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Casual rock music fans might know the band as successively including within its ranks three of the greatest rock guitarists of all time: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. That is, after Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds, he suggested Jimmy Page as his replacement; but Page was highly successful as a session guitarist in this period and instead recommended Jeff Beck, who played his first gig with the band just two days after Clapton left. Jimmy Page later joined the Yardbirds after Jeff Beck moved on.

The core of the Yardbirds though is Paul Samwell-Smith (bass guitar and producer), Keith Relf (vocalist and harmonica), Chris Dreja (bass and rhythm guitar), and Jim McCarty (drums); together with original lead guitarist Anthony “Top” Topham, the band originally assembled in May 1963 under the name the Blue Sounds before settling on the Yardbirds, a slang term for hobos waiting around for a freight train, and also a nickname for legendary jazz musician Charlie Parker. In September 1963, the Yardbirds took over as the house band for the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, succeeding the Rolling Stones.

As with many of the British Invasion bands, the Yardbirds initially played American R&B and blues songs rather than their own compositions. As reported in Wikipedia, during their days at the Crawdaddy Club: “They drew their repertoire from the Chicago blues of Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Elmore James, including ‘Smokestack Lightning’, ‘Good Morning Little School Girl’, ‘Boom Boom’, ‘I Wish You Would’, ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin’’ and ‘I’m a Man’.” In fact, Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds in March 1965 as a protest when the band finally got a hit single with a song that did not come from this milieu, “For Your Love” (written by Graham Gouldman, later a member of 10cc).

The frequent hit songs by the Yardbirds – “I’m a Man”, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”, “For Your Love”, “Heart Full of Soul”, “Shapes of Things”, “Over Under Sideways Down”, etc. – hit my eardrums with at least as powerful an impact as the greatest Rolling Stones songs, like “Brown Sugar”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, “Paint it Black”, “Get off of My Cloud”, “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Street Fighting Man”, etc. To me though, these songs sound every bit as fresh to me today, probably because they haven’t been played to death on oldies’ radio as much as anything else. It wasn’t just the hits though; their album tracks also sound terrific, but it is as a live band that the Yardbirds truly cook. On my first Yardbirds album, The Yardbirds’ Greatest Hits, one live track was included, a scorching cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning”; as much as I loved the hit songs that made up most of the tracks, it quickly became one of my favorite songs on the album. “Smokestack Lightning” was taken from the band’s first (British) album, Five Live Yardbirds, described by Allmusic as “the first important – indeed, essential – live album to come out of the 1960’s British rock & roll boom”. And how many rock bands have the guts to put out a concert album as their debut release? Five Live Yardbirds wasn’t released in the U.S. until a CD finally came out in the 1980’s, although one side of Having a Rave up with the Yardbirds was composed of four songs from the album. The muddy sound on many of the Yardbirds songs over the years has been greatly improved as better master tapes have surfaced; Allmusic notes the Repertoire Records releases of the 1990’s as showing significant improvement. Cheap compilation albums with names like Eric Clapton and the Yardbirds and Jeff Beck and the Yardbirds usually feature assortments of uneven performances, and they also have not helped the Yardbirds’ reputation since the 1960’s. But for those in the know, and if you find the right albums, rock music doesn’t get much better than this.

Eric Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers after leaving the Yardbirds in order to concentrate on the blues; he was in the band from April to August 1965, and from November 1965 to July 1966. John Mayall’s band was a revolving door of famous British musicians; but even more remarkably, bandmembers who left John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers often helped form other rock bands. Examples include Jack Bruce, later a member of Cream with Clapton. Shortly after Eric Clapton left for good, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers consisted of John Mayall plus three of the founding members of Fleetwood Mac: Peter Green, John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood. Others include Mick Taylor, the first new musician to join the Rolling Stones since their classic line-up was formed; Jon Mark and Johnny Almond, who later formed Mark-Almond, among other musical accomplishments (not to be confused with Marc Almond of Soft Cell); top English drummer Aynsley Dunbar; and Andy Fraser, a founding member of Free.

Jack Bruce was the original bass guitarist for Blues Incorporated, which was founded by Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner as the first amplified R&B band in Britain; other bandmembers in the early line-up include Charlie Watts, the drummer for the Rolling Stones, and vocalist Long John Baldry. The band was never intended to have a fixed line-up and included numerous fine musicians over its life, among them the future drummer for Cream, Ginger Baker. Jack Bruce was also briefly a member of Manfred Mann.

