Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 7-4-1971, Part 5: Van Morrison, Linda Tillery, Lydia Pense, and More

Here's the fifth set from the fifth day out of five days of concerts that closed the Fillmore West venue in San Francisco in 1971. So this is the very last album of the series. (See my write-up on the Boz Scaggs set for general information about the closing.) This set is a spontaneous jam session featuring pretty much any musician who wanted to be on stage.

Promoter Bill Graham wanted his final night of the week of concerts closing the Fillmore West to go out with a bang. So the radio station broadcast on KSAN continued until the early morning hours as the jamming continued. Surprisingly, Van Morrison didn't get a set of his own at any point that week. But maybe that was in order to save him as a surprise for this final jam session, I don't know. For the song list below, I'm only including the prominent lead vocalists for the songs that had vocals. You can see Van Morrison sang on most of the songs. But Linda Tillery of the band the Loading Zone sang quite a lot, as did Lydia Pense, of the band Cold Blood. 

But those weren't the only ones on stage. I found information that at least these other musicians were on stage during this jam session: Carlos Santana, Sam Andrew (Big Brother & the Holding Company), Michael Bloomfield, Jack Casady (Hot Tuna), John Cipollina (Quicksilver Messenger Service), Vince Guaraldi, George Hunter (an artist who did many record covers), George Marsh (the Loading Zone), Bernard Purdie (a jazz drummer), and members of Tower of Power. The biggest surprise there for me is Vince Guaraldi, a jazz musician best known for his soundtracks to Charlie Brown TV specials.

It's clear no songs were carefully practiced for this jam session in advance. So the musicians stuck to simple songs that most everyone on stage was likely to know, or at least could fake it, such as "Johnny B. Goode" and "Roll Over Beethoven." 

A Rolling Stone Magazine article written just after the concert had this to say about the final jam session: "[Bill] Graham and his staff pelted the audience with gifts – paper plates, beer, champagne, and ice cubes. Sometime between 4 and 5 A.M., everyone gave up and went home. About 40 fans stuck around to shake hands with Graham, then left him to wander alone among the amps and debris." 

We actually have a photo of Graham "wandering alone among the amps and debris," so, what the heck, I'll show that here. 

It sounds like the Fillmore West was a great venue, and certainly a lot of phenomenal music was performed there during its relatively brief run, from 1968 to 1971. At least it went out in proper style with these concerts. 

This album is 55 minutes long. 

01 talk (Jam Band)
02 Rock Me Baby (Van Morrison & Linda Tillery)
03 I Found a Love (Van Morrison, Linda Tillery & Lydia Pense)
04 Flute and Guitar Jam [Instrumental] (Jam Band)
05 talk (Jam Band)
06 Roll Over Beethoven (Van Morrison, Linda Tillery & Lydia Pense)
07 Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On (Van Morrison, Linda Tillery & Lydia Pense)
08 Johnny B. Goode (Van Morrison, Linda Tillery & Lydia Pense)
09 My Angel Baby - Sh-Boom - Blue Moon - My Angel Baby (Linda Tillery)
10 Final Jam [Instrumental] (Jam Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Wh56F1Mw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fBIQ5OtldjBWT6P/file

Once again, I got lucky with the cover art. The cover only shows Van Morrison, but apparently it comes from this exact concert. 

Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 6-30-1971, Part 5: Elvin Bishop, Taj Mahal, and More

Here's the fifth set from the first day of five days of concerts that closed the Fillmore West venue in San Francisco in 1971. (See my write-up on the Boz Scaggs set for general information about the closing.) This set is different. Instead of featuring one musical act, it was a bonus jam session after all the acts scheduled to perform had finished their sets. 

I luckily found this set on YouTube, then converted it to audio format and broke it into mp3s. The text for that contained some informative text taken from Wolfgang's Vault, so I'll repeat that here: 

"As many may already know, on the final night (July 4th) of the closing week festivities at Fillmore West a lengthy jam session occurred, featuring many great musicians and singers. What few remember is that a similar event occurred earlier in the week (on the first night, June 30th). It was this jam session, in fact, that provided the two tracks that made it onto the 'Fillmore: The Last Days' live release. The core band includes Elvin Bishop on lead guitar, Stephen Miller (from Elvin's band) on organ, David Brown (from Boz Scaggs' band) on bass and Michael Shrieve (from Santana) on drums. This was one of the few sets not broadcast locally, and until these pre-production reels were recently discovered in the Bill Graham Archive, nobody was aware that most of this jam session existed on tape. This part of the session features Lester Chambers of The Chambers Brothers on lead vocals. On 'Have You Ever Been Mistreated,' Chambers sings in an unfamiliar falsetto and on 'You Better Believe,' sings in his distinctive voice, with the Pointer Sisters punching out their gospel-fueled vocals between each line of the verses. A truly captivating performance." 

I have some more information to add. This set also included some lead vocals by Linda Tillery, who was the lead singer for the band the Loading Zone. And Jo Baker was involved as well. She sang lead on some songs in the Elvin Bishop Group at the time. The Pointer Sisters sang lead vocals on one song. Their involvement here is especially interesting because they were just starting out. They signed a record contract at some point in 1971, and released a single later that year, as well as another one in 1972. But their debut album wouldn't come out until 1973.

The credits in the song list are only for the main lead vocalists. Many others were involved, but it's pretty much for me to tell who was playing on each song. But, for instance, the Pointer Sisters were an opening act for the Elvin Bishop Group in 1971, and doing a lot of backing vocals in studio sessions. So they sang some backing vocals here as well. 

This album is an hour and two minutes long. 

01 We Gonna Rock (Taj Mahal, Elvin Bishop & Boz Scaggs)
02 Long and Tall (Taj Mahal, Elvin Bishop & Boz Scaggs)
03 You Got Me Hummin' (Pointer Sisters)
04 I Found a Love (Linda Tillery)
05 Why I Sing the Blues (Linda Tillery)
06 Have You Ever Been Mistreated (Lester Chambers)
07 You Better Believe (Lester Chambers)
08 talk (Elvin Bishop)
09 Blues Jam (Elvin Bishop & Everyone)
10 talk (Elvin Bishop)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2x78nZby

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/kq2pNq5x6Li4Q5X/file

I thought it would be tough to find a good cover photo for this album, since there wasn't one main musical act this time. So I was tickled pink to discover a photo of Boz Scaggs, Taj Mahal, and Elvin Bishop from this exact concert. It must be from the first two songs. That's Scaggs, Mahal, and Bishop from right to left. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.