that I want to do some minor tidying up before I share a folder. As just one example, every time I create album art, I made a .PSD file which I put in that album folder. But .PSD files are very big files that only open in Photoshop, and most people don't want them, or even know what to do with them. So I have to move those out and put them somewhere else. And there are a number of other things I want to do first like that.

That said, I'm working on sharing more. If you want any particular album I've posted here and you can't get it through Zippyshare, leave me a note and I'll share it through Soulseek.

By the way, for each album I post here, I keep a .JPG file of the cover art, if I've made one or otherwise have one. But the blog comments I post here are just here, so far. If someone wants to go through the bother of making text files out of each one and sending them to me, I could add those to the folders too, so people could get them through Soulseek as well. But that's another hassle I don't want to do. I recall at least one person left a comment that they saved the blog comments for each album they downloaded, so maybe that person could help out with that.