John Mayall (NOT RIP)

quarky

Just seen this on Amazon, and it looks like Volume two was recently released.

Any opinions as to whether it is a good set for someone with none of his stuff?

Jalapeno

IMHO - Bluesbreakers "Beano" album with Eric, followed by A Hard Road with Peter Green.

Fast Forward to 1993 and he put out a belter called Wake Up Call, with Buddy Whittington on guitar

There are loads of Live & Bootleg albums around, but for my money these are the best ones for a starter set.

quarky

Thanks @Jalapeno, I am going to pick those up.

EricTheWeary

What @jalapeno said. The 70th birthday dvd is worth a look (one for the Clapton haters as he is outshone by everyone else). There's a great BBC documentary about him somewhere, he was initially famous for living in a big tree house (in his parent's garden I think) before he was known as a musician. I liked the story where he bought a clicker so he could count the audience coming in the building and not get ripped off by promoters. Eccentric and somehow curiously out of time and space. I saw him with Whittington about seven years ago and his performance was better than anything I'd heard by him on record.

mudslide73

Phew... I thought he'd passed on. Beano and Hard Road FTW as @jalapeno says. 

Jalapeno

mudslide73 said:

Phew... I thought he'd passed on. Beano and Hard Road FTW as @jalapeno says. 

Good point - edited the title for the OP

xSkarloey

The story about him in a treehouse is rounded off beautifully by him having had a Hammond organ up there too.

In addition to the Beano/ Hard Road, try to get something with the young Mick Taylor on too. I think there's a comp covering the years with all three.

EricTheWeary

I can't even remember what it's called but he did a tribute album to Freddie King with Whittington on guitar (and Robben Ford guesting on one track IIRC) that I liked a lot. Freddie is pretty much my blues hero though. Indeed the companion album to Beano and Hard Road is probably King's Let's Hideaway and Dance Away which is very much the roots of those two albums (especially the Beano one).

boogieman

Jalapeno said:

IMHO - Bluesbreakers "Beano" album with Eric, followed by A Hard Road with Peter Green.

Fast Forward to 1993 and he put out a belter called Wake Up Call, with Buddy Whittington on guitar

There are loads of Live & Bootleg albums around, but for my money these are the best ones for a starter set.

Plus one on Wake Up Call, it's excellent. (It's Coco Montoya on lead guitar though, not Buddy Whittington But if you get a chance to see Buddy playing a gig over here don't miss him, he's an astounding player )

scrumhalf

A fair amount of the recently-released stuff has been on Youtube for a while. Much of it is magical. There's a long version of "The Stumble" which is magic.

HAL9000

Jalapeno;1079507" said:

Fast Forward to 1993 and he put out a belter called Wake Up Call, with Coco Montoya on guitar

There. Fixed. Oops - just seen @boogieman beat me to it.

Also, Crusade with Mick Taylor is pretty good.

More recently, A Special Life had a pretty good version of Floodin' in California.

EricTheWeary;1079813" said:

I can't even remember what it's called but he did a tribute album to Freddie King with Whittington on guitar (and Robben Ford guesting on one track IIRC) that I liked a lot.

The album is called In The Palace of the King.

bigjon

I remember the BBC documentary for his 70th had fantastic Whistle Test footage with a stunning full-length guitar solo from Walter Trout. I've looked in vain for the excerpt on YouTube.

EricTheWeary

bigjon said:

I remember the BBC documentary for his 70th had fantastic Whistle Test footage with a stunning full-length guitar solo from Walter Trout. I've looked in vain for the excerpt on YouTube.

That from the gig with Trout with a huge moustache plus Coco Montoya on an upside down explorer? It was on a vhs/ DVD release originally something like Live at Berkley. Will google... B-)

EricTheWeary

...

Iowa State University. I'm guessing it's somewhere in there. Worth watching just for the haircuts.

bigjon

Not that one, I've got that DVD, the BBC doc had Whistle Test footage. Best Walter Trout solo ever.

EricTheWeary

Ahh, I missed the mention of Whistle Test.