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This may sound like too laid-back of a band to call "experimental," but that's what I'd call it anyway. Listen to John Mayall's impressions, jamwise, of California.This four-piece string-driven band was recorded in 1969 and released on Mayall's album The Turning Point. It was a Easy Rider-era favorite amongst the high school outcasts who started growing our hair about then since we didn't fit in with any other group and couldn't get near girls except in marching band.
I don't know much about Mayall even though he was so influential in the British blues scene, and his Bluesbreakers band was a proving ground for many players I admired in other settings, including Sugarcane Harris and Aynsley Dunbar (violin and drums, respectively, with Frank Zappa), and Dick Heckstall-Smith (reeds with an under-known British jazz-rock band called Colosseum). (I'll bet Barry or Sam can offer some interesting facts.)
Anyhoo, although it's somewhat subtle, one will notice that this combo uses no dedicated percussion instruments. The guitars, bass, and Mayall's impressive harp-sucking are deployed throughout the album in highly rhythmic and percussive ways, yet the overall sound is predominantly mellow. In addition to that innovation, Mayall added a straight-ahead jazz component with Johnny Almond's sax and flute. Almond isn't that dazzling, technically speaking, but he really doesn't have to be---it's a goddam blues band, after all. Listen how the crowd responds when Almond hits the altissimo register at the end of his tenor solo; it doesn't require virtuosity, but he uses the sound to excellent climactic effect.
Altogether, what impresses me most about this band is how well everyone fits with everyone else. I think this is a sound that has been under-explored over the years.
California, John Mayall (1969, "The Turning Point," Polydor [catalog information not available because I can't find the damned album in my junk]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.
You're right. You could describe Mayall's band as the seed bed of British rock blues. Somehow in the mid 60's Clapton, Peter Green, Jack Bruce, Mike Fleetwood, Andy Fraser, all played in his band... and the list goes on.
ReplyDeleteThink of it. Cream, Fleetwood Mac and my personal favourite Free all spun out of the Bluesbreakers.
Don't forget Alexis Korner's band Blues Incorporated who at one time or another included the original Stones line up, along with Rod Steward and Jimmy Page. And of course there's King Crimson who gave birth to possibly the best album in the universe "In the Court of King Crimson".
I could go on and on and on...
Well, since it's at the front of the stack next to the turntable, here ya go...
ReplyDeletePolydor Stereo 24-4004
Producer: John Mayall
Engineer: Eddie Kramer
Location: Gill Graham's Fillmore East, NYC
Date: 12th July 1969
Photographers: Barrie Wentzell, Mayall, Zill, Larry La Fond, Bob Gordon and Tapani Tapanainen
Design and Artwork: John Mayall
Music Publisher: St. George Music Limited, Copyright 1969
Fan Club Newsletters: 67 Brook Street, London W1, England
Johnny Almond appears by kind permission of The Decca Record Company Limited, England (to whom I owe much)
Marginalia: thanks for the info. I didn't even know Free was from the UK; saw them with Traffic in fall 1972, but mostly remember Traffic. I'll have to look up Blues Incorporated, and certainly it's about time I look closely at the Bluesbreakers catalog. Did not know there was a Jack Bruce connection, either.
ReplyDeleteGurlitzer: atta girl! I even remember carefully reading those very words over and over again when listening to The Turning Point, because that's what we all did with those big album covers in that era (that and using them to divvy up weed). What else is near the front of your stack?
Rotary Connection - Peace
ReplyDeleteArlo Guthrie with Shenandoah - Outlasting the Blues
Little Feat - Waiting for Columbus
Bloomfield, Kooper, Stills - Super Session
John Mayall - Memories
John Mayall - Moving On
John Mayall - New Year New Band New Company
John Mayall - Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton
John Lennon - Shaved Fish
Graham Nash/David Crosby