The Yardbirds Take It Easy Baby

Spread over four discs, this set contains every released recording the Yardbirds made under the leadership of their manager Giorgio Gomelsky from 1963 to 1966…

The Historic Classic Recordings are from the early years of The Yardbirds. The double CD features studio and live recordings from the London Marquee Club and the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, Surrey. Not only Eric Clapton, but also the legendary Sonny Boy Williamson, with whom the band toured in December 1963, were involved in the fantastic recordings. Also, the contributions of Jimmy Page in some pieces are unmistakable. With For Your Love, Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, Shapes Of Things, Draggin 'My Tail (with Jimmy Page), Evil Hearted You, I Is not Got You, A Certain Girl, Got To Hurry, Too Much Monkey Business, Mr. You're a Better Man Than I, Choker (with Jimmy Page), Honey In Your Hips, West Coast Idea, I Wish You Would, Freight Loader (with Jimmy Page), Snake Drive, Jeff's Blues and others, a total of 36 titles.

Recorded December 8th, 1963 at Craw-Daddy Club, Richmond and at the Club A Go Go, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England on 30 Dec. 1963.
Sonny Boy Williamson was, in many ways, the ultimate blues legend. By the time of his death in 1965, he had been around long enough to have played with Robert Johnson at the start of his career and Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Robbie Robertson at the end of it. In between, he drank a lot of whiskey, hoboed around the country, had a successful radio show for 15 years, toured Europe to great acclaim, and simply wrote, played, and sang some of the greatest blues ever etched into Black phonograph records…

Eric Clapton has become one of Britain's most successful guitar heroes of the last three decades, a writer, singer and performer who has consistently produced quality singles and albums which have sold millions around the globe, and whose live shows are always guaranteed standing-room-only events. Clapton has now been a solo performer for so long that it is easy to forget that his formative musical years were spent working with a variety of different blues bands, including John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith, and not forgetting the legendary Yardbirds.

Of all the British acts that started messing with the blues in the early '60s, the Animals always sounded the toughest and most committed to the cause. They didn't have a genius guitarist like the Yardbirds or the Bluesbreakers, and couldn't write memorable original material like the Rolling Stones, but Eric Burdon was one of the few singers in the U.K. whose guts and ferocity approached that of his influences (without sounding like he was simply copying what he'd heard), and the tough, no-nonsense attack of guitarist Hilton Valentine, bassist Chas Chandler, and drummer John Steel drove the Animals with style and power, while keyboard man Alan Price gave the band plenty of welcome melodic flair…

The title is a bit of a misnomer; this double CD only includes the complete sessions that the Animals recorded with producer Mickie Most in 1964 and 1965. The 40 songs capture the band at their peak, including most of their best and biggest hits: "House of the Rising Sun," "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," "Bring It on Home to Me," "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," "I'm Crying," "It's My Life," and "Boom Boom." Most of the rest of the tunes don't match the excellence of these smashes, though they're solid. The great majority of them are covers of vintage R&B/rock tunes by Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and the like, which aren't quite as durable as reinterpretations from the same era by the Stones and Yardbirds.