The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation
Blue Thumb, 1969 according to Wikipedia
British blues from around 1970 that is very good—a real rarity. One reviewer on Amazon said it sounds jazzy—I think that means the guys can play their instruments and stay in tune. I’m tempted to say they are businesslike—meant as a compliment, compared to shouters, muddy guitar players, and self-indulgent solos offered by other bands. It helps that they play mostly their own material, so they don’t mutilate classics. When they cover a classic, they do it well. They do a Little Walter tune, for example, and know better than to play any harmonica.
Aynsley Dunbar was John Mayall’s drummer for a while, then did some Retaliation albums, and then had a big career with Journey, the Mothers of Invention, and many more. He wrote one of Black Sabbath’s early hits. This phase of his career gets little notice on the internet.
I don’t know about the cover. It looks like spy photos. Or maybe an LSD trip? Is it what you’d see if you took Dr. Dunbar’s prescription? I don’t know, I suppose it looked arty. Something that cheered me: Some of the lyrics for these songs are available online, which wasn’t true five years ago.
This was the first record in alphabetical order in my collection for years, until I bought my first Roy Acuff record. One reason I didn’t integrate my wife’s records into my collection was to keep The Association from being first. An individual was alphabetized by last name, but this was the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, not Aynsley Dunbar, so it went under A. For performers who weren’t known by their real names, I used the pseudonym if it functioned as a real name. If you said, “Hey, Taj,” Taj Mahal would turn around, so he was filed under M. Call Richard Penniman “Hey, Little,” and you’d get blank stares, so he went under P. Muddy Waters, W. Big Bopper, R for Richardson. I decided Odetta went under O, but Donovan Leitch went under L. I love taxonomy.
“The Devil Drives” is a great title, based on one of my favorite lines from Marlowe. The singer gets advice from his mom, including “needs must that the Devil drives.” I have always thought this a delightful play on words in Doctor Faustus. The use of “that” instead of “who” or “whom” means we don’t know whether the Devil drives the person who needs must or in this case, the person drives the Devil. No one understood me in German class, either. The song also has the singer give his name—his mother called him Crozier. I’ve loved that since The Four Tops Live quoted Mom [“She said Levi, and that’s my name”].
First song suggesting underage sex: In “Call My Woman,” the singer says I’ve loved you since you were 12 years old.