Less than three months prior to his induction into the Rock &, Roll Hall of Fame, John Mayall passed away on Monday at the age of 90 from unknown reasons. But for scores of song fans, the famous uncle of American blues has been a hall of fame since the 1960s when his legendary group, the Bluesbreakers, was a key launching pad in the careers of at least seven musicians who are now themselves Rock Hall inductees.
They include Fleetwood Mac co-founders Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood Mac, and John McVie, who co-founded the founding energy group Product after leaving Mayall’s group. They also co-founded Fleetwood Mac as a result of their involvement with The Bluesbreakers.
Other Bluesbreakers ‘ alums who rose to fame after joining Mayall’s band include drummer Aynsley Dunbar and guitarist Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones, who later joined Frank Zappa’s band and co-founded the band Journey. Both Taylor and Dunbar are even Rock Hall recruits.
When you join John’s circle, you’ve pretty little reached the pinnacle. What do you do next, exactly? past Bluesbreakers ‘ guitar Walter Trout said in a 2021 San Diego Union-Tribune meeting.
However, Mayall had a tendency to underplay his abilities as a talent scout and coach, despite being rightly glad of his unwavering ability to discover and nourish talented young players who went on to have distinguished careers of their own.
In a 2005 Union-Tribune interview, Mayall stated,” It’s really wonderful being able to earn a living doing what I love.” I’m not going ahead. There is a section where I’m compared to some renowned figures, and it’s a pleasure to keep playing because of those individuals.
On November 29, 1933, Mayall was born in Macclesfield, England, close to Manchester. A qualified graphic designer and actor, he was 30 when devoted himself to audio after a stay serving in the military in Korea. Shortly after, he shared his passion for American music legends like Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, Otis Rush, and J. Along with other players in England, B. Lenoir created a devoted next.
The teams of Mayall’s rings changed regularly and audiences joyfully welcomed the chance to hear the latest popular young musicians he had discovered. Mayall became a permanent native of Southern California in 1969 after numerous American tour dates.
Mayall furthermore played keyboards and guitar, and he was a peculiar, reedy-voiced song and harp player. While he diligently championed music by British blues pioneers, he was an accomplished musician whose lyrics had a decidedly personal stamp.
In his 2005 Union-Tribune meeting, Mayall said,” If you’re going to sing things, you should speak something individual.” That’s what the primary characteristic of blue is: you tell your story. I’ve always been a fan of singing about topics that I have no experience with.
Mayall performed many days in San Diego over the years, most frequently at the Belly Up. His Poway Center for the Performing Arts performance in the last area was in 2021. He was 88 and it was the last trip of his job.
Mayall was unable to attend conversations because of her declining health at the time. Our in-depth 2021 feature article about him, which includes estimates from a number of his artistic partners and some San Diego musicians, is available in whole below.
John Mayall, famed ‘ Godfather of English blues,’ on last musical tour, at 88, after episode with COVID-19
By George Varga
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Dec. 5, 2021
When he released his second album, A Hard Road, in 1967, he was not yet 34. He was the famous” Godfather of English music” and a key artistic force for at least seven Rock &, Roll Hall of Fame recruits.
The end of that street appears to be looming for the person whose pioneering group, The Bluesbreakers, served as the launching pad for a number of gifted young players bound for fame 54 years after. Some key examples include the Rolling Stones ‘ Mick Taylor, Cream’s Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce, and Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie.
When you join John’s band, you’ve pretty much reached the pinnacle. What do you do next, exactly? ” said guitarist Walter Trout, 70, who played with Mayall for much of the 1980s.
Trout and his band will also play a Saturday performance at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts as Mayall’s current concert schedule includes. Mayall will be performing on six dates between Friday and December 17 before having no more shows scheduled for the moment.
His next ( and possibly last ) album”, The Sun is Shining Down,” will be released Jan. 28 — nearly one year to the day after this year’s release of his 35-CD career retrospective box set”, John Mayall: The First Generation.”
His upcoming half-dozen shows might make for a bittersweet combination of celebration and reflection for this unwavering supporter of American blues. For his current band’s three members and his devoted fans, of course.
Mayall announced this fall that he is bowing out from touring, although the Woodland Hills-based singer, harmonica player, guitarist and keyboardist hopes to do some periodic one-off gigs in and near Southern California. In 1969, he relocated from his native England to Los Angeles.
Mayall, who turned 88 on Monday, stated in a statement from September 22 that” I have decided, due to the risks of the pandemic and my advancing age, that it is time for me hang up my road shoes.”
” As a result, I will be radically reducing my touring schedule and will be limiting my performances to local shows near my home in California and the occasional concert further afield. However, my epic road dog days have come to an end.
