Jimmy Buffett - Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes Live (1978-2008) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here is another guest post by Mike Solof. I am putting words into his mouth, but I think what happened is that he Felt he really enjoyed the 1977 album "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes," by Jimmy Buffett. But after hearing it many many times, he wanted to hear it in a different way. So he collected live versions of all songs on the album and put them in the same order as the original. 

He managed to find live versions of all of the songs, with all of them in excellent sound quality. Most of them come from a year or two after the album was released, though a couple are from significantly later. None of the songs are extended, so don't expect drastically different versions. In fact, this album is a minute or two shorter than the studio version.

This was Buffett's breakthrough album that turned him into a big star, helped greatly by the conclusion of the hit song "Margaritaville." If you like the album a lot, you should enjoy this one.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes (Jimmy Buffett)
02 Wonder Why We Ever Go Home (Jimmy Buffett)
03 Banana Republics (Jimmy Buffett)
04 Tampico Tundra (Jimmy Buffett)
05 Lovely Cruise (Jimmy Buffett)
06 Margaritaville (Jimmy Buffett)
07 In the Shelter (Jimmy Buffett)
08 Miss You So Badly (Jimmy Buffett)
09 Biloxi (Jimmy Buffett)
10 Landfall (Jimmy Buffett)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9UBFHbeV 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/z8ghyGoVXlXDmgg/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Omni Coliseum in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 4, 1976.

Various Artists - Musical Salad, Volume 2 (1939-2025) (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here is the second volume of "Musical Salad,"a collection of songs about vegetables. For real. 

As I mentioned with the release of "Musical Salad, Volume 1," this project began as one of Fabio from Rio's eccentric ideas, supported at first by my cautiously skeptical encouragement. But after we finished "Volume 1," I have to admit I was already looking forward to a second helping.

Nearly all of the songs in "Volume 1" were found by Fabio. But for this volume, I went digging and found a majority of these ones. As with the first volume, Fabio really went above and beyond the usual call of duty, making an artistic booklet with text, talking about each song and including an illustration for each song, made by AI. (He wrote all the text however.) I also provided ideas and suggestions for many of the illustrations generated with the help of Fabio's AI-assisted artwork process.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I have concerns about the use of AI. For instance, I have been careful to never include any music made by AI in this blog. But the AI artwork made for this booklet was just too good not to include. In fact, it's kind of "scary good," since it can do what a human can do for practically no cost in just a tiny fraction of the time.

At any rate, as I mentioned in the write up for the first volume, the songs here had to actually be about vegetables in some way and not just have a fitting title. So for instance, we didn't use the song "Vegetable Man" by Pink Floyd, because all of the lyrics reference clothes and fashion, with just a mysterious line in the chorus, "Vegetable Man, where are you?" That may well refer to someone being a mental vegetable and have nothing to do with actual edible vegetables at all.

But now that we are posting the second volume, if you can think of any fitting songs that are worthy of inclusion for a possible third volume, please let us know. I thought that we had pretty much found all the good ones that fit, but already we've had a few suggestions in the comments for valuable one that look promising. I could easily see a third volume, including more of the fun artwork, if we can just find enough songs that keep up the standards of the first two volumes. 

Also, if you have suggestions for other theme, albums, similar to this one, please let us know. I doubt I would spearhead any project like that (since I have my hands full with so many other albums I want to post already), but there's no telling what kind of off the wall ideas that might appeal to Fabio. In fact, I already get the feeling that he is thinking about other food related albums, so if you have some suggestions for songs along those lines, please let us know about those too.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Our Garden (Lucy Kalantari)
02 Life in the Slaw Lane (Kip Addotta)
03 I Love Onions (Jackie Weaver)
04 Cheese and Onions (Rutles)
05 Homegrown Tomatoes (Guy Clark)
06 Solid Potato Salad (Ella Mae Morse)
07 Potato (Cheryl Wheeler)
08 The Potato Stomp (Killin' Jivers)
09 Beans and Cornbread (Louis Jordan)
10 Eat Every Bean and Pea on Your Plate (Daddy A Go-Go)
11 Cornbread and Butterbeans (Carolina Choc Drops)
12 The Spinach Song (Julia Lee)
13 Broccoli (Association)
14 Artichokes (Maps & Atlases)
15 Avocado Woo Woo (The Tin Men)
16 Fruit Salad (Tierra Whack)
17 Coleslaw (Louis Jordan)
18 Vegetables [1993 Live Version] (Beach Boys)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eN4EguPz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/khZ7cVB1EQwxUMr/file

The cover image was made by Fabio, using AI. As mentioned above, he also used AI to have illustrations of each of the songs. Here's one that I particularly liked, for the song Avocado Woo Woo." 

Various Artists - Musical Salad, Volume 1 (1939-2025) (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

As part of this music blog's ongoing Brian Wilson Week, here's another tribute to one of the most original musical minds of the Twentieth Century. If we've got our dates right, this should be appearing on June 17th, which happens to be National Eat Your Vegetables Day in the United States.

The idea for this collection emerged during a late-night Discord conversation with Fabio from Rio, when preparing the "Covered: Brian Wilson" discs. While discussing Brian Wilson's wonderfully eccentric song "Vegetables", we started wondering whether anyone else had ever written songs about vegetables. What began as a joke I made quickly turned into a challenge taken up by Fabio. A few days later, he returned with a surprisingly long list of candidates, and before long we realized there might actually be enough material for an entire compilation – or two.

The result is "Musical Salad." It's a collection of songs inspired by vegetables, salads, and assorted garden-related culinary adventures. Some tracks are genuinely great, some are bizarre, some are funny (either deliberate or not), and a few somehow manage to be all three at once. Taken together, they form one of the strangest and most entertaining themed collections we've assembled so far.

Note that there are many many songs that have a vegetable or something vegetable related in the title. We decided that wasn't good enough. The song has to actually be discussing something vegetable-related in the lyrics.  Furthermore, it had to hold up musically as well. I know this concept may seem strange. But just as your parents probably told you when faced with eating an unfamiliar vegetable for the first time, "try it, you'll like it." I was skeptical at first, but I think these ended up being fun albums.

