Development of the British Blues and; Rhythm

  --- show 31 ---   7-8-2015

Free    (+Dupree)                             1968-70

John Dummer Band                           1969
Duffy Power BBC                      1968-73 + 1994

You might recall that bassist Andy Fraser was dating Alexis Korner’s daughter Sappho  when Alexis referred him to John Mayall.  After a brief period (six weeks) as a Bluesbreaker, Andy joined with drummer Simon Kirke, guitarist Paul Kossoff and vocalist Paul Rodgers as they formed the band Free in April of 1968.  Our first set comes from their debut LP, Tons of Sobs, as well as a tune from a BBC session and a jam that was not released until much later.  All the tunes were recorded in 1968.

Kossoff and Kirke also played on Champion Jack Dupree’s Blue Horizon LP From New Orleans to Chicago, along with Stuart Brooks on bass guitar, all three being members of the Black Cat Bones when the tracks were recorded in April of 1968.  Duster Bennett shows up on My Home is in Hell and Juke Box Jump.  Johnny Almond’s baritone saxophone can be heard on I Haven’t Done No One No Harm.. Both are also on Black Cat Shuffle, this time with Almond on tenor sax.

The band had two more studio albums before Free Live, which may or may not have been recorded all at one concert but was not put together for release until after the band’s decision to break up in 1971.

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John Dummer, in his youth a listener to both Blues and Modern Jazz, fronted the band Lester Square and the GTs in 1964 which also included the Yardbirds’ pre-Clapton guitarist Top Topham until they took o9n a stint in Germany.  Upon returning to the U.K., he answered a Melody Maker ad for a band looking for a vocalist (a later similar ad brought in pianist Bob Hall)   The band’s initial lineup had drummer Dave Bidwell, bassist Peter Moody and guitarist Roger Pearce and gigged as The John Dummer Blues Band.

Bidwell left in December of 1965 to move on to Chicken Shack and later Savoy Brown, and when his replacement Dave Elvidge departed in January, Dummer sat himself behind the drum kit while still handling the vocals.  Moody left in March of that year and the quartet now included Dummer, Hall, Pearce and replacement bassist Tony Walker.  Walker’s 14-year-old sister Regine added some vocals on a 1966 recordings which surfaced in 1995.

Hall was in and out of the band as he also became a part of Savoy Brown and maintained his full time day job and Dummer for a while was relieved from drum duties, but the band really took shape when Walker and Pearce left at different times in 1967 and were replaced by bassist Iain “Thumper” Thompson and guitarist Dave Kelly.  Steve Rye played harmonica with them for a short while and was followed by John O’Leary, fresh from his stint with the earliest iteration of the Savoy Brown Blues Band.

One of the band’s gigs was at the popular Nag’s Head Pub including after Mike Vernon took it over and named it after his new record label, the Blue Horizon Club.  As Dummer told Beat Instrumental, ”We were playing semi-Blues things … it was just a simple basic band which we started because of the interest the music held for us.  We were just playing at this club for our own amusement, but gradually it became more important to us.”

The group signed a recording contract with Mercury and decided they wanted to bolster Kelly’s bottleneck style as  Tony McPhee shared both guitar and lead vocal duties with Dave.  In July of 1968 the label released the single featuring Traveling Man and 40 Days and scheduled September for the release of the debut album.  By the time the LP (Cabal) was released in January, McPhee had left to establish his own label and form once again his Groundhogs.  O’Leary also moved on, but both can be heard (along with Dave’s sister Jo Ann on a couple of vocals) on our first Dummer Band set.

Adrian “Putty” Pietryga was brought in by the next recording session and Bob Hall was once again available.  The band’s next 45 was Try Me One More Time, which includes an interesting although uncredited piece of violin work, and Riding at Midnight, noteworthy because the band had a two week English tour that summer backing its author, Howlin’ Wolf.  These tracks were included on the LP when it came out in September 1969 and we include the first seven tracks from the album in order on our second Dummer set.  Shortly after the album’s release, Kelly left the band, citing too much touring and not enough time to write music as the reason, but he did recommend multi-instrumentalist (fiddle, guitar, harmonica, piano and vibes; could he have provided the violin on the second single?) Nick Pickett as his replacement.  As I read up on John Dummer, the new band appears to have moved away from the Blues, so this seems an apropos time to end this segment.

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We return for a follow-up with one of our favorite vocalists, Duffy Power, whom we first heard from way back in our fourth episode of this seemingly never-ending saga.  (But that doesn’t mean we’re running out of good music by any stretch of the imagination!)  This set is comprised of BBC takes and includes guitarist Alexis Korner on the first two tracks and sax man Dick Heckstall-Smith on the two that wind up the set.

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Walk in My Shadow

Waitin’ on You
The Hunter
I’m a Mover
Guy Stevens’ Blues
   Free   (CD: Tons of Sobs)

I Need Love

Just a Feeling
No Chance with You
After Hours
Young Fashioned Ways
Low Down Santa Fe
When You Got a Good Friend
Welfare Blues
Hound Dog
Daddy Please Don’t Cry
   The John Dummer Blues Band   (CD: Cabal)

A Racehorse Called Mae
Roll On
My Home is in Hell
Black Cat Shuffle
I Haven’t Done No One No Harm
Juke Box Jump
   Champion Jack Dupree
     (CD: From New Orleans to Chicago)

Gin House Blues

Every Day Since You Been Gone
Dusty Road
That’s All Right Mama
Hellhound
City Woman
Little Soldiers
Sky Blues
Little Boy Blue
   Duffy Power   (CD: Sky Blues)

Woman

Fire and Water
Ride on a Pony
Mr. Big
Trouble on Double Time
All Right Now
   Free   (CD: Free Live)
Few Short Lines
Bullfrog Blues
Try Me One More Time
Money And Fame
Reconsider Baby
Riding at Midnight
*Memphis Minnie   (time permitting)
Ain’t Gonna Work No More
   John Dummer’s Blues Band
     (CD: John Dummer Band)