CANNED HEAT: CANNED HEAT (1967)
1) Rollin' And Tumblin'; 2)
Bullfrog Blues; 3) Evil Is Going On; 4) Goin' Down Slow; 5) Catfish Blues; 6)
Dust My Broom; 7) Help Me; 8) Big Road Blues; 9) The Story Of My Life; 10) The
Road Song; 11) Rich Woman.
It is interesting that, despite all the
creativity going on in late '66 / early '67, it was precisely that time that
also saw the last big wave of «blues purists» before Electric Blues Revival
finally gave way to Semi-Original Blues Rock once and for all. In the UK, this
period brought about such big figures as Ten Years After and Fleetwood Mac; and
on the other side of the Atlantic, arguably the biggest figure to appear on the
scene were Canned Heat, the proud Topanga Canyon follow-up to Chicago's Paul
Butterfield Blues Band — a bunch of young white amateurs and blues collectors,
who'd spent the early Sixties soaking up influences and eventually grew up into
admiring imitators, rather organically at that.
The band's first recordings were produced (by
Johnny Otis) already in 1966, but they didn't get to release a proper album
until they'd met their lucky star at the Monterey Pop Festival and were hailed
by some critics as one of the finest blues-based performers of the entire event.
Sticking to their guns, they went into the studio to record (or re-record) much
of their current repertoire — all covers of blues classics, sometimes
reshuffled and spliced together from different ones in the good old folk-blues
tradition. A few of the tracks were credited to Canned Heat, but do not believe
that for a second — every bit of lyrics and/or melody here is pilfered from
them black guys (most of them dead, so they won't need the cash anyway; the
ones that were still alive, like Willie Dixon, are properly credited — then again, take pity on starving white
kids, too, as they obviously needed themselves some pocket money).
Anyway, Canned Heat's debut is a pretty decent
collection of electric blues tunes, but hardly amazing even for the still
not-too-demanding standards of early '67. The biggest flaw, which would be
diminished, but not eliminated on subsequent albums, is a painful lack of
personality: all the members of the band are competent, yet they lack that
particular single spark that could set them aside from all the rest. The
greatest blues purists of the time had star figures as frontmen or sidemen,
people who made it clear that their interpretation carried more significance
than the source material itself — Mike Bloomfield in the Butterfield Blues
Band, Alvin Lee in Ten Years After, Peter Green in Fleetwood Mac — but Canned
Heat, at least in their earliest days, were a pure blues democracy with
everyone sitting at the same trench level.
Thus, the band's primary vocalist Bob Hite
("The Bear"), the proud owner of a rough, rowdy voice and a «300
pounds of joy»-type body, is a competent blueswailer, but his limited range and
inability to come up with a fresh style of singing leaves no chance for
«competence» to cross over into the realm of «awesomeness». Rhythm guitar
player Alan Wilson ("The Owl") has not yet begun to mature as a
songwriter, and his main talent on this album lies in his harmonica playing: he
blows a very mean, dry, creaky harp on ʽGoin' Down Slowʼ and a few other tunes
— also, his oddly childish, high and shaky singing (ʽHelp Meʼ) makes a nice
contrast with Hite's far more powerful, but far less subtle vocalizing. And
lead guitarist Henry Vestine can play some sharp solos every now and then,
understanding the value of a good juicy guitar tone and all, but, well, he
ain't no (insert the name of your favorite mid-Sixties blues guitarist here,
like Clapton or Bloomfield): I really like the things he's doing on ʽThe Story
Of My Lifeʼ, but Freddie King could do all of that with his eyes closed — and with
even more power.
Because of all that, Canned Heat's self-titled
debut is more of a historical curio, just so that you could see how it all
started, and check out the many ways in which it is possible to recombine
Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, and a
half-dozen other blues greats and adapt them for... one's pleasure, really:
there's no silly talk here about «making black Chicago blues accessible for
white auditories», because those particular auditories for whom Canned Heat
were playing were perfectly capable of accessing the original stuff themselves.
No, it's all just for the fun of it — and also for the improved mix and
production, because, at the very least, Canned
Heat has a far more «modern» sound.
Although Canned Heat were already positioning
themselves as a jam band at the time, the debut album is quite cautious in that
respect: only ʽCatfish Bluesʼ is stretched out to nearly seven minutes — a
mistaken decision, I'd say, because they entrust the entire instrumental
section to Vestine, and he delivers a rather disjointed, absent-minded solo
without any interesting build-ups or climactic peaks (not to mention that
Hite's overdoing his Muddy impersonation). Everything else is thankfully kept
in the 3-4 minute ballpark, and I by far prefer the brief, tasteful, polished
bottleneck solos on ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ and ʽDust My Broomʼ than the
meandering dryness and distortion of the ʽCatfish Bluesʼ jam.
One thing I do not quite understand is the intentional
mix-up: for instance, ʽRich Womanʼ, originally credited to Canned Heat and then
later re-credited to Dorothy LaBostrie and McKinley Millet, is really ʽI Wish
You Wouldʼ by Billy Boy Arnold; and ʽThe Road Songʼ, also credited Canned Heat
and then later re-credited to Floyd Jones, is really ʽSmokestack Lightningʼ.
Either there must have been some mix-up at the record plant, or they were
generously trying to feed some unjustly forgotten blues heroes at the expense
of those who'd already gotten their dues. In any case, the titles of these two
songs are quite strangely matched to their contents (Side A, on the contrary,
seems fixed up fairly well).
Anyway, on the whole I have about as much use
for this album as I do for Fleetwood Mac's self-titled debut — maybe even a
little less, because Peter Green at least tried from the very beginning to use
the classic blues idiom to placate his own demons, whereas Canned Heat just sounds like a simple blues party thrown on at a
moment's notice by sincere blues aficionados. If they had not gone on to
slightly more ambitious projects, the record would probably have sunk beyond
any possibility of redeem or recovery.
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