Triumvirate

 

So I put this in for the umpteenth time, and went looking for anything that anyone was saying about it ... and found, basically, nothing.

Lynn found a recipe once for a snack that combined rice (or corn) chex, non-dairy powdered creamer, and Nesquik.  There may have been something else, but that was just about it.  It came out kind of gray, and didn't actually look all that appetizing.  So, I tried one.  Not ... bad ... and that was pretty much the standard reaction.  But pretty soon, you had another.  And before you knew it, the bowl was empty and you were wondering if she could make some more.

That's what this album is like.

Back in the day, when vinyl records roamed the earth, I knew a number of people who had interesting record collections.  I would go to their house/apartment/whatever, often with a friend; we would roll a couple of doobies and hang out for a while.  There was often a long wooden crate filled with albums in random order.  The usual thing was for the most recently played ones to get put in the front.  So, I would go to the back.

This is how I got turned onto a lot of great music; Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, Uriah Heep, Super Session, early Fleetwood Mac, lots of different stuff.  This album showed up in a few collections, and I got to hear it a few times.

Mike Bloomfield first came to the public's attention as lead guitarist for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, one of the first white blues groups.  Actually, of the 6 members, only 3 of them were white, but that was white enough for the early 1960's.

John P. Hammond was a blues musician, and the son of record producer John Hammond, who discovered and produced such performers as Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Bruce Springsteen, Benny Goodman, and many others. 

Dr. John (Mac Rebbenack) was a pianist/singer/songwriter from New Orleans, best known for his one chart hit, Right Place Wrong Time.

All three were signed to the CBS family of record labels in the early 1970's.  As was the practice of the time, the company would sometimes take artists that weren't doing much and put them together for one-off projects.  This was one such project.  On paper, I suppose it looked like a no-brainer; three guys who all played blues.

The liner notes are surprisingly brutal in their reporting of the situation.  Usually, liner notes gush glowingly about how brilliant an idea the collaboration was, etc. As it turned out, the first recording session produced the whole sum of nothing.  There was just no apparent chemistry between the three, and they noodled around for a couple days until Dr. John just got sick of it and left.

At this point, the story becomes a little vague.  Did he get a vision, and call them all back?  Or did CBS just apply pressure, reminding him that he was under contract and that he'd better do something.  At any rate, his assessment was that the project lacked focus.  So, more studio time was booked, and Dr. John returned with a fistful of songs and his road band.

What this means is that the album became a Dr. John album with John Hammond on vocals and Bloomfield on lead guitar.  On the whole, you could do a whole lot worse.

I hadn't heard this album in at least 30 years when I found it on CD at Pitchfork Records in Concord.  I was in the middle of a blues blitz, and couldn't resist.  Playing it on the way home, I wondered what it was that I liked about it.  Lyrically, it's not the most profound, and the music could best be described as loose.  

But, like the aforementioned snack, I found it growing on me.  Pretty soon, I got thinking about it, and grabbed it again.  I've done that several more times, and the more I listen to it, the more I like it.  John Hammond is not one of my favorite vocalists, but he's not too bad, and he's quite the good harmonica player.  Mike Bloomfield is brilliant, as ever.  And it's hard to resist that blues/New Orleans/swamp groove that Dr. John and his band lay down.

So, I would recommend you pick up this album, or at least find it on YouTube or some streaming service and give it a listen.  But be warned; you won't be impressed at first, and yet it will suck you in.