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John Mayall: Live at The Marquee 1969 & The Masters
by Doug Collette
John Mayall had a reputation for being a rebel long before 1969. How else to explain his single-minded devotion to the blues in the face of Beatlemania? Still, in dispensing with a drummer and including no lead electric guitarist in the band he formed for The Turning Point (Polydor, 1969), Mayall was going against the very grain of the blues movement he had helped to establish alongside his illustrious sequence of lead guitarists--Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor.
John ...
Continue ReadingJohn Mayall and The Bluesbreakers: In the Palace of the King
by Doug Collette
Ostensibly a tribute to the late Freddie King, this CD also serves admirably as a showcase of John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers themselves. The band displays both versatility and finesse on a combination of covers by the Texas guitarist as well as two originals. Meanwhile their front man exhibits his usual authority as a band leader, while at the same time demonstrating enough humility to pay righteous homage to a kindred spirit of the blues.
Mayall's pleasure in playing and ...
Continue ReadingJohn Mayall and Al Kooper at The Egg
by R.J. DeLuke
John Mayall Quartet and Al Kooper Funk Faculty Band The Egg Albany, NY April 21, 2007Legendary British Bluesman John Mayall is still going strong at the age of 73, still preaching the gospel of the blues with all the energy and cleverness one has grown to expect over the decades. On his latest tour, which stopped at the Egg in Albany, N.Y. on April 21, he's saluting another blues icon, guitarist Freddie ...
Continue ReadingJohn Mayall (selected by): Picking the Blues: Pioneers of Boogie Woogie
by Robert R. Calder
Veteran English blues performer John Mayall's “reminiscences" here aren't “of great blues figures" but of encounters, often via recordings, of the very best barrelhouse, blues and boogie woogie piano music. Barrelhouse piano combined various different proportions of blues, ragtime and dance rhythms in the hands of technically unorthodox players. Jelly Roll Morton spoke of “specialists --each with a tiny repertoire nobody else could play. Bang on! Cow Cow Davenport also recorded ragtime, but “Cow ...
Continue ReadingJohn Mayall: Essentially John Mayall
by Doug Collette
Essentially John Mayall, a five-CD box set, is not mere nostalgia. Rather, like most anthologies devoted to the Father of British Blues, it supplies a historically accurate focus on his career by setting his most recent work in relief against earlier recordings. In doing so it reaffirms his virtues as bandleader, composer, musician and talent scout.
Four of these CDs comprise Mayall's work of recent vintage for Eagle Records, which does full justice to the legacy of the Bluesbreakers moniker. ...
Continue ReadingJohn Mayall and The Bluesbreakers: Road Dogs
by Doug Collette
During the course of his forty-year career, John Mayall has endured some fallow periods, but the British-born bluesman put himself into a creative stride when he renamed his band the Bluesbreakers back in 1984. Using the name which had gained such fame when including Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, and John McVie, among others, this seemingly cosmetic change brought Mayall to an elevated level of creativity that continues to this day, in the form of a brand new, self-produced studio album ...
Continue ReadingJohn Mayall: The Godfather of British Blues/The Turning Point
by Doug Collette
John Mayall's legacy as a legendary figure in blues music in general, not just in Britain, was well-established before the end of the sixties. By the time 1969 arrived, he had enlisted, collaborated with and seen move on, the likes of Eric Clapton, Peter Green, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Mick Taylor (among others), all of whom became, to a greater or lesser degree, famous names with other affiliations such as Cream, Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac.
True to his ...
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