Plenty of British bluesmen have sold more records, but few command as much respect as John Mayall OBE. With a back catalogue of close to 60 albums, and kick-starting the careers of countless stadium-filling galacticos, there’s a solid pub argument that nobody has done so much, for so long, to keep British blues afloat. No wonder they call him the Godfather.
ESSENTIAL Classics
_Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton _
John Mayall And The Bluesbreakers
Decca, 1966
The inevitable first purchase, 1966’s so-called Beano album is the high-water mark of the 60s British blues boom, Mayall’s finest hour and Eric Clapton’s precocious launch pad. From the languid opening swoop of Otis Rush’s All Your Love, through the jet-fuelled Hideaway, to spring-heeled Mayall originals like Key To Love and Little Girl, this is amped-up blues rock that walks a tightrope between reverential and rip-it-up exciting. Nearly 50 years after it hit number six in the UK, there’s a case for saying that nobody involved has ever flown higher.
A Hard Road
John Mayall And The Bluesbreakers
Decca, 1967
Producer Mike Vernon hit the roof when The Bluesbreakers rolled into Decca Studios without Eric Clapton. He needn’t have panicked. The canny Mayall’s new signing, 20-year-old nonentity Peter Green, was patently up to snuff, whether bleeding soul over his self-penned instrumental The Supernatural, detonating Freddie King’s The Stumble, or dovetailing with Mayall on top-drawer originals like the morose title track.
Green and bassist John McVie would split that same year for Fleetwood Mac, but their legacy is an album that snaps at The Bluesbreakers’ heels.
SUPERIOR Reputation cementing
Crusade
John Mayall And The Bluesbreakers
Decca, 1967
Mayall was outraged by the untrumpeted death of J.B. Lenoir, and Crusade was his attempt to force the blues down the throat of the mainstream (“I hope you’ll join forces with me,” he writes in the sleeve notes).
With Green gone, his eye had settled on a teenage Mick Taylor, who brings equal parts soul and swagger. Crusade took just seven hours to record and mix, which perhaps accounts for its wham-bam brilliance. The band tips its hat on The Death Of J.B. Lenoir, and Taylor arguably pips Clapton’s Hideaway with his jaw-dropping instrumental Snowy Wood.
Blues From Laurel Canyon
John Mayall
Decca, 1968
Mayall had spent the summer of 1968 crashing at Frank Zappa’s dissolute Laurel Canyon home. This loose concept album is his postcard, opening with the roar of an airliner touching down (Vacation), then lurching through sticky accounts of musos (The Bear) and LA groupies (the jazzy Miss James). The rhythm section of drummer Colin Allen and bassist Steve Thompson provide a taut backbone, but the star of the piece is a ridiculously precocious Mick Taylor, whose pugnacious, heart-in-fingers fretwork made his exit for the Stones the following year feel like a step down.
Bare Wires
John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers
Decca, 1968
Bold moves all round, as Bare Wires binned the Crusade rhythm section, added brass and kicked off with a 23-minute title ‘suite’. Jazzier and lyrically introspective, the album rewarded open-minded listeners with a volley of cuts that still dazzle, from the rug-cutting funk of No Reply (Mick Taylor working the wah-wah pedal with Hendrix-worthy panache) to the parping slow-blues of I’m A Stranger. It tested the faith of his trad-blues fans, but the consensus was a thumbs-up: Bare Wires gave Mayall his highest UK chart placing (number three) and broke him in the States.
The Turning Point
John Mayall
Polydor, 1969
By the end of the 60s, the man who mobilised electric blues was restless, dropping the Bluesbreakers brand and recording a live album of self-described “low-volume music”. Out went the drums and blazing lead guitar; in came John Almond’s saxophone and Jon Mark’s acoustic finger-style nuances, for some of the folkiest and rootsiest tracks of Mayall’s career. So Hard To Share drips atmosphere, and I’m Gonna Fight For You J.B. is campfire- intimate, but the pick is the closing Room To Move, its chippy harp-led strut remaining a high point of Mayall shows to this day.
