Come and Get Your Love reached wide American television audiences in early 1974 when Redbone performed the hit on Burt Sugarman’s NBC series The Midnight Special, a performance later recycled in VH1’s classic-concert programming. The broadcast captured the band at the moment the single, drawn from the late-1973 album Wovoka, was ascending the U.S. charts toward its spring 1974 peak. Unlike the polished single edit, the televised rendition foregrounded the group’s live pocket—an elastic, mid-tempo backbeat, interlocked rhythm guitars and bass, and a lead vocal that favored call-and-response over strict adherence to the studio phrasing.
The staging was typical of U.S. TV rock slots in 1974: fixed multi-camera blocking, a low riser for the kit, and the band in coordinated, Native-influenced stagewear that Redbone had embraced since the turn of the decade. Lolly Vegas carried the melody with bright, Leslie-tinged guitar lines that evoke the studio’s electric-sitar color; Pat Vegas’s bass stayed up in the mix, emphasizing the syncopated hook; Tony Bellamy alternated between tight rhythm figures and simple keyboard pads; and Butch Rillera’s drumming locked the groove with crisp hi-hat work and restrained fills. Small deviations from the single—an extended vamp before the final chorus, extra ad-libs, subtle dynamic swells—mark it as a working band translating a radio staple for a live lens.
Production values on the broadcast were straightforward: dry vocals with a hint of plate reverb, close miking on snare and kick, and a roomier capture of guitars that let the modulated shimmer sit above the rhythm section. The song’s form remains intact (intro riff, verse-pre-chorus lift, chant-like chorus), but the performance leans into the groove’s danceable lilt, trimming transitional ornaments the studio cut uses to glide between sections. That economy suits television’s time constraints while preserving the earworm chorus and its percussive scansion.
Historically, the 1974 TV appearance functioned as a national snapshot of Redbone at their commercial zenith. The single’s success—emerging from Wovoka into heavy rotation—coincided with a cycle of network and syndicated music shows that amplified charting acts in prime or late-night slots. VH1’s later rebroadcasts and retrospectives kept this particular performance in circulation, reframing it for cable audiences who would later rediscover the track in new contexts. The clip now reads as both documentation and continuity: a concise, period-specific rendering of a crossover hit by a Native American and Mexican American rock band, and a performance that television repeatedly returned to as shorthand for the song’s enduring presence.
The broadcast’s lasting value lies in its clarity. There is no elaborate concept or narrative overlay—just a tight quartet presenting a durable hook with economy and feel. That transparency has made the 1974 rendition an anchor for subsequent re-airings: a performance where arrangement, musicianship, and camera discipline converge to explain why Come and Get Your Love traveled so effectively from studio to stage to screen.
Line-up: Lolly Vegas — lead vocals, lead guitar (Leslie/electric-sitar coloration); Pat Vegas — bass guitar, backing vocals; Tony Bellamy — rhythm guitar and keyboards, backing vocals; Butch Rillera — drums, backing vocals. Studio contributors associated with the parent album Wovoka include Gene Page (orchestration), Joe Sample (piano/vibraphone), and Eddie Caciedo (percussion).
