1. All Your Love*
2. Hideaway
3. Little Girl
4. Another Man
5. Double Crossing Time
6. What'd I Say*
7. Key to Love
8. Parchman Farm
9. Have You Heard
10. Ramblin' On My Mind
11. Steppin' Out*
12. It Ain't Right
A-
I think the highest compliment that you can pay this album is that it sounds like generic blues rock. Very well-performed blues rock, mind - I'm no fan of Eric Clapton but I'll never say he didn't know his way around a guitar. And while Clapton is very much the star of the show, the other musicians are note-perfect. You only have to listen to "What'd I Say", which is a real showcase for the band as a whole, and features a killer drum solo. John Mayall's voice is highly interesting, in that instead of the raw, rasping quality one expects from Chicago blues he instead has a high, clear voice. It's a nice contrast with the music and helps give the album its own personality.
It's not really fair to say that this is just aping Chicago blues, though. Obviously that is the main frame of reference for the music, but this album is pretty innovative. My opening comment had more to do with the fact that this album was obviously so influential that there's not really much to distinguish it, stylistically, from the countless imitators that came after it. So what was once incredibly new and exciting now sounds kind of old hat.
So perhaps it's better to take Blues Breakers as an excellent example of the form, and examine it in that context. The first thing that strikes you about the album is the clarity and purity of the sound. This isn't a raw album - it's very polished, and very well-recorded. But at a time when studio wizardry was starting to encroach on music it stands out for those very qualities.
The next thing you notice is Clapton's guitar, which is admittedly pretty great. I will never forgive Eric Clapton for the song "Tears in Heaven" (it is sad that his son died, but maybe he shouldn't have memorialised him with one of the worst songs I've ever heard), but he was at one point an extremely talented and innovative guitarist, perfectly bridging the divide between the blues and hard rock - a genre he would of course help to define with the maddeningly inconsistent Cream. And really, it's not just his playing, but the tone of his guitar - a wonderfully full, lightly distorted sound that hits hard while staying classy.
Of course this is a group effort, and if you enjoy the blues then this is an album worth seeking out. I, personally, don't have an especial fondness for it. This is a technically flawless album and I can't help but give it high marks, but I've never been especially fond of British Blues. I'm not sure why, really - I think it comes down to my hesitation about Europeans co-opting African-American culture in an attempt to seem more authentic. It borders on a fetishization of the other. But then at the same time, to say that only black people can play the blues risks fetishizing them just as much. So I don't know. I guess it's a dialogue between different cultures and that's always a good thing, even if it did eventually lead to the existence of Eminem and, god help me, skip hop. And in any case, the Blues Breakers seem to have both a genuine reverence and a deep understanding for the music they're playing, which elevates them above most of their peers and gives the album a nice vitality.
Long story short, this is a very fine album. It just happens to be a genre of music I have virtually no interest in. Still, if not for this album there probably never would have been a ZZ Top, and I don't want to live in a world that doesn't contain the song "Legs".
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