"Space Captain," Joe Cocker
This spring marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, which yielded a documentary movie and a live album, the latter recorded at New York's Fillmore East on March 27 and 28, 1970.
Joe Cocker - who might finally get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year - hadn't planned to tour in the spring of 1970. In fact, he had gone to Los Angeles to get some rest before resuming shows in July of that year. But Dee Anthony, his American manager, negotiated a Cocker concert tour with promoters that was due to start in Detroit on March 20 and concluded in San Bernardino on May 16. With only a week or two to prepare for another tour so soon, Cocker got help from Leon Russell, who was already making the transition from session player to rock's newest singer-songwriter sensation with his debut album. So well-connected was Russell that he was able to assemble a touring band - Mad Dogs and Englishmen, named for the Noël Coward song - in record time and begin long, grueling rehearsals with Cocker in the soundstage at A&M Records, the label started by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss.
Two performances from these rehearsals were recorded, resulting in a single - a cover of the Boxtops' "The Letter" backed with an original song from an unknown songwriter named Matthew Moore, "Space Captain." A live performance of the latter song during the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour - with a band that included Russell, bassist Carl Radle, drummer Jim Gordon (both soon to join Eric Clapton in Derek and the Dominos), saxophonist and Rolling Stones sideman Bobby Keys, keyboardist Chris Stainton, drummer Jim Keltner, and singer Rita Coolidge and Claudia Lennear - is my Music Video Of the Week this week. Look for Leon Russell in the tall stovepipe hat.
Cocker mostly took a couple of years off after this tour, retuning to the studio in 1972 to record his third studio album. The afterburners of Mad Dogs and Englishmen - the album came out later in 1970, the movie in 1971 - were strong enough to let him coast for awhile before he was ready to resume his career. Watch the video and you'll understand why. 😁
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