There is a second volume coming, hopefully tomorrow.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 Vegetables (Beach Boys)
02 Sam the Vegetable Man (Stuff Smith)
03 Cauliflower (Rattles)
04 The Onion Song (Marvin Gaye & Tammy Terrell)
05 Don't Touch Me Tomato (Phyllis Dillon)
06 Hot Potatoes (Kinks)
07 Eat Your Green Beans (Happy Campers)
08 Call Any Vegetable (Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention)
09 Potatoes, Tomatoes, Gravy and Peas (Terry Scott Taylor)
10 Carrot Juice Is Murder (Arrogant Worms)
11 Eggplant (Train)
12 Leaf and Lime (High Llamas)
13 [Don't Give Me That] Broccoli (Phenomenauts)
14 Vegetable Town (Barenaked Ladies)
15 The Boy Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn (Johan Heldenbergh & Veerle Baetens)
16 Lettuce and Croutons with Fresh Daily (ScienZe)
17 Red Peppers (Peppes)
18 Hang On Little Tomato (Pink Martini)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wnZK6i25

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/zj3KlY4Ns9gV2Jq/file

The cover image was made by Fabio, using AI. Furthermore, he went above and beyond and used an AI art generator to create a visual picture of each of the songs. I was skeptical of that at first as well, especially since I'm not a big fan of AI art, or really AI much of anything. But I have to admit these pictures that Fabio made for the songs turned out really well. In fact, they turned out so well that I told Fabio they make me fear for the future, because if AI can make one of these in a matter of seconds, I don't see how people will be able to stay employed as artists. But that's a discussion for another time and place perhaps. Here is a sample of one such picture. This one illustrates the song "Carrot Juice Is Murder." You can find an entire booklet that he made with these AI created pictures as well as descriptions of each song in the download zip file.

Covered: George Harrison, Volume 4: 2004-2010

Here is the fourth out of six "Covered" volumes for George Harrison.

Unfortunately, before the start of the time period of this volume, Harrison had already died. (He died in 2001 all too young, at the age of 58.) That means he wasn't putting out any more new music. So for this volume and the next two, we're basically playing catch up, with covers from earlier parts of his music career, including going back to his years with the Beatles.

The first song here is a special treat. It comes from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in 2004, because Harrison was posthumously inducted that year. This version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" has a lot of stars peforming on it, including some I didn't include in the song title, due to wanting to keep it short, like Steve Winwood and Dhani Harrison. But what really makes this version stand out is the wild guitar soloing by Prince. A lot of people were impressed, as you can see by the fact the YouTube video is up to 140 million views when I'm writing this in May 2026. But this version remains unreleased. 

Generally speaking, I try hard to only include one version of each song in a Covered series like this. But every now and then, there are cases where I can't resist adding more than one. For this series, I have two versions of "Something" (on Volumes 1 and 2, by Shirley Bassey and James Brown). I also have two versions of "If I Needed Someone." I included the Hollies version of that song on Volume 1, because they had a hit with it back in 1965. It made the Top Twenty in Britain. That was Harrison's first hit song, actually. 

However, I'm including a second version of that song here, even though it's not one of his most popular songs. That's because in 2004, Roger McGuinn did a version of it. McGuinn used to be the main singer for the Byrds, and Harrison wrote the song with a very obvious Byrds influence. It was one he openly acknowledged from the start. He even sent McGuinn an advanced copy of the song, along with a thank you note. So it's nice to finally hear what the Byrds might have done with this Byrdsy song.   

This album is an hour and one minute long.

01 While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne & Prince)
02 All Things Must Pass (Paul McCartney)
03 If I Needed Someone (Roger McGuinn)
04 Love Comes to Everyone (Eric Clapton)
05 Handle with Care (Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins)
06 Stuck Inside a Cloud (Herb Eimerman)
07 Dark Sweet Lady (Nelson Bragg)
08 I Want to Tell You (Thea Gilmore)
09 Blue Jay Way (Secret Machines)
10 Within You, Without You (Patti Smith)
11 That's the Way It Goes (Joe Brown)
12 I Live for You (Tift Merritt)
13 Blow Away (Den Fiori)
14 Hear Me Lord (Chip Mergott)
15 Deep Blue (Carolina Lima)
16 Be Here Now (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/61Dy14BG

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/esiuW1bolSkXUjR/file

The cover image is from 1991.  

Covered: Neil Young: Alternates, Volume 3: 2007-2016 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's the third volume out of four containing alternates to the "Covered" volumes made for the songs of Neil Young.

As with the other volumes in this series, the song selections were almost entirely made by guest poster Fabio from Rio. I just made a few small suggestions. So thanks again to him for his work on this.

I've already said pretty much all I wanted to say in Volumes 1 and 2 in this series, so look to that for more commentary. Also, Fabio wrote some liner notes, which are included in the download zip. (But they're the same notes for all four volumes.) 

This album is one hour long.

01 Bandit (Liam Titcomb)
02 Sugar Mountain (Harpoondodger & Pat Robitaille)
03 Long May You Run (Chris Seldon)
04 Wonderin' (Nils Lofgren)
05 Coupe de Ville (Jens Severin & Helpless)
06 I Am a Child (Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka & Lucy Kaplansky)
07 Words [Between the Lines of Age] (Chip Taylor)
08 You and Me (Trappers Cabin)
09 On the Way Home (America)
10 Lost in Space (Cosmo D)
11 Shots (Max Spada)
12 Can't Stop Workin' (Minus 5)
13 Hangin' on a Limb (Hall - Eserstam)
14 Country Home (Ragged Glory Holes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HkT8kKJb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tNUkYbG4WCAjmCj/file

The cover image is from 2005.

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.

Elton John - Cover Versions, Volume 6: 2008-2017

Here's the sixth and last album in a series of albums of cover versions by Elton John. I had started posted this series back in 2023, but I stopped for a couple of years due to problems with the copyright police. But they seem to be going easy on me lately, so I'm finally finishing off the series.

Only four of the songs here are unreleased. "Back in the U.S.S.R." and "Birthday" are from a bootleg of a joint concert John did with Billy Joel in 2009. (He's done a lot of those over the years.) Unfortunately, the sound quality of those two songs are lower than the rest, despite my best efforts to make some audio editing improvements. "Streets of Philadelphia" is from a 2013 MusiCares tribute concert to Bruce Springsteen that I've posted in full on this blog. "Gravity," a duet with Sara Bareilles, is from a 2014 concert.

