Mike Bloomfield - east meets west

For a time back in the mid to late 1960s...

...Mike Bloomfield was as significant a player on the US white blues scene as Clapton was on the UK's.

Born into a prosperous Jewish family living on Chicago’s North Side, Bloomfield became infatuated with the music that came from the city’s black South Side. The white teenager became not only accepted, but admired by the black blues musicians he met there. Muddy Waters, BB King and Buddy Guy all supported his early career, so he must have impressed them profoundly.

Those early days in Chicago gave rise to the band that brought Bloomfield to greater public attention. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (they dropped the ‘Paul’ later) comprised Bloomfield on guitar, Paul Butterfield on harp and vocals, Elvin Bishop on guitar and vocals, Sam Lay on drums, Jerome Arnold on bass guitar and Mark Naftalin on keyboards.

This was a rare thing in 1960s America – a mixed-race band. Lay and Arnold were black and had formerly comprised not just any black rhythm section, but Howlin’ Wolf’s rhythm section!

Their first eponymous album was good, but not earth-shattering. It revealed a band which had quickly gelled together and showed off everyone’s chops well, although Bishop had yet to play any lead guitar. Listening to it alongside the Mayall/Clapton "Beano" album at the time, it seemed a little refined and, as a budding guitarist back then, Clapton’s playing sounded rawer and more direct to me. Thinking about it now, I realise that Bloomfield’s playing was actually far more fluent and less confined to the normal pentatonic licks than Clapton’s. I managed to nail Clapton’s style pretty well after a while, but the way Bloomfield played was far less easy to copy. I still listen to Bloomfield in awe of the way he strung licks into runs, especially when they descended, which I've always found to be the trickier direction.

Anyway, when the ‘difficult’ second album from the Butterfield Band came along Bloomfield’s playing had changed and progressed so dramatically that I gave up trying to copy him and just listened instead.

This album – "East West" – was unlike anything white blues guys had ever produced before. Hell, it was unlike anything anyone had produced before.

For the first time, you had a blues-influenced electric band stretching out on long improvised tracks and smashing down the boundaries between musical genres with a merging of elements of blues, jazz, Indian raga and folk music.

The track responsible for this was the title track – a 13 minute piece which included solos from Butterfield, Bloomfield and Bishop, with stellar support from the three other guys - Mark Naftalin, Jerome Arnold and Billy Davenport who'd replaced Sam Lay in between albums.

It evolved over time from a piece called ‘Raga’ and the recorded version captures it in the middle of its development with subsequent live versions becoming longer and even more complex. Fortunately, some of the versions of what was always ‘a work in progress’ are available on a commercially-released CD called ‘East West Live’ which includes a 28 minute version that reveals an intensity and complexity that has never been bettered. Even when Bloomfield and Bishop step back to play rhythm they layer tritone chords in a way I’ve never heard before or since and when the various musicians cut loose – and they all do on this version, which is noticeably less polite than any of the other versions available – the results are just brain-meltingly good.

The original was the first ‘modern’ recording I’d ever heard which took me to ‘another place’. Yes, Clapton’s playing on the ‘Beano’ album went for the ears and guts, but Bloomfield’s also went for the heart and mind. He showed me that music could take you to places you’d never been and that only existed in your mind anyway. They were unique and private places I could visit whenever I dropped the needle onto the vinyl and that Bloomfield was creating for me and everyone else who cared to listen.

It was the first ‘head’ music.

It’s my contention that without Bloomfield modern rock guitar would have remained essentially blues-based and anyone who played outside of that format would have found it far more difficult to gain acceptance. In ‘East West’ you can spot the birth of improvisation that the Grateful Dead, Hendrix, Cream-era Clapton and many others capitalised on, leaving the blues behind for a while and opening everyone’s minds to music beyond it for many, many years to come.

In a nutshell, with ‘East West’ Bloomfield gave to rock what Miles gave to jazz with ‘Kind of Blue’.

Freedom.

To get hold of a copy of "East West", and also the stunning live collection, just answer the laughably easy question in the comments below. 

Hear how the boundaries were broken!

Tony (TS) McPhee 1944-2023

I've just heard the sad news of the death of Tony (TS) McPhee.   

Probably best known for his work with the Groundhogs, McPhee was yet another UK blues musician who emerged in the years of the British Blues Boom. 

I first became aware of him via the Immediate label blues compilation "Blues Anytime" (1968) and immediately (no pun intended) found his guitar style very appealing. It was a little more sinewy and rootsy than the style Clapton had pioneered. He became sought after as a session player and, in a stroke of luck when John Mayall's Bluesbreakers were unavailable, as a backing musician for US blues artists such as John Lee Hooker and Champion Jack Dupree on their UK tours.

