John Mayall - Room To Move/Jack Bruce - The Clearout/Blind Faith - Well All Right/ Taste - Blister On The Moon
As
the elder statesman of British blues, it is John Mayall's lot to be
more renowned as a bandleader and mentor than as a performer in his own
right. Throughout the '60s, his band the Bluesbreakers acted as a
finishing school for the leading British blues-rock musicians of the
era. Guitarists Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and Mick Taylor joined his
band in a remarkable succession in the mid-'60s, honing their chops with
Mayall before going on to join Cream, Fleetwood Mac, and the Rolling
Stones, respectively. John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, Jack Bruce, Aynsley
Dunbar, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Andy Fraser (of Free), John Almond, and
Jon Mark also played and recorded with Mayall for varying lengths of
times in the '60s.
Mayall
recorded his debut single in early 1964; he made his first album, a
live affair, near the end of the year. At this point the Bluesbreakers
had a more pronounced R&B influence than would be exhibited on their
most famous recordings, somewhat in the mold of younger combos like the
Animals and Rolling Stones, but the Bluesbreakers would take a turn for
the purer with the recruitment of Eric Clapton in the spring of 1965.
Clapton had left the Yardbirds in order to play straight blues, and the
Bluesbreakers allowed him that freedom (or stuck to well-defined
restrictions, depending upon your viewpoint). Clapton began to inspire
reverent acclaim as one of Britain's top virtuosos, as reflected in the
famous "Clapton is God" graffiti that appeared in London in the
mid-'60s.
In professional terms, though, 1965 wasn't
the best of times for the group, which had been dropped by Decca.
Clapton even left the group for a few months for an odd trip to Greece,
leaving Mayall to straggle on with various fill-ins, including Peter
Green. Clapton did return in late 1965, around the time an excellent
blues-rock single, "I'm Your Witchdoctor" (with searing sustain-laden
guitar riffs), was issued on Immediate. By early 1966, the band was back
on Decca, and recorded its landmark Bluesbreakers LP. This was the
album that, with its clean, loud, authoritative licks, firmly
established Clapton as a guitar hero, on both reverent covers of tunes
by the likes of Otis Rush and Freddie King and decent originals by
Mayall himself. The record was also an unexpected commercial success,
making the Top Ten in Britain. From that point on, in fact, Mayall
became one of the first rock musicians to depend primarily upon the LP
market; he recorded plenty of singles throughout the '60s, but none of
them came close to becoming a hit.
Clapton
left the Bluesbreakers in mid-1966 to form Cream with Jack Bruce, who
had played with Mayall briefly in late 1965. Mayall turned quickly to
Peter Green, who managed the difficult feat of stepping into Clapton's
shoes and gaining respect as a player of roughly equal imagination and
virtuosity, although his style was quite distinctly his own. Green
recorded one LP with Mayall, A Hard Road, and several singles, sometimes
writing material and taking some respectable lead vocals. Green's
talents, like those of Clapton, were too large to be confined by sideman
status, and in mid-1967 he left to form a successful band of his own,
Fleetwood Mac.
Mayall then enlisted 19-year-old Mick
Taylor; remarkably, despite the consecutive departures of two star
guitarists, Mayall maintained a high level of popularity. The late '60s
were also a time of considerable experimentation for the Bluesbreakers,
who moved into a form of blues-jazz-rock fusion with the addition of a
horn section, and then retreated into mellower, acoustic-oriented music.
Mick Taylor, the last of the famous triumvirate of Mayall-bred guitar
heroes, left in mid-1969 to join the Rolling Stones. Yet in a way Mayall
was thriving more than ever, as the U.S. market, which had been barely
aware of him in the Clapton era, was beginning to open up for his music.
In fact, at the end of the '60s, Mayall moved to Los Angeles. Released
in 1969, The Turning Point, a live, all-acoustic affair, was a
commercial and artistic high point.
In
America at least, Mayall continued to be pretty popular in the early
'70s. His band was as unstable as ever; at various points some American
musicians flitted in and out of the Bluesbreakers, including Harvey
Mandel, Canned Heat bassist Larry Taylor, and Don "Sugarcane" Harris.
Although he's released numerous albums since, and remains a prodigiously
busy and reasonably popular live act, his post-1970 output generally
hasn't matched the quality of his '60s work. Following collaborations
with an unholy number of guest celebrities, in the early '80s he
re-teamed with a couple of his more renowned vets, John McVie and Mick
Taylor, for a tour, which was chronicled by Great American Music's Blues
Express, released in 2010. The '60s albums are what you want, though
over the past decades, there's little doubt that Mayall has done a great
deal to popularize the blues all over the globe. Continuing to record
and tour into his eighties, Mayall released A Special Life, recorded at
Entourage Studios in North Hollywood and featuring a guest spot by
singer and accordion player C.J. Chenier, in 2014. The album was
universally celebrated as one of his best.
