February 2015 • Issue 19
features
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Heavy blues
The story of how Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and the class of ‘67 recast electric blues for a new generation.
William Bell
Soul icon on Stax and writing Born Under A Bad Sign for Albert King.
Jake Fussell
Son of a folklorist interpreting ancient blues for the modern world.
Ian McLagan
Bonnie Raitt, Billy Bragg and others pay tribute to the much-missed Faces and Small Faces keyboardist.
JJ Grey & Mofro
The charismatic leader of the Southern soul collective reveals the story behind his new album Ol’ Glory.
Steve Earle
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The Nashville rebel on the journey that led to the writing of Terraplane, his bluesiest album yet.
Randy Bachman
Bachman Turner Overdrive legend recruits Frampton, Bonamassa and Jeff Healey for new album Heavy Blues.
The birth of heavy blues
Vince Ray
The king of rockabilly art on his music and love of Link Wray.
How Hendrix inspired the Brit elite to kick blues up a few notches.
CeDell Davis
A rare encounter with the last man standing of delta blues.
rex, getty
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william bell
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jj grey & mofro
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randy bachman
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February 2015 • Issue 19
Regulars
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Testify
All the latest news from our throbbing world of blues including British guitarist Laurence Jones securing his place at the European Blues Challenge in Brussels in March and a book commemorating last year’s Walter Trout tribute show in London. You also find interviews with artists both established and new.
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Call & Response
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Under The Influence
The South African singer and guitarist on spreading the blues, getting caught in hurricanes and learning to turn it down a bit thanks to a gig with legendary Chicago pianist Henry Gray.
The erstwhile guitarist with The Kinks and power-chord pioneer recalls the vinyl discoveries from the likes of Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker and others that set him on his lifelong rock’n’roll journey.
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Cuttin’ Heads
One great song. Two great versions... but which one is best? This round features the original Sam & Dave hit I Thank You taking on a spirited, hirsute cover by Texan tres hombres ZZ Top. As ever, blues scholar and aficionado Charles Shaar Murray picks the victor.
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First Time I Met The Blues
Bedfordshire gunslinger Ben Poole remembers learning from B.B. King, jamming with Jeff Beck and drinking with Gary Moore.
Dan Patlansky
Reviews All the CDs and DVDs you need to feed your blues obsession, reviewed by our team of aficionados.
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reissues
117
lives
getty
albums
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heavy blues
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1966, November 25 Having created a buzz with a handful of small-venue appearances, including the now legendary jam with Cream at Regent Street Polytechnic which had left Eric Clapton gobsmacked at his prowess, Jimi Hendrix was officially launched with a showcase gig in The Bag O’Nails, a tiny but influential music biz Mecca in London’s Soho. As well as key journalists invited by Hendrix’s manager Chas Chandler, a Bag O’Nails appearance ensured that the fledgeling Jimi Hendrix Experience would be seen by the venue’s regular clientele, which included Paul McCartney, The Who, Eric Burdon and others. John Mayall (The Bluesbreakers): When Jimi first came to England, Chas Chandler had put the word out that he’d found this phenomenal guitar player in New York, and he could play the guitar behind his head and with his teeth and everything. The buzz was out before Jimi had even been seen here, so people were
anticipating his performance, and he more than lived up to what we were expecting. Terry Reid (rock vocalist): We were all hanging out at The Bag O’Nails: Keith, Mick Jagger. Brian [Jones] comes skipping through, like, all happy about something. Paul McCartney walks in. Jeff Beck walks in. Jimmy Page. [Ed’s note: Page denies having been there.] I thought, “What’s this? A bloody convention or something?” Here comes Jim, one of his military jackets, hair all over the place, pulls out this left-handed Stratocaster, beat to hell, looks like he’s been chopping wood with it. And he gets up, all soft-spoken. And all of a sudden, “WHOOOR-RRAAAWWRR!” And he breaks into Wild Thing, and it was all over. There were guitar players weeping. They had to mop the floor up. He was piling it on, solo after solo. I could see everyone’s fillings falling out. When he finished, it was silence. Nobody knew what to do. Everybody was dumbstruck, completely in shock. Keith Altham (journalist, NME): Jimi was almost too much, to be absolutely honest. He
getty x2, rex x2
ike all the great overnight sensations, Jimi Hendrix took years to get off the ground. His was a long road to fame: from the little boy who, in 1958, used his beat-up guitar to imitate TV cartoon sound effects, to the 1964 guitarslinger who hired out his talents to Little Richard, The Isley Brothers and others, to the outlandish psychedelic six-string shaman who flew into London in late 1966. However, within weeks of Hendrix being launched to the Big Smoke’s goggle-eyed media at The Bag O’Nails club on Friday November 25, 1966, virtually every major British blues guitarist found himself rethinking his musical direction. Inevitably, the purists would continue to recycle the past and the unimaginative would slavishly emulate Hendrix, but a handful of inspired innovators would choose to fashion their own unique styles until, out of that seething maelstrom of creativity, heavy blues would be born.
heavy blues
The icon in action: Jimi with Strat and Marshall stack.
his amazing blues but his physical assault on the guitar. His actions were all of one accord, an explosive package. Me, Eric and Jimmy, we were cursed because we were from Surrey. We all looked like we’d walked out of a Burton’s shop window. He hit me like an earthquake when he arrived. I had to think long and hard about what I did next. Mick Jagger: I loved Jimi Hendrix from the beginning. The moment I saw him, I thought he was fantastic. I was an instant convert. Mr. Jimi Hendrix is the best thing I’ve ever seen. It was exciting, sexy, interesting. He didn’t have a very good voice but made up for it with his guitar.
