Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Joe South (2008)

Joe South was born Joseph Alfred Souter on 28 February 1940, and was first encouraged to make a career in music by Bill Lowery, an Atlanta music publisher and radio personality. He began his recording career in Atlanta with the National Recording Corporation, where he served as staff guitarist along with other NRC artists Ray Stevens and Jerry Reed, but he soon returned to Nashville with The Manrando Group, and then on to Charlie Wayne Felts Promotions. He had his first top 50 hit in July 1958 with a cover version of the b-side of The Big Bopper's hit single 'Chantilly Lace', a novelty song called 'The Purple People Eater Meets The Witch Doctor', but thereafter he would concentrate mainly on song-writing. In 1959 he wrote two songs which were recorded by Gene Vincent, and he was also a prominent sideman, playing guitar on Tommy Roe's 'Sheila', bass guitar on Bob Dylan's 'Blonde On Blonde' album, and the classic tremolo guitar intro on Aretha Franklin's 'Chain Of Fools'. Responding to late 1960's issues, South's writing style changed radically, most evident in his biggest single, 1969's pungent, no-nonsense 'Games People Play', which was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Accompanied by a lush string sound, an organ, and brass, the production won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Song and the Grammy Award for Song of the Year, and he followed that with 'Birds Of A Feather', most successful as a cover by The Raiders, which peaked on the Hot 100 at No. 23 in 1971. 'Games People Play' was first released in 1968 on South's debut album, 'Introspect', which some consider to be the first ever country-soul album, and it reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, and so the record company decided to cash in on this by not only adding it again to his next album in 1969, but also titling the record after the hit single. Luckily there were plenty of other outstanding songs on the record to make up for this duplication, and it wasn't long before they were being picked up and covered by some pretty famous groups, with possibly the most notable being Deep Purple's version of 'Hush'. South's old comrade from Atlanta, Ray Stevens, released his version of 'Party People' as a single, and The Tams had a hit with 'Concrete Jungle', while most of the other songs had received covers by 1971. One oddity about this album is that it states on the front cover that it includes 'Down In The Boondocks', but this song is actually missing from the track listing, and so I've added Gary Lewis & The Playboys' version to make this reinterpretation of the album more complete. 

Track listing

01 Games People Play (Paper Lace 1972)  
02 Party People (Ray Stevens 1965)  
03 Untie Me (The Weedons 1966)  
04 Concrete Jungle (The Tams 1965)  
05 Hole In Your Soul (The Black Crowes 2008)  
06 Hush (Deep Purple 1969)
07 Birds Of A Feather (The Raiders 1971)  
08 Heart's Desire (Billy Joe Royal 1966)  
09 Leanin' On You (The Yo Yo's 1966) 
10 I Knew You When (Wade Flemons 1964)
11 These Are Not My People (Johnny Rivers 1969)
12 Down In The Boondocks (Gary Lewis & The Playboys 1966)

Deep Purple - Days May Come And Days May Go (1975)

During May 1975 Deep Purple were based in California, and were frequenting Pirate Sound Studios, while searching for a new guitarist to replace the recently departed Richie Blackmore. One morning Tommy Bolin walked into the studio, strapped on his guitar and started to play, with David Coverdale later saying 'We all just stood there in amazement', and the whole band were so bowled over that they all decided that they just had to play with him. The new lineup was now complete, and over the next two months the band spent hours jamming, improvising and writing, and it's from a couple of hours of these jams, which were taped and have survived for over 20 years, that this album is made up. Some songs were later re-recorded for the 'Come Taste The Band' album, and so I've omitted those so that I can include the otherwise unrecorded pieces (apart from a Purple version of 'Say You Love Me' which appeared on David Coverdale's 1978 'Northwinds' album), and I've edited a couple of the longer tracks to a more concise length. The sound quality is excellent, and although they are termed 'jams', these are all fully formed songs, with none of the unfocused instrumental noodling that usually occurs in a jam session. 

Track listing

01 Owed To G (Bolin) 
02 If You Love Me Woman (Bolin, Coverdale)
03 The Orange Juice Song (Coverdale, Lord)
04 I Got Nothing For You (Bolin, Coverdale, Hughes, Lord) 
05 Statesboro' Blues (Blind Willie McTell) 
06 Dance To The Rock & Roll (Blackmore, Coverdale, Hughes, Lord, Paice)
07 The Last Of The Long Jams (Bolin, Coverdale, Hughes, Lord, Paice) 

08 Say You Love Me (Coverdale)
09 Pirate Blues (Bolin, Coverdale, Hughes, Lord, Paice) 

Post updates

I've been playing some of the older albums that I put together over the last year (what else was there to do for the past 12 months?), and I've noticed that a few of them had little things wrong with them that detracted from a complete listening experience, so I've fixed them and the corrected files can now be downloaded to upgrade the original post.