John Lee Hooker's "Groundhog Blues" was where McPhee got his band's name from, and they went on to build up a strong fan base with their blues-based rock, until psychedelia came along with new avenues to investigate, but not before the band became Hooker's support of choice for his UK shows.

Here's Hooker and the Groundhogs from 1964. That's McPhee to Hooker's left with the Gibson SG.

Although it's pretty much true to say that McPhee was a bluesman first and foremost, he was more than open to experimenting with the sound of his guitar and also exploring other styles of music. He was an inveterate tinkerer with both his guitar and his stage rig, introducing various electronic effects as soon as they came on the market.

This all came to a head in 1971, after some experimentation with the Hogs on various releases, with the "Split" album, inspired by a drug-induced panic attack that McPhee had the year before.

It's a remarkable album with four thematically linked pieces making up Side One and four more blues orientated standalone pieces on Side Two.

The four part "Split" isn't some sort of concept piece - at least, not in sound - as each section can be heard individually, with none of the impact lost. Indeed, live, sections were dropped from the set list, and I'm not sure if "Split Part Three" was ever played live. McPhee morphs and warps his guitar as much as the effects of the time allowed and the lyrics all describe feelings of dread and despair, with an existential questioning of the writer's significance.  As pretentious as that might sound, it's powerful and direct stuff with guitar, bass and drums powering behind the bleak vocals.

I can't find any live video clips of the "Split" Side One songs, but the link below takes you to what is probably the best illustration available of how far McPhee and the Hogs had traveled from playing straight blues. It's very much in the style of "Split".

Here's a different video of the band in their heyday, although it's inferior to the one above.

McPhee is on record as saying that he wished he had the means available to further augment his guitar sound on "Split" and he got this wish granted in a way much, much later with "Split Up" in 2015...

"In 1971 when 'Split' was originally released, there were {a few} guitar pedals, mainly wah-wah, overdrive & chorus (with a bit of phasing or 'flanging'). I had an Arbiter and a sound early octave pedal but I was keen to find 'new' sounds, like ring modulation. Some of the 70's bands have re-done their most popular albums but I never thought I could improve on Split, with Martin Birch engineering at De Lane Lea studios, it had it all!
When Andrew Liles (regarded by some to be the funniest man) told me he'd like to re-do Split I thought he was having a laugh, but he has done what I would have IF I'd had the modern pedals.
Andrew has done me a great service by bringing my recordings into the 21st Century."

Cursed with poor health in his later years, after suffering a series of strokes, McPhee quit the Hogs in 2015 and died at home yesterday (6 June) from complications after a fall last year. 

McPhee and the Hogs have been part of my musical world for a very long time and this tribute by Karl Hyde from Underworld, with whom McPhee had recently been collaborating, seems as good as any.

[He was] "one of the greatest unsung guitarists that this country has ever produced, and also one of its most distinct vocalists”.

In 1971, the Groundhogs were on the road supporting the Rolling Stones. The Leeds gig was recorded by the Stones' mobile studio and Glyn Johns captured the whole evening on tape. Mick Jagger gave McPhee a copy of the Hogs' set - half an hour of exciting, driving rock - and this can be yours if you answer the simple question below. 

RIP TS.

More swing than Western

My introduction to Western swing music...

...came about when, in desperation, I took out an Asleep at the Wheel album from my local record library; there being nothing else even vaguely interesting available that day.

This set me off on a journey of discovery and eventually led me to some of my favourite music of any type or era.

But, what is Western swing?

Now, this is where it gets tricky. It's essentially a combination of blues, jazz, cowboy and old time music performed on string band instruments for dancing, often led by the fiddle. In the form that I find most appealing, it's swing jazz played with multiple electric instruments - guitar, steel guitar and, on occasion, mandolin - playing lines that you'd more usually expect to come from a horn section. To be more specific, it's the music that Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys were playing in the post war years 1946 and 1947.

At that time, the genre was on the decline and wartime measures to raise taxes had had an impact on venues. Clubs and ballrooms had a 30% levy imposed if they allowed dancing and, although this was eventually reduced to 20%, its negative effect on all forms of dance music and touring bands was severe.

