Live at Topanga Corral
1971 live album by Canned Heat
Live at Topanga Corral is a 1971 live album by American blues rock band Canned Heat. It was taken from a 1968 concert at the Kaleidoscope in Hollywood, California, and not at the Topanga Corral as the title suggests. Canned Heat was under contract to Liberty Records at the time and Liberty did not want to do a live album, so manager Skip Taylor told Liberty that the album had been recorded in 1966 and 1967 at the Topanga Corral and released the record with Wand Records to avoid legal complications. The record has been bootlegged and reissued countless times, and is also known as Live at the Kaleidoscope.
Track listing
"Bullfrog Blues" (Canned Heat) – 7:21
"Sweet Sixteen" (Joe Josea, B.B. King) – 10:57
"I'd Rather Be the Devil" (A. Leigh – actually Elmore James, Robert Johnson) – 5:10
"Dust My Broom" (Elmore James, Robert Johnson) – 5:46
"Wish You Would" (Billy Boy Arnold) – 8:03
"When Things Go Wrong" (A. Leigh – actually Hudson Whittaker) – 9:08
Personnel
Canned Heat
Bob Hite – vocals
Alan Wilson – slide guitar, vocals, harmonica
Henry Vestine – lead guitar
Larry Taylor – bass
Fito de la Parra – drums
Production
"A Rainstory Production by Richard Moore and Michael O'Bryant" (as indicated on LP)
Skip Taylor and Canned Heat – actual producers
Notes
References
de la Parra, Fito (2000). Living the Blues: Canned Heat's Story of Music, Drugs, Death, Sex and Survival ISBN 0-9676449-0-9.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Live at Topanga Corral” is 1971 live album by Canned Heat. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Live, Topanga and Corral, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1971 live album by Canned Heat” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 19, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3835277. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1968, 1966 and 1967.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Live at Topanga Corral” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.