Pretty much all the other songs are from John's appearances on albums by other musical acts. Check the mp3 tags for more details. The one exception is "I Love You All the Time," which was released as an A-side in 2016.

This is probably going to be the last album in this series because, rather surprisingly, I can't find any good cover versions he did after 2017. Mind you, he's done lots of songs on his studio albums, but these albums only collect covers that aren't the versions from his studio albums. If anyone knows of covers I've missed from this time period, or after, let me know and I'll probably add them in to this album. 

This album is 45 minutes long. 

01 Joseph, Better You than Me (Killers, Elton John & Neil Tennant)
02 Back in the U.S.S.R (Elton John & Billy Joel)
03 Birthday (Elton John & Billy Joel)
04 Snowed In at Wheeler Street (Kate Bush & Elton John)
05 Oh Well, Part 1 (2Cellos & Elton John)
06 Streets of Philadelphia (Elton John with Raphael Saadiq)
07 The Tracks of My Tears (Smokey Robinson & Elton John)
08 Gravity (Sara Bareilles & Elton John)
09 I Love You All the Time (Elton John)
10 Where Do the Guilty Go (Elton John & Frankie Miller)
11 Alone Again, Naturally (Pet Shop Boys & Elton John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5co2GBbS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/MyoGx6JEfwTVUTa/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Manchester Evening News Arena, in Manchester, Britain, on December 20, 2008.

Various Artists - Covered: Neil Young, Volume 6: 2007-2011

Modern technology is amazing: I’m writing this while sitting in an eco lodge deep in the Amazon jungle in Peru (with a huge rhino beetle on the floor about five feet from me). Anyway, not much time to write, but here’s another Neil Young “Covered” album, since I have more of those to post than Dionne Warwick albums while I’m on vacation.

As usual, here's the write up by Fabio from Rio:

By the late 2000s, Neil Young's catalog had entered yet another phase of rediscovery. While earlier generations of alternative rock musicians had embraced his influence during the grunge years, a new wave of indie-folk and Americana performers began revisiting his songs with quieter, more introspective arrangements. At the same time, the Internet was transforming how music circulated among fans: live recordings, tribute performances, and previously obscure interpretations were now easier to find and share among the global community of "Rusties." Young himself remained prolific, releasing ambitious projects such as "Chrome Dreams II" and "Le Noise." The covers in this volume reflect that diverse landscape - a mixture of indie artists, roots musicians and veteran performers exploring both well-known classics and deep cuts from across Young's long career.

--- 

Note that Fabio wrote individual paragraphs about all the songs in this volume. To see that, please look at the Word file added to the download zip file. Thanks again to Fabio for his help putting these albums together.  

This album is an hour and four minutes long. 

01 Walk On (Heidi Gluck)
02 Sleeps with Angels (Astrid Young)
03 Too Far Gone (The Brooke)
04 Soldier (Tara Angell)
05 World on a String (Nils Lofgren)
06 War of Man (Ann Wilson & Alison Krauss)
07 Mellow My Mind (Simply Red)
08 Don't Cry No Tears (Nils Lofgren)
09 Human Highway (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Ambulance Blues (Lisa Miller)
11 Journey through the Past (James Mercer)
12 You and Me (Trappers Cabin)
13 Cortez the Killer (Veda Hille)
14 Let's Roll (Irish Zeyez)
15 Transformer Man (Veda Hille)
16 From Hank to Hendrix (Joe Chaplain)
17 The Losing End [When You're On] (Elvis Costello) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fPC5Dxpi

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/FLXFvzMRlreZG3c/file

The cover photo is from 2006. I used the Krea AI program to improve the detail.

Richard Thompson - 1000 Years of Popular Music - Third Version (2008-2009)

From about 2001 to 2009, Richard Thompson occasionally put on a special type of concert, called "1000 Years of Popular Music." The idea started for him around the year 2000, when Playboy Magazine asked him and a bunch of other famous musicians to list what they considered to be the best songs of the millennium. Thompson alone took them literally and gave them a list that genuinely covered 1000 years, whereas everyone else made lists just of the last century. That inspired him to perform this concerts where he played some of his favorite songs of the last 1000 years, with many going back centuries. 

In 2021, I compiled and posted two versions of these kinds of concerts. Those mostly were sourced from concerts between 2001 and 2004. At that time, I also made a third version, mostly consisting of concerts from 2008. But I never felt ready to post it until now. The reason was sound quality. Most of the songs from the first two versions came from soundboard bootlegs or a DVD video. But this one pretty much entirely comes from unreleased audience bootlegs. (As usual, you can find sourcing details in the mp3 tags.) I felt that didn't meet the sound quality standards I'd set for my music blog. I waited, hoping either better sources would be found, or audio editing technology would improve enough for me to make this sound worthy of posting.

Well, better sources never were found, but audio editing technology did improve. Now, in January 2026, I feel this one sounds nearly as good as the first two. I just recently discovered a relatively new filter the MVSEP program has called "denoise." It's great for getting rid of hiss. So I used that on all the songs. I also ran all the songs through MVSEP's reverb reduction. And I additionally ran all the talking tracks through Adobe's vocal enhancer, which does wonders adding clarity to talking.

I know a couple of commenters have been asking for this ever since I mentioned a third version back in 2021. Thanks for your patience! Sorry it took so long. 

Speaking about that Adobe vocal enhancer, since that works so well, I recently used that on many of the talking tracks in the first two versions. Many of those talking bits were from audience boots instead of soundboard boots, so they needed help too. They sound much better now. So I strongly recommend you redownload those albums, if you'd downloaded them before.

Here's the link to the first version:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/05/richard-thompson-1000-years-of-popular.html

And the link to the second version:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/06/richard-thompson-1000-years-of-popular.html

I was very careful to avoid duplicating any songs from version to version. Luckily, Thompson kept changing the songs on his different "1000 Years" tours. So this should be just as entertaining as the other two versions. Also, like those versions, I've included sourcing information in brackets in the song titles. That includes the songwriter or writers, when known, and the year the song was written, if known.