However, as the biggest act in Western Swing, Wills' band continued to be very popular and sell records very steadily, although he'd cut down the size of the band, losing most of his horn players. Following a move to California, Wills signed a deal with the Tiffany Music Company to produce a series of transcription discs which would be sent to radio stations throughout the US. Some 458 tracks were cut, 360 of which were complete takes. The sessions took place during the band's down time and, by all accounts, were very good natured and relaxed affairs. The band featured, at various times and in various combinations, guitarists Eldon Shamblin and Junior Barnard, steel players Noel Boggs, Ray Honeycut and Herb Remington, and Tiny Moore on electric mandolin. It was these players who, along with the fiddles, made up the band's "horn section" and gave it its distinctive full and driving sound and its harmonised ensemble lines, as well as most of the improvised solos. Furthermore, it gave the band a wider range of tunes which allowed them to blow more freely than they otherwise might have done. Bob seems to be having a great time, urging the players on and laughing at the electric gymnastics.

Unfortunately, the project ended up a relative failure, with only a small number of radio stations ordering the discs. Tommy Duncan - Wills' vocalist and a big draw - quit the band. Wills' manager advised against issuing any more transcriptions as it was giving Duncan - now a rival act - too much publicity. Cliff Sundin and Clifton Johnsen (aka Cactus Jack) - the Tiffany Music Company's bosses - started to fall out over what Sundlin perceived as CJ's crooked dealings. One particular salesman with a drink problem started to go rogue and make deals that the company couldn't deliver on, as well as claim fake expenses. The two label bosses parted company leaving the concern in the hands of Sundin and Wills, the latter of whom had his own issues with drink. Attempts to revive the transcriptions project and release the material by Sundin came to nothing and, by the end of the decade, the recordings were locked away in Sundin's basement.

Inevitably, the transcription discs fell into collectors' hands and a trade in bootlegged recordings sprang up, until 10 LPs of the recordings were issued by the Kaleidoscope Records label over the course of several years, starting in 1982. Further compilations of unissued Tiffany recordings followed, although as far as I know there are still some tracks remaining in the vault.

So what about the music?

In the comments you'll find the link to a Hole-exclusive compilation of Tiffany tracks - 20 in all, and chosen to illustrate the jazzier side of the whole Kaleidoscope ten album set. They're also all instrumental, apart from a couple of tracks, and feature very hot solos on electric guitar, steel guitar, electric mandolin, as well as piano and fiddle.

Notable soloists include Herb Remington on steel, Junior Barnard on (distorted) electric guitar channeling Charlie Christian and Tiny Moore on 5 string solid electric mandolin.

If you thought that Western Swing was variations on San Antonio Rose, maudlin ballads and hokey old time square dance tunes, think again. This is some really ballsy stuff and it swings - as the late Alexis Korner would have put it - like a bitch. Indeed, although the material is a million miles away, nothing using electric instruments achieved quite such an intensity until the rise of the electric guitar in the mid to late 1960s. Yes, it really is that powerful at times, and it's music that's meant to be played LOUD!

Need a smile putting on your face?

Play this sucker!

Say "Hi" to High Pulp

There seem to be quite a few bands around at the moment...

...flirting with jazz and rock, and with an approach suited to the larger ensemble. Snarky Puppy is probably the prime example, and if you've missed them, you've missed a real treat.

Anyway, here's one of the very latest bands of this sort to emerge - High Pulp. 

Hailing from the US West Coast, they've adopted an organic approach to music. Organic in that none of the members actually intended to end up in a band playing jazz, but jazz is essentially what they ended up playing, with the result being a melange of each member's view of that genre. However, there's a lot more to the band than jazz.

They're releasing their third album in July, and this is their second - last year's Pursuit of Ends.

Led by drummer Bobby Granfelt, the band reveals an array of influences on the album, including Sun Ra, early 1970s Miles, more than a touch of Weather Report, and hip hop (mainly down to Granfelt's superb drumming) without compromising on groove and ambience. Along the way, there are hints of psychedelia, electronica, and world music. The horn arrangements are excellent, with the opening of  A Ring on Each Finger especially impressive, as the horns almost seem to chime.

It's very "widescreen" music, with lots of atmospheric synth pads making up an expansive backdrop for the melodies and solos. Occasionally, there's the odd shock - including snatches of Coltrane-style sax and otherworldly discordant harmonies.

What's most satisfying about it is that it constantly surprises - it never settles for too long into any one groove. Something usually comes along to disrupt proceedings - a series of sampled synth stabs, almost sequence-like horn riffing, a new little chord pattern, or a low piano part suddenly appearing in the mix from nowhere.

Here's the band with a live version of the second track, All Roads Lead to Los Angeles.

So, a little jazz, hip hop and electronica all brought together and presented in a form that has a wider appeal, due to its intention to generally rock and groove.

A band to watch...

Ollie Halsall - The Man

Meet Ollie Halsall...

