John Mayall

The Blues alone...

I’ve never had a hit record, I never won a Grammy Award, and Rolling Stone has never done a piece about me. I’m still an underground performer.

-John Mayall in 2013

My good friend Shawn was the first to break the news to me that John Mayall had passed. Although I saw it coming for some time, it’s still hard to believe.

This week on that Big River called Jazz, I pay homage to John Mayall, the musician who most influenced my music journey.

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Oddly, it was through the music of John Mayall that I first discovered blues AND at the same time jazz, although I didn’t even know such a thing as jazz music existed. I owe much of this discovery to my oldest brother’s record collection and my mother.

Around 1976, when I was fourteen years old, my brother came home from college. He brought home a record player, headphones, and a record collection, which I methodically listened to when he wasn’t around. Two albums caught my attention the most, both by John Mayall: The Turning Point and The Best of John Mayall. They had the first blues music I ever heard - or what I thought was blues. My brother also had a harmonica on his dresser. After I asked him what it was, he showed me how to play it. After a while, my mother bought me two of my own.

However, perhaps even more than my brother’s record collection, my mother played an important role in my musical journey.

One day out of the blue (and if you knew her, the dark blue), my mom brought home from Kmart a Big Walter Horton album and an early B.B. King album. I woodshedded on that Big Walter Horton album and later a Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee album from the library and learned to play blues harp. I got my start on harmonica playing along with those albums, whenever it “fit” - meaning I could find the right key.

The next year, I noticed John Mayall was coming to town. Since I was only fifteen years old, I asked my mom if she’d take me to see him. She invited her friend Mrs. Hilliard, and we all drove south of the Minnesota River to some roadhouse around Shakopee. I’d hurt my leg before the show and was on crutches, so we got there early. She found the backstage area and told me, “Come along.” I hobbled after her. When we got to the entrance to the dressing rooms, a bouncer stopped us. In her English accent, my mother told him, “I’d like to take my son to see John Mayall.” He told her we could not go down there, “For musicians only.” She told him again, “Well, my son is here to see John Mayall.” He told her, “I’m sorry, no one is allowed down there - for musicians only.” Suddenly, down the hall, a head popped out from an open doorway and called out to us, “I’m John Mayall.” My mom answered, “My son came to see you.” He called back, “Well, send him down here then.” I hobbled down the hall with his latest album A Banquet in Blues under my arm.

He was very nice and we spent quite a while talking. He asked about my leg and how I came to like the blues. He also talked a lot with my mom and how she ended up in Minnesota (that’s a long story). In the end, he signed my album (my first name is Bill - Tyler is my middle - another long story) and bid me farewell:

That was the first time I met John Mayall. I’d meet him a few more times in Germany twelve years later, during his 1987 European Bluesbreakers tour with guitarists Coco Montoya and Walter Trout.

By then, I was in the Army and stationed in Northern Germany near Bremen. I noticed one day that John Mayall was coming to Hanover, just about an hour south of where I lived. I went to the show, and afterward, I noticed Walter Trout hanging around by the stage. He looked bored, so I walked up to him and started a conversation. When he realized I was American and a soldier, he took me backstage to meet John Mayall and the band. That was the second time I met John Mayall.

Walter invited me to their show the next night in Bremen. He put me on the guest list, and I saw the band again. Here are concert flyers from those two shows:

I saw them one more time in Frankfurt. After that show, the band was heading further south, and I told Walter I couldn’t make it to that one. I also shared I’d be heading back soon to Fort Ord in California. He said to give him a call when I got there. From the Frankfurt show, here’s Walter’s setlist and recording chart with his address and phone number:

So when I got back to the States and settled into Carmel, I called him. He told me the Bluesbreakers were playing in a big blues festival at The Forum in LA and that I should come down for it. He gave me an all-access pass, and that day I met John Mayall again - for the last time. That was thirty-five years ago.

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If you want to learn about John Mayall, all you have to do is go to a used record store and buy his 1971 album Memories:

It’s a gatefold album with lyrics to all the songs. Just put the vinyl on the turntable and listen to him tell you stories about his early years in the UK and Korea. This is a very intimate yet playful album, recorded with no drums and just Larry Taylor on bass and Jerry McGhee on guitars.

