Various Artists - Covered: Dennis Lambert & Brian Potter: 1965-1985

A week or two ago (as I write this in mid-May 2026), a commenter named Rich had the excellent suggestion that I should make a "Covered" album for the songwriting team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. So thank you, Rich. They fit the format of the "Covered" series perfectly, because they had no careers as performers, but they wrote a lot of hits for others.

Lambert and Potter are a rare case of a successful trans-Atlantic songwriting partnership. Lambert was born in 1947 and raised in New York City. Potter was born in 1939 and raised in the Essex countryside of England. Lambert joined a record company in 1965, working in A&R, production, and songwriting. I'm not sure what Potter did at first (with him being almost ten years older than Lambert), but in 1965 he already had a big songwriting success, helping to write "What'cha Gonna Do about It," the first British hit for the Small Faces. Meanwhile, Lambert had a decent success in 1965 as well, co-writing "Do the Freddie," a hit for Freddie and the Dreamers.

Lambert and Potter met when Lambert was in London in 1969. The two of them decided to write songs together. They both moved to Los Angeles and began working with a record company there. One of their first songs they wrote together was "One Tin Solder." It made the Top Forty in the U.S. for the band the Original Caste. Then it would get higher on the charts in 1971 for the band Coven. Their first really big success together though was "Don't Pull Your Love," which was a Top Five U.S. hit in 1971 for Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds.

From that point on, they had many more hits all through the 1970s. I've only included the ones I like best here. There were others that were Top Forty hits. Their songwriting continued until about 1980. I don't know much about Potter's career, but it seemed he stopped writing songs around that time, because I don't find any more songwriting credits for him after 1980. 

However, Lambert kept going well into the 1980s, writing with others. He didn't have that many hits, but he had a couple of really big ones. He co-wrote "Nightshift" with a member of the Commodores, and the Commodores had a Top Five hit with it in both the U.S. and Britain in 1985. 

He also helped write "We Built This City." That song was originally written by Martin Page and Bernie Taupin (the latter being the main co-writer for Elton John). But their version was lacking something. So Lambert and a producer named Peter Wolf drastically changed it. (That's a different Peter Wolf than the one in the J. Geils Band, by the way.) The result was a smash, going all the way to Number One in the U.S. for Starship in 1985. Personally, I don't think it's a bad song, but it's hated by a lot of people, making several worst songs of all time lists by critics.

Since then, Lambert and Potter presumably both eventually retired. But both of them are still alive as I write this in 2026. 

Here's the Wikipedia page for Lambert:

Dennis Lambert - Wikipedia

And here's the one for Potter:

Brian Potter (musician) - Wikipedia  

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 What'cha Gonna Do about It (Small Faces)
02 Do the Freddie (Freddie & the Dreamers)
03 Delighted to See You (Honeybus)
04 One Tin Soldier (Original Caste)
05 Don't Pull Your Love (Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds)
06 Keeper of the Castle (Four Tops)
07 The Runway (Grass Roots)
08 Ain’t No Woman [Like the One I’ve Got] (Four Tops)
09 Love Music (Sergio Mendes)
10 Are You Man Enough (Four Tops)
11 Country Boy [You Got Your Feet in L.A.] (Glen Campbell)
12 One Chain [Don’t Make No Prison] (Four Tops)
13 It Only Takes a Minute (Tavares)
14 Open Invitation (Santana)
15 Don't Look Any Further (Dennis Edwards & Siedah Garrett)
16 We Built This City (Starship)
17 Nightshift (Commodores)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rrnJPb9s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/oLZomJN7xtUUHiG/file

The cover image was the cover photo for an issue of Songwriter Magazine in 1977. That's Dennis Lambert on the left and Brian Potter (with the blue shirt) on the right.

Various Artists - Covered: Roquel 'Billy' Davis: 1957-2008

I was going through my "Covered" album collection to fix some broken links, and I saw that I haven't posted this one yet, even though I thought I did. So here it is now, better late than never. This highlights the songwriting of Roquel "Billy" Davis.

Chances are, you haven't heard of Davis. But he was involved in writing a lot of good soul hits. He was born in 1932 in Detroit. He got to know Berry Gordy in the 1950s, a few years before Gordy founded Motown Records. He got involved in writing some big hits with Gordy, and sometimes others, especially Gordy's sister Gwen, who was Davis's girlfriend at the time. Since I already posted a "Covered" album for Berry Gordy, I used the big hit versions for many of those. For instance, "Reet Petite" was a big hit for Jackie Wilson in 1957, "Lonely Teardrops" was an even bigger hit for Wilson in 1958, and "I'll Be Satisfied," was another Wilson hit in 1959, but I've used alternate versions for all of those.

Note that I'm not including "You Got What It Takes," although it was a big hit that has been credited to Davis, Gordy, and others. That's because I think there's an airtight case that it was actually written entirely by Bobby Parker, since the first version of it came out by Parker with him listed as the sole songwriter. Gordy simply stole it later, and falsely changed the songwriting credits.

Anyway, around 1960, Gordy got heavily involved with his new record company, Motown Records. Davis didn't become a part of that, so his songwriting partnership with Gordy faded away. Their last song together that I've included is "All I Could Do Was Cry," which was a hit for Etta James in 1960. Since I used that version elsewhere, I've chosen a 2008 version by Beyonce.

Davis continued to write hits without Gordy for most of the 1960s. He usually worked with Chess Records, even taking charge of many A&R and production duties for that record company. "Seven Day Fool" was a rare case of Davis getting the sole credit for a song. More typically, he wrote with others, but he didn't have any consistent co-writers. In fact, most of the songs after "Seven Day Fool" were written with a different co-writer.

Davis had a sudden career change in 1968. He used his success as a songwriter and producer to get a job at one of the top advertising agencies in New York City. His primary client was Coca-Cola, and he was responsible for many successful ad campaigns for that company. But unfortunately, this meant that his songwriting pretty much stopped, except for writing ad jingles.

But his work with Coca-Cola would lead to his biggest songwriting success of all. I've told this story in the write-up for the "Covered" album for Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, but I'll retell it here from Davis's point of view. Cook and Greenaway had already written a song called "True Love and Apple Pie." But it was released by an obscure artist and went nowhere. Then Cook happened to get stuck waiting in an airport in Ireland for many hours. Also stuck in the same airport was Davis, now working for Coca-Cola, and another Coca-Cola executive, Bill Backer. Backer came up with the line "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" while they waited for their plane. Later, back in New York City, Cook, Greenaway and Davis reworked "True Love and Apple Pie" into "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," which became one of the biggest hits of the decade, as well as a massively successful ad campaign for Coca-Cola.

"Country Sunshine" is also a song Davis first wrote for a Coca-Cola ad. But it was so catchy that it was fleshed out and became a country hit for Dottie West in 1973. That seems to be the last new song Davis was involved in that made the charts, although some of his earlier songs were hits in new versions, sometimes several times over.

Davis died in 2004 at the age of 72. By the way, he's also responsible for "it's the real thing," "things go better with Coke," "have a Coke and a smile," all for Coca-Cola, "If you've got the time, we've got the beer," for Miller Beer, and many, many other advertisements.

Here's his Wikipedia page:

Billy Davis (songwriter) - Wikipedia 

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Jim Dandy Got Married (LaVern Baker)
02 To Be Loved (Malcolm Vaughan)
03 That's Why [I Love You So] (Jackie Wilson)
04 Seven Day Fool (Etta James)
05 Pushover (Etta James)
06 Reet Petite (Dinah Lee)
07 Two Sides to Every Story (Etta James)
08 Use What You Got (Sugar Pie DeSanto)
09 I Had a Talk with My Man (Mitty Collier)
10 We're Gonna Make It (Little Milton)
11 Recovery (Fontella Bass)
12 Who's Cheating Who (Little Milton)
13 I Can't Rest (Fontella Bass)
14 I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (Hillside Singers)
15 Country Sunshine (Dottie West)
16 Lonely Teardrops (John Fogerty)
17 I'll Be Satisfied (Shakin' Stevens)
18 All I Could Do Was Cry (Beyonce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rGtRVEWA 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/h0hrXz1oG7qsojq/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of an interview he gave many years after his songwriting career had ended. I don't know the exact year, however.

