John Mayall – Thru The Years

I’m not sure how, in my early years of collecting, I formed an opinion of John Mayall and his bands without actually ever hearing them – but I did. And in those days, when you essentially had to buy a record in order to hear it – the radio wasn’t playing this stuff; my friends didn’t own it – there was no way to confirm or deny that Mayall’s bands sounded any different than the versions of the blues that were being put out by The Animals, Manfred Mann, even the Rolling Stones or half a dozen other rock outfits whose early records leaned very hard on a very standard blues motif. That Mayall had run through such a who’s who of ’60s and ’70s rock stars (Peter Green, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Jack Bruce, Mick Taylor, and yes, Eric Clapton) was interesting but also didn’t point toward a particularly interesting approach to the blues. It wasn’t until much later that I learned he’d also featured Aynsley Dunbar and Keef Hartley and a whole bunch of names I’d never have recognized in my early 20s. And it was later still that I learned just how quickly in his career, Mayall essentially said, “That’s enough of that; let’s try this.”

Once I decided that my conceptions of John Mayall as rather standard British blues were kinda wildly incorrect, and realized that I really enjoyed his work, I just started buying it whenever I found it – and so since my first, “The Latest Edition,” in 2018, I’ve added nine more, and every one has been a bit different, a different take on whatever it is he’s doing at the time.

This was added to our collection late in 2022, a gift from Forever Changes for helping out with something or other, and it filled in a major hole in my Mayall collection and gave me a much better picture of what his earlier work was like. It’s a 1971 release – the very same year as “Memories,” but a world apart, as it’s really a collection of singles and unreleased songs from Mayall’s Decca years. As a result, it’s much more in the line of traditional blues than the later works I’ve collected, with songs by Willie Dixon, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Mayall’s hero J.B. Lenoir, as well as several by Peter Green and Mayall himself. Despite being from his “full band” years, a number of these tracks highlight Mayall’s incredible versatility, as he plays not only guitar and harmonica but keyboard and organ. Sometimes it’s just him a a drummer, but you’d never know it.

By the time this 1971 collection came out, Mayall was off in different directions, but if you listen, every song has a slightly different approach to what can be a very formulaic genre.

It’s a collection I frequently slot in with the History of the British Blues Vol. 1 (naturally, as it features many of the same players) or my Aynsley Dunbar records.