Writing for Allmusic, Bruce Eder noted that early on, most drummers were famous only because the bands they were in were famous: “Ginger Baker was rock’s first superstar drummer and the most influential percussionist of the 1960s. . . . Baker made his name entirely on his playing, initially as showcased in Cream, but far transcending even that trio’s relatively brief existence. Though he only cut top-selling records for a period of about three years at the end of the 1960s, virtually every drummer of every heavy metal band that has followed since that time has sought to emulate some aspect of Baker’s playing.” During the 1950’s, Ginger Baker was a member of several of what were known in England as “trad jazz” bands, i.e., Dixieland jazz. Charlie Watts recommended Baker as the drummer for Blues Incorporated after he left the band. Ginger Baker crossed paths with lead vocalist, saxophonist and organist Graham Bond and bassist Jack Bruce; together with another alumnus of the band, saxophone player Dick Heckstall-Smith, the four began jamming together before enthusiastic crowds while performing with a band called the Johnny Burch Octet. Bond initially formed the Graham Bond Quartet with Bruce, Baker and guitarist John McLaughlin (an important figure in jazz fusion who performed on Miles Davis’s first gold record, Bitches Brew); when Heckstall-Smith joined up, the group was renamed the Graham Bond Organisation. It was in this period that Ginger Baker developed his signature drum solo, “Toad”.

To some extent at least, the formation of Cream grew out of an English all-star band called the Powerhouse that was assembled solely to provide music for a 1966 compilation album called What’s Shakin’ that announced the arrival of Elektra Records in Great Britain. Bandmembers included Eric Clapton (guitar); Jack Bruce (bass guitar) and Paul Jones (harmonica) from Manfred Mann; Stevie Winwood (lead vocals) and Pete York (drums) from the Spencer Davis Group; and Ben Palmer (piano), who had briefly been in a band with Clapton in 1965. Ginger Baker was originally slated to be the drummer for the group but was unavailable. This remarkable line-up included two members of Cream (and almost all three), plus two future members of Blind Faith (Clapton and Winwood). What’s more, Cream later recorded two of the only three songs ever made by this assemblage, Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads” and an instrumental called “Steppin’ Out” that Eric Clapton had previously performed while in John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. The artist on these two songs was listed as Eric Clapton & the Powerhouse. The third song, “I Want to Know” was credited to MacLeod, an evident reference to Paul Jones’ wife Sheila MacLeod; Ten Years After included “I Want to Know” on their first album, Ten Years After that was released in late 1967.

In 1966, Eric Clapton met Ginger Baker; both men felt a little stifled in their band environment – John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers and the Graham Bond Organisation, respectively – and Baker asked Clapton to join a band that he was putting together. Clapton agreed, but only if Jack Bruce was also included as the lead vocalist and bass guitarist; Clapton later said that Baker almost wrecked his car when he heard that. Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were notorious for their volatility while in the Graham Bond Organisation together, including on-stage fights and sabotage of the other’s instruments. The two put aside their differences for the sake of the new band, but this probably sowed the seeds for Cream’s dissolution in barely two years’ time. The band’s debut album, the fittingly titled Fresh Cream featured a mixture of traditional blues songs as well as band originals. For a band that became renowned for their instrumental solos, the two opening tracks (both written or co-written by Jack Bruce), “I Feel Free” and “N.S.U.” were less than 3 minutes each. “I Feel Free” was co-written with Pete Brown, who became an important songwriting partner with the Cream bandmembers; he and Bruce were the songwriters on their hit “White Room” plus four songs on Disraeli Gears that included “Sunshine of Your Love” (which was co-written with Eric Clapton). The blues songs include Skip James’ “I’m So Glad”, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” (originally written and recorded by Hambone Willie Newbern, with the first famous recording being by Muddy Waters), and the stomping “Spoonful” (written by Willie Dixon). As was often true throughout the British Invasion, the British and American releases of Fresh Cream were different. “I Feel Free” is not on the U.K. version even though it was the band’s first single in Britain, while “Spoonful” is omitted from the original American release – happily it is included on my copy, since it is one of my favorite Cream tracks. “Spoonful” is also a standout, extended live track on Wheels of Fire.

Disraeli Gears marked the arrival of the man who became essentially a fourth bandmember in Cream, Felix Pappalardi. He was the record producer on this album and the next two, and Pappalardi plays many different instruments (often uncredited), particularly on Wheels of Fire. With his wife Gail Collins Pappalardi, Felix Pappalardi also wrote two songs on this album, “Strange Brew” and “World of Pain”. With this album, Cream introduced psychedelia into their mixture of styles and influences. Besides their hit “Sunshine of Your Love”, outstanding songs on the album include “Strange Brew”, “Tales of Brave Ulysses” and “Swalbr” – the curious title of the last song comes from the initials for “She Walks Like A Bearded Rainbow” (or “She Was Like A Bearded Rainbow”). Writing for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine calls Disraeli Gears “a very British album”, and never more so than on the closing track “Mother’s Lament”, showing that Cream was also attracted to traditional songs other than the blues. For a change, no attempt was made to market a different album in the U.S. from the one that was released in England, and Americans responded by driving the album to #4 on the Billboard album charts, even better than the #5 showing that Disraeli Gears reached in the U.K.