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He breaks into Wild Thing and it was all over. Guitar players were weeping. They had to mop the floor up. was overwhelming in that small space. You knew something special was going on, you knew the guy was obviously a brilliant guitarist but it was very difficult to take in as a journalist. Jeff Beck: The thing I noticed was not only
or almost half a decade, Hendrix had criss-crossed America, honing his talents as a sideman and studio guitarist, ratcheting up credits with Little Richard, The Isley Brothers, Sam Cooke and many others. His was an impressive résumé, but fame and fortune hardly seemed any closer in 1966 than they did at the start of the decade. In the autumn of 1966, Chas Chandler, previously best-known as the bassist for The Animals, had ‘discovered’ Hendrix playing in a Greenwich Village club during a night out in New York and immediately decided to bring him to the UK. Chandler’s instincts were absolutely right. Not only would Hendrix’s musicianship and image make him stand out from London’s axe elite, but had he remained in America, he would probably never have got his head above water. John Lee Hooker: Eric Clapton, John Mayall and all those other people over in England made the blues a big thing. In the States, people didn’t want to know. Tony Garland (assistant to Chas Chandler): White America was listening to Doris Day. Black American music got nowhere near white AM radio. Jimi was too white for black radio. Here, there were a lot of white guys listening to blues from America and wanting to sound like their heroes. Stephen Dale Petit (contemporary blues guitarist/genre expert): The British contribution to the blues is equal, in my eyes, to what Robert Johnson or Blind Lemon Jefferson did – all of those guys through to Muddy Waters. I think it’s a certainty that without the British blues boom, the music would not have anything remotely like the profile it does. Remember too that when Chas invited Jimi to London, Jimi did not ask about money or contracts. He asked if Chas would introduce him to Beck and Clapton.
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sing his extensive contacts network, Chandler had engineered a huge profile for Hendrix since the day he arrived in London, but from November 1966 he shifted into overdrive. In the next two months, Jimi would play at The Marquee, The Cromwellian, Blaises, The Speakeasy and elsewhere, with London’s rock elite turning out regularly to hear him. Any muso who hadn’t heard of Hendrix after The Bag O’Nails launch would know him now, and already his influence was being seen as well as heard. Two weeks after The Bag O’Nails, when Cream appeared at The Marquee Club, Clapton was sporting a frizzy perm and he left his guitar feeding back against the amp, just as he’d seen Jimi do.
Unsung sixstring heroes Six overlooked pioneers of blues-rock guitar.
Les Paul
The man born Lester William Polsfuss was a genius. This is the guy who developed multitrack recording (from seized Nazi technology, no less), inspired the construction of the solidbody Gibson guitar that carries his John Hancock, and built the first guitar effects units. He was a huge star in the 40s and 50s, releasing layered guitar classics like How High The Moon with his then wife Mary Ford. The heavy blues explosion wouldn’t have happened without his hard graft.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta was the first rock guitar hero. Chuck Berry, Elvis sideman Scotty Moore and Hank Marvin of The Shadows might get the props as pioneers but she was cuttin’ heads before any of them. She was playing rock’n’roll in the 40s, and she played electric guitar onstage – not hidden in some orchestra pit but slung round her neck. Listen to her rapid-fire licks on her 1945 hit Strange Things Happening Every Day and say you don’t hear her influence on Led Zep’s first album.
Link Wray
Amplifier distortion was regarded as a fault before this one-lunged half-Shawnee Native American proto-punk deliberately poked holes in his speakers to get a filthy guitar tone. He used it to spectacular effect on his ’58 single Rumble, the heavy blues almost 10 years ahead of the curve, which was banned on some radio stations for ‘potentially’ inspiring teen violence. Rumble gave us the power chord, fired up Pete Townshend and is valued by Jimmy Page as a life-changing 45. classicrockmagazine.com 37
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william bell
He prototyped country soul, invented the Stax Records sound and wrote a stonecold blues classic to boot. William Bell reveals all about his life in music.
