John Mayall | TEN YEARS ARE GONE | CD

Personnel: John Mayall (vocals, guitar, 12-string guitar, slide guitar, harmonica, keyboards); Freddy Robinson (vocals, guitar); Don "Sugarcane" Harris (violin); Red Holloway (flute, saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone); Blue Mitchell (trumpet, flugelhorn); Victor Gaskin (bass guitar); Keef Hartley (drums).
Recording information: Sunset Sound, Los Angeles, CA.
Photographers: Leandro Correa; Andy Kent.
Mayall returned to the studio in 1973 for this double album. The ten years Mayall had in mind, of course, were the previous ten, which had seen him start as a local musician in Manchester, England, and emerge a decade, almost two dozen albums, and nearly as many lineups later with an evolved jazz-blues style and an international following. The album allows the ensemble considerable room to solo on Mayall's typically simple, blues-based song structures, and the approach is perhaps excessively casual. The second LP is a live date recorded at the Academy of Music in New York, and here things stretch out even more: "Harmonica Free Form" clocks in at 12 minutes and "Dark of the Night" runs 17:41. ~ William Ruhlmann

• Format: CD
• Genre: Pop
• Released: 05/12/2009