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Although most accounts happily assert that the Mad Dogs & Englishmen album was recorded at New York's Fillmore East on the 27th and 28th of March 1970, there were three recording locations involved.

'The Letter' and 'Space Captain', which appeared as the first single, were laid down during rehearsals at the A&M Soundstage in Los Angeles, on March the 17th, with Leon Russell and Denny Cordell producing. These tracks, with something close to studio quality, are noticeably different from the versions which would later appear on the live album.

The intention for the live album was that it should come from recordings made by Eddie Kramer at The Fillmore East, where he used 27 mics but, as Billboard magazine made clear on April the 10th 1971, Wally Heider Recording had supplied 16-track remote recording facilities and a three-man crew to record the show at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on April the 18th, 1970.

Heider asserted that 85% of the soundtrack originated from Santa Monica and only two songs, 'Delta Lady' and 'Feeling Alright', were from Kramer's Fillmore East recordings. A letter in the following week's Billboard, from Fedco Recording, which had overseen the Fillmore recordings, confirmed this.

As far as can be ascertained, Cordell and Russell were disappointed with the recordings, feeling that they didn't reflect the quality of the live shows, so producer Glyn Johns was brought in to work on them. On the Fillmore East tapes the choir was badly out of tune, so Johns re-recorded original members of the choir in the studio. He also re-mixed the album to highlight the new material.