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Words: Alice Clark Portraits: Bill Carrier
n 1961, William Bell entered Memphis’ Stax Recording Studios at 926 E. McLemore. Backed by the Triumphs – pianist Marvell Thomas, organist Booker T Jones, bassist Lewis Steinberg and drummer Ron Capone – one of a number of groups acting as the Stax engine room at the time but also recording artists in their own right, he recorded his debut solo single. You Don’t Miss Your Water was a secular spiritual he’d written in a New York hotel room while on tour with the jazz pianist Phineas Newborn Sr and his orchestra. Produced by Chips Moman, it was delivered by Bell’s yearning tenor, a fine balance between vulnerability, knowing and control. Pinned to churchy organ and countryish guitar, it guaranteed Bell’s legacy. One of Stax Records’ first major hits, it marked Bell as a chief architect of Southern soul and provided the label with a sound it could return to time and again. Bell shrugs his shoulders when asked about the recording of that benchmark 45 today. “I never intended to be a singer or songwriter,” he says. “I wanted to be a doctor and was just performing to raise money for my college fees. Trouble was, I kept having hit records so I never got to go back and do that study.” Indeed, those hit records just kept coming. During his tenure as a solo act at Stax from 1961 to ’75, when the label folded, he meshed black gospel with white country on a groundbreaking series of sevens, from 1967’s ballad Everybody Loves A Winner to his Christmas hymnal Everyday Will Be Like A Holiday. Then there was 1968’s Private Number, his sassy duet with Judy Clay; I Forgot To Be Your Lover, a mournful slice of country soul; and A Tribute To A King, his heartfelt eulogy to the then recently deceased Otis Redding. He also provided Albert King with his signature tune and the future blues standard Born Under A Bad Sign in 1967. Bell, who started out at Stax singing backgrounds in 1960, was born on July 16, 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee as William Yarborough. He took the surname Bell from his grandmother’s first name Belle. She was a gospel singer, as was his mother, and Bell began singing in his local Baptist church aged seven. “Memphis was the place to be at the turn of the 60s,” he enthuses. “Music was changing so very quickly. From gospel, blues and jazz, you got doo-wop, R&B and soul. Every street corner had a group singing on it, every venue, from the Flamingo Room to the Palace Theater had someone performing at it. And then you had the Satellite Record Shop which was a real teen hangout. It was run by Estelle Axton, who also ran Stax with her brother Jim Stewart. And at Stax Records, you had Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, you had Booker T and the M.G.’s, Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, everybody who was anybody.” While his mother and grandmother grounded him in gospel, his grandfather introduced him to jazz via a collection of Count Basie records. The radio broadened his taste, giving him Sam Cooke, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. “From them I acquired a taste for ballads and harmonies. Sam was a role model – he showed you that you classicrockmagazine.com 47
Fired by a passion for Booker T, Ian McLagan’s distinctive Hammond became a key part of the Faces and Small Faces’ sound. We look back at the life and career of a man who put a new spin on old blues, bringing it to a new generation.
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“I’m absolutely devastated. Ian McLagan embodied the true spirit of the Faces.” McLagan’s playing was an essential ingredient in the success of hit singles such as the Small Faces’ All Or Nothing and the Faces’ Stay With Me, and he co-wrote some of the Faces’ best-loved songs, including Cindy Incidentally, Borstal Boys and Three Button Hand Me Down. McLagan was a humble man who always had time to chat to fans and sign autographs, and he was never slow to credit those whose music had inspired him. He told The Blues: “When I heard [Booker T & The M.G.’s] Green Onions I just had to do that, I had to make that sound. I owe a huge debt to Booker T Jones. I wouldn’t have had a career without him.” Though it was with diminutive mods the Small Faces that he had his first taste of chart recognition, his musical career started in 1963 with R&B band The Muleskinners, whom he formed with friends from Twickenham art school. The Muleskinners’ raw, spirited, 1965 cover
of the Willie Dixon-authored, Howlin’ Wolf number Back Door Man on Fontana Records sank without trace, but the band did get to back Howlin’ Wolf and his guitarist Hubert Sumlin, Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter, all of whom McLagan revered. He remembered Wolf fondly: “He was such a kind guy. He comes across as ferocious and scary as an entertainer, but he wasn’t anything like that. He was a sweet man. [When The Muleskinners first met him] he put his arms around the five of us and said, ‘My boys.’ I was full of awe at being near to the great man.” A brief period in the Boz People, with future King Crimson and Bad Company bassist Boz Burrell on vocals, followed. The high point for Mac was playing bottom of the bill on The Byrds’ first UK package tour. Later, he found the band with whom he would achieve fame (though little fortune), and allow him to explore his Booker T fixation in full. That was, of course, the Small Faces.
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an ‘Mac’ McLagan died aged 69 on December 3, 2014 in hospital in his adopted home town of Austin, Texas after suffering a stroke. The Hammond organist and Wurlitzer electric pianist, born on May 12, 1945 in Hounslow, London, left an indelible imprint on the UK and US musical landscape. He was a key player in both the Small Faces and Faces, and a prominent sideman over the years that followed, playing with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal. In recent times, he resurrected the career as a singer-songwriter that he’d begun in the late 70s, playing live with the Bump Band. His latest album, the critically acclaimed United States, was released in 2014. On hearing the news of McLagan’s death, Small Faces and Faces drummer Kenney Jones said, “I am completely devastated by this shocking news,” while Faces singer Rod Stewart added,
Ian ‘Mac’ McLagan
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