Development of the British Blues and Rhythm

  --- show 42 ---   1-13-2016

Eric Clapton                                         1973, 74

Rory Gallagher                                     1971, 72
Dick Heckstall-Smith                              1972

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Well, here we are with the first show of our third year in this study of the British Blues.  No way would I have guessed when this all started that we would still be proceeding along this path, and looking ahead I would have to guess we have material I wish to present for about the next six months.  I hope you guys have enjoyed it and learned about some of the more obscure artists, as I have in putting it all together.  So, on to today’s broadcast …

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Never letting an opportunity to open with our namesake song, Key to the Highway, pass unobserved we start off with some live Eric Clapton from his 1973 Rainbow Concert.  We mentioned earlier that Clapton had shied away from the spotlight after the extreme exposure he was put under with Cream and Blind Faith, to the point that he didn’t even put his own name on Derek and the Dominoes in 1970.  George Harrison did convince him to join him in his Concert for Bangladesh in August of 1971, but his next stage appearance (to the best of my knowledge) was this concert in January 1973.

The Rainbow Theatre in North London was a longtime music venue which had housed shows by many of Britain’s Rock bands and would be a fitting location for this charity event.  Although the recordings were put out as Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert, the chief architect was the Who’s Peter Townsend, one of three popular (more like famous?) guitarists along with Eric and the Faces Ron Wood in the performance.  From Traffic, Townsend recruited percussionist Rebop, drummer Jim Capaldi and keyboardist Steve Winwood, with Stevie sharing vocals with the three guitarists.  Rick Grech played bass and there was a second drummer, Jim Karstein.

Eric would return to the studio in April 1974 for his 461 Ocean Boulevard, the first time since the Dominoes sessions almost three years prior.  The first track of our next Clapton selections was recorded one month later, with the entire set taken from the first two (of four) discs of the live Crossroads 2 collection going up to 1975.  That first track has Jamie Oldaker on drums and Carl Radle on bass, and subsequent tracks have them joined by Dick Sims at the keyboard and George Terry playing second guitar as well as Yvonne Elliman and Marcy Levy providing background vocals.  Discs three and four jump to 1977 & 1978 with essentially the same backing artists and we’ll likely hear from them before this series concludes, which is perhaps indicative of why this has seemingly become such a never-ending saga.

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The Irish trio Taste broke up in 1970 just as they were being critically acclaimed for their two albums due to personality conflicts and Rory Gallagher took little time in finding the right players for his new group, again a trio and under Rory’s own name, coincidentally also the name of this, his first album.  Gallagher, at age 23, employed Wilgar Campbell as the drummer and Gerry McAvoy on bass augmented on two tunes (we will only hear Wave Myself Goodbye) by pianist Vincent Crane; Rory played guitar, mandolin, alto sax and harmonica in addition to doing all the singing.  McAvoy would remain with Rory for two decades, while Campbell lasted only a year and a half; both were part of the band Deep Joy which had opened often for Taste.  All the tunes we will hear are Gallagher compositions except the closer, Voodoo Woman, which was written by Muddy Waters.

There have been many examples earlier in this series where American Bluesmen have been recorded with British artists backing them, going all the way back to Sonny Boy Williamson II’s live recordings with the Yardbirds and the Animals in 1963.  He had come to Europe for the American Folk Blues Festival and took on some gigs while he was abroad, winding up deciding to spend most of his last years on that side of the pond.  Similarly, John Lee Hooker went into the studio with his British supporting group, T.S. McPhee and the Groundhogs.  And we heard several sessions featuring many of Britain’s best behind Champion Jack Dupree, who used the excuse of not wanting to fly a return trip across the Atlantic in a rickety airship as his reason to take up permanent residence in Europe.

The other side of this coin was while Fleetwood Mac was touring the U.S. they made special arrangements to record at the Chess studio in Chicago with several of their favorite American sidemen.  Then, beginning with the Howlin’ Wolf London Sessions, we began to see how Chess Records decided to put to their advantage the popularity of the British Blues scene to bolster the sales of their established stars, indeed the originators of some of the most often recorded tunes of the times.

 Today, we listen to the second Chess excursion featuring Muddy Waters along with more of Brit’s best, including guitarist Rory Gallagher.  From the defunct Blind Faith came bassist Rick Grech and Steve Winwood, Stevie having also added to Wolf’s London Sessions and here sharing piano and organ duties with Georgie Fame.  From the Jimi Hendrix Experience came drummer Mitch Mitchell although Herbie Lovelle, an American with more than two decades of studio work, played on three of the tracks.  In addition to Lovelle, Muddy brought along one of his regular guitarists in Sammy Lawhorn and Blues harpist Carey Bell Harrington.  Muddy of course provided his vocals and slide guitar.  A quartet of horn players was added later when the tapes got back to the states.  Something else this album provides us with is the opportunity to open and close with the same song.  You didn’t think I’d leave off another version of Key to the Highway, did you?