John Symon
Asher Bruce (14 May 1943 – 25 October 2014) was a Scottish
singer-songwriter, musician and composer. He gained popularity as the
co-lead vocalist, and bass guitarist of British rock band Cream. After
the group disbanded in 1968, he pursued a solo career and also played
with several bands.
In
the early 1960s Bruce joined the Graham Bond Organisation, where he met
his future bandmate Ginger Baker. After leaving the Graham Bond
Organisation, he joined with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, where
he met Eric Clapton, who also was his future bandmate. His time with the
band was brief. In 1966, he formed Cream with lead guitarist Clapton
and drummer Baker; he co-wrote some of their hits (including "Sunshine
of Your Love", "White Room" and "I Feel Free") with songwriter Pete
Brown. After the group disbanded Bruce formed his own blues-rock band
West, Bruce and Laing in 1972, with guitarist Leslie West and drummer
Corky Laing. In the late 1960s he began recording solo albums. His first
solo album, Songs for a Tailor, released in 1969, was a worldwide hit.
His solo career spanned several decades. From the 1970s to the 1990s he
played with several groups as a touring member. He reunited with Cream
in 2005 for concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and at Madison Square
Garden in New York.
Bruce is considered to be one of
the most important and influential bass guitarists of all time. Rolling
Stone magazine readers ranked him number eight on their list of "10
Greatest Bass Guitarist Of All Time". He was inducted in the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, and was awarded the Grammy Lifetime
Achievement Award in 2006, both as a member of Cream.
Blind
Faith were an English supergroup featuring Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton,
Ginger Baker, and Ric Grech, active in mostly 1969. They were eagerly
anticipated by the music press as a continuation of Clapton and Baker's
former group Cream and Winwood's former group Traffic, but they split
after one album and tour.
The
group originated with informal jamming by Clapton and Winwood in early
1969 following the break-ups of Cream and Traffic. Baker joined them in
rehearsals and they decided to form a group. Grech joined as the fourth
member from the band Family in May, and they began recording their
eponymous debut album. It drew controversy for featuring a photograph of
a topless 11-year-old girl on the front cover, and it was issued with a
different cover in the United States.
The
first Blind Faith concert was on 7 June in front of an estimated
100,000 fans in Hyde Park, London, but they felt that they had not
rehearsed enough and were unprepared. They subsequently played concerts
in Scandinavia and the US, but the lack of material in the live set led
them to play old Cream and Traffic songs which pleased the audience but
disillusioned the band. Clapton became increasingly isolated during the
tour, preferring to spend time with support act Delaney & Bonnie,
and the band split up immediately after their last performance on the
tour. Clapton and Winwood both enjoyed the music that they played
together in the group's limited time, and they have since collaborated
on several tours playing Blind Faith material.
Taste
(originally "The Taste") was formed in Cork, Ireland, in August 1966 as
a trio consisting of Rory Gallagher on guitars and vocals, Eric
Kitteringham on bass, and Norman Damery on drums. In their early years
Taste toured in Hamburg and Ireland before becoming regulars at Maritime
Hotel, an R&B club in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the summer of
1967.
In
1968 Taste began performing in the UK where the original lineup split
up. The new lineup formed with Richard McCracken on bass and John Wilson
on drums. The new Taste moved permanently to London where they signed
with the record label Polydor. In November 1968, the band, along with
Yes, opened for Cream at Cream's farewell concerts. While with Polydor,
Taste began touring the United States and Canada with the British
supergroup Blind Faith. In April 1969, Taste released the first of their
two studio albums, the self-titled Taste, with On the Boards following
in early 1970, the latter showing the band's jazz influences with
Gallagher playing saxophone on numerous tracks.
One
performance came in 1970 as part of the Isle of Wight Festival,
alongside Jimi Hendrix and The Who. According to Donal Gallagher (Rory's
brother who managed the band) filmmaker Murray Lerner had given
instructions to his crew to shoot just two numbers from the new bands
and to save the main film stock for Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Leonard Cohen
and the other headliners but Taste’s performance prompted him to change
his instructions.
"Murray
didn’t know who Taste were but when he saw the spontaneity of the band
and the audience and their interaction, he just told his guys keep
filming and they just kept going and captured over an hour of the
performance which was quite incredible." In the song "Sugar Mama", a
photographer can be seen hurriedly bringing his camera up from a re-load
to cover another camera angle.
Later the same year
Taste toured Europe but were disbanded due to numerous reasons, the
details of which are still unclear; but are generally acknowledged as
having been due to managerial disputes and also tensions between
Gallagher and the rest of the band, who wanted to be recognised as
equals with him (Gallagher having been the sole songwriter in the band).
They performed their last show on New Year's Eve in Belfast. Wilson
and McCracken immediately formed 'Stud' in early 1971, with Jim Cregan
and John Weider, while Gallagher went on to pursue a solo career.