Pink Floyd - Allen Theater, Cleveland, OH, 4-24-1972

Wow! I try not to hype things up on this blog, since there's way too much of that on the Internet these days already. But if you're a Pink Floyd fan, you definitely need to give this a listen.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Pink Floyd made no attempts to record themselves in concert. So the relatively small number of excellent sounding recordings we have are due to lucky chance, like the times they were recorded by the BBC. One unfortunate gap due to this is there's no great live recording of the "Dark Side of the Moon" album from 1972 or 1973. (There is one from a 1974 BBC broadcast.) For a long time now, I've especially wanted to hear what that sounded like in 1972, because the band performed that album in concert for over a year before recording it, and there were a lot of changes along the way. So it's pretty damn shocking to me that, 54 years later, a recording of this quality showed up on the Internet in the last couple of weeks. (I write this in mid-May 2026.)

This is an audience recording. Normally, that's a step below a soundboard or radio broadcast, sometimes several steps below. But not in this case. In my opinion, this sounds as good or better than most soundboards from the era. Previously, most people felt that a concert recording from the Rainbow Theatre in London on February 20, 1972 was the best live recording that included an early version of Dark Side. However, there were some big flaws with that, including some big chunks of the quality recording that were missing and had to be filled in with a much inferior recording from another source. I think this sounds better all the way through, and there are no missing chunks or other flaws like that.

I've included a PDF file that explains the story of how this recording was made public so many decades after the show. So read that if you're interested. That story makes me wonder what other audio treasures are still sitting in people's houses, forgotten or hoarded.

I made one big change to this already fine recording. I ran all the songs through an MVSEP audio filter to get rid of ambient crowd noise. At the time of this concert, in early 1972, Pink Floyd was more of a cult band, with a decent sized devoted fan base. As a result, the crowd listened very attentively and respectfully. So there wasn't much crowd noise to begin with. But I got rid of all I could during the songs, while keeping the cheering at the ends of songs. There wasn't a lot of even that because the Dark Side portion of the concert was played like one big song medley, with few occasions for the audience to really cheer until the whole album was over. Plus, the music of that album was brand new to everyone, so one didn't have the usual phenomenon of big cheers when recognizable songs started.

Additionally, there was very little in the way of random "woo-hoo" noises and talking during this recording. I found a little bit of that on two tracks, and ran those two through an extra MVSEP filter to get rid of that. Oh, and I also got rid of some dead air between songs. In particular, there were a few minutes of the sound of the crowd while the band took a short intermission at the end of the Dark Side portion of the concert. I got rid of that entirely.

Note that two songs that were a part of Dark Side at this point were later totally changed, with only a vague concept staying the same. "The Travel Sequence" was replaced by "On the Run." And "The Mortality Sequence," also sometimes known as "Religion," was replaced by "The Great Gig in the Sky." 

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long.

01 Speak to Me [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
02 Breathe (Pink Floyd)
03 The Travel Sequence [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
04 Time - Breathe [Reprise] (Pink Floyd)
05 The Mortality Sequence [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
06 Money (Pink Floyd)
07 Us and Them (Pink Floyd)
08 Any Colour You Like [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
09 Brain Damage - Eclipse (Pink Floyd)
10 One of These Days [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
11 talk (Pink Floyd)
12 Careful with That Axe, Eugene [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)
13 Echoes (Pink Floyd)
14 talk (Pink Floyd)
15 Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (Pink Floyd)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VvXP9ZkE

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/S9NNWY3jyprpp93/file

The cover image is the only photo that I was able to confirm actually was taken at this exact concert. It shows lead guitarist David Gilmour. 

Various Artists - Covered: Joan Baez, Volume 1: 1967-2016 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's another Fabio from Rio guest post. A couple of months ago (as I write this in May 2026), he really got into Joan Baez's music for the first time. In particular, he was struck by her songwriting talent, despite the fact that she's best known for covering songs written by others. So he put together five albums containing all of her original songs, which I recently posted. But he also made two "Covered" albums, showing off her songwriting in a different way. Some people don't like her singing. I have a friend like that, who finds it too high and shrill. So here you can enjoy her songs entirely through cover versions.

Probably the most unexpected cover here is the version of "Diamonds and Rust" by heavy metal band Judas Priest. Even more surprising, it went on to be quite popular, making their "best of" albums and inspiring more hard rocking cover versions. Here's what Baez had to say about it:

"I love that! I was so stunned when I first heard it. I thought it was wonderful. It's very rare for people to cover my songs. I think there are a couple of reasons. One is they're personal – they don't have a universal quality to them. And I think maybe it's because I've already sung them, and who wants to compete with that? But it's always flattering when somebody does." 

There's a lot more to be said about this album. But, as usual with Fabio guest posts, I'll leave that to the liner notes he wrote, which are included in the download zip. 

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 North (Tom Scott with the California Dreamers)
02 Saigon Bride (Gabor Szabo & the California Dreamers)
03 Sweet Sir Galahad (Gary & Randy Scruggs)
04 Song for David (Judy Collins)
05 Last Lonely and Wretched (Wild Rice)
06 Outside the Nashville City Limits (Mabel Joy)
07 Diamonds and Rust (Judas Priest)
08 For Sasha (Louise Tobestill)
09 All the Weary Mothers of the Earth (Annie Patterson)
10 Play Me Backwards (Sin Frontera)
11 Winds of the Old Days (Lori Blois)
12 Here's to You (Lisa Simmons)
13 Only Heaven Knows (Joanne Cooper)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/D4agojYd

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/NJ5kf1Y6ukB05fs/file

The cover image is from 1974.

Various Artists - Covered: Geoff Stephens: 1964-2002

I recently posted a couple of "Covered" albums dealing with British professional songwriters from the 1960s and 1970s (as I write this in May 2026). As I said elsewhere, there was a circle of a dozen or more who often collaborated with each other, and wrote lots of pop hits. Here's another one from that group, Geoff Stephens.

Many of the other songwriters in this group that I've been discussing came up with the British Invasion, the musical trend that started around 1963. But Stephens was slightly older - he was 29 years old in 1963- and his music career began before that. He served in the military for a couple of years and held a series of odd jobs before getting serious about songwriting. His first song was covered by a musical act in 1961. 

His first hit was "Tell Me When" in 1964, co-written by Les Reed, another songwriter in that group. I've already posted the hit version by the Applejacks in the "Covered" album for Barry Mason and Les Reed. So I went with a different version here. Later that same year, he had an even bigger hit with a song he wrote all by himself, "The Crying Game." The version by Dave Berry went all the way to the Top Five in Britain, although it wasn't a hit. (Boy George eventually had a hit in the U.S. with it in 1992.) It had an unusual melody, showing surprising musical sophistication for a pop hit 1964.

He had an even bigger hit in 1966 with "Winchester Cathedral," performed by the New Vaudeville Band. It actually was recorded by session musicians. The lead vocalist was John Carter, another songwriter I've profiled with a "Covered" album." Stephens had a fondness for vaudeville/ music hall music from the 1920s and earlier, and wrote the song in that vein. It was such a massive success - hitting Number One in the U.S. and some other countries, and selling three million copies worldwide - that it started a mini-vaudeville trend for the next couple of years. Few British artists could resist performing at least one or two songs in that style, for some reason.

Sometimes, Stephens was the sole songwriter, as was the case with "Winchester Cathedral." But more often, he wrote with other members of that unnamed British professional songwriter group. For instance, "There's a Kind of Hush" was written with Les Reed, "Sorry Suzanne" was written with Tony Macaulay, "My Sentimental Friend" was written with John Carter, "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast" was written with Peter Callander, and so on. As you can see, Stephens didn't favor just one songwriting partner. In fact, he had many more, including Roger Greenaway, Barry Mason, Don Black, and Mitch Murray. All of those other people have their own "Covered" albums, or their albums are coming.