Actually, I believe the last time Thompson toured with this theme was 2008. I have one song here from 2009, "Substitute," that came from a different kind of concert. But it was done in acoustic mode, like all the songs here, and I thought it fit in nicely, so I included it. Let's hope he comes back to this tour concept someday, because it's a fun way to learn musical history. (Besides, I'd love to see what songs he would deem worthy from the 2010s and 2020s.)  

This album is an hour and 26 minutes long. 

01 Edi Beo Thu Hevene Quene [Praise to You, Queen of Heaven] [1200s] (Richard Thompson)
02 talk (Richard Thompson)
03 The Three Ravens [1400s or earlier] (Richard Thompson)
04 talk (Richard Thompson)
05 Ja Nus Hons Pris [King Richard, 1192] (Richard Thompson)
06 talk (Richard Thompson)
07 Cutty Wren [1300s] (Richard Thompson)
08 talk (Richard Thompson)
09 False Knight on the Road [1820s or earlier] (Richard Thompson)
10 talk (Richard Thompson)
11 Pipe, Shepherd's Pipe [unknown] (Richard Thompson)
12 talk (Richard Thompson)
13 A Man Who Would Woo a Fair Maid [Gilbert and Sullivan, 1888] (Richard Thompson)
14 talk (Richard Thompson)
15 Down by the Salley Gardens [William Butler Yeats, 1889, set to music in 1909] (Richard Thompson)
16 talk (Richard Thompson)
17 Rigs of the Time [1905 or earlier] (Richard Thompson)
18 talk (Richard Thompson)
19 Brother, Can You Spare a Dime [Bing Crosby, 1932] (Richard Thompson)
20 talk (Richard Thompson)
21 Strange Fruit [Abel Meeropol, 1937] (Richard Thompson)
22 talk (Richard Thompson)
23 Parchman Farm [Mose Allison, 1957] (Richard Thompson)
24 talk (Richard Thompson)
25 Little Boxes [Malvina Reynolds, 1962] (Richard Thompson)
26 Hold Me Tight - There's a Place - I Want to Hold Your Hand [Beatles, 1963] (Richard Thompson)
27 talk (Richard Thompson)
28 All Right [I'll Sign the Papers] [Ray Price, 1964] (Richard Thompson)
29 Substitute [Who, 1966] (Richard Thompson)
30 talk (Richard Thompson)
31 Workin' Man Blues [Merle Haggard, 1969] (Richard Thompson)
32 talk (Richard Thompson)
33 Get Up, Stand Up [Bob Marley & the Wailers, 1973] (Richard Thompson)
34 talk (Richard Thompson)
35 Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime [Korgis, 1980] (Richard Thompson)
36 talk (Richard Thompson)
37 Beds Are Burning [Midnight Oil, 1987] (Richard Thompson)
38 talk (Richard Thompson)
39 Maneater [Nelly Furtado, 2006] (Richard Thompson) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wPFoeBMn

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/ruKCZLQUli3nX0K/file 

The cover photo comes from a concert at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2008. I also used the same framing artwork that I used on the first two versions.

Various Artists - Covered: Tom Waits, Volume 3: 2004-2012 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's "Volume 3" out of four volumes made for the "Covered" series, showcasing the songs of Tom Waits.

Like the other volumes in this series, this was mostly put together by Fabio from Rio. He did all the heavy lifting in finding the source material, and I only helped to winnow down the songs to a reasonable number. Fabio also wrote the notes for each volume, so here's his notes for this one:

In the nineties and early 2000s, Waits fused experimental sounds with stark American roots music—blues, gospel, field hollers, and folk. Themes of death, sin, redemption, and rural myth dominate. This allows for covers that, while highlighting their folk or country origins (sometimes deeply buried at the original recordings, but more perceptible when reinterpreted by performers from diverse backgrounds), still keep their darker spirits through melancholic or nihilistic lyrics.

In this volume, the country side of Waits' music is quite perceptible via covers by Elvis Costello, Norah Jones, and Claudia Bettinaglio. One may also feel the sexiness and smoky-room cabaret ambiance at Diana Krall's "Temptation", Monique Maion's "Walking Spanish," and Clara Bellino's "Swordfishtrombone." 

Traces of rockabilly and R&B can be found with Mark Lemhouse's "No One Can Forgive Me" and English seventies folk with Plant and Krauss' "Trampled Rose", along with blues and rock tracks like Hart and Bonamassa's "Chocolate Jesus" and Goldheart Assembly's "Clap Hands." Overall, this makes for an eclectic selection, much like the average Tom Waits album. An acoustic, home-demo-like version of "In the Neighborhood" by Peter Gabriel, recorded in 2012 for a benefit album for war-torn regions, closes the volume on a poignant note.

--- 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 Innocent When You Dream (Elvis Costello)
02 Temptation (Diana Krall)
03 Long Way Home (Norah Jones)
04 Big in Japan (Shane Nicholson)
05 Swordfishtrombone (Clara Bellino)
06 Eyeball Kid (Michael Stanley)
07 Cold Cold Ground (Claudia Bettinaglio)
08 Trampled Rose (Robert Plant & Alison Krauss)
09 All the Time in the World (Southside Johnny)
10 No One Can Forgive Me (Mark Lemhouse)
11 Walking Spanish (Monique Maion)
12 Chocolate Jesus (Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa)
13 Clap Hands (Goldheart Assembly)
14 In the Neighborhood (Peter Gabriel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wvcKwhGU

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/7tUs0XZxiJ6YplA/file

The cover photo shows Waits at a movie premiere in Leicester Square, in London, on October 6, 2009. (As usual with this series of course, I replaced the background with blank light blue).

Various Artists - Covered: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Volume 2: 1998-2011 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's the second out of three albums celebrating the music of songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim. Like the others in this series, Fabio from Rio was more responsible for putting this together than I was. So a very big thanks to him. Due to the fact that he's a Brazilian with deep knowledge of Brazilian music, he knew Jobim covers way better than I did.

Jobim wrote most of his classic songs from the 1950s to the 1970s. He actually died in 1994, of heart and cancer problems at the age of 67. So all the covers here are from after his death, of songs that often were written decades earlier. That's a sign that his songs keep getting covered, long after their first appearances on records. 

Fabio and I selected these choices together. We rarely went for the big hit versions, because his songs rarely turned into big hits. But he's had dozens of songs with literally hundreds of cover versions. Typically, Fabio selected a bunch of versions of a given song, then I would listen to them and pick my favorite. If you want to hear more versions, go to the write-up for Volume 1, because Fabio has made six more albums of Jobim covers that you can find there.

Also note that I kept this to versions in English, despite the fact that Jobim wrote nearly all of the original versions of his songs in Portuguese. And I kept my selections to versions with vocals, since there are countless hundreds of instrumental versions of his songs as well. I figured English versions would have more popular appeal for people who aren't that familiar with his music. 

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 For All of My Life [Por Toda a Minha Vida] (Eliane Elias)
02 Modinha [Broken Heart] (Paquito D'Rivera & New York Voices)
03 Ela e Carioca [She's a Carioca] (Celso Fonseca)
04 Someone to Light Up My Life [Se Todos Fossem Iguais a Voce] (Ann Hampton Callaway)
05 No More Blues [Chega de Saudade] (Idea of North)
06 Porpoise [Boto] (Beijbom Kroner Big Band)
07 Song of the Jet [Samba do Aviao] (BR6)
08 Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars [Corcovado] (Diana Krall)
09 I Was Just One More for You [Esperanca Perdida] (Dawn Clement)
10 That Look You Wear [Este Seu Olhar] (Elly Hoyt)
11 Zingaro [Retrato em Branco e Preto] [Portrait in Black and White] (Nina Ripe)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gSWRErwx

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/N9ABCsEsu77SMaL/file

I don't know the details about the cover photo. But based on his appearance and the other photos I saw of him putting this together, I'd guess the picture was taken in the 1980s. 

REO Speedwagon - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 7-2008

I like REO Speedwagon at about the greatest hits level. If I were to post a concert from them, I would have preferred it to be from their early 1980s peak in popularity. But they performed for "PBS Soundstage" in 2008, so that's what I'm posting here. I'm committed to posting most any episode of this show I can find.

Given that this is a fairly recent professionally recorded TV broadcast, I was surprised to discover there was a major flaw: the vocals were way too low in the mix. It was very noticeable. But I was able to fix that using the UVR5 audio editing program. After that change, this sounds very good.

REO Speedwagon sold about 40 million records, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s. They were led by two singer-songwriters, Kevin Cronin and Gary Richrath. Some founding band members left by the time of this concert, including Richrath. But Cronin still led it, and they played all their biggest hits here, including the ones written by Richrath. It seems the band retired in 2024.

Here's their Wikipedia page:

REO Speedwagon - Wikipedia 

This album is 54 minutes long. 

01 Find Your Own Way Home (REO Speedwagon)
02 Take It on the Run (REO Speedwagon)
03 Keep Pushin' (REO Speedwagon)
04 Can't Fight This Feeling (REO Speedwagon)
05 Dangerous Combination (REO Speedwagon)
06 Time for Me to Fly (REO Speedwagon)
07 Don't Let Him Go (REO Speedwagon)
08 talk (REO Speedwagon)
09 Keep On Loving You (REO Speedwagon)
10 Roll with the Changes (REO Speedwagon)
11 Riding the Storm Out (REO Speedwagon)
12 talk (REO Speedwagon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nbFbScBh

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/s5lUq7uefF0BxlU/file

The cover is a screenshot taken from a video of this exact concert. I used Krea AI to flesh out the details of a low-res image.

Various Artists - Covered: Hank Williams, Volume 2: 1995-2017

Here's the second part to the "Covered" series about country music legend Hank Williams.

As I said in my write-up for Volume 1, I wanted to make these albums accessible to more than just country music fans. So that's why I mostly chose covers from recent decades, and by the likes of Beck, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Norah Jones, and so on. 

The vast majority of these were hits when Williams did them before his death in 1953. While there were a lot of hit cover versions of his songs, these generally were not hits. As I just mentioned, I was striving to get away from country versions, and those were most of the hit versions.

As always with these "Covered" albums, the songs are in loose chronological order, based on the year of release. And, as always, check the mp3 tags for the details. 

This album is 45 minutes long. 

01 I'm a Long Gone Daddy (The The)
02 I Can't Help It [If I'm Still in Love with You] (Cat Power)
03 [I Heard That] Lonesome Whistle (Beck)
04 I Can't Get You Off of My Mind (Bob Dylan)
05 Alone and Forsaken (Emmylou Harris & Mark Knopfler)
06 You're Gonna Change [Or I'm Gonna Leave] (Tom Petty)
07 Cold, Cold Heart (Norah Jones)
08 Lost Highway (Lee Rocker)
09 Ramblin' Woman (Cat Power)
10 Take These Chains from My Heart (Rosanne Cash)
11 A House of Gold (Patty Griffin)
12 How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart (Norah Jones)
13 Mansion on the Hill (Willie Nelson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/p9WTgUAm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/D7RUZWT6RaYdFQj/file

I don't know the details of where or when the cover photo was from. However, it was in color, so I didn't need to change anything. 

Various Artists - Covered: Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, Volume 2: 1968-2023

Here's the second and final album of the "Covered" series for the songwriting team of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham.

In the first volume, I noted that Penn and Oldham had a lot of success writing hit songs from about 1966 to 1968, while based in Memphis, Tennessee. The first song here is from 1968. But after that, there was a sharp drop with their musical successes. Penn later claimed that there was a lot of fruitful collaboration between white songwriters like Spooner and him and the black singers they were mainly writing for during that time period, but that changed as the years went on. He saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 as a key moment. After that, race became more of an issue, and the expectation grew that soul music songs sung by black singers would be written by black songwriters too.

Due to this changed environment, Penn and Oldham split up. Oldham moved to Los Angeles, where he found a lot of success playing keyboards as a session musician. That continued for decades, with him playing on albums by the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Aretha Franklin, Jackson Browne, the Everly Brothers, J.J. Cale, Linda Ronstadt, and many, many more. 

