The Mists of Time - John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers
When I was 13, in one of my periodic, desperate attempts to become "cool" in the eyes of my peers, I bought Mayall's "Crusade" and placed it at the visible end of my bookended records, hiding loveable white moptops (Beatles, Monkees) and middle-aged black men in suits (Isley Brothers, Four Tops) from judgemental eyes. It worked, especially when someone else who was "cool" came to visit me and I played it. Otherwise it was back to the rock, Motown and Stax.
However, John Mayall grows on you. He's not the world's greatest singer, almost anonymous in his stubborn blues persistence, yet as I've grown older I've played his records more and more. I always think that he moved to Laurel Canyon, LA, in 1969 not only because the weather was good and it was a beautiful place to live, but also because, although there were loads of musicians there, not many were blues musicians, so there was a gap in the market. From that time he lived in California until his death in July aged 90 (see last 3 posts).
Unlike so many other blues, jazz and rock musicians, Mayall's life, like his vocals, was nondescript. After moving to the States, about the only notable thing that happened to him was the incineration of his Laurel Canyon home in a bush fire in 1979. All he did, it seems, was play the blues, touring, recording and then touring again.
Over the next 50 plus years he released 30 live LP's and 31 studio albums, the last of which, 2022's "The Sun is Shining Down", he recorded at the age of 88.
In 1968 he disbanded the Bluesbreakers, only to reform them in 1985, and disband them again in 2008, but whoever he was playing with, to me it made no difference: they were the Bluesbreakers. After all, there were numerous line-ups of the "official" band over the years, and many of those musicians wound up playing with him on his "solo" records.
Mayall's dedication to the blues was relentless, he was a pilgrim to the genre, never giving up on his journey and it was this singleminded dedication that attracted the best players to work with him: Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Harvey Mandel of Canned Heat and many others. It was his self-effacing style of playing and singing which allowed musicians the space to shine around him, his hermit-like, almost anonymous vocal providing an authenticity that freed them to perform unselfconsciously.
"The Mists of Time" from his 2002 Bluesbreakers album "Stories" has an appropriate valedictory tone:
"Somewhere in the world
are friends I've missed from so long ago,
could be drifting by the wayside
or even dead, I just don't know
and now my memories are fading
like melting footprints in the snow............
.....so far, my life's a journey
and I wouldn't change for anything -
all those years of bold adventures -
the highs and lows that make me sing
within the swirling mists of time
such sweet memories still often ring."
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