This Is The (British) Blues

It’s tempting, given the relative paucity of Americans, to suggest that the recently released This Is the Blues, Volumes 1-4 instead be titled This Is The British Blues, or, even better, This Is British Blues-Rock. After all, nearly every track on these four discs comes from either older tribute albums to Peter Green’s original Fleetwood Mac (as well as a bit of his solo work), British blues pioneer Cyril Davies and American blues institution John Lee Hooker. That’s a considerably British orientation. So it stands to reason that despite the presence of names like Harvey Mandel, Southside Johnny, Vince Converse, Johnnie Johnson, Harvey Brooks and assorted lesser-known sidemen, the series would have a decidedly British feel, and might even stand as a sort of state-of-the-art-today document on British blues one-half century after their inception.

Because it really is all here: the flashy guitar (“The Same Way”) and extended jams (more than 10 minutes of “You Shook Me” that even Mick Taylor’s blistering guitar can’t save,) the endless boogie (several Savoy Brown tracks), the blackface vocals (“Love That Burns”), the singing bass lines (“Serves Me Right to Suffer”) and hammering drum patterns (“Lazy Poker Blues”), and those permutations of the music once referred to scornfully as da blooz (“Drifting”) and admiringly as heavy blues and acid blues (the instrumental “Fleetwood Mac”). But at the same time there’s a seasoned maturity that was rarely evident in the first wave of British blues; you can hear it on tracks like Mick Clarke-Lou Martin guitar-piano duet “One More Mile.”

There’s plenty of good music spread across these four discs; my own favorites have changed several times, as I seem to drift away from the purist blues and towards the blues-rock. England has spawned a fair number of both, and so has America. (Only the USA, though, can claim the original black bluesmen, a near-extinct species, which fact only partially explains why hardly any are represented here). But for starters, I’d suggest you pay some serious attention to the ingenious arrangement of “Hobo Blues” that features singer Earl Green and guitar wizardry by Jeff Beck, with Guyanese drummer Richard Bailey motorvating the band; the bone-rattling reading of Fleetwood Mac’s naughty “Rattlesnake Shake” by an Anglo-American band with Innus Sibbun and Vince Converse on guitars; Tony McPhee’s deep blue guitar on “Drop Down Mama” and “Ground Hog Blues,” the latter with Dick Heckstall-Smith supplying some wild sax, as he also does on “The Green Manalishi”; the crackerjack band led by bassist/harpist Jack Bruce and guitarist Clem Clempson that swings “Send For Me,” prototypical early Brit blues from Cyril Davies; the smart horn arrangements on Green’s groovetune “Baby When the Sun Goes Down”; the exuberant, high-stepping “Little Wheel” by a band of journeyman British rockers like Gary Brooker (of Procol Harum) and Andy Fairweather-Low; and The Pretty Things having a rave-up on “Judgment Day,” complete with Relfian harp.

Irishman Rory Gallagher is a hidden star of the series. He brings his guitar, mandolin and vocals to “Leaving Town Blues,” and leads the band from an initial New Orleans feel to a churning conclusion on “Showbiz Blues.” Aided by organist Booker T Jones and guitarist Randy California, Hooker provides a galvanizing, straight-up blues reading of Jimi Hendrix‘s “Red House.” And scattered throughout the series are some great, hard-rocking versions of songs that don’t always get their due in discussions of the original artists – the absolutely frantic renditions of “Ramblin ‘Pony” (Green’s rewrite of “Rollin ‘and Tumblin’” for Fleetwood Mac) and Hooker’s “I’m Leaving” by a band starring Clempson and McPhee on guitars, for example, or the Stonesy version of “Crying Won’t Bring You Back” by another Brit band starring Jess Roden and both Luther Grosvenor and Ariel Bender (the latter being a pseudonym for the former).

With performances like those, I can forgive the inclusion of crotchety old Ian Anderson and his cute flute on “Man of the World,” perhaps the least bluesy track of the 60 included here. And the series ‘limitations are obvious considering the genesis of these sides on tribute albums – any number of British blues stars – Clapton and Mayall jump to mind immediately – are missing in action (though Mick Jagger sneaks in blowing nondescript harp behind his brother Chris’s vocal on “Racketeer Blues”). The definitive British Blues Today series remains yet to come (and an American equivalent is even less well represented). But until then, this passes muster, warts and all.