Stephens had many more hits through most of the 1970s, until about 1978. In fact, one of his biggest hits was one of his last, since "Silver Lady" by David Soul went to Number One in Britain in 1977. (That one was co-written with Tony Macaulay, by the way.) But musical styles changed drastically in the late 1970s, with the rise of disco, punk, and new wave. So his hits stopped at that time, as was the case with most of the other songwriters in that group he'd been working with since the mid-1960s. 

Starting in the early 1980s, he mostly switched to writing songs for musicals. In doing so, he still collaborated with people from that same group, writing different musicals with Don Black, Les Reed, and Peter Callander. He died in 2020 at the age of 86.

Here's his Wikipedia page:

Geoff Stephens - Wikipedia 

Because Stephens often wrote with other songwriters who have their own "Covered" albums, sometimes I've resorted to using non-hit versions, so the same versions don't appear on two different albums. So, for instance, I have "Sorry Suzanne" here by the Glass Bottle, instead of the hit version by the Hollies. "Smile a Little Smile for Me" is an outliner, because I chose a late cover for the same reason. The hit version was in 1970. Without that one, this album would end in 1980. 

This album is one hour long. 

01 Tell Me When (Jaybirds)
02 The Crying Game (Dave Berry)
03 Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James (Manfred Mann)
04 Winchester Cathedral (New Vaudeville Band)
05 My World Fell Down (Ivy League)
06 There's a Kind of Hush (Herman's Hermits)
07 Boy (Lulu)
08 Sunshine Girl (Herman's Hermits)
09 Lights of Cincinnati (Scott Walker)
10 My Sentimental Friend (Herman's Hermits)
11 Sorry Suzanne (Glass Bottle)
12 Knock, Knock, Who's There (Mary Hopkin)
13 Daughter of Darkness (Tom Jones)
14 Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast (Wayne Newton)
15 You Won't Find Another Fool like Me (New Seekers)
16 Doctor's Orders (Carol Douglas)
17 Silver Lady (David Soul)
18 It's Like We Never Said Goodbye (Crystal Gayle)
19 Like Sister and Brother (Frank Hooker & Positive People)
20 Smile a Little Smile for Me (Chris von Sneidern)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GVD6cdXe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/6MIhB6jKMNGt8K9/file

I don't know anything about the cover image except that it's "circa 1970." The original was in black and white. I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

The Carpenters - Imaginary Piano Recital, Volume 1: 1970-1975 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's another Fabio from Rio guest post. It's the first of two volumes featuring the Carpenters. Basically, Fabio and I love Karen Carpenter's voice, but the production of Carpenters records usually left a lot to be desired. Too often, the songs were drenched with syrupy strings and other overproduction that detracted from the beauty of her voice, and the song, instead of adding to them. So we've tried to counter that in various ways. First, I posted a "Near Acappella" album that stripped the music just down to vocals, bass, and drums. Then, we posted two completely "Acappella" albums. Now, there's this. The idea is, an imaginary piano recital, with nothing but Karen Carpenter singing, and usually her brother Richard playing piano.

Fabio found all the songs for this. First, he found some other people on the Internet who already had used audio editing technology to strip official studio versions of songs down to just lead vocals and piano. But many songs he liked hadn't been given that treatment, or hadn't been stripped enough, so he did his own audio editing. So all the songs have been edited, heavily, but the ones with "[Edit]" in them specifically indicate the ones with Fabio's editing.

Fabio has a lot more to say on this. So check out his liner notes that are included in the download zip. 

This album is 52 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 [They Long to Be] Close to You [Edit] (Carpenters)
02 Maybe It's You [Edit] (Carpenters)
03 For All We Know (Carpenters)
04 One Love [Edit] (Carpenters)
05 Rainy Days and Mondays [BBC Version] [Edit] (Carpenters)
06 Superstar [Groupie] [Edit] (Carpenters)
07 A Song for You [Edit] (Carpenters)
08 I Won't Last a Day without You [Edit] (Carpenters)
09 I Can't Make Music [Edit] (Carpenters)
10 Sing [Edit] (Carpenters)
11 The End of the World [Edit] (Carpenters)
12 Top of the World [Edit] (Carpenters)
13 Yesterday Once More [Edit] (Carpenters)
14 Love Me for What I Am [Edit] (Carpenters)
15 Solitaire [Edit] (Carpenters)

Top of the World [Country Singalong Version] [Edit] (Carpenters) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/m4XXvPoN

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mvMqUYAmX1OEhxY/file

For the cover image, we wanted to show Karen singing and Richard playing piano. Luckily, we found two, just enough for our two volumes. I don't know the details of where or when this image was taken though, except that it's "circa 1971."

Various Artists - Covered: Randy Newman, Volume 1: 1963-1973

Whenever I think about the "Covered" series of albums I've made, I get frustrated, because I've got dozens that I've never gotten around to posting. I guess I enjoy the making of the albums more than the steps needed to post them. It feels like unfinished homework. But I'm going to make more of an effort to fix that, starting with a triple-header of Randy Newman.

Here's some highlights from his Wikipedia entry:  

"[Newman] is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, composer, and arranger. Born in Los Angeles to an extended family of Hollywood film composers, he is known for his Americana-inspired songs, non-rhotic Southern-accented singing style, and typically mordant or satirical lyrics. Since the 1990s, he has worked mainly in film scoring, most popularly for Disney and Pixar. ... Newman has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards (out of 22 nominations), three Emmys, seven Grammy Awards, as well as nominations for a BAFTA Award and seven Golden Globe Awards. His award-winning film work includes 'Ragtime' (1981), 'The Natural' (1984), 'Toy Story' (1995), 'A Bug's Life' (1998), 'Pleasantville' (1998), 'Monsters, Inc.' (2001), 'Cars' (2006), 'The Princess and the Frog' (2009), 'Toy Story 3' (2010), and 'Marriage Story' (2019). He was honored with the Recording Academy's Governors Award in 2003, a Disney Legend award in 2007, and inductions into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013."

As mentioned above, he was born in Los Angeles. But he also spent many of his childhood summers in New Orleans. That would prove to be important, because his songwriting would be heavily influenced by New Orleans styles. And also as mentioned above, he was part of an extended family of Hollywood film composers. His mother and father had regular jobs (as secretary and internist, respectively), but three of his uncles were film composers, and so were three cousins. 

He began writing songs professionally by the age of 17. He put out a single under his own name in 1962, but it flopped. So he decided to try writing songs for others for a while. He began having successes almost immediately. The first song here, "Hold Your Head High" by Jackie DeShannon, is from 1963. 

Also very early on, he began writing instrumental music for TV shows, starting with an episode of "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" in 1962. That talent would continue to grow, leading to him to eventually doing full movie soundtracks starting in 1971. More on that in a later volume though.

Alan Price helped boost Newman's songwriting career in 1967. For one thing, he had a hit with Newman's "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear." But also, he was so taken by Newman's songwriting that his 1967 album "A Price on His Head" had no less than seven songs by Newman. Harry Nilsson paid him an even bigger compliment by covering an entire album of his songs in 1970, "Nilsson Sings Newman."

Newman finally released his first album under his own name in 1968, "Randy Newman (Creates Something New Under the Sun)." It was a critical success, and it led to even more musical acts covering his songs, but it didn't sell well. It didn't even reach the top 200 U.S. albums chart. For the next ten years or so, he would continue to be a cult artist, meaning he was critically praised and beloved by a small group of fans, but didn't have much wider commercial success. 

Meanwhile, his songwriting continued to get better and better. It arguably peaked with his 1972 album "Sail Away," though he has maintained remarkably high consistency for his entire career. Rolling Stone Magazine has put that album on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. His 1974 album "Good Old Boys" would also make that list, though lower down it.