Blind Faith formed shortly after the break-up of Cream. Eric Clapton had been trying to bring Stevie Winwood into Cream to act as a sort of buffer between Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker – actually that probably wouldn’t have worked out, since I heard that Baker and Winwood didn’t get along in Blind Faith. As with the formation of Cream itself, Eric Clapton and Stevie Winwood were frustrated with their present bands. Cream had better amplifiers toward the end, and Jack Bruce was pushing the volume up during concerts, so Ginger Baker was having difficulty getting his drums heard above the roar. Eric Clapton said that he stopped playing during a Cream concert once, and neither Jack Bruce nor Ginger Baker even noticed; he also characterized later Cream performances as the bandmembers showing off. In the same time period, Stevie Winwood was feeling hamstrung in the Spencer Davis Group, where he had been their lead singer for years. He had wanted to introduce a more experimental, jazz-inflected sound into the band; eventually he left the group and formed his own band called Traffic in 1967. When Traffic broke up temporarily in 1969, Stevie Winwood began jamming with Eric Clapton; they had played together previously in the Powerhouse. Ginger Baker sat in one time in 1969, and he was a natural as the band’s drummer. Clapton was reluctant to team up with Baker again so soon after Cream broke up, but Winwood convinced him that they would never find a more talented drummer than Baker. The three invited Rick Grech (also known as Ric Grech) to join the group; he was the bass guitarist in Family and left that band mid-tour to join Blind Faith.

The striking photograph on the British cover of the group’s sole album, Blind Faith shows a young topless girl holding a shiny metal winged object that reminds me of a hood ornament. The cover shot was created by photographer Bob Seidemann, a good friend and former flatmate of Eric Clapton who had also photographed Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. The image was titled “Blind Faith” by Seidemann, and that became the name of the band Blind Faith as well. There was a great deal of buzz associated with the Blind Faith album (mainly due to its Cream connections, at least in the U.S.), but there is every indication that it was rushed to the market. There are only six songs on the album, one of them a Buddy Holly song, “Well All Right”; one of the tracks, “Do What You Like” is a 15-minute jam. Still, the quartet created a great album by any measure: “Sea of Joy” and “Presence of the Lord” are classic rock songs without question, and the two opening tracks, “Had to Cry Today” and “Can’t Find My Way Home” are every bit as good. Eventually I will have to pick up the 2001 deluxe edition, which includes 9 bonus tracks. Despite the fact that one-half of Blind Faith was previously two-thirds of Cream, their album seemed dominated instead by Stevie Winwood; besides handling lead vocalist duties, Winwood wrote half of the songs, with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker each contributing one.

Whereas rock music critique was previously about what was good and what was bad, the Blind Faith album was released (in August 1969) at a time when opinions began to be divided about rock music as a whole, and beyond mere aesthetic considerations – whether the idea of rock as an industry could be a good thing regardless of what the music itself was like. As an example, there were three different reviews of Blind Faith in Rolling Stone that month. Here is how Bruce Eder opens his article on Blind Faith for Allmusic: “Blind Faith was either one of the great successes of the late ’60s, a culmination of the decade’s efforts by three legendary musicians – or it was a disaster of monumental proportions, and a symbol of everything that had gone wrong with the business of rock at the close of the decade. In actual fact, Blind Faith was probably both.” In any case, Blind Faith didn’t stay together but seven months.

Shortly afterward, Eric Clapton began playing as a sideman with a completely different group, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, a rock/soul collaboration of Delaney Bramlett and his wife Bonnie Bramlett with a whole parade of musicians: Besides Clapton, Wikipedia lists Duane Allman, Gregg Allman, George Harrison, Leon Russell, Bobby Whitlock, Dave Mason, Rita Coolidge, and King Curtis. In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton: The Autobiography, Eric Clapton claimed that Delaney & Bonnie and Friends was the first white group to sign with Stax Records. Delaney & Bonnie and Friends was the opening act for Blind Faith at many of their concert appearances; about this, Eric Clapton stated: “For me, going on [with Blind Faith] after Delaney & Bonnie was really, really tough, because I thought they were miles better than us.” The group recorded a total of six albums between 1969 and 1971, though none were big sellers.

