Richie Havens - Richie Havens On Stage

    Richie Havens On Stage is a 1972 2-LP release and according to Wikipedia, one of only two "Live" albums from Richie Havens.  It's been sitting in my To-Be-Digitalized pile for a while, and in light of Mr. Havens' passing away earlier this year, I decided to convert it.

Side 01

01. From The Prison
02. Younger Men Get Older
03. Old Friends
04. God Bless The Child

Side 02

01. The Dolphins
02. Nobody Knows
03. My Sweet Lord
04. No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed

Side 03

01. Tupelo Honey
02. Just Like A Woman
03. Teach Your Children
04. Minstrel From Gault

Side 04

01. High Flyin' Bird
02. San Francisco Bay Blues
03. Where Have All The Flowers Gone
04. Rocky Raccoon

   These are mostly covers; the track numbers of the three songs penned by Havens are marked in blue.  As usual, my faves are in pink.  It took me a while to place The Dolphins; It's A Beautiful Day also covered it.

    The LP's were in fair shape, but cleaned up nicely.  As with any live album, I removed a couple minutes' worth of clapping.  The music for this album comes from three different concerts.  There are a couple very nice segues from one song to the next.  Kewl, except it makes it tough to find exactly where to clip the tracks.  A few times I just left them together. 

    One curiosity - the cover image shown above is actually the back cover.  The front image is just a head shot of Richie from one of the concerts, with no text at all.  Richie Havens On Stage seems to be a bit of a rarity - Amazon doesn't offer it as a CD or as MP3 files.  iTunes doesn't list it either.

    I suppose this means that his albums haven't been selling much lately.  That's a shame, since Richie Havens was a Rock-&-Roll fixture in the late 60's and early 70's.  He was an activist without being a radical; a champion of the poor and oppressed; and a black guy who wasn't afraid to cover music by white folks.  I wouldn't call him a guitar genius, but he could make strumming sound every bit as good as a guitar solo.

    RIP, Richie Havens.  You will be missed, but not forgotten.