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A relatively last minute inclusion of Dick Heckstall-Smith’s album, A Story Ended, emits a different mood from the other guitar-centric sets, an album I find mostly enjoyable once I block out the (to me) nonsensical and irritating lyrics of Peter Brown.  Is it really songwriting to throw together phrases that seemingly no one can understand?

From DHS’s former band Colosseum were Mark Clarke who played bass throughout and sang the opening number, Dave Greenslade’s piano is heard on Crabs, while Chris Farlowe’s vocal and Jon Hiseman’s drumming enhance The Pirate’s Dream, a centerpiece for this album that Jon and Dick had worked on for several months but never got as far as the studio with Colosseum.  Guitarist Chris Spedding makes his only appearance on this track and this is one of three that feature Graham Bond’s keyboards as well as the vocal on Moses In, the Bullrushourses (hey, that’s how they spell it!)  Hiseman also produced the album, but on all but Dream the drumming and guitar playing are done by Rob Tait and Caleb Quaye respectively.  Veteran vocalist Paul Williams, perhaps best known to anyone but me for his work with Juicy Lucy (I remember him as a bassist for Zoot Money), takes the lion’s share of the vocals with three numbers, and pianist Gordon Beck appears on one track.

The two closing numbers in this set are live tracks that have no documentation whatsoever.  The liner notes speculate that this version of Pirate’s Dream just might have been a live performance by Colosseum and that No Amount of Loving (not on the original album) might be by Dick’s band Manchild, which he put together just after these sessions.

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I’ll be getting away from British Blues for my next couple of airings as I fill in on John Fuller’s Backstroke show beginning at 10pm on Monday evening the 18^th of this month.  Up for consideration are Blind Willie Johnson, Nappy Brown, Jimmy “Fast Fingers” Dawkins, Odetta, Earl Hooker, Blind Blake and even some BeBop piano by Bud Powell.  All that in three hours?  Probably not, but most of ‘em.

Then the following Wednesday will be my annual Mardi Gras show.  I have that show pretty much worked out and it should include a lot of Allen Toussaint, Earl King, and Nathan and his Zydeco Cha Chas.

Toussaint passed away in November and Dawkins in April of 2013 (it seemed more recently) and both ranked high in my esteem so I am hoping to put enough material together to make them both proud.  I should publish a blog the day of each show, as per usual.

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Since it is still relatively new, I thought I’d mention that KKUP is now streaming on the internet and, while it is still in a developing stage, we have been putting out the word.  I’m not all of that good with high-tech stuff, but it seems pretty easy to access.  If you go to our website at KKUP.org you will see on the home page a strip of options immediately above the pictures of the musicians the next to the last option being LISTEN ONLINE.  By clicking this, it brings up a choice of desktop or mobile.  I can only speak for the desktop but after maybe a minute I was receiving a crystal clear feed.  As already mentioned, this is still a work in progress and we are currently limited to a finite number of listeners at any one time.  I mention this so you will be aware to turn off the application when you are not actually listening.  (I put the player in my favorites bar for the easiest of access.)  Now we can reach our listeners in Los Gatos and Palo Alto, even my family in Canada.  Let your friends elsewhere know they can now listen to your favorite station, and while they have the home page open they can check out our schedule.

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Key to the Highway
Layla
Badge
Roll It Over
Pearly Queen (not Little Wing as announced)
Crossroads
   Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert 

Laundromat

Just the Smile
Wave Myself Goodbye
It’s You
Can’t Believe It’s True
Gypsy Woman
   Rory Gallagher 

Future Song

What the Morning Was After
Crabs
Same Old Thing
I Can’t Get It
Moses In, the Bullrushourses
No Amount of Loving
The Pirate’s Dream
   Dick Heckstall-Smith 

Walking Down the Road

Willie and the Hand Jive / Get Ready
The Sky Is Crying / Have You Ever Loved a
    Woman / Ramblin’ on my Mind
Further On Up the Road
   Eric Clapton (Crossroads 2) 

Blind Man Blues

Young Fashioned Ways
Who’s Gonna Be Your Sweet Man
I’m Ready
Walking Blues
I Don’t Know Why
Key to the Highway
   Rory Gallagher with Muddy Waters