Eric Clapton continued to keep a relatively low profile in order to counter the star worship that he was attracting. In 1970, Eric Clapton assembled another band consisting of the rhythm section from Delaney & Bonnie and Friends – Bobby Whitlock (keyboardist and vocals), Carl Radle (bass) and Jim Gordon (drums) – plus Dave Mason on guitar. This quintet backed George Harrison on his monumental solo album, All Things Must Pass. Eric Clapton was then interested in turning them into a proper band; he first suggested the name Eric Clapton and Friends, but that seemed too much like Delaney & Bonnie and Friends to suit others in the group. There are several stories as to how they took the name Derek and the Dominos, but “Derek” seems clearly derived from “Eric”, and Fats Domino might have inspired the band name. As it happened, Dave Mason was present only at their first concert in June 1970, before they even took that name. Like Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos only released one studio album, Layla and Other Love Songs (1970), though it was a double album. A few days into the sessions for the album, Eric Clapton first heard Duane Allman play with the Allman Brothers Band at an outdoor concert in Miami. Eric Clapton and Duane Allman had an all-night jam session soon after that; Allman was invited to join Derek and the Dominos as a fifth member, but he declined in order to remain loyal to his band. However, Duane Allman played slide guitar on all but 3 of the 14 songs on the album. My brother Tom Winfree is a huge Duane fan; he says that most people are hearing Duane Allman on this album when they think they are hearing Eric Clapton – those opening notes on “Layla”, for instance, are from Duane. As reported in Wikipedia: “Many critics would later notice that [Eric] Clapton played best when in a band composed of dual guitars; working with another guitarist kept him from getting ‘sloppy and lazy and this was undeniably the case with Duane Allman’.”

The Derek and the Dominos album includes of course their massive hit “Layla”, but the album was not a big seller right away – in fact, Layla and Other Love Songs didn’t make the record charts in England until 2011 (for one week). However, “Layla” was included on an album called The History of Eric Clapton and was released by Atlantic Records as a single in 1972; the song then made the Top Ten in both the U.S. and the U.K. (By this point, Derek and the Dominos had broken up during the recording sessions for their second album). “Layla” was a hit again in 1982; and after Eric Clapton reworked the song into a ballad for his MTV Unplugged sessions in 1992 – preserved on the album Unplugged – the song made #12 on the Billboard charts. As the years have gone by, appreciation of Layla and Other Love Songs – which wasn’t even a critical favorite at the time – has grown, and the album makes several best-album lists. VH1 named it #89, and Rolling Stone has it at #115.

The short life of Derek and the Dominos was beset with tragedy – Jimi Hendrix died just eight days after the band laid down one of his songs for the album, “Little Wing”, and one year later, their near-bandmate Duane Allman was also gone. Eric Clapton was settling into heroin addiction while the band was on tour, and he sank into despair when this band too broke up. After appearing only at the Concert for Bangladesh that George Harrison organized in 1972, Pete Townshend of the Who brought together an allstar line-up for a 1973 concert intended to bring Eric Clapton out of hiding and to help him kick his habit. Known as the Rainbow Concert, musicians on hand include Rick Grech and Stevie Winwood from Blind Faith, Jim Capaldi (who had co-founded Traffic with Winwood), Anthony “Reebop” Kwaku Baah (a percussionist from Ghana who played with Traffic and also the German band Can), Ron Wood (then in Faces), and drummer Jimmy Karstein (who was on hand for the final album by Buffalo Springfield). As documented on the album Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert, the performance does not rank among Eric Clapton’s best. However, the album can certainly be appreciated as the re-emergence of one of the great guitar gods from a demon that had already claimed many of the best rock musicians. From this point on, Eric Clapton’s colorful career has been primarily as a solo artist, beginning with the 1974 album 461 Ocean Boulevard; his debut solo album was Eric Clapton (1970).

Meanwhile, Ginger Baker was putting together a supergroup and a double album of his own. Ginger Baker’s Air Force – described in Wikipedia as a rock-jazz fusion band – was organized from the ashes of Blind Faith and featured the other three musicians in the band besides Eric Clapton: Ginger Baker (drums, percussion and vocals), Stevie Winwood (organ and vocals), and Rick Grech (violin and bass guitar). Others on hand in the 10-piece band include Baker’s former bandmate Graham Bond, Denny Laine (one of the original members of the Moody Blues – he sang lead on their early hit “Go Now” – and later a key member of Paul McCartney and Wings), Chris Wood (another founding member of Traffic), and Wood’s wife Jeanette Jacobs (previously in the New York band the Cake). Billed as the first left-handed album (the gatefold album cover had the front cover printed on what was normally the back, though the album art was so extreme that it was a little hard to tell the difference), Ginger Baker’s Air Force was released in March 1970. In the 4½ star review of the album in Allmusic, Bruce Eder raves: “For a change, the late 1960s yielded up a supergroup that lived up to its hype and then some. Ginger Baker’s Air Force was recorded live at Royal Albert Hall in January of 1970 – in fact, this may be the best-sounding live album ever to come out of that notoriously difficult venue – at a show that must have been a wonder to watch, as the ten-piece band blazed away in sheets of sound, projected delicate flute parts behind multi-layered African percussion, or built their songs up Bolero-like, out of rhythms from a single instrument into huge jazz-cum-R&B crescendos. Considering that this was only their second gig, the group sounds astonishingly tight, which greatly reduces the level of self-indulgence that one would expect to find on an album where five of the eight tracks run in excess of ten minutes.” The band’s second album, Ginger Baker’s Air Force 2 came out at the end of 1970 and had a different group of musicians. This album too is well regarded in Allmusic and receives 4 stars.

