Development of the British Blues ---- show 4 ----

3-26-2014 

Rolling Stones   1964/65

Duffy Power   1962-67

 

We have spoken earlier of the importance of Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated in the formation of the Rolling Stones, but we can go back even farther, to 1951, when Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were boyhood friends in Dartford, about 15 miles southeast of London.  When they ran into each other again at a train depot in 1960, Richards took note of the batch of R&B records Jagger was carrying.  Keith’s tastes ran more towards Chuck Berry-styled Rock ‘n’ Roll but were close enough that they were soon performing together in Jagger’s group The Blue Boys.

 

As they moved around the London Blues scene, they went to the Ealing club on April 7^th 1962 to see Blues Incorporated and were impressed with slide guitarist Brian Jones, a regular sit in guitar player.  At this time he was going by the name Elmo Lewis, (coincidentally?) Lewis being his father’s given name.  Within a week, the three began rehearsing and soon moved in together as roommates and began to put together a band.  According to Richards, “Mick and I both thought he was incredible. He mentioned he was forming a band. He could have easily joined another group, but he wanted to form his own. The Rolling Stones was Brian’s baby.”  Between rehearsals, the three still sat in with Blues Incorporated.  Their first performance was filling in at the Marquee July 12^th 1962 while Korner did a BBC show. The trio was rounded out by drummer Mick Avory (later of the Kinks), bassist Dick Taylor (a holdover from Jagger’s Blue Boys) and keyboardist Ian Stewart, who would often be referred to as the sixth Stone.  Among the artists at their first rehearsal were guitarist Geoff Bradford and singer Brian Knight, both of whom declined joining because they were interested in pursuing Blues instead of the R&B Jagger and Richards were heading towards. Late in October, the band paid to cut a demo, which was very quickly rejected by EMI, leading Taylor to leave the group and begin his path to forming the Pretty Things.  Bill Wyman would replace him in December 1962 and Charlie Watts became the drummer the next month.  The first gig for this ensemble was January 14^th, 1963 at the Flamingo Club, after which Ian Stewart noted in his diary, “Best Stones show ever”.

 

While the Stones were playing a recently acquired eight month residency at Giorgio Gomelsky’s Crawdaddy Club, the Beatles came to hear them on April 14^th after reading a favorable newspaper write-up.  Following the show, the Stones hosted the Beatles backstage and Jones wound up bringing Lennon and McCartney back to their flat.  The Beatles continued the good feelings by inviting the Stones backstage the next week at the Albert Hall where Jagger queried the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, about some financial details such as royalties.

 

Gomelsky served as their manager until they came under the guidance of Andrew Loog Oldham.  Gomelsky had no signed agreement with the band and thus had no say in the matter.  The band terminated him after his return from his father’s funeral.  At nineteen, Oldham was not only younger than all the band members but wasn’t even able to sign legal documents without his mother’s co-signature (in fact, only the 26-year-old Wyman was past the required age of 21), but he was able to acquire a contract with Decca Records in May 1963 and cut their first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s Come On that they declined to play on stage and Decca publicized with only one ad.

 

The contract with Decca was very favorable, after the label missed out by declining to sign the Beatles, not only monetarily (triple the royalties that a new client would receive and ownership of the master tapes), but also giving the Stones full artistic control over the material recorded and the right to use studios other than just Decca’s for their sessions.  Normally, only three hour blocks of recording time were allotted but, because of Regent Sounds’ modest pricing, the band was able to spend longer on their projects and this was the studio where the entire first album was recorded.  Oldham felt the studio "leaked, instrument-to-instrument, the right way"

 

After a couple more singles preceding that first album, the Stones hit number 1 in the UK in mid-1964 with their cover of Bobby and Shirley Womack’s Its All Over Now.  By the next year, the writing tandem of Jagger-Richards was going full throttle with The Last Time and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction and the April 1966 release of Aftermath was the first album of entirely band-written material.  Jones’ contributions to the album went beyond his lead guitar, piano and harmonica work, stretching out to marimba (I had to pull out my dictionary; it is a type of xylophone of which the vibraphone is one) on Under My Thumb, the dulcimer on Lady Jane, and sitar on Paint It Black.  Later he would increase his instrumental arsenal when he implemented recorder on Ruby Tuesday (which also featured Bill and Keith on cello), mellotron on Please Go Home and accordion to Back Street Girl.  Towards the end, he would limit his stage performing to mostly piano.

