On Tue, 23 Jul 2024 21:19:03 -0400, DianeE <
DianeE@NoSpam.net> wrote:
But I can't get past the Times's paywall today to give you any more info
on his death.
from The New York Times:
|
John Mayall, Pioneer of British Blues, Is Dead at 90
John Mayall, the pioneering British bandleader whose mid-1960s blues
ensembles served as incubators for some of the biggest stars of rocks
golden era, died on Monday. He was 90.
The death was confirmed in a statement on Mr. Mayalls official
Facebook page. The statement did not give a cause or specify where he
died, saying only that he died in his California home.
Though he played piano, organ, guitar and harmonica and sang lead
vocals in his own bands with a high, reedy tenor, Mr. Mayall earned
his reputation as the godfather of British blues not for his own
playing or singing but for recruiting {as sidemen} and polishing the
talents of one gifted young lead guitarist after another.
In his most fertile period, between 1965 and 1969, those budding stars
included Eric Clapton, who left to form the band Cream and eventually
became a hugely successful solo artist; Peter Green, who left to found Fleetwood Mac; and Mick Taylor, who was snatched from the Mayall band
by the Rolling Stones.
A more complete list of the alumni of Mr. Mayalls band of that era,
known as the Bluesbreakers, reads like a Whos Who of British pop
royalty. The drummer Mick Fleetwood and the bassist John McVie were
also founding members of Fleetwood Mac. The bassist Jack Bruce joined
Mr. Clapton in Cream. The bassist Andy Fraser was an original member
of Free. Aynsley Dunbar would go on to play drums for Frank Zappa,
Journey and Jefferson Starship.
In his book Clapton: The Autobiography (2007), Mr. Clapton described
playing in the Bluesbreakers under Mr. Mayalls tutelage as a
demanding but rewarding kind of musical finishing school. After
leaving the Yardbirds and joining the Mayall band in April 1965,
grateful that someone saw my worth, he wrote, he moved into a tiny
little cupboard room at the top of Johns house so that he could
better soak up all the lessons he wanted Mr. Mayall to teach him.
After guitarists everywhere took notice of his first two albums, he
started touring regularly in the United States and Europe.
With long curly hair and a beard, which gave him a look not unlike
Jesus, he had the air of a favorite schoolmaster who still manages to
be cool, Mr. Clapton recalled. He had the most incredible collection
of records I had ever seen, and over the better part of a year, when
I had any spare time, I would sit in this room listening to records
and playing along with them, honing my craft.
The one album that Mr. Clapton recorded with Mr. Mayall, Blues
Breakers (1966), is often credited with kick-starting the electric
blues boom of the 1960s among young Americans and Britons. With songs
by Robert Johnson, Otis Rush, Freddie King and Ray Charles, as well as
Mr. Mayall himself, the album provided a repertoire, arrangements and
a thick guitar sound that would be widely copied by hundreds of bands
in both countries. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Blues
Breakers No. 195 on its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All
Time.
John Mayall was born in Macclesfield, England, just outside
Manchester, on Nov. 29, 1933. His father, Murray, who played guitar in
local pubs and collected records, and his mother, Beryl, stimulated
his interest in music, but he trained as an artist and graphic
designer at the Manchester College of Art and, after doing military
service in Korea, worked for several years for advertising agencies.
(He would later put that experience to use by designing the covers of
many of his albums.)
Mr. Mayall was already 30 when he decided to become a full-time
musician and moved to London, where performers like Alexis Korner and
Cyril Davies had already carved out a niche for the blues.
Financially, it was tough going: Even when he had future stars like
Mr. Clapton, Mr. Green and Mr. Taylor in his band, the Bluesbreakers
followed a grueling routine of touring by van and playing short
engagements on cramped stages in small clubs, often for audiences of
only a few dozen people.
But after guitarists everywhere took notice of the Blues Breakers
album and its equally influential follow-up, A Hard Road (1967),
featuring Mr. Green, Mr. Mayalls horizons expanded. He started
touring regularly in the United States and Europe: The Diary of a
Band, a two-disc set recorded live in the Netherlands and other
locales with Mr. Taylor, was released officially, and performances at
the Fillmore West and in Germany and Italy eventually circulated in
bootleg versions.
In 1969, after recording the album Blues From Laurel Canyon and
befriending members of the American blues band Canned Heat, Mr. Mayall
moved to the Los Angeles area, where he lived for the rest of his
life. That led to a fundamental shift in the composition of his bands,
with British musicians giving way to Americans.
His first American group included Harvey Mandel on guitar and
Sugarcane Harris on electric violin. Later units featured the
guitarists Sonny Landreth, Walter Trout and Coco Montoya, all of whom
went on to successful solo careers.
Mr. Mayall had already begun moving away from what Mr. Clapton called
his textbook blues style before coming to the United States, forming
the jazzy, drummerless acoustic band that recorded The Turning Point
in 1969. In the 1970s, however, he would go deeper into, as the title
of a 1972 album put it, a Jazz Blues Fusion, working with jazz
musicians like the trumpeter Blue Mitchell and the saxophonists Ernie
Watts and Red Holloway.
But Mr. Mayall never abandoned the blues altogether, and in the 1980s
he re-formed the Bluesbreakers, with which he would continue to tour
and record, with constantly shifting personnel, well into the 21st
century. In some editions of the band, he was joined by alumni like
Mr. Taylor and Mr. McVie; Mr. Clapton would occasionally play with him
as well.
In all, Mr. Mayall released more than 70 albums, the most recent of
which was The Sun Is Shining Down (2022). He also issued several
DVDs, including one of a 70th-birthday concert in 2003 at which he was
joined by many of his most prominent former sidemen.
He is survived by his children, Gaz, Jason, Red, Ben, Zak and Samson;
seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. His two marriages
ended in divorce.
It was announced in April that Mr. Mayall, along with his fellow blues
artists Alexis Korner and Big Mama Thornton, would receive this years
musical influence awards from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
In 1979, a fire destroyed Mr. Mayalls house in Los Angeles. Lost in
that blaze was most of the record collection that had so impressed Mr.
Clapton and other blues initiates, which by that time had grown to
include thousands of discs, including many rare 45 and 78 r.p.m. blues
singles, as well as many of the live tapes Mr. Mayall had made of his
own bands in the 1960s.
In 2014, Mr. Mayall sat down for an evening-long interview at the
Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, in which he reminisced about the
challenges of being a crusader for the blues in London in the early
1960s. He recalled playing 11 shows a week in dens of iniquity and
having to persuade Mr. McVies parents to let their son, who was
underage at the time, join his band.
It was extremely exciting, he said of those times. We all felt we
were part of the same family and that we really were connecting with
people, a new generation of people, and also having a great time
playing. You just continually played; it wasnt worth going home.
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