Felix Pappalardi, who produced Cream’s second through fourth albums and became almost a fourth member of the band, is actually from New York. A classically trained musician, Pappalardi had previously worked with a Long Island garage rock band called the Vagrants and had them signed to Atco Records. Their third single in 1967, “Respect” became a hit on the East Coast, until Aretha Franklin released her version of the song, and that was the end of that. In early 1969, guitarist Leslie West of the Vagrants started a band called Leslie West Mountain (with “mountain” being a reference to his then-large size); other bandmembers were Norman Landsberg (keyboards, bass) and Ken Janick (drums). Felix Pappalardi expressed interest in producing the band’s work. The album is called Mountain and was released in July 1969, just five months after Goodbye; Felix Pappalardi produced the album and also performed bass guitar with Leslie West, Norman Landsberg, and drummer N. D. Smart, formerly with the highly regarded Boston garage band the Remains (who are featured on the Nuggets album). The album is often confused as being by the band Mountain; but officially, it is the first solo album by Leslie West.

After Mountain, the solo album by Leslie West was released, the group then went on the road using the band name Mountain, bringing along Steve Knight on keyboards after Norman Landsberg and Ken Janick left to start the band Hammer. Their fourth concert as a working band was at the 1969 Woodstock festival; though they were not included on the first album or the concert film, their performances of “Blood of the Sun” (from the Leslie West solo album, Mountain) and “Theme for an Imaginary Western” (written by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown) were included on the double album Woodstock 2 that came out in 1971. Shortly after Woodstock, Canadian Corky Laing replaced N. D. Smart on drums, and this line-up of Mountain produced one of my favorite hard rock albums of all time, Climbing!. The album featured the hit song “Mississippi Queen” and also “Theme for an Imaginary Western”, but the whole album cooks. Felix Pappalardi’s wife Gail Collins Pappalardi co-wrote six songs on the album and also contributed artwork for the cover on their first three albums. The album also includes a reflection on Woodstock, called “For Yasgur’s Farm” (Max Yasgur owned the farm where the festival took place). Mountain released two more albums in quick succession, both quite good, called Nantucket Sleighride and Flowers of Evil, with the third album coming out just 20 months after their first.

The other member of Cream, Jack Bruce released his debut solo album, Songs for a Tailor in the U.K. at almost the same moment that Mountain was performing one of the songs on the album, “Theme for an Imaginary Western” at Woodstock. All of the songs on the album had music by Jack Bruce and lyrics by Pete Brown; they had co-written several of the Cream songs previously. Jack Bruce has released many albums since then; the one that I have is an anthology album called At His Best.

Jack Bruce has rarely performed with a band since Cream; but after Mountain broke up in 1969 when Felix Pappalardi left the group, he hooked up with two of the members of the group, Leslie West and Corky Laing and formed a power trio called West, Bruce and Laing. The group released two studio albums, Why Dontcha and Whatever Turns You On; no hits emerged from the albums, and by the time their live album, Live ’n’ Kickin’ came out in 1974, the group had already broken up. Leslie West and Felix Pappalardi organized a new line-up of Mountain in mid-1973; and, as before, the band had a frenetic existence, releasing in a six-month period the double live album Twin Peaks and a studio album called Avalanche that featured Corky Laing on drums. After playing a final gig at the Forum in L.A. in December 1974, Mountain broke up again.

As with past UARB the Sons of Fred, I learned about this month’s Under-Appreciated Rock Band, THE SOUL AGENTS through the albums in the English Freakbeat Series. The English Freakbeat, Volume 2 CD includes a song made famous by Muddy Waters, “I Just Wanna Make Love to You” plus the flip side of a later single, the organ-driven instrumental “Gospel Train”. The English Freakbeat, Volume 4 CD has three more songs, “Don’t Break it Up”, “Mean Woman Blues” and “I Just Wanna Make Love to You” again. Apparently the intention was to include “Let’s Make it Pretty Baby” on the earlier CD (it was included on the English Freakbeat, Volume 2 LP); Greg Shaw says that it was his favorite among their songs in the liner notes for the English Freakbeat, Volume 2 CD.