 

In the meantime, the band was having continuously successful album sales.  The British-only album, Rolling Stones #2, charted number one for thirteen weeks while its American equivalents (since the Brits did not include already released singles on their albums and American labels did the remaining songs were split between two LPs, one released two months earlier and the other two months afterward) 12x5 hit #3 while Now climbed as high as #5 upon its release.  Out of Our Heads soared to number one and, once it was released two months later, December’s Children (and Everybody’s) didn’t drop from the US charts for 36 weeks, peaking at number four.  The UK version of Out of Our Heads, which similarly contained songs from both those US albums, only got to #2.  This was the first time since their third single over a year and a half previous that a release had not gone to number one in Britain, and it would be a full year before another such occurrence.  All of those LPs were released in the one year span between November ’64 and November ’65.  It is clear that the Stones were becoming a powerhouse in the fairly recent transition of album dominance over 45s in the American marketplace.  Aftermath went #1 UK and #2 US.

 

Backing up a bit, to March 17^th 1964, the band met Marianne Faithfull at a birthday party.  Immediately afterward, Richards sat down and wrote the song As Tears Go By, which first shattered Jones’ idea of his own writing future with his realization that Keith could write a three minute song in three minutes, then later proved to be the highlight of Marianne’s singing career.  It is likely she was better known for her long-term relationship with Jagger, although she first spent time with Brian and then Keith, but before all of them she had a brief marriage which bore a son in 1965.  Regarding their relationship, she noted, “After the beginning Mick was never very interested in having sex.  I always felt that whatever sexual drive Mick had, he used it up on stage and there was little left over for his personal life” and later that “the whole time I was with Mick, I fancied Keith”.  In this age of artists choosing appropriate career names (a la Duffy Power, the other half of today’s show), Faithfull was her father’s last name while her mother’s maiden name was Sacher-Masoch, the second part descended from the novelist whose writings brought about the term masochism.  She moved in with Mick around Christmas 1965 and, although she declined his numerous offers to marry, they remained together for four years.  Let’s Spend the Night Together was also written for her.

 

On October 25^th 1964, Americans saw the Stones on the Ed Sullivan Show and also saw a flood of complaints from parents, leading Sullivan to say, “We won’t book any more Rock and Roll groups and we’ll ban teenagers from the theater”.  The Stones later went on to Santa Monica to headline the TAMI (Teen-Age Music International) Festival, following Chuck Berry, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Beach Boys and Smokey Robinson, among a handful of others, but immediately preceding them was James Brown at his peak.  According to the Supremes Mary Wilson, “James gave the longest show ever to ensure that the Stones had to work hard to beat it.  And they did.”  Later, during their 1965 US tour, they met up again with Brown and received death threats from the Ku Klux Klan for consorting with “niggers”.

 

On this first American tour, the Stones visited the Chess studios at 2120 South Michigan Avenue, the address used as the title to an instrumental on the 12 x 5 album, where they met their idol Muddy Waters dressed in overalls while doing maintenance / janitorial work on the building.  This treatment of Muddy reminds me of the discussion between Leonard Chess and Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun where Chess mentioned an agreement he had with Waters, the man who almost singlehandedly put Chess Records on the map.  "Muddy, when your stuff like Hoochie Coochie Man and Mojo stops selling, you can come over to my house and do the gardening."  Regarding his relationship with Big Joe Turner, Ertegun responded, "Funny, but I got a different kind of deal with Turner.  If his records don't sell, I can be his chauffeur!"  The band got the opportunity to pay tribute to their heroes the next tour when they were set to play on the Shindig show.  They negotiated their appearance contingent upon Muddy’s being included on the broadcast, but when he was unavailable Howlin’ Wolf got his TV debut on the May 20^th airing. 

 

December 7^th was their last of 244 concert dates in 1965 and the group went right into the studio and laid down half of the Aftermath album.  Their 1966 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show was the first US network television color broadcast.  When the tour wound down in mid-1966, it would be three years before the Stones were stateside again.  I thought I had never seen the Stones, but was reminded in my reading that, on June 18^th 1967, Jones introduced Jimi Hendrix to the crowd at the Monterey International Pop Festival, to this day the best concert I have had the privilege of attending

 

For the Stones, disruptions at their concerts were just an everyday part of doing business.  While it was not particularly unusual for teenagers to try to get on the stage with their Rock idols, this band had a penchant for creating full-blown riots at their performances.  One example would be a concert in mid-1964 at Blackpool, Scotland where Brian Jones was taunting the young men in the audience while also mouthing sexual suggestions to their girlfriends.  The crowd got rowdy and Richards took center stage to further chastise them.  As he began the next tune he was spat upon in the face and so walked up to whom he considered the culprit and kicked him in the mouth with his steel-tipped boot.  As the band was whisked away in a police van, the resulted damage was reportedly 35 arrests, 60 injuries and 10,000 British pounds.  Another time in Berlin, Jagger took the opportunity to goosestep and hold up a stiff-armed Nazi salute on stage to the instrumental break in Satisfaction, angering the crowd into an ensuing frenzy that brought about 149 arrests as the band made their escape through old WWII air raid tunnels.  And there was the time that Jones told the driver to speed up so he could watch a fan that was holding on to the car lose his grip and fall in the road.