Newman's songwriting is extraordinary, but it's also idiosyncratic, with frequent heavy sarcasm. Some songs have general romantic themes that lend themselves to being covered a lot, for instance "I Think It's Going to Rain Today." There are over a 100 different cover versions of that one. But then consider a song like "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)." It's a sarcastic song about how God seemingly could care less about the human race, and even laughs at the calamities it throws at humanity. I think it's a great song, with deep meaning, but it's not exactly typical Top Forty subject material! So there are a lot of songs I would have wanted to include but didn't, because either there's no cover versions at all, or at least no worthy covers. And I've followed my usual rule for the "Covered" series of generally not including versions by Newman himself (although he'll show up with one song in a later volume, and in a duet in the other volume).

Note that some of the best songs written by Newman during this time period only show up in one of the later two volumes. So if you don't see a favorite, wait to see what's on those first. 

This album is 52 minutes long. 

01 Hold Your Head High (Jackie DeShannon)
02 Baby, Don't Look Down (Billy Storm)
03 I've Been Wrong Before (Cilla Black)
04 Nobody Needs Your Love (Gene Pitney)
05 Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear (Alan Price Set)
06 Snow (Claudine Longet)
07 Illinois (Everly Brothers)
08 I Think It's Going to Rain Today (Dusty Springfield)
09 Just One Smile (Blood Sweat & Tears)
10 Bet No One Ever Hurt This Bad (Linda Ronstadt)
11 Love Story (Peggy Lee)
12 Dayton, Ohio, 1903 (Wayne Fontana)
13 Mama Told Me [Not to Come] (Three Dog Night)
14 Cowboy (Nilsson)
15 The Beehive State (Doobie Brothers)
16 Living without You (Manfred Mann's Earth Band)
17 God's Song [That's Why I Love Mankind] (Etta James)
18 Guilty (Bonnie Raitt)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/V6aqPKqW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qo8CJZ7pNQ5aBBM/file

The cover photo is from 1968.

Joan Baez - Baez Sings Baez, Volume 2: 1972-1975 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's another guest post by Fabio from Rio. Joan Baez is mostly known as a singer of songs written by others. But Fabio has put together five volumes of songs written or co-written by Baez, showing that she's actually a pretty talented songwriter. Here's the second volume.

I don't have much to say, because Fabio has written extensive notes, which are included in the download file. But I'll just point out that Baez proved herself to be a talented songwriter by writing the classic "Diamonds and Rust," which was a hit in 1975. And that song is included here.  

All the songs here come from official releases. So naturally the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 19 minutes long.

01 Prison Trilogy [Billy Rose] (Joan Baez)
02 Love Song to a Stranger (Joan Baez)
03 Myths (Joan Baez)
04 Weary Mothers [People Union 1] (Joan Baez)
05 To Bobby (Joan Baez)
06 Song of Bangladesh (Joan Baez)
07 Only Heaven Knows [Ah, the Sad Wind Blows] (Joan Baez)
08 A Young Gypsy (Joan Baez)
09 Rider, Pass By (Joan Baez)
10 Windrose (Joan Baez)
11 Where Are You Now, My Son (Joan Baez)
12 Where's My Apple Pie (Joan Baez)
13 Diamonds and Rust (Joan Baez)
14 Children and All That Jazz (Joan Baez)
15 Winds of the Old Days (Joan Baez)
16 Dida (Joan Baez with Joni Mitchell)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2RefJk56

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/d26OuaQsQb5loJ8/file

I don't know any details about the cover photo, except that it's from 1973. Fabio picked it.

Eric Andersen - Jabberwocky, Syracuse, NY, 9-15-1972

I've been posting a lot of 1970s concerts from the Ebbets Field venue in Colorado lately. I was disappointed not to be able to find an Eric Andersen concert recording from that venue, since I came across evidence that one of his shows there was recorded and broadcast (specifically, on October 4, 1974). Maybe it'll turn up someday. But I like Andersen's music, and I decided I'd try to find a similar substitute. I came up with this one, from the same time period.

Andersen put out his first album in 1965. He didn't have big commercial success, but he's had a long career as a respected singer-songwriter that continues until this day. (He's 83 years old as I write this in 2026.) Here's his Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more:

Eric Andersen - Wikipedia

Probably his most acclaimed album is "Blue River," released in 1972. So we're lucky this concert comes from his 1972 tour promoting that album. We're especially lucky to have this, because I looked fairly thoroughly, and this is by far the best bootleg from him from the 1970s (and I couldn't find anything at all from the 1960s). It's an excellent sounding soundboard that was given to someone by Andersen himself, according to the notes I found. He performed all of it in solo acoustic mode.

This is the early show. There was only a little bit of the introduction to the late show on the recording. Since there was no recording of an emcee introduction at the start of the early show, I moved the emcee introduction from the late show to the beginning. I also got rid of dead air between a lot of songs. There was a lot of uninteresting guitar tuning, and well as some silence. But I kept all the banter. 

By the way, as I was posting this, I noticed that this album, and the last album I just posted by Jerry Jeff Walker, both contain the song "More Often than Not," written by David Wiffen. Good song!  

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Eric Andersen)
02 talk (Eric Andersen)
03 Hello Sun (Eric Andersen)
04 talk (Eric Andersen)
05 Close the Door Lightly When You Go (Eric Andersen)
06 talk (Eric Andersen)
07 Why Don't You Love Me (Eric Andersen)
08 talk (Eric Andersen)
09 Lie with Me (Eric Andersen)
10 talk (Eric Andersen)
11 Blue River (Eric Andersen)
12 talk (Eric Andersen)
13 Daddy Frank [The Guitar Man] (Eric Andersen)
14 Is It Really Love at All (Eric Andersen)
15 Time Run like a Freight Train (Eric Andersen)
16 talk (Eric Andersen)
17 Thirsty Boots (Eric Andersen)
18 talk by emcee (Eric Andersen)
19 talk (Eric Andersen)
20 Mama Tried (Eric Andersen)
21 Florentine (Eric Andersen)
22 talk by emcee (Eric Andersen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3nJZ9bdk

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/cKvUwXMxxdo6tU7/file

The cover image is from a concert in Queens College, New York City, on May, 13, 1971. I used Photoshop to remove a big, distracting light fixture right above his head. I also used Krea AI to generally improve the details.

Jonathan Edwards - A & R Studios, New York City, 3-1-1972

A few days ago, I posted a 1974 concert by singer-songwriter Tom Rush, where he was backed by the band Orphan. I mentioned that I had another concert by singer-songwriter Jonathan Edwards from a couple of years earlier, where he also was backed by the band Orphan. Here is that concert. After listening to it again, I didn't find any actual mention of Orhan as a band, so I didn't include them in the song credits and such. However, they probably were backing him up around this time, just the same. I just did a little research, and found that in 1972, Edwards and the band Orphan were so close that they actually all lived in the same house in Boston.

Edwards released his debut album, the cleverly titled "Jonathan Edwards," in 1971. It contained a surprise hit, "Sunshine (Go Away Today)," which would be his only big hit. This concert took place around the time he was recording his second solo album, "Honky Tonk Stardust Cowboy." One song on that album, "Paper Doll," is the exact performance recorded at this concert. Everything else here is unreleased.

The sound quality is excellent, because this was recorded for FM radio broadcast. The radio station WPLJ broadcast a lot of great radio shows at A & R Studios in New York City, in the early 1970s, including this one. Some of them have been officially released as live albums, from the likes of Elton John and the Allman Brothers Band. Perhaps in the future I'll try to collect and post more of them, but my hands are pretty full with posting other things right now. The broadcasts were sponsored by the 7-Up soft drink. If you listen carefully at Edwards' banter between songs, he made some clever jokey digs about 7-Up.

