DAVID BOWIE 'FOOTSTOMPIN'' cover of The Flairs live on Dick Cavett 1974

B ★ O ★ W ★ I ★ E 

Fascinating cover from David Bowie and the germs of a song that was to become another this morning from Sounds of 71 

Someone asked soundsof71:

David Bowie on The Dick Cavett Show, aired December 5, 1974, with David Sanborn (sax), Earl Slick, Carlos Alomar (guitars), and Pablo Rosario (percussion)

I need to find this somewhere on the interwebs

soundsof71 says:  Here ya go! It’s quite ragged, coming at the end of 74 Diamond Dog/Soul Dog shows. David’s voice is shredded, but this stompin’ cover of “Footstompin’” by The Flairs features a Carlos Alomar riff that evolved into the foundation of Bowie’s track “Fame”, which the band recorded the following month.

Also featured: Geoff MacCormack (aka Warren Peace) and Luther Vandross on vocals, David Sanborn on sax, and a cutaway to a dancing Ava Cherry.

Poke around and you can find this entire episode of Cavett online, with a highly animated (coked up?) Bowie chattering away, as well as edited performances of “1984″ and the recently recorded but still unreleased title track of “Young Americans”.

Keep in mind that in the US, we were still nearly a full year before Bowie’s prime time TV debut (on Cher, November 23, 1975), so this was the first time that much of mainstream America got a look at our boy in action– as well, indeed, as the first look most of us got of Luther Vandross and the wailin’ David Sanborn.