Meanwhile, Penn moved to Nashville, the home of country music, and tried to find success writing country songs. However, although his style had always been an interesting combination of soul and country music, he didn't do well writing just  for country singers. In 1973, he finally released his first solo album, "Nobody's Fool." While it was critically acclaimed, it sold very little. He did have some success as a songwriter and/or producer, but in a low-key way.

In 1994, Penn and Oldham reunited for Penn's second solo album, "Do Right Man." This mostly consisted of Penn's versions of his biggest hits from the 1960s. It was critically acclaimed. And while it also wasn't a big seller, it generated enough interest for Penn and Oldham to essentially start a new career as duo, going on tour to promote the occasional new album by Penn. Since then, Penn has released three more studio albums. The two of them have built up a following. As I write this in 2025, they are still going on tour, despite the fact that they're both in their early eighties.

Penn continues to write new songs, though it seems not often with Oldham anymore. He's had the occasional successful late career song. For instance, "Don't Give Up on Me" was the title track to Solomon Burke's acclaimed 2002 album by that same name. And "Memphis Women and Chicken" from Penn's 1994 album is usually performed in the concerts by Penn and Oldham.

Most of the songs here were written by Penn with others instead of Oldham. However, "Lonely Women Make Good Lovers" was written by Oldham without Penn. Unlike the hit-filled Volume 1, there really aren't any big hits here, though arguably some could be considered classics, and the songwriting is still at a consistently high level. Some of the songs were written much earlier than when the versions here were recorded. For instance, "Keep On Talking," recorded by Texas in 2023, was first released by someone else in 1965. In cases like that, these are the versions I like best.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 I Met Her in Church (Box Tops)
02 A Woman Left Lonely (Janis Joplin)
03 Rainbow Road (Percy Sledge)
04 Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (Bob Luman)
05 Zero Willpower (Irma Thomas)
06 Like a Road Leading Home (Jerry Garcia Band)
07 Where There's a Will [There's a Way] (Dan Penn)
08 Time I Took a Holiday (Nick Lowe)
09 Don't Give Up on Me (Solomon Burke)
10 Memphis Women and Chicken (Gary Nicholson)
11 I Hate You (Nicki Bluhm)
12 Keep On Talking (Texas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/twgxcZ9G

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Vm9TnixuDiQ2TBW/file

I don't know what year the cover photo is from. But I did find this photo of the two of them together, probably in the 1990s. I used Photoshop to move them closer together.

Various Artists - Songs in the Key of Brian - Remembering Brian Wilson (1975-2021) (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

One of the all-time great musical geniuses, Brian Wilson, died a few days ago, on June 11, 2025. He was 82 years old. I wanted to post something to mark his passing. Luckily, I've recently been collaborating with a new musical friend, who goes by the name Fabio from Rio. He's a big fan of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, and came up with the idea of creating an album consisting entirely of songs about Brian Wilson. So that's what this is. I gave him free reign, and only helped him some with suggestions on song selection.

I would have never come up with the idea for this album, because I had no idea that there would be enough songs about Brian Wilson to make up an entire album. I knew of the song "Brian Wilson" by Barenaked Ladies, since that was a hit back in the 1990s, but that was about it. But Fabio must be a really big fan, because he found so many songs that we had to cut some out to keep the album from getting too long.

The album starts with a rare demo written and sung by Wilson himself. It also ends with two more written and sung by him, including a rare live version of "Love and Mercy." Fabio explained the reasoning for this in an email, which I liked. I'll just paste in his explanation here:

"The Wilson tunes are bookends, as they serve to introduce and close the 'main event' (all the tracks written to him or about him) while bringing a personal Brian touch to the collection. The first song, a 1975, demo works as a prelude (acknowledging Brian's fragility and strength both simultaneously contained in his voice), 'The Last Song' is the epilogue, and 'Love and Mercy' is a coda." 

Regarding the rest of the songs, what Fabio calls the "main event," tracks 2 through 13, are basically divided into two parts. Tracks 2 through 8 are direct tributes to Brian. That's obvious by their titles, but it's not just that: the lyrics and musical style ooze reference and admiration for the man. That's followed by tracks 9 through 13, which are indirect tributes to Brian, or direct tributes to things related to him (the Beach Boys, his health shop, girls, his genius, family), all mentioning him either in the title or lyrics.

So, a big thanks to Fabio from Rio for coming up with the idea for this album and then finding and selecting the songs. As you could guess from the name, he's Brazilian, and hopefully in the future he'll be able to assist in sharing more music from Brazil. I like a lot of music from Brazil, despite not speaking Portuguese at all. I haven't really shared any music from Brazil until now, because I don't have worthy rarities. But he does, so look forward to that in the future. He also has some other plans, including creating one or more albums as a further tribute to Wilson that will consist of songs in a Beach Boys style composed by other musical acts. 

Fabio has also taped a great number of concerts in Brazil. You can find some of them on his YouTube page, here: 

https://www.youtube.com/@musicadequalidade2020/videos

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 In the Back of My Mind [Demo] (Brian Wilson)
02 The Love Songs of B. Douglas Wilson (Splitsville)
03 Mr. Wilson (Hormones)
04 Dear Brian (Chris Rainbow)
05 Brian Wilson Said (Tears for Fears)
06 Brian Wilson (Barenaked Ladies)
07 Mr. Wilson (John Cale)
08 Brian Wilson (Queers)
09 Crazy = Genius (Panic at the Disco)
10 Radiant Radish (Pearl & the Oysters)
11 Brian Wilson Is My Dad (Breakup Shoes)
12 Minnesota Girls (Shackletons)
13 Since God Invented Girls (Elton John)
14 The Last Song (Brian Wilson)
15 Love and Mercy (Brian Wilson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Kn42WH9u

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/EMCkcQ343EW7g0m/file

The cover photo shows Wilson in 2007. I added the font colors and type to match those used on the cover of the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" album.

Paul Weller - BBC Sessions, Volume 14: In Concert, Carling Academy, Brixton, Britain, 11-26-2008

Here we go again with yet another Paul Weller BBC album. This time, it's another concert.

In 2008, Weller released the double album "22 Dreams." The fact that it was a double album was a promising sign that he was on a creative tear, and sure enough, in my opinion, it's one of his better solo albums. So late 2008 was a good time to check in with another concert.

