Bobby Charles (1938-2010) was early rock's ragin' Cajun, a white Louisiana cat who wrote and sang with down-home R&B vigor. By the early Seventies, Charles – the author of "See You Later Alligator" and the Fats Domino hit "Walkin' to New Orleans" – was in Woodstock cutting this simple diamond of swampy drawl and country-hippie soul with Dr. John and most of the Band. Songs like "Small Town Talk" and "Street People" have the unhurried swing of a hammock on a bayou porch. The 10-track '72 album is blown up to three discs in this reissue, so you also get an LP's worth of 1974 sessions that were just as fine yet strangely abandoned.

Listen to "Small Town Talk":

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“Let My Love Open the Door”

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."