I found this last summer, when Forever Changes was still in pop-up mode, feeding my need once a month instead of all the time (not complaining – having a great record store where I love to hang has been a huge thing in this past year). I believe I had never seen it before.
If I ever saw it in my early record-collecting days, the only familiar name would have been Dr. John’s. Bloomfield was a name in the mists – I knew he existed but not exactly what he did. And I was sinfully unaware, in my college years, of John Hammond, who would soon enough come to occupy an outsized space in my musical obsession, after we got to see him perform for the first time at the blues festival at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in 1990. He absolutely blew us away then, and in addition to seeing him live at least twice more, we have eight of his albums on CD (and one, a recent acquisition, on vinyl). When I was into John Hammond, I wasn’t into vinyl.
But in this recent vinyl resurgence, I have become both very into vinyl and very into Mike Bloomfield. There’s hardly anything he’s touched that I haven’t liked, a lot, so I’m currently buying anything I can find that he was involved with. When I found this 1973 record, I was stunned.
I’ll say that I didn’t expect much. I figured: three different guys, each gets to lead about three songs, and it’ll be a mixed bag – kinda like the “Super Blues” I recently wrote about featuring Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, and Little Walter, which was just an unsatisfying mess.
Boy, would that have been wrong – this album is a solid sender, start to finish. There’s no trading off, no “you do my song and I’ll do yours” feel to it. The only member of the trio with a writing credit at all is Dr. John, who contributed two of the songs. This album is a true collaboration, with lead vocals by John Hammond throughout, giving the whole thing the feel of a real album, instead of a random team-up. Tommy Kaye’s production is absolutely invisible; you couldn’t do better for a blues record. So good that I wish there had been another.
Chris Ethridge on bass, too! A solid tie to the whole Flying Burrito Brothers/Gram Parsons family tree and loads of other great ’70s studio credits.
I didn’t even catch that one! Sometimes you get an album full of the best studio musicians and it’s still nothing, because the ideas just aren’t there. That’s not the case with this one.