OK, a lot of people may not have heard of him, but a lot of people have certainly heard him  on the early Rutles recordings, and possibly even seen him in the Rutles movie, in which he played Leppo, the fifth Rutle who disappeared. On the recordings, Halsall handles the "Paul" vocals - slightly speeded up - as well as all the lead guitar work.

No matter how significant Ollie’s part in the Rutles was, there’s far more to him than this, however.

Emerging in the early 1960s as the self taught vibes player in a band called Timebox with singer Mike Patto at the helm, Ollie taught himself to play guitar whilst with Timebox and when the band morphed into the sublime Patto, he was ready to play some of the most amazing guitar you’ll ever hear - and all this by 1970, too. He was also a bloody good pianist.

No-one in rock before him had ever played guitar like Ollie.

Absolutely no-one.

His playing was defined by long winding legato runs given an amazing fluency by his use of hammer-ons and pull-offs and all within musical structures which owed little to blues and more to jazz and even, dare I say, fusion.

Ollie’s late-blooming prowess on guitar influenced a young Alan Holdsworth when the two met in John Hiseman’s Tempest after Patto split up. Holdsworth’s refinement of Halsall’s legato runs in turn, influenced a certain young chap called Edward Van Halen who wrote a whole new chapter of what became known as "shred" guitar. Listen to the late Eddie’s playing and you can hear Halsall in there as clear as day.

Make no mistake, Ollie was an unknown but highly innovative player whose explorations of long fluid runs mark him as one of the key figures in the development of modern rock guitar.

His recorded legacy is patchy, to say the least. Like virtually all great lead guitarists, his major work was as a backing musician – not as the featured player. Consequently, we have a handful of Patto releases, collaborations with people like Kevin Ayres, Viv Stanshall, Neil Innes and John Cale, albums with his later band Boxer when he was united with Mike Patto, and various other recordings – many made in Spain during one of Ollie’s lengthy stays abroad.

I can whole-heartedly recommend the Patto studio releases – all of which feature plenty of very dense and intense playing. To be honest, it’s not always easy listening due to its sheer mass in terms of notes per second and occasional rather freeform vibe. My favourite Ollie track is ‘Loud Green Song’ from a bootleg of BBC radio sessions where he shows what he could do with his style in a straightforward rock setting.

Unfortunately, Ollie’s life story wasn’t a particularly happy one. Dead from a heroin overdose in 1992 aged just 43, Ollie enjoyed getting regularly wrecked on anything he could get his hands on. Even the rest of Patto – his most musically rewarding association – seem to have shared his bad luck, with Mike Patto dying of cancer, bassist Clive Jenkins, suffering from severe brain damage in a car crash and eventually dying, and drummer John Halsey physically disabled – from the same accident as Jenkins.

Sure, listen to Ollie and you’ll hear lots of qualities and characteristics that marked early shred and fusion guitar and which now seem hackneyed, but then think when he was first playing like this – in 1970.

"Ollie may not have been the best guitarist in the world, but he was certainly among the top two.” - John Halsey.

File under "guitar genius".

Not getting Nilsson

Nilsson...one of a number of people I don't "get".

Not that I rule it out at some future date.

I never thought I'd "get" Prince, or Tom Waits, or The Residents, but I do now.

Although I've never been a Nilsson fan, there's one track of his which I've loved to pieces ever since I heard it way back in 1971 - probably courtesy of John Peel.

It's this...

Taken from his best selling album "Nilsson Schmilsson", "Jump into the Fire" is a superb 7 minute wig-out comprising very loose riffing over a single chord. Its main feature is the bass line, played by ace UK session player, Herbie Flowers. Google him - he's certainly been around! During the song, he gradually detunes his bass until it's so low it's hardly audible, and then he gradually brings it back to pitch. The other musicians include Jim Gordon on drums, Chris Spedding, John Uribe and Klaus Voorman on guitars, and Jimmy Webb (yes, that Jimmy Webb!) on piano. Nilsson's voice has some heavy delay applied to it throughout, giving it an almost dub vibe, and he seems to be channeling "Abbey Road" era McCartney. Think "Oh! Darling". 

In a strange way, the track's overall groove is very like "Fur Immur" from the "NEU!2" album, with its Motorik rhythm. One of the guitars even sounds like Michael Rother. Nilsson's recording predates NEU's by a couple of years, but I doubt there's any influence at work, although there's an intriguing and striking similarity there.

Anyway, revisiting the track in an idle moment last week offered me the opportunity of seeing if I now "get" Nilsson, and what better way to start than with his best known and most successful album?

The opening track - "Gotta Get Up" - is a solid uptempo pop song that wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Monkees album a few years earlier. Nilsson wrote for the band, of course.