Country Mike - Country Mike's Greatest Hits
Firstly, I've finally managed to source a stereo vinyl rip of 'Country Mike's Greatest Hits', which was the cause of some controversy when I first posted it. As every copy that I found online was a mono one, I was convinced that the album must have been issued like that, but after some heated discussions in the comments, I was assured that a stereo version must exist, and it's taken this long to find it. 

Other fixes are not as drastic as that, so if you have the following albums and want an upgraded version then you can download them now. 

Amy Winehouse - Procrastination - Long Day
Elton John - Young Man's Blues - Rock Me When He's Gone
I can't actually remember what was wrong with these two, possibly dodgy fadeouts or over-long/no gaps between the tracks, but they are now fixed.

Deep Purple - Coronarias Redig
Extra track added that was somehow missed from the original post.

Cerrone - Supernatural Paradise Of Love
I wasn't happy with a couple of the edits, so have redone the whole piece.

Misty In Roots - Salvation
Dub section of 'Rich Man' volume corrected to be the same as the vocal part.

Soulseek update

I know that there are a few people who can't seem to get Soulseek to work, but hopefully most of you are now using it regularly, and finding that it works pretty well. I've had a couple of days where my searches didn't seem to bring up any of my results, so I had to reboot and that seems to have fixed it. 
If you find that your searches don't bring up any results then do bear in mind that if no-one is downloading something when I go to bed then I do turn off the laptop, so try try again in six to seven hours and see if the searches work then. If not then leave a message and I'll try the reboot to see if that fixes it.  

I have to thank Paul over at Albums That Should Exist for turning me onto Soulseek, as not only has it been an ideal solution to sharing my music without leaving links, and risking the blog being deleted again, but I've also used it to find albums that I'd been after for a while that I hadn't been able to find online. I hope that everyone who started using it when I reinstated the blog is also using it to find other music that they want to hear from other uploaders.

If you find that you have absolutely no luck in getting Soulseek to work then leave a message in the comments with your email address and I'll send direct Yandex links, and then delete the comment to keep your email private. When I've sent the first link you will have my email address for future requests. 

Tommy Bolin - ...and on guitar (1975)

Thomas Richard Bolin was born in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1951, and began playing with The Miserlous as a teenager, before he was asked to join Denny and The Triumphs in 1964, at the young age of thirteen. They played a blend of rock and roll, R&B and the pop hits of the moment, and after leaving them they were followed by American Standard when he moved to Boulder, Colorado in his late teens, and then by Ethereal Zephyr. This last group was named after a train that ran between Denver and Chicago, and when record companies became interested the name was shortened to Zephyr. This band included Bolin on lead guitar, David Givens on bass, and Givens' wife Candy Givens on vocals, attempting to emulate Janis Joplin, and not always successfully. Their second album 'Going Back to Colorado' featured a new drummer, Bobby Berge, who would pop up from time to time in musician credits in Bolin's later projects. In 1972, now aged 20, Bolin formed the fusion jazz-rock-blues band Energy, but they were unable to secure a record contract, and so never released an album during Bolin's lifetime, although recordings have been released posthumously. Stuck between the musical direction he wanted to pursue and a nearly-empty bank account, 1973 found Bolin replacing Domenic Troiano, who had in turn replaced Joe Walsh, in the James Gang. He recorded two albums with them, 'Bang' in 1973 and 'Miami' in 1974, and had a hand in writing nearly all the songs on both records.
 In between the two James Gang albums, Bolin played on Billy Cobham's 1973 solo album 'Spectrum', which included Bolin on guitar, Cobham on drums, Leland Sklar on bass and Jan Hammer on keyboards and synthesizers. After the 'Miami' tour, Bolin left the James Gang and filled his time doing session work for various rock and jazz bands, and he also toured with Carmine Appice and The Good Rats. Later in 1975, he signed with Nemperor Records for a solo album, and it was during the recording of 'Teaser' that he was contacted by Deep Purple. After Ritchie Blackmore left the band, the other members had a meeting and discussed whether to disband or try to find a replacement. They chose the latter option, and Bolin was suggested by David Coverdale, who had been listening to his work on Billy Cobham's 'Spectrum' album. He was invited over for a jam session, and four hours later the job was his. 'Come Taste the Band' was released in October 1975, and contained a number of Bolin co-writes, but the band broke up a year later, leaving him free to put together the Tommy Bolin Band. After releasing just one album, 'Private Eyes' in 1976, Bolin died on 3rd December 1976 from an overdose of heroin, cocaine and alcohol. As you will hear from this album, he was a talented guitarist in a number of styles, from hard rock with Moxy and Deep Purple, to the most intricate jazz-rock fusion with Billy Cobham and Alphonse Mouzon, and he is a great loss to the world of music.   

