(Nancy Wilson - Nat "King" Cole - In a word, magic)

October 4, 1964 saw an extraordinary group of people assembled on stage at the Hollywood Bowl to raise funds and awareness for defeating a Proposition on the November ballot. Proposition 14, or the attempt by Realtor groups and the John Birch Society to nullify the Rumford Fair Housing Initiative that passed in 1963. A veritable who's who of Hollywood, with orchestra led by none other than Nelson Riddle and emcee's Joey Bishop and Milton Berle introducing a lineup of talent that included Nancy Wilson and Nat "King" Cole.

I've extracted the Wilson and Cole sets out for this segment.

This goes under the heading of "previously unknown concert tapes", as I don't believe any commercial (or otherwise) copy of this concert has been available before today.

You get to hear it first.

(Buffalo Springfield - 1967 - Back by popular demand - the whole set)

One of my first Backstage Weekend posts for Newstalgia was a Hollywood Bowl performance by The Buffalo Springfield from April 29, 1967. Significant in that it was the first public performance of "Mister Soul" (recorded a few days earlier) and one of the few recordings surviving from the period of the band during their prime. At the time I did the post all we had was You Tube and I was restricted to a 10 minute lump of that concert. And so only Mister Soul made it. But a few months later, when C&L got the new snappy embed player, I promised everyone who asked that I would make available the whole set, unedited.

Response to the first playing of the set was so overwhelming, even Neil Young included that recording of Mister Soul on his latest boxset. Needless to say, I was really happy to oblige.

Just be aware, if you haven't heard this yet - there are some bad technical glitches, which explains why it has never been issued. Not only is the Hollywood Bowl sound system crude by todays standards with lots of distortion, there's a nice high-pitched squeal which goes through the whole show, which I found out later was an ungrounded radio mike.

But with all the technical problems, one thing stands out - and that's a historic performance by a legendary band during a pivotal time in our music culture.

And that, I think is worth putting up with some distortion, squeals and bad mixes - don't you?

Enjoy and Happy New Year everyone!

(Duke Ellington - aka: National Treasure)

A repost from 2009, but you may have missed it the first time around. A previously unheard and unknown, recently discovered performance by Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra, along with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic live at Hollywood Bowl from August 25, 1966.

Get comfortable and have a listen.

(Newstalgia Goes Country . . . .well, for twenty minutes anyway)

A big departure from previous Backstage Weekend entries. I admit to not being much of a Country-Western fan, outside of the Willie Nelson/Waylon Jennings/Johnny Cash/Merle Haggard school and almost didn't put it up this weekend. But the Haggard set changed my mind.

This tape came as a complete surprise - sitting in the vault with only a date(September 9, 1967) and "Reel One" written on its spine, I was pretty clueless as to the contents.

Turns out, it's a concert featuring all acts on Capitol Records Country-Western roster (along with Buck Owens, Tex Ritter and several others) performing at The Hollywood Bowl.

The Glen Campbell set is interesting in that he was still pretty much straddling Pop as well as Country music, doing his rendition of Roy Orbison's "Crying" and his, at the time, latest single "Gentle On My Mind".

Merle Haggard has an abbreviated set. Abbreviated because the tape ran out in the middle of a song featuring Bonnie Owens. Presumably there is more on "reel 2", and as soon as I find it, I will put it on.

But for now here is the Glen Campbell and most of the Merle Haggard sets from the concert of September 9, 1967.

(Merle Haggard in 1967 - well on his way to achieving Legend status)

Something unusual tonight. Not really part of the off-the-air musical numbers, but a rare demo done by one of the immortals of Jazz. A solo demo, presumably for the publisher of a song Nat "King" Cole would record in March of 1949 in New York. I Wake Up Screaming After Dreaming Of You features Cole at a small recording studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Studio & Artists was a hotbed of demo recordings as well as off-the-air recordings for clients during the heyday of Radio. The Studio was located less than a block away from the famed CBS Broadcasting Studios in Hollywood and about three blocks east of the NBC Studios on the corner of Sunset and Vine.