I've already posted an Edwards concert from 1972. But that one is from the end of 1972 and this one is from the beginning, and their set lists are fairly different. I think both are very good. Edwards is really underrated, in my opinion. His first two solo albums (mentioned above) are excellent. But unfortunately he couldn't maintain that level of quality and his popularity declined as the 1970s went on.  

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 Everybody Knows Her (Jonathan Edwards)
02 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
03 Dues Days Bar (Jonathan Edwards)
04 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
05 Sugar Babe (Jonathan Edwards)
06 Dreamer (Jonathan Edwards)
07 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
08 Morning Train (Jonathan Edwards)
09 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
10 Honky Tonk Stardust Cowboy (Jonathan Edwards)
11 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
12 Shanty (Jonathan Edwards)
13 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
14 Beautiful Day (Jonathan Edwards)
15 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
16 Don't Cry Blue (Jonathan Edwards)
17 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
18 Everything (Jonathan Edwards)
19 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
20 Sweet Upsy Daisy (Jonathan Edwards)
21 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
22 Sometimes (Jonathan Edwards)
23 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
24 Sunshine [Go Away Today] (Jonathan Edwards)
25 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
26 Train of Glory (Jonathan Edwards)
27 Paper Doll (Jonathan Edwards)
28 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
29 When the Road Has Called Up Yonder (Jonathan Edwards)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bEQPUCpd

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/8C4F0evtMQKkVQC/file

I had a very hard time finding any good photos of Edwards in concert from around this time. I found a YouTube video of him performing "Sunshine (Go Away Time) live on T.V. in 1973. So I took a screenshot of that performance. The video quality was pretty rough, but I improved the quality with the help of the Krea AI program. 

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-3-1972, Part 2: Jonathan Edwards, Long John Baldry & More

Here is the second part of the third (and last) day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. This is the last album from this festival. Like the other album I put together from this third day, this is a grab-bag, consisting of relatively short sets of four music acts: Jonathan Edwards, Long John Baldry, Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010, and Osibisa.

Jonathan Edwards is a singer-songwriter who had a hit with the song "Sunshine." It went all the way to Number Four in the U.S. singles chart in 1971. That makes him a one-hit wonder. But he was (and still is) a lot more than that. I especially like his first few albums, and I've posted a concert from him. We have six songs from him here, but they only make up about 18 minutes of this album. "Sometimes in the Morning" and "Train of Glory" are from the official live album from the festival. His other songs are from the same audience bootleg as most of the other songs I've posted from this festival.

The next three songs are from British blues singer Long John Baldry. I've posted a BBC sessions album from him, as well as music from a band he was in, Steampacket. He had his biggest success in 1967, when he put out a single, "Let the Heartaches Begin," that went all the way to Number One in Britain (though it barely made the U.S. singles chart). His career was still going fairly well at the time of this concert. He had a minor hit in 1971 with the song "Don't Try to Lay No Boogie Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll." Interesting fact: half of his 1971 album "It Ain't Easy" was produced by Elton John, and the other half was produced by Rod Stewart. "Bring My Baby Back" made it to the official live album from this festival, while the other song here is from the same audience boot mentioned elsewhere.

Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010 was a salsa band from Puerto Rico. Apparently, some of their lyrics were political, but the meaning was generally missed by the mostly English speaking audience. There were other lesser known bands like this one that performed at the festival, such as Banda del K-rajo, Bang, Elephant's Memory, Michael Overly, Rubber Band, Stonehenge, and Malo. But we don't happen to have any recordings from them, and we happen to have two songs from this band. Both are from the same audience boot mentioned above.

The last song was by the band Osibisa, who were the last musical act to perform at the festival. This song made it to the official live album. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about them: Osibisa is a Ghanaian-Caribbean Afro rock band founded in London in the late 1960s by four expatriate West African and three London-based Caribbean musicians. Osibisa was the most successful and longest lived of the African-heritage bands in London... and was largely responsible for the establishment of world music and Afro-rock as a marketable genre." They would have a couple of hits in Britain later in the 1970s.

Here's their Wikipedia entry:

Osibisa - Wikipedia 

So that's the last of the music I have from this festival. But before I finish my write-up of this last album, I want to explain a bit about some interesting events that happened as the festival finished. As I mentioned in a previous write-up, the main promoter of the festival was Alex Cooley, who had promoted some other major rock festivals. But he ran into a lot of trouble with this one, including the fact that he failed to get the proper permits. The festival only happened because it would have caused more trouble for the government to have tens of thousands of angry fans who had paid to fly to Puerto Rico just to attend the festival.

Cooley later explained how the festival ended for him: "[A] guy who was working in the festival, came over to me, the last night of the festival, and said [the government] issued a warrant in San Juan and they were coming to arrest me. So they smuggled me out of there with a Volkswagen bus. I got in the bus and they put things on top of me and they took me to the airport and there were people at the airport that were very sympathetic towards this and they let them.... Of course, you'd never be able to do this now - they let them drive the Volkswagen out on to the runway. So I got out of the Volkswagen and got directly on the plane. So that's how I got out of San Juan, out of Puerto Rico."

He left in all sorts of trouble, including owing at least $40,000 in taxes that apparently never got paid.

Cooley wasn't the only one who had trouble leaving the festival. Creem Magazine reported, "People had begun making the long trek back to San Juan and points beyond after the first day of the festival, but even this steady exodus didn't avert the Tuesday tie-up at the airport. Many of the people who had purchased the $149 festival package found that their return plane tickets were good only for stand-by, thus effectively leaving the stranded until auxiliary flights could be arranged."

Luckily, the government helped take care of the people stranded at the airport. Tents were set up near the main terminal. The Red Cross, the government, and even some airline companies provided food, water and medical attention. Some bands performed for the stranded passengers. Pan American Airlines provided the flights for about 3,000 people who attended the festival from outside Puerto Rico who otherwise couldn't leave. It took several days before everyone was able to leave the country. 

No wonder the government was mad at Cooley and the other festival organizers. It's also no wonder why Puerto Rico didn't have another rock festival like this until decades later.

This album is 55 minutes long. 

01 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
02 Athens County (Jonathan Edwards)
03 Dues Day Bar (Jonathan Edwards)
04 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
05 Give Us a Song (Jonathan Edwards)
06 Shanty (Jonathan Edwards)
07 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
08 Sometimes in the Morning (Jonathan Edwards)
09 Train of Glory (Jonathan Edwards)
10 It Ain't Easy (Long John Baldry)
11 talk (Long John Baldry)
12 Bring My Baby Back (Long John Baldry)
13 Hemos Dicho Basta [Incomplete] (Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010)
14 Ya Se Van (Fran Ferrer & Puerto Rico 2010)
15 Y Sharp [Instrumental] (Osibisa)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZSLiFptp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/iaLTJsYB36ObzqH/file

The cover image of Jonathan Edwards is from this exact concert. 

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-3-1972, Part 1: Cactus, Faces & More

Here is the first part of the third, and last, day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. Unfortunately, for this last day of the festival, I wasn't able to find as much music as I found for the first two days. So I just have portions of sets. This has music from Cactus, the Faces, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Potliquor.

The four Cactus songs all come from official sources. The first three are from a live album called "'Ot 'n' Sweaty," released in 1972. The fourth song, "Bedroom Marurka," is from the official live album of the festival, "Mar y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival."

Cactus broke up a couple of months after this festival. Two band members, bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice, joined with Jeff Beck to form the band Beck, Bogert and Appice, releasing an album later in 1972. Here's the Wikipedia entry about Cactus:

Cactus (American band) - Wikipedia 

The Faces, starring Rod Stewart, were one of the main headliners of the festival. However, they didn't perform last on the last day, as one might expect of a headliner. Apparently, the organizers realized that the audience size steadily declined towards the ends of festivals like this, so it was better to have the headliners on earlier. (Interesting fact: when Jimi Hendrix performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, most of the audience had left already. Only about 30,000 to 100,000 of the peak 600,000 people remained.) Unfortunately, we only have three songs from the Faces. All three of those are unreleased.

