Tuesday, August 23, 2022

John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1968-1971

Here is the third and final album of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers performing for the BBC.

As I mentioned in the previous two volumes, I'm not a fan of John Mayall's lead vocals. However, in the 1960s, his band the Bluesbreakers was famous for the series of lead guitarists in it. The last bunch of songs were from the time period Mick Taylor was the lead guitarist, and the continues with the first seven songs here. Taylor was only with the Bluesbreakers for about a year. He went on to be a member of the Rolling Stones from 1969 to 1974.

All seven of the songs featuring Taylor come from the mega box set "First Generation." As was the case with many of the songs on the first two albums in this series, in my opinion, Mayall's vocals were buried too low in the mix. Even though I'm not a fan of those vocals, they at least should be mixed properly, in my opinion. So I used the audio editing program X-Minus to boost them.

After Taylor left in 1968, Mayall disbanded the Bluesbreakers. He stopped using the Bluesbreakers name for the next 15 years, then resumed using it for most of the rest of his career (until present day as I write this in 2022). In truth, it didn't matter much if Mayall called his backing band the Bluesbreakers or not - it was always Mayall plus the frequently changing line-ups of his backing band.

It seems Mayall stopped performing for the BBC after this. At least, I can't find any mentions of further BBC performances from 1969 or after. But I did a search and found three songs he did live for the German TV show "Beat Club" with a similarly excellent sound as the BBC recordings. So I've added those at the end. The first two of these are from 1970 and the last one is from 1971. Mayall's lead guitarist for most of 1970 and 1971 was Harvey Mandel, so I'm guessing he played on the Beat Club songs.

Arguably, Mayall's most famous song is "Room to Move," which was recorded in 1969. I looked for a good version from a TV or radio show to include here, but unfortunately I couldn't find one.

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 Picture on the Wall (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
02 Knockers Step Forward [Instrumental] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
03 The Last Time [Edit] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
04 Rock Me Baby [Edit] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
05 Oh Pretty Woman [Edit] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
06 Long Gone Midnight [Edit] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
07 It Hurts Me to Leave [Edit] (John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Mick Taylor)
08 I'm Gonna Fight for You, J. B. [Edit] (John Mayall)
09 The Train [Edit] (John Mayall)
10 My Pretty Girl [Edit] (John Mayall)

https://www.imagenetz.de/g9Wgv

The cover shows Mayall performing at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1969.

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