MiG Music 2024
Live At Essen Pop And Blues Festival 1969/1970
Beyond the blues in search of creative liberty, half-obscure British combo blind continental crowd with their sheer brilliance.
Only the management’s greed and stupidity robbed this ensemble – one of a handful Old World acts to grace the Woodstock stage – from attaining fame, if not fortune. Still, Keef Hartley excelled in making his collective a musical institution wherein future members of JUICY LUCY, URIAH HEEP and T.REX got schooled, as he steered them towards a different festival, an event held in Essen two years in a row, in 1969 and 1970, separated by a mere six months. It was there, in the Ruhr, that the drummer-directed group spread their wings and took off from the springboard of the brace of albums they had issued previously – neither of which even at the slightest hinted at the players’ strength as free-form performers of stunning jazz-rock, but the reports gathered here do, with a lot of vigor.
Attributing such flights of fantasy strictly to the Brits’ fluctuating brass squad, whose numbers varied from two to eleven, the latter line-up captured on the appropriately titled “Little Big Band” in 1971, would be wrong, though, as the reedmen’s framework – overseen, and spearheaded, by trumpet player Henry Lowther – have always been outlined by the team’s nucleus, as Keef called himself, singing guitarist Miller Anderson and bassist Gary Thain. So much is obvious on “Too Much Thinking” which opens their October 11th, 1969 show and closes the April 25th, 1970 appearance, the wall of wind instruments, respectively Jimmy Jewel and Chris Mercer’s saxes at the fore, allowing vocals and six-string passages to bounce off and land with elegant gravity. However, while the sets on offer are quite similar, the former concert’s pieces find Hartley and Thain unfold powerful groove on “Leavin’ Trunk” where they tightly lock into each other, and the latter’s demonstrate truly intrepid improvs thanks to the presence of Lyn Dobson, Barbara Thompson and a pair of trombonists. Not that any of those could compete with Miller’s piercing voice on “Just To Cry” which, segueing from the preceding cut, soars higher and higher and jives more and more seductively until the collective’s leader beats gel into an exciting solo and “Sinnin’ For You” expands the array’s dynamics in less than five minutes it requires to pack a jovial, riff-spurred punch.
Yet if “Rock Me Baby” serves as a prime example of the ensemble’s ability to extemporize on the twelve-bar idiom and elevate it from down-to-earth infectiousness to celestial heights during their earlier outing, “Me And My Woman” which emerges in the course of their second visit to Essen delivers a stronger blow to leave a lasting impression. As does “Believe In You” of which but an excerpt survived from 1969, preserving Lowther’s spirited violin part that would be gone when the same ballad got reprised half a year later, after the group aired and blared the sonic-amplitude-measuring epic “Think It Over” for the punters to feel their might. The might felt then – and now too, rendering these two discs truly essential.
*****
