Джон Мэйалл: Блюздың көшбасшысы және музыкалық әсері

English blues musician (born 1933)
the 19th century English photographer

John Mayall (born 29 November 1933) is an English blues and rock musician, songwriter and producer. In the 1960s, he formed John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, a band that has counted among its members some of the most famous blues and blues rock musicians. A singer, guitarist, harmonica player, and keyboardist, he has a career that spans nearly seven decades. At ninety years old, Mayall is one of the oldest active musicians. Mayall was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the musical influence category in 2024.

Born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, in 1933, Mayall grew up in Cheadle Hulme. He was the son of Murray Mayall, a guitarist and jazz enthusiast. From an early age he was drawn to the sounds of American blues players such as Lead Belly, Albert Ammons, Pinetop Smith and Eddie Lang, and taught himself to play the piano, guitars, and harmonica.

Mayall was sent to Korea as part of his national service, and during a period of leave bought his first electric guitar in Japan. Back in England, he enrolled at Manchester College of Art and started playing with a semi professional band, the Powerhouse Four. Shortly after, Hughie Flint replaced Hart and Roger Dean took the guitar from Bernie Watson. This line up backed John Lee Hooker on his British tour in 1964. Mayall was offered a recording contract by Decca and, on 7 December 1964, a live performance of the band was recorded at the Klooks Kleek. A later studio recorded single, "Crocodile Walk", was released along with the album, but both failed to achieve any success and the contract was terminated. In April 1965 former Yardbirds guitarist Eric Clapton replaced Roger Dean and John Mayall's career entered a decisive phase.

In 1965, with Eric Clapton as their new guitar player, the Bluesbreakers began attracting considerable attention. That summer the band cut a couple of tracks for a single, "I'm Your Witchdoctor" b/w "Telephone Blues" (released in October). In August, however, Clapton left for a jaunt to Greece with a bunch of relative musical amateurs calling themselves the 'Glands'. John Weider, John Slaughter, and Geoff Krivit attempted to fill in as Bluesbreaker guitarist but, finally, Peter Green took charge. John McVie was dismissed, and during the next few months Jack Bruce, from the Graham Bond Organisation, played bass. In November 1965 Clapton returned, and Green departed as Mayall had guaranteed Clapton his spot back in the Bluesbreakers whenever he tired of the Glands. McVie was allowed back, and Bruce left to join Manfred Mann, but not before a live date by the Mayall Clapton Bruce Flint line up was recorded on Mayall's two track tape recorder at London's Flamingo Club in November. The rough recording provided tracks that later appeared on the 1969 compilation Looking Back and the 1977 Primal Solos. The same line up also entered the studio to record a planned single, "On Top of the World", which was not released at that time. Mayall and Clapton cut a couple of tracks without the others (although some sources give this as occurring back in the summer): "Lonely Years" b/w "Bernard Jenkins" was released as a single the next August on producer Mike Vernon's Purdah Records label (both tracks appeared again two decades later in Clapton's Crossroads box set). In a November 1965 session, blues pianist singer Champion Jack Dupree (originally from New Orleans but in the 1960s living in Europe) got Mayall and Clapton to play on a few tracks. In the meantime, on 11 June the formation of Cream—Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce, and drummer Ginger Baker—had been revealed in the music press, much to the embarrassment of Clapton, who had not said anything about this to Mayall. (After a May Bluesbreakers gig at which Baker had sat in, he and Clapton had first discussed forming their own band, and surreptitious rehearsal jams with Bruce soon commenced.) Clapton's last scheduled gig with the Bluesbreakers was 17 July in Bexley, south east of London; Cream made a warmup club debut 29 July in Manchester and its "official" live debut two days later at the Sixth National Jazz and Blues Festival, Windsor.

Mayall had to replace Clapton, and he succeeded in persuading Peter Green to come back. During the following year, with Green on guitar and various other sidemen, some 40 tracks were recorded. The album A Hard Road was released in February 1967. In the meantime, on a single day in May 1967, Mayall had assembled a studio album to showcase his own abilities. Former Artwoods drummer Keef Hartley appeared on only half of the tracks, and everything else was played by Mayall. The album was released in November titled The Blues Alone.

By the start of the 1970s Mayall had relocated to the United States where he spent most of the next 15 years, recording with local musicians for various labels. In August 1971, Mayall produced a jazz oriented session for bluesman Albert King and a few months later took on tour the musicians present in the studio. A live album Jazz Blues Fusion was released in the following year, with Mayall on harmonica, guitar and piano, Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Clifford Solomon and Ernie Watts on saxophones, Larry Taylor on bass, Ron Selico on drums and Freddy Robinson on guitar. A few personnel changes are noted at the release of a similar album in 1973, the live Moving On. In 1974, Mayall recorded The Latest Edition, produced by Tom Wilson for the Polydor label. The group featured jazz saxophonist Red Holloway, drummer Soko Richardson, bassist Larry Taylor, and two guitarists, Randy Resnick and Hightide Harris. The band toured Europe and Asia that year. During the next decade Mayall continued shifting musicians and switching labels and released a score of albums. Tom Wilson, Don Nix and Allen Toussaint occasionally served as producers. At this stage of his career most of Mayall's music was rather different from electric blues played by rock musicians, incorporating jazz, funk or pop elements and even adding female vocals. A notable exception is The Last of the British Blues (1978), a live album excused apparently by its title for the brief return to this type of music.

In 1982, Mayall was reunited with Mick Taylor, John McVie and Colin Allen, three musicians of his 1960s line ups, for a two year world tour from which a live album would emerge a decade later. In 1984, Mayall restored the name Bluesbreakers for a line up comprising the two lead guitars of Walter Trout and Coco Montoya, bassist Bobby Haynes and drummer Joe Yuele. In 2015, Dinu Logos published John Mayall: The Blues Crusader, the first biography of Mayall to include exhaustive details of every band he put together and every recording he made. In 2018, Mayall made a new addition to his band; his first female lead guitarist, Carolyn Wonderland.

In 2013, Mayall signed with producer Eric Corne's label, Forty Below Records. The two have produced four studio albums together, A Special Life featuring accordionist C. J. Chenier, Find a Way to Care, Talk About That featuring Joe Walsh and Nobody Told Me. Corne also re mastered some live recordings from 1967 featuring Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood released as Live in 1967 in 3 volumes. In 2016, Mayall was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. Mayall's autobiography, Blues From Laurel Canyon: My Life As A Bluesman, co written with author Joel McIver, was published by Omnibus Press in August 2019. In 2024, Mayall was selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024 in the musical influence category.

Mayall began living in the US part time in the late 1960s, living there full time by the early 1970s. A brush fire destroyed his house in Laurel Canyon in 1979, seriously damaging his musical collections and archives. Mayall has been married twice, and has six children and six grandchildren. His second wife, Maggie Mayall, is an American blues performer, and since the early 1980s she has taken part in the management of her husband's career. They married in 1982, and divorced in 2011.

In 2005, Mayall was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Honours List.