THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,708) Climax Chicago Blues Band — “Please Don’t Help Me”
This Chicago Blues Band — from Stafford, England! — gives us “a killer old-school electric blues jam”, “[c]omplete with blues harp and organ” and “some pretty awesome musical passages” (Gary Hill, https://www.musicstreetjournal.com/artists_cdreviews_display.cfm?id=106899) that is “surprisingly funky”. (Bad Cat Records, http://badcatrecords.com/CLIMAXbluesBand.htm) It “shows [John] Mayall’s influence . . . with [Colin] Cooper’s mouth harp and [an] impressive lead line and solo by [guitarist Peter] Haycock, while adding a nice commercial hook”. (Kevin Rathert, https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2019/08/climax-blues-band-the-albums-1969-1972-2019.html)
Stafford is my kind of town!
Jason Ankeny tells us about these Chicago boys;
Led by Colin Cooper, the former frontman of the R&B unit the Hipster Image [see #842], the Stafford, England-based Climax Chicago Blues Band were one of the leading lights of the late-’60s blues boom. A sextet also comprised of guitarists Derek Hold and Peter Haycock, keyboardist Arthur Wood, bassist Richard Jones, and drummer George Newsome, the group debuted in 1969 with a self-titled effort recalling the work of John Mayall. Prior to the release of 1969’s Plays On, Jones left the group, prompting Holt to move to bass. In 1970 [the band] moved to the Harvest label, at the same time shifting toward a more rock-oriented sound on the LP A Lot of Bottle. Around the release of 1971’s Tightly Knit, Newsome was replaced by drummer John Cuffley; upon Wood’s exit in the wake of 1972’s Rich Man, the unit decided to continue as a quartet, also dropping the “Chicago” portion of its moniker to avoid confusion with the American band of the same name. . . . Released in 1975, Stamp was their commercial breakthrough, and 1976’s Gold Plated fared even better, spurred on by the success of the hit “Couldn’t Get It Right.” However, the rise of punk effectively stopped the Climax Blues Band in their tracks, although they continued recording prolifically well into the ’80s . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/climax-blues-band-mn0000158451#biography
Vernon Joynson adds:
They . . . were really “Johnny Come Latelys” on the tail end of the British blues boom. This probably accounted for the band’s low profile over most of their career . . . in the UK . . . . [O]nce the . . . boom eroded they concentrated on the American market and their albums achieved modest commercial success there in the seventies.
The Tapestry of Delights Revisited
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