Hugh Hefner's "Playboy After Dark" with The Byrds, BB King, Tina Turner, Grateful Dead, Country Joe, Fleetwood Mac, Deep Purple...

 

A compilation of live performances by Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, Taj Mahal, BB King, Canned Heat, Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, Sir Douglas Quintet, Steppenwolf, The Nitty Gritty Dirt band, The Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, The Ike and Tina Turner Revue and Country Joe and the Fish on Hugh Hefner's late 60s Playboy After Dark TV Show.

Hugh Hefner plays
Ritchie Blackmore's guitar

Watch this while you can. It may not be on youtube for long.

In the late 60s Playboy founder and editor / publisher Hugh Hefner hosted a syndicated TV talk show with musical guests called Playboy After Dark. The show portrayed a "typical" party at Hefner's pad complete with Playboy playmates and celebrities. Hugh would chat informally and some pretty cool bands would turn up and play live in his mocked up tv studio "penthouse". Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown, The Byrds (with Clarence White), The Grateful Dead (with Tom Constanten),  Deep Purple (with Rod Evans and Nick Simper), Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Canned Heat and Country Joe and the Fish are just a few performers seen in the compilation below  And all the while Hefner can be seen puffing on his pipe with a bunny or two on his arm looking like someone who, in 1969, would have passed for the epitome of square.

The Grateful Dead

BB King

To be fair, Hefner put these bands on TV when no one else was interested. To appear on Ed Sullivan you had to have a hit and be mainstream friendly. The Smothers Brothers show was pretty hip but again favoured bands like the Jefferson Airplane who'd had commercial success. This makes some of the clips here super rare and and gives Playboy After Dark a certain cool. This compilation is a joy to watch. Pure time trip. Sexy and fun. Fantastic Bands, great dancers, groovy clothes...
Classic 60s TV.

According to legend when the Grateful Dead appeared they dosed everyone with high grade acid and the cameramen ended up filming the ceiling. They weren't invited back.

Playboy After Dark
01. DEEP PURPLE (Oct. 23, 1968) And The Address, Hush. 02. IRON BUTTERFLY (Aug. 8, 1968) In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Iron Butterfly Theme. 03. TAJ MAHAL (Oct. 16, 1968) Everybody's Got To Change Sometime, EZ Rider. 04. B.B. KING (April 15, 1970) So Excited, The Thrill Is Gone. 05. CANNED HEAT (Jan. 20, 1969) Turpentine Moan, On The Road Again 06. LINDA RONSTADT (April 16, 1970), Lovesick Blues, Long Long Time 07. THE BYRDS (Sept. 28, 1968) You Ain't Goin' Nowhere, This Wheel's On Fire 08. SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET (Jan. 25, 1969) Mendocino, She's About A Mover 09. STEPPENWOLF (Dec. 17, 1969), Berry Rides Again, Monster-Suicide-America, From Here To There Eventually 10. THE NITTY GRITTY DIRTBAND (Dec. 11, 1968), Washington At Valley Forge, Alligator Man 11. THE GRATEFUL DEAD (Jan. 18, 1969) Mountains Of The Moon, St. Stephen 12. FLEETWOOD MAC (Jan. 8, 1970) Rattlesnake Shake 13. IKE AND TINA TURNER REVUE (Dec. 3, 1969), I Want To Take You Higher, Come Together, Proud Mary 14. COUNTRY JOE AND THE FISH ( April 16, 1970) Sing Sing Sing, I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag

Big thanks to the youtube uploader.

Bonus - 2 shows
If that is not enough for you here are two complete shows featuring Ike and Tina Turner and Sammy Davis Jr. Fascinating viewing. Tina Turner is sublime and Sammy Davis looks like he's been getting wardrobe advice from Jimi Hendrix. The rest is occasionally ridiculous but no more inane that what you get nowadays on the Graham Norton show. Also features The Checkmates, Anthony Newley and a young Bill Cosby

More stranger than known

1970 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival documentary

Fairport Convention Bouton Rouge Sessions   

Freddie King live on POP2 - September 1973

The Grateful Dead - 1969 Dark Star set to vintage film ...

Ten Years After - Swing In 1969 

The Pretty Things live on Pop 2 - 13th January 1971...

The Ike and Tina Turner Revue in Europe - February 1971

1971 was a good year for Ike and Tina Turner. In the previous 12 months they'd had their first top 40 hit in the USA in nearly ten years with a cover of Sly & The Family Stone's I Want to Take You Higher (their most famous hit River Deep - Mountain High was a flop when originally issued in the US). A cover of The Beatles' Come Together also charted and began a switch away from R'n'B towards rock flavoured material. In early 1971, they covered Creedence Clearwater Revival's Proud Mary which became their biggest hit, reaching number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and selling over a million copies. A live album What You Hear Is What You Get was recorded at Carnegie Hall and became their first gold-selling album. Such was the success of their 1971 recordings that Ike was able to build Bolic Sound Studios near their home in Inglewood, California.

Watching the clips below from German Beat Club and Dutch TV one can see that Tina Turner was always a star. The voice. The energy. The command of the stage. The sexual allure...  However, how much was she held back by Ike and what could she have achieved without him?

There is no doubt that Tina owes her career to Ike but imagine if she'd left him sooner. Ike and Tina Turner scored some memorable hits but they were covers. What if someone had been writing material especially for her? Can you imagine the results if Tina had recorded at Muscle Shoals for Atlantic in the mid to late 60s? Or, given that Tina always said she preferred singing rock to soul, fronting a rock band and outrocking Janis Joplin?

Anyway, we can only guess and watch some of these excellent clips from the 1971 European tour when Tina still had a lot of rock'n'roll edge before she got softened up in the 80s. The Ikettes are also impressive here as back up singers. Perhaps the choreography doesn't stand up too well now but they have a personality and character that contemporary backing vocalists never have. There is warmth, playfulness, energy and some real raw soul here.



On Beat Club
River Deep - Mountain High
Beat Club was a German music program that ran from September 1965 to December 1972. It was broadcast from Bremen, Germany. The version of River Deep - Mountain High here is stunning - one of the best live versions I've heard. Raw and primitive but matching the tumultuous intensity of the Spector version.

Proud Mary
Starts nice and easy...

Take Another Piece of My Heart.
The Ikettes get their turn and do a solid version of Take Another Piece of My Heart. According to rabbitno2's comment on YouTube under this clip the Ikettes here are, left to right, Esther Jones, Jean Burks and Vera Hamilton

Come Together / Respect
Respect is ironic considering Tina's personal life at the time with Ike. "I'd like to talk about respect but instead..."

The Ike and Tina Turner Review live
An hour of the Ike and Tina Turner Review recorded in February 1971 for Dutch TV.
Not as impressive as the Beat Club performances but Tina is in fine voice, looks great and is very much the star of the show. The Ikettes lend splendid support. What backing singers are this athletic nowadays? Ike stays pretty much in the background, which is probably just as well, as he seems to be sporting a 1964 Beatle wig and looks like he just beamed down from the Starship Enterprise. No wonder the audience seem so bemused in the early part of the show.

Mostly a rock oriented repertoire however the bluesy I Smell Trouble is outstanding - deep soul with Ike giving it some fine and dirty blues guitar.

1. Them Changes
2. Sweet Inspiration
3. I Want To Take You Higher
4. Ooh Poo Pah Doo
5. A Love Like Yours, Don't Come Knockin' Every Day
6. River Deep, Mountain High
7. Come Together
8. Honky Tonk Women
9. Proud Mary
10. I Smell Trouble
11. There Was A Time
12. Shake A Tail Feather
13. I Want To Take You Higher