Those days have been truly epic. The number of concerts Mayall has performed number in the thousands. His career started almost 60 years ago in England, where he soon gained praise as a top-notch band leader, dedicated performer, and unusually astute judge of young talent.
His live performances lasted almost unabated until May 2019, when a bad case of pneumonia forced him to cancel about six weeks of spring concerts in the U.S. after an extensive European tour.
Mayall returned to the road that same summer, followed by another tour of Europe in the fall of 2019. In the first half of 2019, he played four Southern California dates, culminating with a performance at Belly Up in Solana Beach. Over the past four decades, Mayall has given numerous concerts at the venue.
His Belly Up show was followed a few weeks later by an ill-fated trip to London. Mayall performed there on February 25, 2020, at the” Mick &, Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green and the Early Years of Fleetwood Mac” all-star concert.
John had a bad case of COVID at the end of that trip, according to Jay Davenport, the drummer in Mayall’s band since 2008, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
” And, then, we did n’t play a note of music together for a year-and-a-half because of the pandemic. I believe there were some COVID-related lingering effects and, in general, some health issues. Simply put, it felt very risky to do a lot of traveling. John seemed more fragile.”
Still blows my mind, in my opinion.
Mayall enjoyed a quick return to the stage in August, playing for 90 to 212 hours per performance. His distinctively reedy singing voice and instrumental prowess were seemingly unaffected by his bout with COVID and he earned glowing reviews for his Aug. 22 show at Chicago’s City Winery.
However, at least one review of his Windy City gig revealed that Mayall’s set list’s chronological order made him appear confused at times. Nothing was amiss aside from that.
” John would announce the same song a few times and lose his place in the set list,” Davenport, 61, said”. On the other hand, once he had the appropriate song, he slammed his fist!
He was incredible when we spent four nights in Park City, Utah, in October. We did a different set each night, and — during one of them — he spontaneously wrote two new songs on stage, real songs, right on the spot, that we performed then and there…
He continues,” He can still go out and play harmonica and piano in harmony, and those are two very different musical and mechanical disciplines. It’s not the same as walking and chewing gum at the same time to play the piano and harmonica at the same time. It’s more like walking and building a gum factory at the same time! I still find it unbelievable that he is able to do that.
More than 50 years ago, Mayall began to captivate people in his native England. He became a full-time musician in 1963 after serving three years in the English army in Korea, during which time he bought his first guitar while on vacation in Japan.
When he was a young art student, he discovered records by American boogie-woogie piano legends Meade Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson, and Albert Ammons. His destiny was decided after he learned Brownie McGhee, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Lead Belly.
Mayall was delighted to share songs by the American blues masters he revered with English club and concert audiences, for whom he served as a vital musical gateway. He soon began to write his own songs as well. Some of his best songs are” The Laws Must Change,”” Country Road,” and” Room to Move,” which became a regular on American FM radio in the early 1970s.
” If you’re gonna sing something, you should sing something personal,” Mayall said in a 2005 Union-Tribune interview”. That’s what the main quality of blues is all about: you tell your story. I’ve never been a fan of singing about topics that I have no experience with.
Released in 1969 the chugging, harmonica-driven” Room to Move “remains the most popular song by Mayall, an enduring artist who has never had a hit album or single in the U. S.
His rhythmic harmonica playing on songs like” Room to Move” was revelatory, according to veteran San Diego musician Andy Robinson.
Encinitas singer-songwriter JT Moring agreed that” With its virtuoso harmonica hook and extended’mouth percussion ‘ solo,’ Room to Move’ had a feel like nothing else.” That song is still a benchmark for the kind of energy I’d like to bring to live performances.”
Jordan Peimer is a key part of Mayall’s well-known song’s impact. He serves as the University of California San Diego’s ArtPower, an annual performance season featuring both established and emerging blues and jazz musicians.
” As a young music listener ‘ Room to Move’ opened my eyes and ears to something very basic in music that was always there, but which I’d never been able to name before,” Peimer recalled.
As I developed into a curator, I kept the shock that Mayall’s” The Turning Point” album and eventually his live performances carried with me. In many ways, it inspired me to write ArtPower’s” The American Routes” series.
Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor
The lineups of Mayall’s Bluesbreakers changed regularly since 1965 as the young musicians he nurtured left to form their own bands.
The Bluesbreakers served as a crucial incubator for dozens of musicians, much like a blues-rocking version of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. The first major turning point came with Mayall’s” Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton “album, which was released in 1966 and is informally known as” The Beano Album.”
