In the beginning, there was blues. It poured out of the American South on acoustic guitars and pianos and made it up north where it turned electric. But the core remained the same. It was rhythmic. It was raw. It was casual, and the poetry it offered was the poetry of the working classes. If that rhythmic element was emphasized in order to make it easier to dance to, people began calling it rhythm & blues.
There have been doctoral dissertations written on the modalities of the music and the artists who created blues. I haven’t read any of them, but I know they exist. My knowledge on the subject only extends a bit beyond what Buddy DeSilva and Lew Brown wrote 100 years ago – “They heard the breeze in the trees, singing weird melodies – And they made that the start of the blues – And from a jail came a wail of a down-hearted frail – And they played that as part of the blues.”
That’s actually a pretty good history. The blues, rhythmic or not, grew out of a human instinct to want to be free like the natural world that surrounds and occasionally mocks us.
Five under-the-radar fantastic blues-rock albums from the 1970s
And then those same blues – especially the R&B brand – begat rock & roll. It came from Robert Johnson and B.B. King filtered through Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. By the time the 1960s rolled around, British bands were taking the blues and making it the bedrock of the most dominant musical trend between the end of WWII and the late part of the 20th century.
Early Beatles, early Stones. The Yardbirds. John Mayall. You could hear their love of the old-school sound even as they were scuffing it up with distortion and volume and speed that would have initially seemed alien to Willie Dixon or Muddy Waters.
But at the end of the 1960s, things began to change. Traditional blues rock didn’t disappear. But it was overtaken by other sounds. Folk rock grew. Pop rock grew. Progressive and glam and new forms of electronic music crowded the market. Kraftwerk and Carole King both released their debut albums in 1970. So did J. Geils. There was still room for R&B in the rock landscape, but that landscape was spreading rapidly in multiple directions.
Take Fleetwood Mac as a test case. The band was formed in the mid-1960s to play blues-based rock & roll. With guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, they released three consecutive top-ten albums. Then Green left.
The fourth album, Kiln House, was not nearly as successful. Spencer left as well. Two artists with more pop-leaning sensibilities – guitarist Bob Welch and keyboardist Christine McVie – joined up. The next album, Future Games, abandoned the blues for more of a progressive sound. It didn’t do all that well. Old fans felt abandoned.
But the next few albums positioned Fleetwood Mac as a pop rock band, and when they replaced Welch with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks a few years later, well, you probably know what happened. They made history. Not as a blues rock band but as the top pop-rockers on the planet.
Today, we’re looking at the ‘70s and at five albums that helped keep blues rock alive. I’m not sure how well any of these bands are known today. Fans of the genre certainly remember them fondly, but I get the feeling that there are plenty of listeners who have either forgotten them or never knew they existed. If you like old-school R&B-based rock – those early Stones songs, those ’70s albums of J. Geils, and the ‘80s work of Stevie Ray Vaughan - you owe it to yourself to check out these five albums.
Teenage Head by the Flamin’ Groovies (1971)
There was a lot of revolutionary music coming out of the Bay area around 1970. Not much of it sounded like the Flamin’ Groovies. They weren’t the least bit revolutionary. They were old-school, all the way. In singer Roy Loney and guitarist Cyril Jordan, they had an American Jagger and Richards who could write and play blues rock as well as anyone.
What they didn’t have, at least not at that time, was a Brian Jones who could push them to explore beyond the blues. Still, if you’re looking for blues-based rock, you can’t do much better than the original Groovies quintet.
m to explore beyond the blues. Still, if you’re looking for blues-based rock, you can’t do much better than the original Groovies quintet.
Teenage Head was their third album. It opened with “High Flyin’ Baby,” a down-and-dirty blues number that revels in Jordan’s classic riff. Then, on “City Lights,” you could swear you are hearing the Stones. Jordan’s acoustic slide is indistinguishable from Keith's, and if Loney doesn’t sound exactly like Mick, the soul is definitely there.
They do a couple of hard-rocking covers of Randy Newman (“Have You Seen My Baby) and Robert Johnson’s acoustic standard “32-20.” If Loney can’t quite match Johnson’s original “32-20 Blues,” he is definitely up to the task of channeling Elvis on “Evil Hearted Ada.” Nine tracks of blues rock bliss.
Loney split after Teenage Head, as did founding guitarist Tim Lynch. The Groovies stayed a strong band, but drifted away from that blues sound and toward more power pop and proto punk.
Nantucket Sleighride by Mountain (1971)
Hard rock fans still cherish Mountain’s monster hit “Mississippi Queen.” That came on their debut album Climbing! in 1970. The follow-up album, Nantucket Sleighride, broadened the sound somewhat with some more progressive songs like the title track and an Allman Brothers-style jam (“My Lady”). But the core of the album remains that classic R&B.