Up until now, in posting all of these volumes in this BBC series, I've often relied on material that came out on the official box set "At the BBC." But that came out in 2008, so everything from this on forward chronologically is not on that. That almost always means unreleased, and this concert is unreleased. Yet the sound quality is still excellent, thanks to the usual high BBC standards. 

This album is an hour and 22 minutes long.

01 Intro [Are We Ready] (Paul Weller)
02 Peacock Suit (Paul Weller)
03 talk (Paul Weller)
04 22 Dreams (Paul Weller)
05 All I Wanna Do [Is Be with You] (Paul Weller)
06 From the Floorboards Up (Paul Weller)
07 All on a Misty Morning (Paul Weller)
08 talk (Paul Weller)
09 Brand New Start (Paul Weller)
10 Have You Made Up Your Mind (Paul Weller)
11 Wild Blue Yonder (Paul Weller)
12 Black River (Paul Weller)
13 Invisible (Paul Weller)
14 talk (Paul Weller)
15 One Bright Star (Paul Weller)
16 talk (Paul Weller)
17 Where'er You Go (Paul Weller)
18 Wildwood (Paul Weller)
19 Why Walk When You Can Run (Paul Weller)
20 The Butterfly Collector (Paul Weller)
21 Seaspray (Paul Weller)
22 talk (Paul Weller)
23 Echoes Round the Sun (Paul Weller)
24 The Changing Man (Paul Weller)
25 The Eton Rifles (Paul Weller)
26 talk (Paul Weller)
27 Push It Along (Paul Weller)
28 Whirlpool's End (Paul Weller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tCR7FBnS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/q3Qav67HlZED5rU/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Munich, Germany, in October 2008.

Neil Diamond - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: BBC Radio Theatre, London, Britain, 5-14-2008

Here's a Neil Diamond BBC concert from 2008.

Diamond has a curious history of BBC concerts. He did one in 1971, when he was already established as a songwriter for others but was still just starting to make his mark as a solo artist. Then, apparently, he didn't do another one until this one in 2008. Perhaps for most of those years he felt he was so famous that he didn't need the promotion of a free concert broadcast over the radio.

One might have thought Diamond was past his prime in 2008, but he had a late career resurgence. In 2005, he put out the studio album "12 Songs." It was produced by Rick Rubin, and it got good reviews, just like other careers revived by Rubin, most especially Johnny Cash. Then, in 2008, he released "Home Before Dark," which also was produced by Rubin. While neither were huge sellers, if you look at the crowd-sourced ratings at rateyourmusic.com, those two albums have the best ratings of any Diamond album since the early 1970s.

However, most of the songs performed here are classic hits from earlier in his career. The only three new songs were "Pretty Amazing Grace," "Home Before Dark," and "Man of God." Strangely, it seems he didn't have any banter between songs except for one time, before "Home Before Dark." And for that time, he couldn't stop talking, going for over five minutes. Note though that this album is probably edited down by the BBC to fit an hour-long time slot, so we don't know what songs and/or banter might be missing. 

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Beautiful Noise (Neil Diamond)
02 Hello Again (Neil Diamond)
03 Love on the Rocks (Neil Diamond)
04 Thank God for the Night Time (Neil Diamond)
05 Pretty Amazing Grace (Neil Diamond)
06 Home Before Dark (Neil Diamond)
07 Forever in Blue Jeans (Neil Diamond)
08 talk (Neil Diamond)
09 Man of God (Neil Diamond)
10 Cracklin' Rosie (Neil Diamond)
11 Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)
12 I'm a Believer (Neil Diamond)
13 I Am... I Said (Neil Diamond)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/FZe3c5UB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ghMHzKVt7HGUjVq/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Paul Weller - BBC Sessions, Volume 12: 2005-2008

Here's yet another in a long line of albums of Paul Weller performing for the BBC. This time, it consists of studio sessions.

As I've mentioned previously, Weller released a box set of his BBC recordings from the start of his solo career in 1990 until 2008, but it certainly didn't include everything he performed for the BBC. This album is a case in point. In fact, two songs here, "All on a Misty Morning" and "111," are unreleased and come from the exact same BBC studio session as the four tracks before it (tracks 8 to 11), which did make the box set. "Love," "I Don't Need No Doctor," "Black River," and "Invisible" are other unreleased songs from BBC sessions. Everything else here is from the box set. Check the mp3 tags for all the exact details.

A definite highlight here are two songs where Weller dueted with Amy Winehouse, "Don't Go to Strangers" and "I Heard It through the Grapevine." These went unreleased for a long time, and were another thing that didn't make it onto the Weller BBC box set, but they finally got released on a Winehouse BBC album.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Come On-Let's Go (Paul Weller)
02 Love (Paul Weller)
03 Roll Along Summer (Paul Weller)
04 I Wanna Make It Alright [Edit] (Paul Weller)
05 I Don't Need No Doctor (Paul Weller)
06 Don't Go to Strangers (Amy Winehouse & Paul Weller)
07 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Amy Winehouse & Paul Weller)
08 All I Wanna Do [Is Be with You] (Paul Weller)
09 Cold Moments (Paul Weller)
10 Push It Along (Paul Weller)
11 Pretty Flamingo (Paul Weller)
12 All on a Misty Morning (Paul Weller)
13 111 [Instrumental] (Paul Weller)
14 Black River (Paul Weller & Graham Coxon)
15 Invisible [Orchestral Version] (Paul Weller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Dv87M7x3

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FzteuxGnu7sWxtg/file

The cover photo was taken at the Mojo Honours List Awards Ceremony, in London, on June 16, 2005. I used Photoshop to remove some writing on the wall behind him.

Various Artists - Covered: Sam Cooke: 1957-2009

It's time for more of my "Covered" series highlighting great songwriters. I generally want to look at songwriters who didn't have successful careers as performers, but sometimes I make exceptions, and this is one of those times. Sam Cooke is generally known as a great soul singer. For instance, in 2023, Rolling Stone Magazine listed him as number three in their list of the 200 best singers of all time. But I think his talent as a songwriter is far less known and appreciated.

