John Mayall London Blues

John Mayall with the Bluesbreakers celebrates his 70th birthday with a concert featuring former guitarists Eric Clapton and Mick Taylor.

Dick Heckstall-Smith, Jack Bruce, John Stevens - This That (1994) {Atonal Records ACD 3017}
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© 1994 Atonal Records } ACD 3017
Jazz / Blues Rock / Fusion / Neo-Bop

Heckstall-Smith was an active member of the London jazz scene from the late 1950s. He joined Blues Incorporated, Alexis Korner's groundbreaking blues group, in 1962, recording the album R&B from the Marquee. The following year, he was a founding member of that band's breakaway unit, The Graham Bond Organization. (The lineup also included two future members of the blues-rock supergroup Cream: bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker.)

The History of Eric Clapton is a compilation double LP, released in 1972 by Polydor Records in the United Kingdom, and Atco Records in the United States. It features Eric Clapton performing in various bands between 1964 and 1970, including The Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos. The compilation is notable for helping Clapton's career when he was battling heroin addiction and making the song "Layla" famous. It is also notable for being perhaps the first compilation in rock music to collect music of a single rock musician that spans time, bands, music styles and record labels. The album cover picture was taken at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh while Clapton was playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on a Gibson Byrdland hollow-body guitar.

In 2002, Ace released Big Joe Louis & His Blues Kings/The Stars in the Sky, which contained two albums – Big Joe Louis & His Blues Kings (1989, originally released on Blue Horizon) and The Stars in the Sky (1992, originally on Tramp) – by Big Joe Louis & His Blues Kings on one compact disc.

Nine Below Zero started life in South London during 1977, in the midst of the punk rock boom in England – but their sound and inspiration were so totally counterintuitive to what was going on in punk rock that they scarcely seemed to be part of that movement, apart from their extremely energetic attack on their instruments. Rather than noise for its own sake or auto-destruction, their inspiration lay in classic Chicago blues (though John Mayall's early music and that of the Who and the Kinks from early in their careers also figured into their sound). Dennis Greaves (lead vocals, guitar), Peter Clark (bass), and Kenny Bradley (drums) – soon joined by Mark Feltham (who actually replaced a teacher of theirs who had sat in on the early gigs) on vocals and harmonica – were schoolmates and friends who shared a love of blues; all had all come into the world in the early '60s, and might well have resigned themselves to having missed the boat for the British blues revival by virtue of having been born in the midst of it. Instead, they reached back to that era and found themselves pegged as part of the "mod revival" in the midst of the punk era.

Eric Clapton Young Man Blues (1994 Japanese-only 16-track CD album featuring the 1960s rhythm and blues works of young "Slow Hand", including Bluesbreakers, Yardbirds & immediate sessions with Jimmy Page).
At his peak, Eric Clapton was nicknamed "God" by his fans, an indication of how highly regarded the guitarist was during his glory days. This phrase, immortalized in graffiti that spread across London in 1967, originated a few years earlier when Clapton was playing with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers just after leaving the Yardbirds in 1965. Clapton never was comfortable with the nickname - he embraced "Slowhand," titling his 1977 album after it - but "Clapton Is God" is a pivotal part of his story and an instrumental moment in the rise of the guitar hero, a rock & roll cliché that didn't exist prior to EC…

Paul Lamb is a British blues harmonica player and bandleader. He has had a four-decade long career as a blues harmonicist and bandleader, with fans around the world. Lamb’s initial interest in blues came from listening to John Mayall’s records; he then discovered the music of Sonny Terry, in whose style he thoroughly immersed himself for 12 years. He played in folk clubs and in 1975 was successful in a harmonica championship held in Germany. Around 1980, he began playing amplified harmonica, initially in Walter Horton’s style, and as a member of the Blues Burglars he recorded for the Red Lightnin’ label in 1986.

Like many black American blues and R&B artists, New Orleans singer and pianist Champion Jack Dupree found more respect and recognition in Europe than he did in his homeland, and he relocated to Europe in 1959, only rarely returning to the U.S. He cut several albums there, including the two included in this double-disc set from Beat Goes On, From New Orleans to Chicago, recorded in London in 1966, and Champion Jack Dupree and His Blues Band, tracked in the same city a year later (both were originally released on London Decca). Of the two, the latter release is the stronger (thanks in no small part to guitarist Mickey Baker), although From New Orleans is probably better known, mainly for the presence of Eric Clapton and John Mayall at the sessions…