Under either name, it introduced a new generation of Americans and Britons to Clapton’s prodigious guitar chops. They were also given access to some of the well-known American blues songs that Mayall adored, including Robert Johnson’s” Ramblin’ On My Mind,”” Otis Rush’s” All Your Love,” and” Freddie King’s” Hideaway.”
Clapton soon left to form Cream with drummer Ginger Baker and former Bluesbreakers bassist Jack Bruce. Peter Green, who later resurrected Clapton, and Mayall, who later took over as Clapton’s replacement, helped to launch Fleetwood Mac. The teenaged Mick Taylor, who the Rolling Stones hired away in 1969, took Green’s place in turn.
” For me, discovering The Bluesbreakers ‘ 1967 album,’ Crusade,’ was a godsend,” said Billy Thompson, a leading San Diego guitarist and singer now based in Virginia.
Mick Taylor provided some excellent and potent guitar on that album. Mayall opened doors for me. I learned who many of the great bluesmen were from Mayall and Clapton.”
However, Mayall’s guidance helped other budding guitar greats find their footing.
After establishing themselves in The Bluesbreakers, at least four drummers, Hughie Flint, Aynsley Dunbar, Jon Heisman, and Keef Hartley, established themselves as well as producing their own acclaimed bands in England. And Dunbar, after moving to California to play in former San Diegan Frank Zappa’s band, became a co-founding member of Journey.
Soon after recording two standout albums with Mayall, 1969’s” The Turning Point” and 1970’s” Empty Rooms, the band Mark-Almond was founded by saxophonist, flutist, and acoustic guitarist Jon Mark. Those albums came before the all-acoustic” Unplugged” era that MTV first took the lead in the 1980s.
By mid-1970, Mayall was leading his first band of American musicians. His 1972 live album, Jazz Blues Fusion, had an all-star brass section that he added to his 1973 live album, Moving On.
” Amazing education”
” It was an incredible education being a Bluesbreaker, “guitarist Trout said, speaking from his home in Huntington Beach”. When I was in high school in the 1960s, I studied all of John and The Bluesbreakers ‘ famous albums. We did” Hideaway” and” All Your Love” in the 1980s, and I got up and played with John for the first time, which I can still do today.
” At the end of the night, John said: ‘ Walter, if I wanted Eric I would have called Eric. I adore your playing, and I want you to perform the songs as you please. That night, John freed me to establish myself as a musician.
” I learned to be a band leader by watching John. I believe that he is one of the best band leaders, and I would rank him alongside Duke Ellington and Count Basie because he knows how to group players with the right chemistry. And he’s similar to my biological father. I was heavily into drinking and drugging when I got in John’s band and he nurtured me, stood by me, and helped me get sober.”
Before joining Mayall’s band in 2008, drummer Davenport, 61, played with such Chicago blues legends as Junior Wells, Pinetop Perkins, Sugar Blue, and Melvin Taylor. Davenport is not White, in contrast to the majority of Mayall’s audience and band members over the years.
” I’m Black and live in Chicago, and when I went to hang out at a music club Muddy Waters or Junior Wells was sitting at the end of the bar,” Davenport said”. Therefore, I did n’t have to look too far for the music John had criticized.
” John did a unique job of introducing traditional blues to everyone in this country. I know so many people that heard John play’ Hideaway’ and then went searching for the original version by Freddie King.
John was able to authentically recreate that music, which helped many people in this venue find blues more appealing. They were very happy in England that they were n’t distracted by the music’s color or the musicians ‘ focus.
Davenport credits a combination of skill, tenacity and leadership for sustaining Mayall’s career since the 1960s.
” John is the sweetest man you could ever imagine being your boss,” Davenport said in a speech from his Chicago home.
It’s funny because everyone refers to him as” Boss,” which dates back to the 1966 album” Beano.” So while Bruce Springsteen has the title’ The Boss,’ John had it first and we still call him Boss. John is a fearless, tireless leader who has no ego. It’s a big deal for us that he made the decision to stop touring because he has a strong will to do it for as long as he can.
The last word goes, as it should, to Mayall, whose autobiography”. My Life as a Bluesman, a blues from Laurel Canyon, was released in 2019.
Mayall’s devotion to music was highlighted by his announcement to stop touring in September and by his enthusiasm for” The Sun is Shining Down,” his upcoming new album.
” It has been a privilege to have spent my life doing what I love and having you along for the ride with me through all of it. Although Mayall said at the time,” I do want to keep sharing my love of the blues with you,” despite the fact that I wo n’t be visiting.
I’m pleased with what we created for the album and eager to share it with you. I look forward to seeing those of you who can attend my local shows, and I will miss all of you who cannot, but as always, keep loving the blues!”
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