The Wailers Live at Max’s Kansas City, NYC, 1973

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 for comparing this to the previously circulated sources.

The Wailers
Live at Max’s Kansas City
NYC
July 18-23, 1973

01 Lively Up Yourself
02 400 Years
03 Stir It Up
04 Slave Driver
05 Stop That Train
06 Kinky Reggae
07 Concrete Jungle
08 Get Up Stand Up