Humble Pie — Sunset Blvd 1969

Humble Pie never needed training wheels to get rolling. The supergroup, with the play-it-down name, hit the ground rocketing, right from the jump in January of 1969. Completely conceived, cohesive and undaunted, they immediately—and impressively—released not one but two LPs in their native England that same year: As Safe As Yesterday Is debuted in August; fast on its heels, Town & Country spun on turntables in November. Even their first single—the standalone, pre-Safe “Natural Born Bugie”—got the neighbors talking. The UK charts agreed.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

But right before ’69 turned into ’70, Humble Pie was also busy storming the U.S. shores for their very first time. “I Walk on Gilded Splinters,” a volatile monster that ate up cities along the tour, left no room for doubt that the newborn band was actually a fully-fledged force, having had instantly gelled when the four of them convened for the first time only mere months ago.

BOOM!

Earwitness for yourself. Because you’ve lucked out and scored a seat inside the Whisky a Go Go for a fateful clutch of evenings, just as 1969 was winding down. Humble Pie had pulled into L.A., rumbled down the Sunset Strip, and headed straight into the legendary club on Sunset Boulevard. (The same legendary club where the Doors had served as the house band in 1966.) Sunset Blvd 1969 captures, over those couple of December nights, that final, landmark stand before jetting back home overseas. It’s a coveted, hourlong piece of rocker lore for having predated their shows at larger venues such as San Francisco’s Winterland and New York City’s Fillmore East in a short few years to come.

Humble Pie (from left): Steve Marriott, Jerry Shirley, Greg Ridley, Peter Frampton

Onstage was a lineup of seasoned veterans, half of whom were still in their teens. There were two singing guitarists: Steve Marriott had been the face of Small Faces, a vital component of London’s mid-’60s soundtrack for fellow button-downed and Chelsea-booted Mods. (The Who and The Kinks also made the list.) The other was Peter Frampton, who hailed from The Herd, modest hitmakers and the Marquee Club’s resident noisemakers. Bassist Greg Ridley came out of the doubly-keyboarded Spooky Tooth. Drummer Jerry Shirley? Apostolic Intervention.

Small Faces

United, their powers generated a sound way, way different from any of their pre-Pie roots. Those formative days of the four-minute hit-and-run song were fading fast, replaced by the encroaching sprawl of the jam. Of the five performances culled from the Whisky, the majority roamed quite contentedly past nine minutes.

As was the case with the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead around that time, Humble Pie likewise unplugged from their amplifiers for a moment of acoustic repose within their live sets. “For Your Love” stood as the centerpiece. The lengthy and moody arrangement of the Yardbirds’ classic—minus harpsichord and faux-psychedelia—mesmerizes as Frampton’s intricately fingerpicked guitar entwines with Marriott and Ridley’s; the constantly thumping heartbeat belongs to Shirley’s hand-smacked drums. Marriott’s vocals hang in the air, except when breaking the trance with sinewy, scissor-throated, rock-and-roll shrieks. (You can hear why he was Jimmy Page’s first choice to howl into the mic for Led Zeppelin.) Incidentally, this same song was the culprit—the final “pop” straw—that sent Eric Clapton packing his bags in 1965, heading off from the Yardbirds to the bluer waters found with John Mayall & the Blues Breakers (their famed “Beano” album was cut only a handful of weeks after the relocation). Kryptonite for Clapton—yet mojo for Humble Pie, who flourished in its newfound earthy mysticism.

From that instant forward, though, it was full-on electric muscle.

Johnny Kidd & the Pirates

“Shakin’ All Over,” a No. 1 UK hit for Johnny Kidd & the Pirates in 1960, promptly asserts amplified dominance, ushering in glorious brute force. Within the thick ensuing morass, a harmonica holds its own; the real surprise pops out in the unexpected wail of keyboards. At 12plus minutes, six of Kidd’s two-minute originals could fit inside this spaciously explored version. A year later, The Who would get their licks in while Live at Leeds. But Humble Pie’s treatment was distinctly surlier.

Not even “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” was safe from the band’s hankering to blow out borrowed material. Incomparably heavier than either Ray Charles’ 1956 original or the cover being worked out four years after by some unknown Quarrymen huddled inside a Liverpool home, lovestruck joy indeed continues to beam forth from Humble Pie’s weighted—yet frisky—model. Their signature version remained in the repertoire, sticking around, for example, for the famous Fillmore run in the 1970s (specifically, May 28–29, 1971), showing up in Cincinnati during the 1980s, and still getting audiences to pump their fists in the air whenever lit off during recent tours.

Not everything was plundered that night. At one point, Marriott launches into his own tale about “The Sad Bag of Shaky Jake.” No, not “Shakey Jake” Harris, the  Chicago harpist, who could be heard singing alongside nephew Magic Sam in 1958 and then with T-Bone Walker in 1962. But Shaky Jake, the murderous Wild West outlaw on the lam from the Texas Rangers, whose plight keeps Marriott and Frampton busily trading stanzas as well as guitar lines. Don’t miss that instrumental release occurring after each chorus circles past, when the band re-engages the clutch, gains traction and again churns away until the next lyric passage. Nothing monumental, but fabulous nonetheless.

Then, straight into the maw of “I Walk on Gilded Splinters” we go.

The stretch is on in a big way here. And magnificently so, as this extended improvisation evolves seamlessly off the tail end of “The Sad Bag of Shaky Jake.” In 1968, Dr. John, its creator, steeped his song in hallucinogenic New Orleans voodoo, fortifying his title as the Night Tripper. Marriott lines out those same spooky incantations, but makes each one ring like a threat while life around him musically expands and contracts in cycles. Menace makes its presence known in a series of violent crescendos rising up from the slow-burn slithers and thrashes of unnerved guitars that aren’t averse to feedback. To stir the pot, Marriott’s blues harp returns to blow another layer of uneasiness over top. Sometimes, pin-drop-quiet introspection sets in. Never for long, though. To guard yourself, keep a close ear on those drums: Whenever they start boiling, look out. That’s the signal for impending detonation. When the adventure eventually draws to a close after 20 minutes, you wish for another 20.

Oh, how those formative days with, say, Small Faces or Spooky Tooth were so far back in Humble Pie’s rearview mirror.

Sweeting the whole deal is the recording’s phenomenal fidelity: deep and rich and full of punch. Little discernable details, too. Like Shirley’s crisply hissing hi-hats cutting through the sublime din. You even can pick out Marriott’s subtle “Come on!” cue to reconvene his mates for the second verse of “Shakin’ All Over,” after everyone had been off jointly journeying. The album is sonically fit for a reunion with your headphones, yet begs for a full, deafening release into the air.

Change for the band would come soon enough. Roughly two months before their double-LP scorcher Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore got released in November 1971, Frampton would peel off for a solo career that struck better than gold in 1976: the 8× Platinum Frampton Comes Alive! And Humble Pie, upon filling the vacant slot with guitarist Clem Clempson, would go on to score huge with 1972’s Smokin’, 1973’s Eat It, and a heap more.

But here, Sunset Blvd 1969 (rescued for posterity by Cleopatra Records, who also curate a slew of other unique Pie mementos) treats you to an extra-special live hang with Humble Pie’s charter members hypnotizing, blasting and jamming their way into rockdom less than a year after the supergroup’s big-bang genesis.

Label: Cleopatra Records

Release Date: 11/21/25

Band website: Humble Pie Official.com

Label website: Cleopatra Records.com

Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski