Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Mason Proffit - Live 1971


Mason Proffit
Live 1971 (unknown date and location)
Audience recording, average quality
New! Now upgraded to include a Lossless (FLAC) version, in addition to the mp3 @ 320 kbps

Continuing with my series of great Chicago artists from the early 1970's, here is Mason Proffit. Formed by Terry Talbot with his brother John Michael Talbot as the core, Mason Proffit was a pioneering country-rock band that was known for their high energy live shows. They released their first album, Wanted, in 1969, which featured their best-known song, the iconic protest anthem, 'Two Hangmen'. They went on to release 4 more albums between 1970 and 1973, all of which were well-reviewed and highly regarded, but did not achieve commercial success. The band was considered very influential and one of the progenitors of country-rock as a viable music format. Many of the groups that followed cited Mason Proffit as an important influence, including The Eagles, who has acknowledged that their 'Hotel California' chord structure was modeled after Proffit's 'Two Hangmen'. Although now recognized as innovators of country-rock (along with The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers), at the time Mason Proffit was known just a hard-working regional band (doing up to 300 shows a year) whose live shows featured a mix of folk, country, bluegrass, and hard-driving rock in a high energy and crowd-pleasing concoction. Another aspect of Mason Proffit was that they were not afraid to deal with controversial political and social issues in their music ('Two Hangmen', which deals with speaking out against injustice and tyranny in government, was banned from radio play by the FCC for being inflammatory). By 1973, the group disbanded, and Terry and John continued on as duo, The Talbot Brothers, featuring a more acoustic style and sound. Terry has remained active in music over the years, even today, releasing over 30 albums. Like many older bands that have found a new audience in today's music world, Terry Talbot and Mason Proffit have a band web site (masonproffit.com) containing info and albums available for download. The web site also features a free download of the original 'Two Hangmen', which I have also included here as a bonus track (mp3 version-only) to the live show presented here. Unfortunately, I do not have any more information about this live show, which is a fine show from 1971 (although not that great a recording), but it is the only Mason Proffit show I have run across. This show is being presented, in part, to answer a request by tonyg, so I hope you enjoy the show, tony. And to everyone else, here is Mason Proffit.

tracklist
01 Old Joe Clark
02 Hard Luck Woman
03 Michael Dodge
04 Walk On Down The Road
05 Till the Sun's Gone
06 Buffalo
07 Sweet Lady Love
08 Don't Try to Make me Stay
09 Old Libby you're A Good Old Girl
10 Truck Driver
11 Everybody Was Wrong
12 Instrumental
13 Everybody Roll Around
14 Old Joe Clark (Instrumental)
15 Two Hangmen
16 Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
Bonus track:
17 Two Hangmen (studio)

New Lossless Link! (updated 06/14/21)
 
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6 comments:

  1. tonygOctober 29, 2010 at 2:54 PM

    Thanks for posting. Their first album cover hangs framed over my office desk. Listener's should sample their music over at Amazon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. tonygOctober 29, 2010 at 2:55 PM

    Thanks! Their first album hangs framed over my office desk. Listeners should head over to Amazon and sample their music.

    ReplyDelete
  3. FFNovember 4, 2010 at 10:17 AM

    Excuse the comment clutter...
    Wanted to let you know that we were zapped by The Man, but were back with a new home. If you could update/include us in your links, it would be greatly appreciated.

    NEVER GET OUT OF THE BOAT (REDUX)
    http://nevergetoutoftheboat-redux.blogspot.com/

    All the best,
    W

    ReplyDelete
  4. BBKronNovember 4, 2010 at 10:37 AM

    Glad to see you back, Willard. I was concerned we had lost you and your wonderful blog. I have updated my link to your new site. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  5. SusanNovember 10, 2010 at 8:28 PM

    Thank you, thank you. I saw them twice in Milwaukee--once after their second album and then when they toured in support of Rockfish Crossing. They were absolutely incredible. Wish there were more recordings of them live.

    Thanks again,
    Susan

    ReplyDelete
  6. pueblo47July 13, 2012 at 11:46 AM

    Thanks for taking the time to re-upload this great show! I check in here every week and you always have some really hard-to-find stuff. Thanks again!

    ReplyDelete