Every once in a while, I see something on the Internet that makes me just step back and marvel. As usual, I went on the Internet to see what I could find about the Soul Agents. I immediately uncovered a blog called The British Sound that is run by an Italian rock historian named Bruno Ceriotti. His most recent creation was what he called “The Soul Agents Day-by-Day Story”. He describes the Soul Agents as “undoubtedly one of the best British rhythm ’n’ blues bands of the early 60’s” and thanks 30 people who assisted him over the 20 years of research required to put this information together, among them Eric Clapton and Keith Emerson. This truly amazing history of the band can be found at: http://brunoceriotti.weebly.com/the-soul-agents.html . Running down something like this for a major rock band like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin would be difficult enough; but I can’t imagine where he even looked, a half-century later, to find out about every gig of the Soul Agents (18 in the month of August 1964 alone, to pick one month basically at random). Bruno Ceriotti noted that one club where the band performed regularly, the Marquee in Soho did not normally list the supporting acts in their monthly program listings, making it that much more difficult. Bruno Ceriotti also uncovered the eight (!) line-up changes of the predecessor band the Lonely Ones (with photographs of two of them) and the personnel changes in the Soul Agents as well. This is an example of the level of detail that Bruno Ceriotti put into his descriptions: “The Lonely Ones added a rhythm guitarist called Jim Sach (b. James Victor George Raphael Sach, Saturday, May 13, 1944, George, South Africa) known to friends as ‘Jimmy’ or ‘Jimbo’. Jim started to play guitar in the spring of 1961 with an unnamed High School band that included singer Kevin Finn (aka Danny Finn of The New Seekers’ fame). They only performed once, at the school concert. Jim left school in the summer of 1961 and formed a band called The Avengers with friends from school and the youth clubs, but gigs were few and far between so he jumped at the opportunity of joining The Lonely Ones in early 1962 changing his day job to accommodate the heavy schedule of gigs that The Lonely Ones were enjoying.”

In 1960, four young men from southwest Hampshire assembled themselves as an R&B band, first taking the name the Stallions and then settling on the name the Lonely Ones in January 1962. The initial line-up was Jerry Bromley (bass guitar), Tony Good (guitar), Johnny Keeping (vocals), and Chris Warman (drums). As noted above, Jim Sach joined as rhythm guitar, and Ray Taylor helped out as a second vocalist and roadie. Gene Anthony was added as a permanent second vocalist in the summer of 1962. The band went through several drummers between the summer of 1962 and August 1963 and made an appearance on June 17, 1963 on a local TV show called Home Grown. In August 1963, the Lonely Ones “went pro”, losing Jerry Bromley in the process, so Jim Sach switched to bass guitar; otherwise, through the beginning of 1964, the Lonely Ones were back almost to its original line-up: Tony Good (guitar), Johnny Keeping (vocals), Gene Anthony (vocals), Chris Warman (drums), and Jim Sach (bass guitar).

For the month of December 1963, the Lonely Ones performed seven days a week at a club called Storyville in Cologne (Köln), Germany (almost exactly one year after the last of the Beatles’ several residencies in Hamburg, Germany took place). British singer Paul Hanford was a sometime “guest vocalist” over this period; he previously had a hit in the U.K. with “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” (Brian Hyland had the original hit in 1960 with “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”). At this point, the band still had more of a pop sound but would transition to a harder R&B band the following year. Gene Anthony and Chris Warman left the band in January 1964; and in March 1964, Don Shinn was added on organ. His strong keyboard work was essential to the band’s sound from then on. The Lonely Ones officially changed its name to the Soul Agents on April 2, 1964. The bandmembers were Tony Good (guitar and harmonica), Johnny Keeping (vocals), Jim Sach (bass guitar). Don Shinn (organ), and Roger Pope (drums).

On June 2, 1964, the Soul Agents released their first single on Pye Records, “I Just Wanna Make Love to You” b/w “Mean Woman Blues”. Later in the year, the single was released in the U.S. and in Canada. The band made a few lyric changes to the Willie Dixon song (and in the title as well – the actual title is “I Just Want To Make Love To You”), and they inserted some nice instrumental fills into their rendition of this blues standard. “Mean Woman Blues” is also an oft recorded song; Elvis Presley included “Mean Woman Blues” in the soundtrack for his 1957 film, Loving You (his first starring role in a movie), and “Mean Woman Blues” was the flip side of Roy Orbison’s immortal “Blue Bayou” when the song was originally released in 1963. In the U.K., Cliff Richard and the Shadows had released “Mean Woman Blues” in 1959. As with the other singles by the Soul Agents, this recording failed to make the British charts. Undaunted, the Soul Agents continued their near constant series of gigs in British clubs and also made an occasional appearance on television and radio. On September 18, 1964 and again on September 21, the Soul Agents backed blues legend Little Walter, a fearsome blues harmonica (“blues harp”) player who was once a part of Muddy Waters’ band. Wikipedia notes that his “revolutionary approach to the harmonica earned him comparisons to Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, for innovation and impact on succeeding generations”. Harmonica is mostly absent from rock music these days, but nearly every 1960’s band had someone who could handle the harmonica. Playing some of his early sides convinced me that Little Walter is likely the reason for this. Little Walter is the first and only musician to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame solely as a harmonica player.