 

Around 8pm on Sunday, February 12^th of 1967, four vans and nineteen policemen interrupted a party at Keith’s home with a warrant as Richards stepped aside to let them inside.  While they missed some LSD and dismissed two dozen needles as for diabetic use as they frisked the nine people in the home (George and Patty Harrison had left earlier), among the multitude of items confiscated were four “pep pills” found in Mick’s velvet jacket but nothing illegal on Keith’s person before the officers politely departed.  Still, Jagger, Richards and two other guests were to face charges that could have brought up to three years incarceration.  With a month off before their next musical commitment, the boys decided to visit Morocco until the matter’s playing out in the headlines blew over.

 

The three defendants appeared in court (the fourth having left the country) on May 10th facing charges, Mick for possession of the four amphetamine tablets and Keith for “permitting (his home) to be used for the purpose of smoking controlled substances”, and were released on bail.  The same day, Brian was confronted by fourteen members of London‘s drug squad who confiscated various types of drug paraphernalia and proceeded to cart him off to the Kensington police station where there were already dozens of journalists already on hand.  The next morning, Jones was in court posting bond for charges of possession.

 

Following testimony on June 27^th, the jury first found Robert Fraser (the third defendant) and then Mick Jagger guilty, but Richards’ portion took three days, including where Keith claimed that any drugs found were planted there.  Much of the proceedings seemed to focus on the fact that Faithfull had been found clothed in nothing but a fur rug and that, when taken upstairs to be frisked, she let it fall to the floor.  Eventually, Keith too was found guilty and received a one year sentence; Fraser was to serve three months and Jagger six as all three were sent off in handcuffs to begin doing their time.  Three days later, the two Stones were out on their own recognizance having posted 5,000 pounds bail.  An appeal on July 31^st brought more good news as Jagger’s sentence was reduced to twelve months probation while Richards’ was thrown out entirely due to the inflammatory nature of the inclusion of the naked Faithfull aspect having tainted the case.  Fraser’s appeal failed and he went back to serve out his full sentence.  Brian’s day in court came on October 30^th when he pled guilty and received a nine month sentence, but a substitution of probation was granted on December 12^th.

 

Besides the release of three members of the band, 1967 also saw the release of three albums (Between the Buttons, the American compilation Flowers, and Their Satanic Majesties Request)

as well as the release of Oldham’s services.    Around the end of the year, the Stones commissioned a mobile studio which was hauled behind a tour lorry and served them well for many years, if not still.

 

Brian Jones was rapidly wearing out his welcome with the band.  Essentially, he was not an honorable person to begin with, having a penchant in his youth to steal almost anything not nailed down in addition to being responsible for many pregnancies without a care for the offspring.  In the early stages of the band, he would take a significantly larger cut of the earnings than the others and, when he found himself unable to write the songs and earn the royalties, he felt as though he was no longer receiving the proper share he was due for starting his band.  He felt his initial idea had inspired the song Satisfaction while Jagger and Richards were the ones getting rich from it, so he would often maliciously throw licks from the Popeye theme into the instrumental break’s lead.  His copious drug intake caused him to be late or not even show up to rehearsals, and it took its toll on his interpersonal relationships with most of the people around him.

 

Now, he was facing problems getting work permits for upcoming tours.  He had disliked the psychedelic tinge to the Satanic Majesties album and mostly stayed out of the studio thereafter.  Rumors began to circulate that Eric Clapton would soon be his replacement in the band.

 

If Marianne Faithfull was Jagger’s long term love interest, then Anita Pallenberg might be as close to that as Brian would attain.  As author Christopher Sandford described the twenty-two year old German who appeared with Jones in September of 1965 as “the most ravishing, drop-dead girl on his arm anyone had ever seen.  But gorgeous.  Bone-thin yet built, with a shock of cropped blonde hair and clad in a shiny black nano-skirt; her face corpse-pale but for two droopy, coal-black eyes that gave her an air of boozy languor … she had starred in films and been on the cover of fashion magazines all over Europe”.  But their relationship was fraught with violence as Brian was seen using his fists on her and she was once heard retaliating with a whip she had been seen carrying into the room.  According to Anita, “Brian was taking acid all the time … When he did, he saw creatures coming out of the ground, the walls, the floors.”

 

In early to mid-March, while in Morocco as the boys were letting tales of their busts cool down, they had taken over the entire top floor of the best hotel in Tangier.  One day, Jones picked up two of the local working girls and took them to Anita’s room for a little more than a manage a trios, but when she declined he proceeded to beat her silly.  Having seen enough of this type of mistreatment of Pallenberg, Keith made up a story to get Brian out of the hotel so he could whisk her away.  When Jones next saw her, he asked the still-bruised woman to return to him, but she too had taken enough.  From then, she was Keith’s girl.

 

While it was the pretty boy Jones the girls came mostly to see, it was the married Wyman who best mastered the opportunities for sexual dalliances, setting a personal record of thirteen groupies in eight nights of their (1965?) Australian tour.  Unlike the rest of the Stones, Charlie Watts would take every opportunity to catch Jazz concerts or listen to Charlie Parker or Thelonius Monk records in the den of his country home, which had formerly been the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

 

Musically, the Stones pulled away from the psychedelia of Satanic Majesties with the massive hit (number one on both sides of the pond and Richards’ self-proclaimed favorite Stones song) Jumpin’ Jack Flash.  Similar to Jones’ feelings about Satisfaction, Bill Wyman was not pleased that he was the one who came up with the riff that would become the other largest royalty revenue-enhancers credited solely to Jagger and Richards.

 

For the Beggar’s Banquet album, they included outside musicians such as Family’s (and later Blind Faith’s bass player) multi-instrumentalist Ric Grech and pianist-extraordinaire Nicky Hopkins (on too many sessions to name but the Jeff Beck Group and the Who immediately come to mind), and even Traffic’s Dave Mason threw in an oboe part to Street Fighting Man.  Their sound engineer Jimmy Miller sat behind the drums when Charlie Watts was occasionally unavailable.  Brian Jones’ contributions were minimal and his last show would be on May 12^th when the band did a ten minute cameo appearance at Wembley Stadium for the New Music Express’ Poll Winners concert.  His departure from the Rolling Stones, the band he had put together, his band, was announced on June 9^th.

 

On Wednesday, July 2^nd, Jones was found floating dead in his pool.  While there are always those who will try to make a conspiracy theory out of just about anything, those sentiments seem unfounded here.  Although he had proven himself to be a strong swimmer in the not too distant past, this was a totally different man.  His body ravaged by drugs and related abuses such as poor diet, he was much heavier than he had ever been and some of his acquaintances thought him to actually be shorter.  It was not a rarity for him to not be able to maintain consciousness.  There was a time during a recording session when the band stopped playing in order to find out what was causing a noise, only to discover Jones slumped over and passed out with his amplifier humming.  According to the coroner’s report, he had a dangerously enlarged heart, liver dysfunction, pleurisy and asthma.  He had the temperature of the pool raised to 92 degrees because he thought it too cold the day before.  Let’s see, obese and in ill health, drunk with a blood-alcohol level of 2.2, stoned and prone to passing out, jumping into water almost the temperature of a hot bath …. generally not a brilliant idea.  The coroner’s verdict of death by misadventure, although a little vague, sounds like the most plausible scenario.

 

The new lead guitarist would be Mick Taylor, a somewhat recent graduate of the John Mayall guitar player factory, who would serve the band thru December of 1974, but this seems as good as any place to end this commentary.  It has turned more to a summary of tabloid literature than of true musical relevance, but such was the nature of the Rolling Stones.  More will appear when we return for a second visit to their music in a couple of months.

 

Our first set from today’s show begins with three of the four sides of the singles they released in 1963 followed by five songs from their first two albums, England’s Newest Hitmakers and 12x5, both released in 1964.  It likely well represented their stage shows of the day with three Chuck Berry songs: Come On, Carol and Around and Around.  In fact, it wasn’t until their fourth album Out of Our Heads, when half of the dozen were penned by the band, that no Berry song was included.  Master Blues writer Willie Dixon has I Wanna Be Loved and I Just Want to Make Love to You, and of course the Beatles tandem of Lennon and McCartney peovided I Wanna Be Your Man on this set.  We also see the first Jagger-Richards composition to reach vinyl in Tell Me.  Stoned, the one 1963 B-side we left out of the set, was credited to the entire band.

 

Our next set was taken from the first disc of the double CD by Duffy Power.  We ignored the two songs chosen for his debut single but when there was enough studio time to try one more track, Duffy’s choice of the Jimmy Witherspoon Jazzy Blues number Times Are Getting Tougher Than Tough seems a perfect introduction.  Duffy’s next release was much better suited to our tastes; the Gershwins’ tune It Ain’t Necessarily So from the black opera Porgy and Bess backed up by Duffy’s own If I Get Lucky Someday.  We discuss in some detail the Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There in the next portion of our essay, but it marks the first time he had the option to bring his club band, the Graham Bond Quartet, into the studio.  The next three tunes were taken from an afterhours jam session and show the style of Blues Duffy was following with Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle and Roll and a couple of Ray Charles numbers, What’d I Say and I Got a Woman, all with the Bond band behind him.  We continue with Duffy’s own composition Woman Made Trouble.  I’m Sitting on Top of the World was first sung by Al Jolson in 1925 and appeared in the 1927 movie The Singing Fool.  The Paramounts backed Duffy on excellent versions of Mose Allison’s Parchman Farm and Floyd Dixon’s Tired, Broke and Busted (that’s Power on harmonica), comprising his next single in March of 1964.  Duffy’s original I Don’t Care is next, with the Fentones augmented by Ginger Baker and Duffy’s harp on Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters’ Money Honey and Lloyd Price’s Lawdy Miss Clawdy winding up a long set.  Fortunately, Duffy gave excellent commentary about the CD tracks although some of the backing musician information is incomplete.

 

We come back to the Stones circa 1965 with selections from the album The Rolling Stones Now with the expected Chuck Berry tune, but Bo Diddlet, Arthur Conley and Amos Milburn influences thrown in.

 

Returning to Duffy Power with three of his own tunes, Love’s Gonna Go (Duffy on harp), She Don’t Know (both featuring Jimmy Nicol on drums), and I’m So Glad You’re Mine (this time, Duffy on guitar and Phil Seaman behind the drums).  McLaughlin, Bruce and Seaman backed Power on Dollar Mamie, a tune that dates back to the thirties or even earlier.  I believe the next four songs (Little Boy Blue, Little Girl, Mary Open the Door with Duffy’s harmonica solo and Big Mama Thornton’s Hound Dog) were released on a French EP by Duffy’s Nucleus, (EDIT: it was It’s Funny and not Little Girl) but the version of the first three here (Power originals) are played by McLaughlin, Baker and Bruce.  McLaughlin is also on Hound Dog.  We wind down the Power portion of the show with Duffy’s original Just Stay Blue and the Randy Newman-penned

Davey O’Brien (Leave That Baby Alone).

 

The 1965 Out of Our Heads album fills out today’s final set with a stronger Soul influence from the likes of Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and Solomon Burke.  We end the show with the one live tune from Out of Our Heads (Bo Diddley’s I’m Alright) and the two from the Decembers Children LP (Route 66 and the Hank Snow country classic I’m Movin’ On), also released in 1965.  I really enjoyed these live cuts, which made it all that much more disappointing when they released a piece of garbage titled Got Live If You Want It a year later with some decent songs but their performance could have been an ad for the effects of amphetamines.

 

The favorite singer of Alexis Korner, Duffy Power never received the acclaim he deserved, even though the British publication Record Collector later referred to his output as “some of the most enduring Jazz-Folk tinged Blues of the 1960s” while asking, “How did this man avoid becoming a superstar?”  We have earlier heard his vocals from the 1965 LP Sky High as our choice for the Blues Incorporated segment of our very first show, although some of today’s selections predate those recordings.   

 

Born in September 1941 as Raymond Howard, he joined in the Skiffle craze with a couple of bands called the Amigos and the Dreamers.  Coming under the influence of Elvis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, by 1958 these artists’ songs found their way into the Skiffle repertoire of the Dreamers, soon to be renamed the New Vagabonds.  He fell under the gaze of the highly successful manager Larry Parnes early in 1959.  Parnes had the habit of finding more suitable names for his clientele as in Tommy Steele (originally Tommy Hicks), who achieved 17 records between 1956 and 1961 making the charts.  Likewise, Reg Smith, now Marty Wilde, charted 13 times 1958-1962 followed by Ronald Wycherley having 26 hits from 1959 to 1966 under the name Billy Fury.  More from Parnes’ late 50s stable included Georgie Fame, Vince Eager, Johnny Gentle, Dickie Pride and Lance Fortune.  By signing with Parnes, Ray Howard became Duffy Power, combining the last names of two popular actors of the time, Howard Duff and Tyrone Power. 