There's just one song here from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the jazz fusion band led by guitarist John McLaughlin, "Noonward Race." But it's an impressive 13-minute-long instrumental. It comes from the official live album of the festival. Here the Wikipedia entry about this band:

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Wikipedia

Finally, that leaves the final song, from a band called Potliquor. This band played Southern rock with a Louisiana influence, since they were from Louisiana. They were together from 1969 to 1973 (plus a reunion in the late 1970s), and put out three albums in those years. Unfortunately, they were signed to a small record label and didn't get much promotion or distribution help. They were building some momentum, but that ended when the band broke up after only a few years. Their one song here is unreleased.

Here's their Wikipedia entry:

Potliquor - Wikipedia

This album is 59 minutes long. 

01 Swim (Cactus)
02 Bad Mother Boogie (Cactus)
03 Our Lil Rock 'n' Roll Thing (Cactus)
04 talk (Cactus)
05 Bedroom Mazurka (Cactus)
06 It's All Over Now (Faces)
07 Maggie May (Faces)
08 Miss Judy's Farm (Faces)
09 Noonward Race [Instrumental] (Mahavishnu Orchestra)
10 The Train (Potliquor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DHMVDrgp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/izVfQzS9XcCFAi3/file

The cover image of Rod Stewart is from this exact concert. The original picture was in black and white, but I converted it to color with the Kolorize program.

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 4: Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Here is the fourth and last part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. There is still one more day of the festival to go after this. This set features the prog rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

At this point in the band's career, they had only released two albums: "Emerson, Lake and Palmer" in 1970, and "Tarkus" in 1971. They had a new album coming ("Trilogy"), but it wouldn't be released until June 1972, and they didn't perform any songs from it. 

The band's bassist and lead vocalist Greg Lake later shared some memories about the band's experience at the festival: 

"The first thing I remember about the Mar Y Sol festival was stepping down onto the runway to discover the sun was so intense it had begun to melt the tarmac. After quite a long drive, we arrived at a luxury tropical hotel. At first, it all felt like a holiday atmosphere until we began to learn there were serious problems at the site and the government was trying to get the festival stopped. I remember jumping down out of a helicopter and being greeted by the backstage manager, who told me that they had just killed a rattlesnake under the stage. The whole thing did not feel good. It was not until later that we discovered a body being ferried out on the helicopter we had just arrived in was, in fact, the dead body of someone who’d been murdered, apparently over some drug deal that went wrong."

Lake also recalls having problems during the band's set. "I remember performing and feeling my left arm becoming unbearably hot. I quickly snatched a look between playing and singing and could see that my left arm was actually beginning to give off smoke. Apparently they had set up a huge and powerful search light on the side of the stage and were planning to use it during the filming. After a few desperate and agonizing screams from me, they finally switched it off."

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

01 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
02 Hoedown [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
03 Tarkus (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
04 Take a Pebble (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
05 Lucky Man (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
06 Piano Improvisation [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
07 Pictures at an Exhibition (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
08 Rondo [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uC48SVJP 

alternate: 

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

I couldn't find many photos from this festival. For this album, I was only able to find one decent one. It only shows keyboardist Keith Emerson. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 3: Alice Cooper

Here is the third part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. (I'm guessing the order based on the relative popularity of the musical acts at the time.) This one features the band Alice Cooper.

At the time of this concert, the band was on their way to the big time. The album "Killer" was released in late 1971, and it was their first big album success. It would eventually go Platinum in the U.S., which means sales of a million or more. The band also had a lot of success with the song "I'm Eighteen," which made the Top Twenty in the U.S. singles chart in early 1971. However, greater popularity was coming. The band's next album, "School's Out" would be an even bigger success in 1972, propelled by a single with the same name. That single would be released only a few weeks after this concert.

The band was making a big impression with audiences due to their theatrical stage performances. One fan who attended this concert later commented, "I was not a fan of Alice Cooper until I saw him in concert at Mar y Sol. I think I was more amazed at the crowd reaction then the actual show, but they could rock. I remember this chill going over me when Alice hung himself. He also did the throwing money bit into the crowd, and watching people scramble for it was pretty funny." 

For this set, it happens that the entire performance has been officially released. It came out on a deluxe edition of the "Killer" album. Most of that album was performed in the concert, as well as "Public Animal  the show previews "Public Animal #9" from the upcoming album. The band played most of "Killer" during the concert, plus three songs from their previous album "Love It to Death," including their sole hit at the time, "I'm Eighteen."

This album is an hour and five minutes long.

01 Be My Lover (Alice Cooper)
02 You Drive Me Nervous (Alice Cooper)
03 Yeah, Yeah, Yeah (Alice Cooper)
04 talk (Alice Cooper)
05 I'm Eighteen (Alice Cooper)
06 Halo of Flies (Alice Cooper)
07 Is It My Body (Alice Cooper)
08 Dead Babies (Alice Cooper)
09 Killer (Alice Cooper)
10 Long Way to Go (Alice Cooper)
11 Under My Wheels (Alice Cooper)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Cfbk6aJd

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/g4Qks4DitkRsWpD/file

I could be wrong, since it's been a long time since I make the cover art for this festival, but I'm pretty sure the cover image is from this exact concert. I found just two photos of him from it, this one, and one of him holding a skull in his hands.  

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 2: Billy Joel

Here is the second part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. (Although note that the set order is mostly guesswork.) This album stars Billy Joel. This is a real treat for Joel fans, because this was one of the most important concerts of his entire career, arguably THE most important. 

It's important to remember that while Billy Joel is a superstar today, and has been one for decades, in 1972, he was basically a nobody. He released his debut album, "Cold Spring Harbor," in 1971. But it came out on a small label and got little notice. Furthermore, the recording was released at the wrong speed, and Joel soon got in conflict with the label, leaving him without promotional support. Joel wasn't even supposed to perform at the festival. But after some other acts dropped out at the last minute (due to reasons I've mentioned in the write-up to the first album from this festival), he was brought in to fill up time. 

This turned out to be the biggest break for his career. His career was basically dead in the water. But some important people from Columbia Records were at the festival, and were impressed by his performance. In fact, they were so impressed that eventually they bought out the rest of his original contract. Going with a major label restarted his career and gave him the support eventually become a star.

Since this concert was so pivotal for Joel's career, I was able to find some interesting quotes about it. Here's one from "Billy Joel: The Life and Times of an Angry Young Man," a book by Hank Bordowitz: "Before Mar Y Sol, nobody had ever heard of Billy Joel, outside of the New York area, and even there, nobody cared about Billy Joel. But as the sun broke through the clouds at Mar y Sol, Billy Joel had the place reeling and rolling."

And here's Irwin Mazur, Billy's first manager, quoted in that same book: "It was a moment I'll never forget. He had the crowd in the palm of his hands. He had never had that kind of command of an audience before. That was the first moment that he took command of the stage."

Here's a lengthier explanation from Larry Russell, who was the bassist in Joel's band at the time: 

"Well, we were slightly unsure what [the crowd would] think, really. Up until that point, we were a very folky, intimate, cerebrally provoking act. Nothing too fancy, very simple four piece band, Thinking back on it now, I think we should have had one more band member to fill things out and make the sound match the 'Cold Spring Harbor' record, but that would have complicated the expenses for the record/management companies. We knew when we saw that crowd we had to toughen our set, but we were not prepared to do that with songs like 'Travelin’ Prayer,' etc. But, somehow, whatever we played that day, they loved. Everything worked. And even though we sounded nothing like the bands that were scheduled to perform. somehow that in itself, set us apart from the others. Song after song, our momentum built, and by the time we were at our last song, the crowd was ready for more.