To give the basics about him, I'll quote from his Wikipedia entry:

"Considered one of the most influential soul artists of all time, Cooke is commonly referred to as the 'King of Soul' for his distinctive vocals, pioneering contributions to the genre, and significance in popular music. During his eight-year career, Cooke released 29 singles that charted in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, as well as 20 singles in the Top Ten of Billboard's Black Singles chart. In 1964, he was shot and killed by Bertha Franklin, a motel owner in Los Angeles with a prior criminal record."

I would add to that the fact that Cooke wrote most of his own hits. That was quite unusual back in the 1950s and early 1960s, before the likes of Bob Dylan and the Beatles changed the expectation that performers should write their own material. And particularly for soul music singers writing their own material continued to be rare for quite some time after that.

What hurts most of all is that it seemed Cooke still had a long career as a singer and songwriter ahead of him when he died in 1964 at the age of 33. In my opinion, he wrote his greatest song, "A Change Is Gonna Come," shortly before his death (it was released one month after he died), after being inspired by "Blowin' in the Wind" by Bob Dylan. It would have been great to see how someone as talented as him would have been influenced by all the musical changes that happened after 1964, but sadly, we'll never know. 

And what makes it worse is that his death seems very suspicious and unnecessary. Law enforcement never seriously investigated it. The woman mentioned above who supposedly shot and killed him, Bertha Franklin, was later convicted of murdering someone else in similar circumstances. The whole thing is really bizarre. I'm guessing he was lured into having sex with a young woman in order to rob him, and that woman who was in cahoots with Franklin, the motel owner. But something went wrong and he got murdered.

Here's the Wikipedia article about him, if you want to know more, including more details about his mysterious death:

Sam Cooke - Wikipedia

Anyway, since the focus here is on Sam Cooke the songwriter, I haven't included any songs performed by him. By the way, note that three songs he wrote, "Wonderful World," "Cupid," and "A Change Is Gonna Come," made it to Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the top 500 songs of all time.

Two songs here need a little explanation. "Sweet Soul Music" wasn't exactly written by Cooke. It was written by Otis Redding and Arthur Conley in 1967, and was a big hit. However, it drew so heavily from a Cooke song called "Yeah Man" that he was included in the songwriting credits (after a lawsuit forced the issue). Also, I generally keep to a rule of only including one version of each song. But I consider "A Change Is Gonna Come" such an incredible song that I couldn't resist including two versions of it.

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long.

01 You Send Me (Teresa Brewer)
02 Rome [Wasn't Built in a Day] (Johnnie Taylor)
03 Shake (Otis Redding)
04 [Ain't That] Good News (Supremes)
05 A Change Is Gonna Come (Aretha Franklin)
06 Soothe Me (Sam & Dave)
07 Sweet Soul Music (Arthur Conley)
08 Cupid (Johnny Nash)
09 Win Your Love (Lou Rawls)
10 Laughin' and Clownin' (Ray Charles)
11 Chain Gang (Persuasions)
12 Twistin' the Night Away (Rod Stewart)
13 Love You Most of All (Persuasions)
14 Bring It on Home to Me (Van Morrison)
15 You Were Made for Me (Luther Ingram)
16 Another Saturday Night (Cat Stevens)
17 Only Sixteen (Dr. Hook)
18 [What A] Wonderful World (Art Garfunkel with Paul Simon & James Taylor)
19 Good Times (Dan Seals)
20 Somebody Have Mercy (Otis Rush)
21 Having a Party (Rod Stewart)
22 That's It, I Quit, I'm Moving On (Adele)
23 A Change Is Gonna Come (Bettye LaVette)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wbUWcEmN

alternate:

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

(NOTE: This could be my last new Pixeldrain link, since I happened to upload this album before I got banned from new uploads to their service.)

I'm not sure when or where the cover photo is from, but it's a rare case of an actual color photo from his short life, before color became the standard.

Various Artists - Covered: Kris Kristofferson, Volume 2: 1974-2009

I just posted Volume One for the "Covered" series selections for country singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson. Here's Volume Two already. 

As I mentioned with Volume One, Kristofferson died two weeks ago as I write this in October 2024. He was 88 years old. 

He had a long and successful music career. He didn't have big commercial success - only two of his 18 studio albums even reached Gold sales (meaning 500,000 copies sold), and he never sold at the Platinum level (meaning a million). But he had a lot of critical acclaim, and he'll probably be best known for the thousands of cover versions of his songs.

His biggest impact undoubtedly was in the early 1970s, which was dealt with on Volume One. A few of the songs here also were first released in the early 1970s, but I preferred versions that came out later. But he continued to write and record quality songs until nearly the end of his life. (His last album of new material came out in 2016). For instance, Johnny Cash said "Here Comes That Rainbow Again" was his favorite song of all time. (The version of that song included here is by the Highwaymen, a country supergroup consisting of Kristofferson, Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson.)

Since I'm not deeply familiar with Kristofferson's entire musical output, if there are any covers of great songs that I missed, please let me know and I'll consider including them.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Why Me, Lord (George Jones)
02 The Junkie and the Juicehead [Minus Me] (Johnny Cash)
03 Prone to Lean (Donnie Fritts)
04 Stranger (Billy Swan)
05 Rock and Roll Time (Roger McGuinn)
06 Something They Can't Take Away from Me (Roy Orbison)
07 You Show Me Yours [And I'll Show You Mine] (Willie Nelson with Amy Irvine)
08 One Day at a Time (Christy Lane)
09 If You Don't Like Hank Williams (Hank Williams Jr.)
10 They Killed Him (Johnny Cash)
11 Lovin' Her Was Easier [Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again] (Tompall & the Glaser Brothers)
12 Here Comes That Rainbow Again (Highwaymen)
13 Jesus Was a Capricorn (Diana Darby)
14 The Pilgrim, Chapter 33 (Emmylou Harris)
15 Please Don't Tell Me How the Story Ends (Joan Osborne)
16 The Silver Tongued Devil and I (Dick Van Altena)
17 Closer to the Bone (Kris Kristofferson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7J6o3oaP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/wGkKo4SaumlCXng/file

The cover photo dates to 1977. There were some issues with the original, so I used the Krea AI program to improve it a bit.