Co-founder, bassist, and vocalist Felix Pappalardi produced the iconic British blues-rock outfit Cream in the late 1960s. When he teamed up with guitar god Leslie West, they created the hardest rocking blues that anyone had ever heard. The opening track, “Don’t Look Around,” explodes from the needle drop in proto-metal. If that isn’t bluesy enough for you, just advance a few tracks to songs like “You Can’t Get Away!,” “Tired Angel,” and “The Great Train Robbery.”
West’s guitar never goes off on long tangents but remains so incisive that it just drips old-school blues into every measure. “The Animal Trainer and the Toad” is an early blend of blues rock and pop rock that would become a staple of bands like Little Feat later in the decade.
Pappalardi didn’t like being on the road and so returned to his production work, and Mountain disbanded a few years later. West continued shredding on guitar in various outfits until his death in 2020. Pappalardi would meet a tragic end when he was shot and killed by his wife in 1983. Drug abuse was reported to have played a major role in the tragedy.
Down by the Jetty by Dr. Feelgood (1975)
It’s not as if the Stone totally abandoned blues-based rock in the ‘70s. Neither did some other British bands. When Dr. Feelgood released their debut album, Down by the Jetty, it proved the blues was far from dead. Guitarist Wilko Johnson blistered through track after track – whether originals like “Roxette” or “All Through the City” or classic covers like John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom Boom Boom” and a live medley of “Bonie Moronie” and “Tequila.”
Lee Brilleaux’s vocals were nothing special, but he contributed mightily with his harmonica that becomes a major force on “Boom Boom Boom Boom” and “That Ain’t No Way to Behave.” Toward the end of the album, Dr. Feelgood throws in a couple of fascinating covers.
There’s the hip-shaking shuffle of “Cheque Book” by highly underrated blues guitarist Mickey Jupp. And Johnson goes to town on the instrumental “Oyeh!,” written by Mick Green, who just might be making an appearance later on this list.
Dr. Feelgood had great success in the late ‘70s. Their live album Stupidity hit number one in the UK and they played shows in the US with an up-and-coming Ramones as their opener. But Johnson and Brilleaux eventually split up and though the band remained active with various lineups, it never recaptured that early success.
Life on the Line by Eddie & the Hot Rods (1977)
Eddie & the Hot Rods played shows with the Sex Pistols and the Ramones in the late ‘70s. As such, they sometimes got called early punk rockers. Then again, their biggest hit, “Do Anything You Want to Do” was basically Big Star-style power pop.
Everyone in the Rods could write songs and when guitarist Graeme Douglas did the writing, they did tend toward power pop. But in bassist Paul Gray’s songs, like “Telephone Girl” and “(I Don’t Know) What’s Really Going On,” you can hear the blues origins.
Founding guitarist Dave Higgs had once played with Dr. Feelgood vocalist Lee Brilleaux, so it makes sense that Higgs’ contribution “Beginning of the End” is also steeped in the blues. Maybe the most interesting song on Life on the Line, the Rods' second album, comes when Douglas and Gray join forces, as they do on the title track, a classic blues groove with power pop overtones. The same applies to the instrumental. “We Sing the Cross,” which tilts more toward Gray’s blues impulses.
By the end of the decade, Gray would take his bass to the post-punk band The Damned. Legal battles with labels would curtail Douglas’ involvement as well. The band put out one more album in 1981, which didn’t find much success, and they would effectively dissolve later in the decade. Reunions took place over the years, and more albums would be released, but with vocalist Barrie Masters’ death in 2019, no Rod from the glory days remained with the current band.
Out of Their Skulls by the Pirates (1977)
A genuine throwback to the days when blues rock ruled. The Pirates had been the backing band for early ‘60s singer Johnny Kidd. He had a massive hit with “Shakin’ All Over” in 1960. When the trio that backed him left to pursue other opportunities, Kidd brought in bass player Johnny Spence, drummer Frank Fraley, and legendary guitar player Mick Green to form his new backing band in Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. A car crash took Kidd’s life in 1966 at the age of 30. The Pirates drifted apart.
They reunited, with Spence taking over the vocals for a fabulous memory. The first side of the album contains six live tracks, opening with an original Johnny Kidd hit “Please Don’t Touch.” Green also goes to town on Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn Theme,” pulling out all the stops in his formidable guitar arsenal.
They also get around to a version of “Shakin’ All Over,” and the old standard “Milk Cow Blues,” which chugs forward with the power of a freight train. Side two of the album features studio recordings of “Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-dee-o-dee,” “That’s the Way You Are,” and “You Don’t Own Me” (not the Leslie Gore song.) Blue rock classics – every single one.
After the second version of the Pirates called it quits, Green, one of the most influential guitarists of his era, continued playing with a wide range of rockers, eventually settling with Van Morrison in the last decade of his life.