"The last song that day and everyday was ‘Tomorrow Is Today’, which on that day was really outstanding. But when we finished that song, they didn’t want us to leave, and so we had to resort to a harder styled cover song with Billy doing a fine impersonation of Joe Cocker, singing ‘The Letter’ with piano chops and Cockers' gyrations as well! After that, I ran off the stage to smoke a joint and our manager told me we had another encore... and then [he went] into the best version I have ever heard of 'Jumpin' Jack Flash.' His vocal range was unbelievable, truly amazing. But then again, he was only 22 at the time."

Here's a link to the whole interview with Russell, if you want even more details:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201204084216/http://marysol-festival.com/interviews/interview-with-larry-russell-billy-joel

As Russell, explains, the band had only been in existence for three or four months prior to this concert, mostly performing in small venues on the East Coast. So to go from that to performing before an audience of tens of thousands must have been a really big deal for Joel. 

In 1999, Joel returned to perform a concert in Puerto Rico for the first time since this 1972 festival. Between songs, he shared some memories with his banter. One person who attended that 1999 concert summarized his comments like this:

"He explained he had been here in the island previously for a festival called 'Mar y Sol,' asking if anybody remembered that. A few screams and claps came from the crowd, to which he replied, 'Oh, so you were there too?!' He said he was glad some people remembered... He admitted that in those days he and his band were just simple amateurs, guys looking for an opening to go forward and get noticed. He was happy that he'd developed his career to get to where he could now thank Puerto Rico for being a kind of 'starting point,' maybe not recognized that much, which helped with the record company’s support from that time forward."

Listening to this recording, I have to admit that it's good, but it didn't really knock my socks off. But I think that's because I'm looking at it from the perspective of Joel being a big star for decades already, with all the crowd-pleasing skills of a big star. In hindsight, this concert was the moment Joel showed he could be charismatic and take control of a crowd, a talent he hadn't shown in public before. I'm sure a lot of that was visual, such as the Joe Cocker-styled gyrations mentioned above. 

This recording is entirely unreleased. (Joel wanted to one of his songs to appear on the official album from the festival, which no doubt would have helped his career a lot, but it wasn't possible due to conflicts between two record companies.) Supposedly, this is from a soundboard source. I don't know if that's true, or if it's from the same audience bootleg as most of the rest of the festival. But it doesn't matter since the sound quality of the audience boot is basically at a soundboard level anyway. Also, we know this is the full performance.  

This album is 35 minutes long. 

01 Travelin' Prayer (Billy Joel)
02 talk (Billy Joel)
03 Josephine (Billy Joel)
04 The Ballad of Billy the Kid (Billy Joel)
05 talk (Billy Joel)
06 Captain Jack (Billy Joel)
07 talk (Billy Joel)
08 Tomorrow Is Today (Billy Joel)
09 talk (Billy Joel)
10 The Letter (Billy Joel)
11 talk (Billy Joel)
12 Jumpin' Jack Flash (Billy Joel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LYxyV5Uk

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/2RF9fUzhcYJXQx9/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 1: David Peel, Herbie Mann, J. Geils Band & More

Here is the first part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. I'm doing this day by day, so this goes back to "Part 1" instead of "Part 4" of the entire festival. This is kind of a grab-bag for musical acts from the second day where I only have small portions of their sets.

Unfortunately, so much time has passed since this festival that a lot has been lost. I only was able to learn some basics about which acts performed on which day (though even that is sometimes questionable, especially since some of the acts performed more than once), and which ones were the headliners. Also, only bits and pieces of the music have survived. I've previously mentioned the official double album, "Mar y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival," long out of print. Some of the songs on this album come from that. (Specifically, tracks 1, 11, and 13.) But most of the songs come from an audience bootleg I mentioned in my previous write-ups. The good news is that the sound quality is surprisingly good for an audience bootleg. I didn't try any of my usual audio editing tricks on those songs, because they sounded like a soundboard already. But the bad news is how we often have only portions of many sets. For instance, I'm sure Dr. John played a lot more than just one song! I assume all the acts here performed more songs. But something is better than nothing.

The J. Geils Band set is the longest here, at 22 minutes. A New York Times review that was down on the festival in general liked that performance, at least, writing, "The J. Gells band finally played a set that deserved the accolades it has received in the past." Too bad there isn't more of it. 

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long.

01 Wang Dang Doodle (Dr. John)
02 All the Things You Are [Instrumental] (Dave Brubeck & Gerry Mulligan)
03 Take Five [Instrumental] (Dave Brubeck & Gerry Mulligan)
04 The Pope Smokes Dope (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
05 talk (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
06 Up Against the Wall (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
07 talk (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
08 New York City Hippie (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
09 Mother Where Is My Father (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
10 Memphis Underground [Instrumental] (Herbie Mann)
11 Respect Yourself [Instrumental] (Herbie Mann)
12 Never Can Say Goodbye [Instrumental] (Herbie Mann)
13 talk (J. Geils Band)
14 Looking for a Love (J. Geils Band)
15 talk (J. Geils Band)
16 Homework (J. Geils Band)
17 Crusin' for a Love (J. Geils Band)
18 Sno-Cone [Instrumental] (J. Geils Band)
19 Wait (J. Geils Band)
20 talk (J. Geils Band)
21 Whammer Jammer (J. Geils Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/77vXqgBR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0qsJyXsMdlKWoD1/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Herbie Mann playing flute in front, with other band members. 

Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-1-1972, Part 2: B. B. King

Here's the second album from the first day of the Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. There are three albums from this day in total. This one consists only of a set by blues legend B. B. King.

As I explained in the first album from this festival, the festival was a bit of a fiasco overall. But there still was a lot of good music, and most accounts said that King's set was one of the highlights. Unfortunately, we only have some of the set. Just one song, "Why I Sing the Blues," made it onto the official album from the festival, "Mar y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival." So I used that version for that song. For the rest, I relied on a surprisingly good sounding audience bootleg that I mentioned in the write-up for the first album. 

But as I mentioned, that bootleg only has portions of the festival (or at least that's all that's been made public. This definitely wasn't King's full set. In fact, one of the songs, "Hummingbird," wasn't even complete. I found a different live recording of that from this era and used it to finish it off. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title.

Now, I want to say a little more about the festival that has nothing to do with B. B. King per se, but I didn't want to write too much in the write-up for the first album. I want to mention the musical acts that were supposed to attend the festival but didn't perform for some reason.

The biggest miss, by far, was John Lennon. He was very interested in performing at the festival, and that would have been a massively big deal, since he only performed a couple of full concerts after leaving the Beatles. Around 1972, he got to be friends with musician John Peel, who did perform at the festival, and he knew some other people who were going. So he wanted to be a part of it as well. Unfortunately, he was having legal problems with the U.S. government over his visa, and leaving the U.S. to go to Puerto Rico apparently would have added to those problems, despite the fact that Puerto Rico was and still is a U.S. territory. So instead, he and Yoko Ono sent a message of support. You can hear that here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSGbEVUbZoY

There were other big misses. Black Sabbath made it to Puerto Rico, and were supposed to perform on the third and last night. But while other bands were flown by helicopter from a hotel in the main city of San Juan to the festival site, no helicopters were available for the band. It was also determined that the roads were clogged, due to the festival, so they couldn't make it that way either. In the end, they simply stayed in their hotel. They didn't mind that much, since they'd already been paid.

Bloodrock, Flash Cadillac, Fleetwood Mac, and Malo also didn't perform for various reasons. Probably a lot of it had to do with the uncertainty surrounding the festival, since it almost didn't happen due to legal issues. A bunch of other musical acts were scheduled to perform, but it's unknown if they did or not: Ashton, Gardner and Dyke, Savoy Brown, Roberta Flack, Al Kooper, Loggins & Messina, Poco,
Billy Preston, Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. If anyone reading this attended the festival and can shed some light on this, that would be great.

This album is 25 minutes long.

01 Everyday I Have the Blues (B.B. King)
02 Hummingbird [Edit] (B.B. King)
03 How Blue Can You Get (B.B. King)
04 Guess Who (B.B. King)
05 Why I Sing the Blues (B.B. King)
06 The Thrill Is Gone (B.B. King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HWrLrgKc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Oeez4DxyNBChLXg/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It's one of the few color photos I could find. The top of his head was missing, but I used AI features in Photoshop to fill out the missing part.
 

