A few days ago, I posted the first of three albums of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers performing for the BBC. That one largely dealt with the time Eric Clapton was the band's lead guitarist.
For this volume, Peter Green was the lead guitarist for the first 7 songs. After leaving this band, he would help form Fleetwood Mac and become a big star. Note that bassist John McVie had been a member of the Bluesbreakers since the band formed around 1963, but he too left to form Fleetwood Mac. Drummer Mick Fleetwood was briefly a member right around when Green left, and also left to with the other two to start Fleetwood Mac (named after Fleetwood and McVie).
Green was replaced on lead guitar by Mick Taylor. He is featured on all of the rest of the songs here, including the two bonus tracks. Taylor only stayed with the Bluesbreakers for about a year, then left to become a member of the Rolling Stones for a few years. There are more songs featuring him in Volume 3 of this series.
All the songs here come from the 2021 mega-box set "First Generation." The sound quality is generally excellent. However, on some of the songs, I felt Mayall's lead vocals were too low in the mix. I'm not a fan of Mayall's singing, but I felt he should either be heard properly or not at all. So I used the X-Minus audio editing program to boost his vocals on the songs marked with "[Edit]." It's possible that some of those songs had BBC DJs talking over some of the music, and I fixed that again, or maybe it was both problems. It's been a while since I fixed these, so I don't remember.
There are two versions of the instrumental song "Curly" here. Since it was a showpiece for Green's guitar work, I've kept both.
Getting back to the sound quality issue, some of the songs with Taylor don't sound as good as the others. Generally speaking, I thought they were fine, and worthy of inclusion. But two of them, "Jenny" and "The Last Time," were far worse than the rest, so those two got demoted to bonus track status.
01 Leaping Christine (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Peter Green)
02 Sitting in the Rain (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Peter Green)
03 Curly [Instrumental] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Peter Green)
04 Riding on the L and N (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Peter Green)
05 Dust My Blues [Edit] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Peter Green)
06 No More Tears (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Peter Green)
07 Curly [Instrumental] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Peter Green)
08 Suspicions [Edit] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
09 Worried Love [Edit] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
10 Supermarket Day [Edit] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
11 Snowy Wood [Instrumental] [Edit] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
12 Sweet Sixteen (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
13 Another Man's Land (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
Jenny (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
The Last Time (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
https://www.imagenetz.de/en9sX
The cover photo shows Mayall in concert in 1968. I would have liked to use a good color photo showing Mayall and either Green or Taylor, but I couldn't find any.
Very nice, thank you!
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