Though the Wailers played several shows which are now considered legendary, perhaps none live up to the hype that surrounds this one. The Wailers, in the U.S. in mid-June 1973, are doing a run at the popular Max’s Kansas City night club. Problem is, most people were there to see the guy they are opening for – a young Americana folk singer from New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen. I previously shared three shows from this run on this blog. I came across a new show, well sort of.
Several years ago, JEMS acquired three reel-to-reel master tapes from the private collection of a recording engineer. All were 1/2-track, 15 IPS reels (this and one other 10″, the third 7″) which helped add to their credibility (most fans and collectors in the ’70s were not working with tapes in those professional standards), as did some of the other tapes we didn’t get which were clearly from studio sessions. This famous recording of Bob Marley and the Wailers at Max’s Kansas City was one of the three.
The entire contents of the reel are what has been classified for years by Marley collectors as “Set Three” or “Segment Three” of the trio of known recordings from the July ’73 run at Max’s. The exact recording dates of the three sets are unverified, but they are all drawn from the six night run in July. Previous torrents of this material suggest “there were two shows per night and three shows on the weekend,” all opening for, amazingly, Bruce Springsteen.
The track list of our copy varies slightly from the widely available version(s) of Set Three in that it is longer and includes “Stir It Up,” where most copies stop at “Kinky Reggae.” The version of “Stir It Up” is different from that of Set One or Set Two. It is an audience, not soundboard recording, but may well be an “open mic” recording, perhaps from mics mounted at the mixing desk and recorded with permission to document the performance.
Many thanks to our good friend Dubwise Garage at www.bobmarleyconcerts.com for comparing this to the previously circulated sources.
My previous post HERE is worth checking out for audio to the other performances and the actual hotel receipt from the Chelsea Hotel, given to us by Bob’s roomie for the trip, 22-year old American and Penn State graduate Lee Jaffe.
The Wailers
Live at Max’s Kansas City
NYC
July 18-23, 1973
01 Put It On
02 Slave Driver
03 Burnin’ and Lootin’
04 Stop That Train
05 Kinky Reggae
06 Stir It Up