 

Parnes was able to get a good amount of publicity and keep his new client busy on package tours with mostly his other artists.  Between 1959 and 1961, Power put out six singles for the Fontana label, mostly remakes of cheesy American pop tunes and none successful enough to maintain his concert schedule, much less a contract renewal. 

 

Due mostly to his lack of success coupled with finding out his girlfriend was a prostitute, Duffy was contemplating suicide, this in spite of adding his newfound Blues influences of Ray Charles and Muddy Waters to his array of songs.  It was not until Ricky Barnes, a Scottish saxman friend, came by and dragged him to a Blues club in Soho where the band of Albert Lee allowed him to perform with them a full hour of Blues material that his depression somewhat subsided.

 

Armed with a newfound confidence, he decided he would only sing only the music of his choice, withdrew from the stable of Larry Parnes in favor of Mike Hawker and signed a new contract with EMI’s Parlophone label by late 1962, his first 45 for them released in February of 1963.  Another change he was considering was a different name to reflect his new musical focus.

 

The Graham Bond Quartet (pre-Heckstall-Smith while John McLaughlin was on guitar) was backing Duffy on his gigs and went in the studio with him on February 1963 to record a Beatles tune, I Saw Her Standing There, possibly in preparation for Power’s July 16^th appearance on BBC’s Pop Goes the Beatles.  Perhaps it was this upcoming performance or the fact that they both recorded for Parlophone, but whatever the reason, the Beatles had enough sway that when they complained about the jazzy way Power and the Bond band put together their version of the song, executive ears were open and a remake had to be cut the next month.  Why would you hand a song to an artist and not expect them to put their own stamp on it?  We heard earlier in the show how different the Stones version of I Wanna Be Your Man was from the Beatles’ own recording, but perhaps by then Lennon and McCartney had become more confident.  Both the recordings are on my CD and in spite of it taking several takes in the evolution to the final release, it is the original that I prefer and present to you, although I really don’t see that much difference nor reason for concern in the first place.

 

The Graham Bond Quartet backed him on a few more sessions and Power also used the Paramounts, later to become Procol Harum, for his recording dates, but he always preferred Jack Bruce’s bass playing and either Ginger Baker or Phil Seaman on drums.  With the termination of McLaughlin from the Bond Quartet, John was freed up to record with Duffy more often.  One of Duffy’s gigging bands later was the Fentones, which included lead guitarist Jerry Wilcox and bassist Graham Alexander, but when they went into the studio he preferred to not use their varying list of rhythm guitarists or drummers.  Not to be overlooked is Duffy’s own playing, both on harmonica and guitar.

 

By the end of 1964, Parlophone opted against renewing his contract.  He put together a single with Love’s Gonna Go which was released only in the US in 1965 by the Jamie label and his name was altered to Jamie Power for the American market.  Alexis Korner came across a demo of the song and he got Duffy to appear with Blues Incorporated at club gigs and ultimately in the studio between April and June to record the Sky High album.  He would often turn to Korner’s bassist Danny Thompson and drummer Terry Cox for future sessions and, when Alexis started a children’s show (Five O‘clock Club), the quartet would throw in a couple of tunes per broadcast until Power and Korner had a falling out.

 

Power’s next body of work was done independent of any band per se as he chose varying musicians to fit the differing projects, but he was unable to find a label to publish them until years later on the 1971 album Innovations.  Early in 1966, he did put together the gigging band Duffy’s Nucleus with McLaughlin, Thompson and Cox, who had replaced drummer Red Reece, and the group put out four songs before they disbanded when Thompson and Cox moved on to form Pentangle.  In 1967, Parlophone put out one last single to no success. 

 

He was approached for an album in 1969 and put together a full set of demos which were supposed to be the basis of recording sessions, but the album never came out until 1973 and then with only his acoustic guitar accompaniment.  Approached again in 1970, this time by Rod Argent and Chris White, currently with the band Argent and best known from their time in the Zombies, with a CBS contract and an offer of a 32-stop tour with them and the Climax Blues Band, but Duffy was dissatisfied with the recordings and quashed the LP.

 

I am very pleased with the 2CD set I purchased (Leapers and Sleepers) and would like to get a couple more of his releases, but they are a little too pricey for my budget.  Perhaps I will find them used.