John Mayall’s father played guitar and banjo, and his boogie-woogie piano records captivated his teenage son, who learned to play the piano one hand at a time — a year on the left hand, a year on the right, “so I wouldn’t get all tangled up.” Boogie Albert from his 1971 Back to the Roots shows off his boogie-woogie skills, but I also like his piano playing on Marsha’s Mood from his 1967 album The Blues Alone:

Recorded in London for the Decca label, The Blues Alone is an amazing album and shows Mayall’s absolute love and dedication to playing the blues - his blues. He plays all the instruments on the album, except for some drum work by Keef Hartley.

Much of my harmonica sound was influenced by Mayall’s playing from The Blues Alone on songs like Sonny Boy Blow and Brand New Start:

After A Banquet in Blues, The Blues Alone was the next John Mayall album I bought, shortly after I saw him in Shakopee with my mom and Mrs. Hilliard.

Blues from Laurel Canyon was Mayall’s last record for Decca in London and tells the story of his visit to America before moving here permanently in 1969.

He settled into Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles and formed an experimental drummerless quartet featuring acoustic guitarist Jon Mark and Mayall’s former bandmates bassist Steven Thompson, and reedman Johnny Almond. In his own words, “I just wanted to do something different, with a little less volume, and expand into that area.” The album this group released was The Turning Point, recorded live at Bill Graham's Fillmore East in July 1969 for the Polydor label:

This brings me back to my brother’s record collection. The Turning Point was the first John Mayall album I ever heard.

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If I had to pick one album that first infiltrated my soul and moved me to discover blues and, by default, jazz, it was The Turning Point.

Two songs on Side 2 got my attention much more than the album’s hit Room To Move. The first was California. I had never heard anything like that before - entirely different from what I had heard or was hearing on the radio:

The next track was Thoughts About Roxanne, featuring Johnny Almond’s soulful saxophone:

The other John Mayall album my brother had was The Best of John Mayall, a double album released in 1973:

This album combines many great songs from his Polydor albums. For example, from his 1972 album Movin’ On, here is Things Go Wrong:

The trumpet player on this album is the fabulous Blue Mitchell, whom I wrote about a couple of years ago:

Blue Mitchell

Here’s one more for the road. While browsing used blues albums at a St. Paul record store in the late 1970s, I noticed this album with John Mayall’s name in the upper corner. It was his tribute album for J. B. Lenior.

I bought it and it remains one of my favorite blues albums - an absolute stone-cold killer. It also contains remarkable interviews with Ella Louise Lenoir, J.B.’s widow, that Mayall conducted at her home in Champaign, Illinois.

I loved the photo on the back cover:

From that album, here’s If I Get Lucky:

John Mayall didn’t follow the path to commercial success, and I’m not sure he wanted it. Rather than the big stadium shows, I think he preferred the more intimate roadhouse settings, where he could stay close to the people, like a star-struck 15-year-old kid on crutches and his somewhat overbearing mother.

Here are lyrics from the song Nobody Cares from Mayall’s Memories:

It doesn't matter whether anybody hears
Though I'm playing it seems like nobody cares
It's my feeling I've got to pack up and go
Off to the city
Maybe I'll make it, I don't know

Oh, but we did care. You were never alone. Let Eric Clapton’s wonderful words find you and keep you until we meet again one more time on the other side:

I particularly like this part:

He taught me that it was ok just to play the music you wanted to play, without dressing it up or making anybody else like it or mattered whether they liked it or not, and to listen to myself and my inner motivations.

Along with his storytelling, I think what I liked most about John Mayall’s music was his steadfastness. It was his music, and I felt it right from the start.

If you’ve stuck with me this long, I should add a shameless self-promotion here. This is my harp solo on Jealous Woman, Fool Hearted Man from Smell My Pillow’s latest release, recorded at the storied Pachyderm Recording Studio located in Cannon Falls, Minnesota:

Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in to explore the waters of the great Jamaican guitar player Ernst Ranglin, who in June entered his 92nd year.

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Until then, keep on walking….