Like a lot of the small studios in business in Hollywood at the time, it was centrally located to all the Network Operations. And some studios, like the famous Radio Recorders, were going 24 hours a day between sessions with such notables as Elvis Presley and recording daily Soap Operas off the Network line for clients and Advertising agencies.

When Radio became a thing of the past, so did the studios. And even though Radio Recorders is "kind of" still in business (only as a location which had a fire a couple weeks ago), the other studios closed up shop and tossed their goods. With gems like this relegated to the dumpster, it begs the question of what else was lost and what else is still lurking around.

But for now, here's a sample of what got rescued. Nat "King" Cole at his always best.

Continuing our look at 1950's Pop with Hollywood 1950's up-and-comer Barbara Ruick and one of the very few singles she recorded for MGM Records in 1951. Long a staple in the Pop music diet, the crossover of Hollywood names with the recording studio had been around as long as movies and records were being made, going back to the days of Rudolf Valentino, who managed to make one record during the course of his brief career.

And so it was Barbara Ruick's turn, and the end result was this sultry little number Serenade To A Lemonade which made a brief appearance in 1951.

It didn't make much in the way of chart action, but probably didn't hinder her career either and the likelihood this recording has been reissued seems a bit remote. It's a breezy footnote in the crossover annals of Pop Music and Hollywood.

As so much is.

(The Toasters - no confusing with the other one . . at all)

The L.A. scene was all over the place genre-wise in 1979. With bands like Fear, X and so many others filling the venues in Hollywood, there was also the quasi-punk/garage/skinny tie/Farfisa Beat bands like The Knack that had a more universal commercial appeal (i.e. good for airplay), filling the venues on the Strip and frankly, there was enough room in L.A. to support just about everybody.

The Toasters (not to be confused with the New York Ska band of the same name) came along and gave it a shot. They got a reasonable amount of airplay and word-of-mouth and played at most of the venues around the Strip (The Starwood being a sort of "honorary" strip venue). But after spending a goodly amount of time in 1982 doing a demo for RCA which failed to click they slugged on and eventually gave up the ghost in the mid-1980's.

This is one of their singles (I believe they released two), Stuck On You which was released on their own Bagel Records.

If you couldn't get someone to do it for you, you had to do it yourself.

(The Titans - Doo-Wop does Basie)

Something special tonight. An unreleased track by the L.A. Doo-Wop group The Titans, during a session they cut for Specialty in 1958. Formed in 1957, The Titans recorded for a number of different local labels during their short-lived career. Their hit for Specialty was "Don't You Just Know It", but they had several other titles in the can before they left the label to settle for a brief stay at Dolphin's of Hollywood before pressing on and calling it a day. One of those unissued tracks was this one, their rendition of the Count Basie classic April In Paris. Why it hasn't been reissued is a mystery but that's no reason you can't hear it here first.

One more time.

(The Dears - just a bunch of fun-loving electronic chaos merchants)

A nice dose of Experimental compliments of The Dears tonight. The Dears are an indie/experimental/quasi-electronica group who have been around for at least the past ten years, have a ton of albums out, have a huge underground following and come from Montreal. This track, Where the World Begins And Ends comes from their 2000 album "End Of A Hollywood Bedtime Story".

Their site has everything they've ever released available (mostly) and it would do your world-weary brain untold good to check them out.

And here's a little something to set the weekend in just that kind of motion.

(The Charlatans - going on 20 years and still one of the best)

I have been a huge fan of The Charlatans ever since I first saw them live at The Hollywood Palladium in 1993. It's been one of my favorite memories of a live gig (and this goes back to 1966, so they're in some good company) ever since. They've gone through numerous changes in personnel, label and direction since then. But they've always been an exciting band to listen to especially live, and the best part is they're still going strong and sounding great as ever. New album slated to come out in 2010.

I ran across this recording of their 2001 Birmingham Academy gig by way of the ever-astounding BBC6 Music. Naturally, I had to post it and, if you aren't familiar with The Charlatans, give you a one-hour taste of what you're missing.

Believe me, it's not too late to add them to your favorites list.

. . .or us, for that matter . . .