Track listing

01 Sun's A-Risin' (from 'Zephyr' by Zephyr 1969)
02 Destiny (demo recording with Jeremy Steig 1971)
03 Naked Edge (from unreleased album by Energy 1972)
04 From Another Time (from 'Bang' by The James Gang 1973)
05 Quadrant 4 (from 'Spectrum' by Billy Cobham 1973)
06 Carbon Dioxide (from 'Mind Transplant' by Alphonse Mouzon 1975)
07 Fantasy (from 'Moxy' by Moxy' 1975)
08 Bolin/Paice Jam (from 'Come Taste The Band' sessions by Deep Purple 1975)

Deep Purple - Shades Of Deep Purple (1968)

This might upset die-hard Deep Purple fans, but I've always felt that their first two albums are rather top-heavy on cover versions. Like most bands, when they started out they played covers to fill out their live sets, but when Purple recorded their first two albums they included a lot of those songs, making up about half the playing time of each record. Considering that both records were released in the same year of 1968, I wondered what their debut would have sounded like if they'd held off releasing anything until they had enough self-penned material to fill a whole album. By removing all the covers from those first two records and rejigging the track listing, we actually have exactly enough music to make up a 45 minute disc, which more represents what the band would become with their next few releases. Two of the tracks comprised instrumental introductions to covers of The Beatles' 'We Can Work It Out' and Skip James' 'I'm So Glad', and so as I didn't want to lose them I've grafted them onto a couple of Purple's own compositions. The result is a nice variety of rockers, ballads, and instrumentals, which I feel works pretty well, and as the album could still be called 'Shades Of Deep Purple', I've used the alternative Asian version of the cover for this post, with just a bit of improvement to the band photo.  

Track listing

01 And The Address
02 Listen, Learn, Read On
03 Wring That Neck
04 Prelude - a) Happiness b) The Shield
05 One More Rainy Day
06 Love Help Me
07 Anthem
08 a) Exposition b) Mandrake Root

Deep Purple - Coronarias Redig (1974)

In May 1968 Deep Purple recorded their debut album 'Shades Of Deep Purple' at Pye Studios in London's Marble Arch, and once that was released in September of that year they quickly recorded their second 'The Book of Taliesyn', which was issued a few months later. The sessions from both of these have yielded a few out-takes, and the band were also regular guests on BBC radio shows, and so we have a number of unheard songs featuring singer Rod Evans. Early in 1969 the band released the one-off single 'Emmaretta', named after Emmaretta Marks, a cast member of the musical 'Hair' whom Evans was trying to seduce. Later that year the band had their first major upheaval, with Nick Simper and Rod Evans being fired, and replacements Roger Glover and Ian Gillan being brought in to make up the classic Mark II version of the band. The very first thing they recorded was the non-album single 'Hallelujah', before they got stuck into recording the classic 'In Rock' album, from which we have a couple of choice out-takes. The 'Fireball' sessions in 1971 also provide a further brace of leftovers, and the final out-take is from the 'Machine Head' sessions in 1972. We close with a 1974 b-side, which was originally intended to be a song with lyrics, expounding Ian Paice's suggestion of 'the return of the coronet', but on the day of recording Coverdale had vocal issues and so it was recorded as an instrumental and stuck of the b-side of 'Might Just Take Your Life'. All in all this is a nice overview of the Mark I, Mark II, and Mark III versions of the band, showing their progression from promising newcomers to all-encompassing global superstars. 

Track listing

01 Shadows (out-take 1968)

02 Oh No No No (out-take 1968)

03 Emmaretta (single 1969)

04 It's All Over (BBC session 1968)

05 Hey Bop A Re Bop (BBC session 1968)

06 Playground (out-take 1968)

07 Hallelujah (single 1969)

08 Cry Free (out-take 1970)

09 Jam Stew (out-take 1970)

10 Slow Train (out-take 1971)

11 Freedom (out-take 1971)

12 Painted Horse (out-take 1972)

13 When A Blind Man Cries (b-side of 'Never Before' 1972)

14 Coronarias Redig (b-side of 'Might Just Take Your Life' 1974)