The Soul Agents released their second single on October 15, 1964, also on Pye Records; and in 1965, this single also came out in America. The band picked two other traditional songs for this 45, “The Seventh Son” b/w “Let’s Make it Pretty Baby”. “The Seventh Son” was a Top Ten hit song for Johnny Rivers in 1965, and “seventh son” is mentioned in numerous other songs as well, such as Roger Miller’s “Dang Me”: “I’m the seventh out of seven sons / My pappy was a pistol, I’m a son of a gun”. Of the “B” side, Greg Shaw said in his liner notes for English Freakbeat, Volume 2: “‘Let’s Make it Pretty Baby’ is my favourite, a John Lee Hooker number but with an urgency that was wholly their own.” The same night as their single was released, the Soul Agents appeared at Soho’s Marquee Club with Long John Baldry and the Hoochie Coochie Men. Allmusic says of the 1964 album by this group: “One of the unsung jewels of the British R&B scene, Long John’s Blues is, astonishingly, the sole surviving document of what was, at one point, among the most exciting live acts on the entire circuit.” Rod Stewart appears on banjo on this album. The following month, a single by the Soul Agents was released in Denmark, consisting of the “A” sides of the two British 45’s. Also, an EP was assembled of all four of their songs that was released in Spain; these were the only picture sleeves released by the Soul Agents up to that point in time.

Rod Stewart – then known as “Rod the Mod” – left Long John Baldry and the Hoochie Coochie Men in November 1964 to pursue a solo career. After trying out with several bands, Rod settled on the Soul Agents as his backing band the following month. No formal agreement was made, and they never could record together since they had separate recording contracts. For individual gig contracts though, they were billed as “Rod Stewart and the Soul Agents”. Without any rehearsals, their first performance together was at the Marquee Club on December 3, 1964, and they were regulars for months afterward at the club; Long John Baldry and the Hoochie Coochie Men was also on hand for that first show and several other times. On January 3, 1965, Rod Stewart and the Soul Agents filled the Mecca Ballroom in Hampshire to capacity; and on January 14, 1965, the Marquee Club featured the group as the headliner for the first time. February 19, 1965 marked the appearance of the third single (on Pye) by the Soul Agents, “Don’t Break it Up” b/w “Gospel Train”. The British songwriting team of Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley wrote “Don’t Break it Up”; they are probably best known for the U.K. Number One hit (and U.S. #5) by the Honeycombs, “Have I the Right”. “Gospel Train” is a terrific instrumental anchored by Don Shinn’s Hammond Organ; the song was written by the band, specifically, Tony Good, Jim Sach, Don Shinn, and Roger Pope.

The same night that their third single was released (February 19, 1965), the Soul Agents (but without Rod Stewart) appeared on the storied British music television program, Ready Steady Go!. They performed their new song “Don’t Break it Up” and then backed blues legend Buddy Guy on two songs. Johnny Keeping left the band immediately after the taping to care for his ailing father and take over the family business. The Soul Agents and Buddy Guy had joint appearances at several British clubs in the coming weeks after the Ready Steady Go! show, often with Rod Stewart. In April 1965, Jim Sach also exited the band and became an accountant, leaving the Soul Agents with just three members plus Rod Stewart. After Don Shinn contracted tuberculosis in July 1965, Rod Stewart left the Soul Agents and joined a “supergroup” called Steampacket that was formed by Long John Baldry with organist Brian Auger and vocalist Julie Driscoll, who had previously recorded together as part of Brian Auger and the Trinity.

The Soul Agents were essentially out of commission until Don Shinn recovered, and he then assembled a new band with David ‘Dave’ Glover (bass), Peter ‘Pete’ Hunt (drums), and Ian Duck (vocals, guitar, harp). They were often billed as Don Shinn’s Soul Agents and Don Shinn and the Soul Agents. The band’s fourth and final single came out on Polydor Records in May 1966, “A-Minor Explosion” b/w “Pits of Darkness”, under the name Don Shinn and the Soul Agents. Both sides were instrumentals that were composed by Don Shinn. On June 6, 1966, Keith Emerson – later a founding member of the Nice and Emerson, Lake and Palmer – told Bruno Ceriotti that he was in the audience for a performance by the Soul Agents at the Marquee Club. As reported by Ceriotti on his blog: “The not yet famous organ God Keith Emerson was in the audience during one of the band’s Marquee shows that summer, and was duly inspired by Don Shinn’s act featuring hilarious stage antics such as a habit of disappearing around the back of his organ to draw out weird sounds with the aid of a screwdriver, and also ‘treated’ adaptations of classical pieces such as an arrangement of Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, one of the most popular of all piano concerti. Seeing Don Shinn do that, made Keith Emerson realise that he’d like to compile an act from what Don did.”