Various Artists - Covered: Van McCoy, Best Of: 1962-1985

Here's another artist for my "Covered" series. To remind you, this highlights the talents of songwriters by collecting cover versions of their songs. This time, the focus is on Van McCoy.

These days, McCoy is probably seen by many as a one-hit wonder, because he had one huge hit under his own name: "The Hustle." This instrumental was a huge hit in 1975. It went to Number One on the main U.S. singles chart, as well as on the soul chart. It reached at least the Top Ten in most other countries as well, including hitting Number Three in Britain. 

That was his only Top 40 hit in the U.S., so technically that makes him a "one-hit wonder" in that country. But he did have other hits in other countries. For instance, he had three more Top 40 hits in Britain. But more important, he had a very long and successful career as a songwriter and producer. The focus here will be just on the songwriting part though.

 

McCoy was born in Washington, D.C., in 1940. He started playing piano and singing in a church choir at a young age. He began writing songs at the age of 12. Eventually, he would have 700 of his songs recorded and released by himself or other musical artists. He started to study psychology at Howard University, but dropped out in 1960 to pursue a music career. 

 

He formed his own record company from the very start. He had a little success with his own recordings. His first single, "Mr. D.J.," was a minor hit in 1960. But he soon found more success writing and producing songs for others. He mostly concentrated on that, though he continued to release singles under his own name. His first really big hit as a songwriter was "Baby, I'm Yours." Singer Barbara Lewis took it to the Top Ten in 1965. He continued to write many more hits in the 1960s and 1970s. I've included the ones I liked the best here. Note these aren't necessarily all the biggest hits on the charts.

 

In the 1970s, he began focusing more on his own career. In the 1960s, he only released one album under his own name. But in the 1970s, he released ten. His solo career really took over after his 1975 hit "The Hustle." But he continued writing and producing songs for others as well. Unfortunately, his career was cut short, because he died of a heart attack on June 29, 1979, at the age of 39.

 

Here's his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more. It's surprisingly detailed compared to other similar entries:

 

Van McCoy - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and nine minutes long. 

01 Stop the Music (Shirelles)
02 Getting Mighty Crowded (Betty Everett)
03 Giving Up (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
04 Baby, I'm Yours (Barbara Lewis)
05 It’s Starting to Get to Me Now (Irma Thomas)
06 Where Does That Leave Me Now (Nancy Wilson)
07 Before and After (Chad & Jeremy)
08 Let It All Out (O'Jays)
09 Stop and Get a Hold on Myself (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 When You're Young and in Love (Marvelettes)
11 You're Gonna Make Me Love You (Sandi Sheldon)
12 The Way to a Woman’s Heart (Billy T. Soul)
13 I Get the Sweetest Feeling (Jackie Wilson)
14 So Soon (Aretha Franklin)
15 Lost and Found (Kenny Carlton)
16 Nothing Worse than Being Alone (Ad Libs)
17 Right on the Tip of My Tongue (Brenda & the Tabulations)
18 Let Me Down Easy (Derrick Harriott)
19 The Hustle (Van McCoy)
20 This Is It (Melba Moore)
21 Heavy Love (David Ruffin)
22 Baby Don't Change Your Mind (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
23 Sweet Bitter Love (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HhVWn2Gr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/kTvbsbNvI6VKdyA/file

The cover photo dates to 1975. I assume it's from an awards ceremony, but I don't know the details. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Lulu - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: 1971-1972

I recently discovered a big amount of Lulu performances for the BBC, so much so that I'm expanding the four albums I'd previously posted into nine albums. This is almost entirely due to finding many more performances from the BBC TV shows she hosted. So here's a fifth volume.

Previously, I'd had one volume stretching from 1971 to 1975 (the old "Volume 4," now deleted). Nearly all of what had been on that volume is on this volume: tracks 1 through 8, and 10 through 14. So the only new tracks are 9 and 15. That means that virtually all the songs on the volumes after this will be new.

Although Lulu had a BBC TV show of her own during this time period, called "It's Lulu," I could find very few songs from this time period from that show. Actually, I only found two: "The More I See You," and the bonus track, "Scarborough Fair." (That's a bonus track due to poor sound quality.) So there's a possibility that many more songs from these years will eventually emerge, if some more recordings of those TV shows were saved somewhere. 

Instead, most of the songs on this album come from performances for the "Top of the Pops" BBC radio show (not to be confused with the BBC TV show of the same name). That makes up tracks 1 through 7 and 12 through 14. Note that you'll see "[Edit]" in the titles of a lot of those songs. That's due to the usual problem of BBC radio recordings from this era of DJs talking over the music. I did my usual editing, using the UVR5 program to remove the talking while keeping the music.

That leaves just tracks 8 through 11, and 15. All of those come from other BBC TV shows that had Lulu on as a guest. If you want specific details, please check the mp3 tags, as usual. These songs generally had audience applause. But I got rid of most of that using the UVR5 program. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is generally excellent, though it varies some. 

This album is 46 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Bridge Over Troubled Water [Edit] (Lulu)
02 You've Gotta Believe in Love [Edit] (Lulu)
03 Save the Country (Lulu)
04 Get Ready [Edit] (Lulu)
05 I Got Love [Edit] (Lulu)
06 Resurrection Shuffle [Edit] (Lulu)
07 Everybody's Got to Clap (Lulu)
08 It Don't Come Easy (Lulu)
09 The More I See You (Lulu with Dudley Moore)
10 Just a Little Lovin' (Lulu)
11 Nights in White Satin (Lulu)
12 Amazing Grace (Lulu)
13 It Takes a Real Man [To Bring Out the Woman in Me] (Lulu)
14 Even If I Could Change [Edit] (Lulu)
15 My Father's House (Lulu with the Young Generation)

Scarborough Fair (Dusty Springfield & Lulu)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SFJw5zRP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/chnsyalqmBk42N6/file

I don't know anything about the cover photo except it's "circa 1972."

Country Joe McDonald - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, London, Britain, 5-4-1972

Just yesterday, I posted "BBC Sessions, Volume 1" by Country Joe McDonald. But I already made a drastic change to it. After posting it, a commenter named SamApplePie sent me a bunch of BBC material by McDonald. I had most of it, but there was some studio session material from 1977 that I didn't have yet. So I split that album in two. I've just reposted "Volume 1," and it's a lot shorter than before. Don't worry, the rest of that material, and then some, will appear in a later volume. So if you downloaded that one already, I highly recommend you re-download it.

By the way, thanks to SamApplePie for that material. 

Now, let's get to this album. This is a short acoustic concert recorded for the BBC radio show "In Concert." It was an hour-long show, and McDonald shared the show with the band Brinsley Schwarz. I edited the first track, because the BBC DJ Alan Black mixed comments about McDonald with comments about Brinsley Schwarz. I just kept the McDonald bits. I also removed some audience noise in the background. So that's what that one track has "[Edit]" in its title.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is close to excellent. 

This album is 35 minutes long. 

01 talk by Alan Black [Edit] (Country Joe McDonald)
02 The Limit (Country Joe McDonald)
03 talk (Country Joe McDonald)
04 Memories (Country Joe McDonald)
05 talk (Country Joe McDonald)
06 Colorado Town (Country Joe McDonald)
07 talk (Country Joe McDonald)
08 The Man from Athabasca (Country Joe McDonald)
09 I'll Survive (Country Joe McDonald)
10 I'm on the Road Again (Country Joe McDonald)
11 Only Love Is Worth This Pain (Country Joe McDonald)
12 Here I Go Again (Country Joe McDonald)
13 talk by Alan Black (Country Joe McDonald)
14 I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag (Country Joe McDonald)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hqUMHqKQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/IwNbicSVRt8DcID/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show in 1972.