Next, another pop ditty called "Driving Along" which reminds me of the Beatles' "Glass Onion", particularly in its use of horns, hand claps and acoustic guitar. 

The third track is a Louis Jordan blues - "Early in the Morning". It's just a vocal and an electric piano. It's so ineffectual that I can't find anything much to say about it. Ah, I know...it's mercifully short.

Track four is "The Moonbeam Song". Again, rather Beatlish in sound, it's a gentle ballad with lots of harmonies and mellotrons towards the end. It reminds me a bit of "Across the Universe".

"Down" ends side one and again I'm forced to think "Beatles" with this slow to medium paced McCartney style rocker, with suitably crazed vocals.

Hmm...I'm not "getting" Harry at all so far.

What about side le deux?

The opening track is the song that Nilsson first thought was written by Lennon and McCartney, as well as being the song that (almost) everyone thinks was written by Nilsson. It was in fact written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger. "Without You" was at first envisaged as having a simple solo piano and vocal arrangement, but that idea soon went out of the window and it got the full (and very overwrought) bells and whistles treatment, and became a #1 hit practically everywhere.  

Things ended very badly indeed for Ham and Evans, who both committed suicide after royalties disputes. The full story is extremely sad and painful to hear.

 

"Coconut" follows - a novelty song consisting of one chord played over four minutes and a cod West Indian vocal. It seems longer than four minutes - a lot longer.

Track three of side two is a cover of Shirley & Lee's "Let the Good Times Roll" - for what appears to be no good reason at all. It features a rather poor harmonica solo by Nilsson. A great song, yes - but why is it here?

"Jump into the Fire" next and although it's totally at odds with the uneven, although often rather Beatlish, mood of the rest of the tracks, it's definitely the stand out song so far, and there's only one more cut to go.

The album closer is almost  Beach Boys'ish. with an orchestral arrangement not a million miles away from "Smile" era Brian Wilson, complete with a plucked banjo in there. It's OK. "I'll Never Leave You"...is that a threat or a promise?

So, have I "got" Nilsson now?

Nah - not even hardly.

The whole album sounds like something that might have been cobbled together for a posthumous release, with rejected tracks, demos and just the odd song (one in this case) worth saving. It's his best selling album which includes his best selling single, but it's a tepid affair, to say the least.

(As ever, only my opinion - feel free to differ.)

So, a one track album...but what a track!

A different take on Steely Dan

Today's platter of choice...

...is an album of Steely Dan songs sung by two Swedish women with minimal accompaniment – mostly piano.

It’s this:

It’s called ‘Fire in the Hole’ and it’s by Sara Isaksson and Rebecka Törnqvist – although they don’t look like the cover seems to suggest they do.

Here they are:

That’s better, isn’t it?

Here’s the Dan songs they cover:

• Rose Darling
• Barrytown
• Gaucho
• Green Earrings
• Your Gold Teeth
• Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me)
• Don’t Take Me Alive
• Josie
• Do It Again
• Fire In The Hole
• Pearl Of The Quarter
• Midnite Cruiser

What surprised me was that if someone asked me to list a dozen Dan songs I’d like to hear covers of, very few of the above would have made it to my list.

However, Isaksson and Törnqvist make the songs their own, and, with minimal accompaniment, the songs are stripped down to the essentials – melody, harmonies and chord changes – and then sung in such a way that each one becomes a small jewel of dazzlingly radiant beauty, that keeps the best of each composition and then allows you to look at it in a slightly different way.

They’ve made me aware of subtleties in songs that I very often skip through when listening to the original albums on which the tunes appeared. I just know that I revisit the Dan versions with fresh ears now.

Their voices are simultaneously plaintive, vulnerable and sensuous but with an inner strength that supports a format of basically two female voices and an acoustic piano.

Yes, there are other instruments – occasionally you’ll hear a mandolin, a sax, a clarinet, an acoustic guitar, a synth, an electric piano or a kick drum – but it’s basically kept very simple and these other instruments just used for texture and seasoning.

Even the voices reinforce this simplicity, with solo and unison singing used when appropriate, and so the glorious harmony sections are made to really stand out .

Some of the instrumental lines – such as the guitar figure in ‘Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me)’ – get sung in a vaguely ‘scat’ way, although what could have been a ‘jazz’ album gets elevated to a sort of a melodic purity by dint of the clarity of the singing and an overriding urge to display the inner lyricism of the tunes.

Hell, if you don't like the Dan, you might just like this, with almost everything stripped away except the melody and harmonies.

It’s an absolutely fantastic piece of work.