Except when starchy fans were clapping on beats one and three, John Mayall was delighted that his 80th birthday tour had included Ronnie Scott's Club. For the ponytailed Godfather of British Blues is also a lifetime jazz fan who lost a huge vinyl collection when fire destroyed his Laurel Canyon ranchhouse.
Any adolescent bluesniks could have opened the show, but jazz-guitar aces Jim Mullen and Nigel Price did the honours instead and John was touched. “Let’s hear it for them,” he said, “before we do what we do.” And for the next 80 minutes he did what he has always done — sing the blues.
Songs slow, fast and medium conveyed macho joy, macho pain and most other macho states in between as major and minor classics by Albert King, Eddie Taylor, Jimmie Rodgers and Curtis Algado chimed with angry originals like Nature’s Disappearin’ — “somethin’ I wrote back in 1957, before ecology was invented.”
A tightknit US group featuring Texan lead-guitarist Rocky Athas and two Chicagoans, bass-guitarist Greg Rzab and drummer Jay Davenport, has made Mayall a stronger singer and soloist on guitar, keys and particularly harmonica, but some things are immutable.
From year dot to his present album, My Special Life, a passing jazz chord has never muddied his waters. You only ever get the basic three, because this spry octogenarian remains the purest purist of them all.