GOOD Worth exploring
USA Union
John Mayall
Polydor, 1970
Mayall’s recruitment of an all-American band was a blow to national pride, but the line-up of Canned Heat’s Harvey Mandel and Larry Taylor alongside the emotive electric violin of Don ‘Sugarcane’ Harris proved a potent mix on this love-letter to then-partner Nancy Throckmorton.
With its generally laidback vibe, it’s the spiritual sequel to The Turning Point, and while the material isn’t quite up to that album there is frequent magic in highlights like You Must Be Crazy and Crying. Best of all is Nature’s Disappearing, its jazzy lilt concealing a stinging ecological polemic (‘Man’s a filthy creature, raping the land and water and the air…’).
Back To The Roots
John Mayall
Polydor, 1971
It was certainly a star-studded prospect, with Bluesbreakers alumni Clapton, Taylor and Keef Hartley briefly lured back to the fold, alongside Mayall’s US band of the period. In practice, while the chemistry doesn’t always spark like the old days, Back To The Roots offers enough gems for a spot on the podium. _Prisons On The Road _is a barrelhouse pop at the daily commute, and Taylor has rarely sounded sweeter than on Marriage Madness, but the peak is Accidental Suicide, on which the guesting guitar heroes jockey for position. Remixed versions appeared on Archive To The Eighties, but Roots is the better option.
Jazz Blues Fusion
John Mayall
Polydor, 1972
Don’t let the cappucino-and-polo-neck connotations of the title scare you off. Mayall lured a crack squad of jazz cats into the fold – including guitarist Freddy Robinson and trumpeter Blue Mitchell – but this live album is anything but po-faced muso pseudery. Between the upbeat anarchy of Good Time Boogie and the brassy bounce of Mess Around, there’s plenty to scratch the hard-core’s blues itch, while there are few finer showcases for the bandleader’s formidable harp chops than Exercise In C Major. Mayall deemed the short-lived line-up a “dynamite combination”, and this album sounds like one hell of a night out.
AVOID
Big Man Blues
John Mayall
Music Avenue, 2012
John Mayall doesn’t make ‘bad’ albums as such, but he does knock out the odd workmanlike one. There’s nothing wrong with this one, recorded in the early 80s and repackaged various times since. The line-up – James Quill Smith, in particular, is a capable guitarist – make a decent fist of cuts like Jimmy Reed’s Baby, What You Want Me To Do and J.B. Lenoir’s Mama Talk To Your Daughter. Elsewhere though, on some lacklustre Mayall originals like John Lee Boogie, there’s a wagon-circling feel, and changes that can be seen coming a mile off. Not a car crash, it’s just another so-so blues album. And God knows we’ve got enough of those.
ESSENTIAL PLAYLIST
STEPPIN’ OUT
Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton
KEY TO LOVE
Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton
_NATURE’S DISAPPEARING _
USA Union
SO MANY ROADS
Looking Back
_OH, PRETTY WOMAN _
Crusade
_I’M YOUR WITCHDOCTOR _
1965 single
A HARD ROAD
A Hard Road
2401
Blues From Laurel Canyon
ROOM TO MOVE
The Turning Point
_GOOD TIME BOOGIE _
Jazz Blues Fusion
_MARRIAGE MADNESS _
Back To The Roots
_CRAWLING UP A HILL _
1964 single
_PICTURE ON THE WALL _
Looking Back
_THE SUPERNATURAL _
A Hard Road
NO REPLY
Bare Wires
THE STUMBLE
A Hard Road
WHAT HAPPENED IN 1933?
Mayall was born in 1933. This is also what happened that year:
Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge began
Hitler comes to power in Germany
King Kong premiers in New York
America repeals prohibition
The controversial Bodyline cricket series between England and Australia happens