In September 1966, the Soul Agents broke up; as reported by Bruno Ceriotti: “Don Shinn went to form his own band The Shinn, Ian Duck joined The MeddyEvils, Pete Hunt joined The Quik, and Dave Glover went to form The Loot (that included another former Soul Agent, Roger Pope).” The Loot also had several connections with the Troggs; bandmember Dave Wright was one of the original members of that band, and “Baby Come Closer”, from their first single, was later recorded by the Troggs. Also, their label, Page One Records was owned by Troggs manager Larry Page; and Ronnie Bond, the drummer for the Troggs produced many of the songs by the Loot. Other bandmembers in the Loot were Chris Bates (vocals) and Bruce Turner (lead guitar). The band released six singles between 1966 and 1969. In 1969, lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Caleb Quaye (vocals, guitar, keyboards) formed a band called Hookfoot with former Soul Agents Ian Duck (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Dave Glover (bass guitar) and Roger Pope (drums). Quaye had previously been in one of the final incarnations of Long John Baldry’s band Bluesology (whose previous members included Elton John when he was still known as Reg Dwight – in fact, the “John” in his stage name is in tribute to Long John Baldry). The bandmembers met while working as house musicians at DJM Records, which had also signed Elton John in the same time period. Caleb Quaye and Roger Pope were part of the backing band for Elton John on his debut album, Empty Sky (1969); and everyone in Hookfoot was on hand for his third album, Tumbleweed Junction (1970). In 1972, Hookfoot released an album called Good Times A’ Comin’ on DJM Records (A&M Records in the States). In 1972, three previous members of the Soul Agents – Jerry Bromley, Jim Sach and Johnny Keeping – were in a new band called Tapestry.

Flashback: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for May 2012 – Tina and the Total Babes

Oh, Tina and the Total Babes is a fun band. Tina Lucchesi had previously been a member of the all-female Trashwomen, and she fronted an otherwise male band in this venture. YouTube has several songs by the band, all audio only. One of the standout cuts on their sole album, “Why Do I Like You” can be heard at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPqJTgsC-oI&list=PLNTskUNB9DGXsgdwqFx6RZ8KBidGExicL . The faster “All About Makin’ Out” is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwqDIZvLfnA&list=PLNTskUNB9DGXsgdwqFx6RZ8KBidGExicL&index=2 . Tina and the Total Babes slow it down for “Christy”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFfldG78C_o&list=PLNTskUNB9DGXsgdwqFx6RZ8KBidGExicL&index=3 . Officially or unofficially, these are ranked as the most popular songs on YouTube by the band, but there are several more.

Picture Gallery: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for May 2011 – The Lonesome Drifter

This is the album of music by the Lonesome Drifter on Norton Records:

Here is a (colorized) portrait of the Lonesome Drifter:

This is his famous single, “Eager Boy”:

And the flip side, “Tear Drop Valley”:

Story of the Month: THE NERVES (from April 2010)

In 1976, a band called the Nerves was formed as a true power trio: Jack Lee, Peter Case and Paul Collins were talented musicians as well as dynamite songwriters. They came up with an EP and a handful of singles that included a minor hit, “One Way Ticket”. The lead song on their EP, “Hanging on the Telephone” was gloriously covered by Blondie on their breakthrough album Parallel Lines. Rumor has it that someone put the Nerves EP on while the band was on their way to a gig, and the rest is history. “Heart of Glass” might have been their #1 hit song, but as the follow-up, “Hanging on the Telephone” reached #5 in the UK and ensured that Blondie would remain a force in rock music well into the 1980’s – in fact, they are still touring and recording good albums to this day. It wasn’t until 2008 that a proper retrospective album for the Nerves came out, called One Way Ticket – on the Bomp-affiliated Alive Records label – that includes their recorded output as well as some additional related tracks, plus seven nice live tracks from a 1977 show. The Nerves broke up due to the usual musical differences – not surprising considering that each member of the band was fighting to get their songs recorded – and the Breakaways immediately formed. Basically it was just the duo of Peter Case and Paul Collins plus whatever guitar player or two that they could scrounge up to join the session; there were three different line-ups in the group in their short history. Their sound is sparer than that of the Nerves, but no less energetic for all that. One of their earliest tracks is also one of the best: “Walking out on Love” was part of the Nerves’ live show but had never been recorded by that band. Case and Collins worked through most of 1978 getting as many songs on tape as possible, along with a handful in the recording studio. By the end of 1978, these two had also gone their separate ways, with Peter Case forming the Plimsouls and Paul Collins starting the Beat (later Paul Collins’ Beat).