McKenna Mendelson Mainline: McKenna Mendelson Blues [PACEMAKER]

Why you'll love it

This Pacemaker reissue brings back the very first recordings by one of Toronto's great blues bands, cut in September 1968 with the original lineup. It's raw, electric Yorkville blues from the month after their first club dates.

About the album

Mike McKenna put an ad in the Toronto Star in the spring of 1968 looking for blues players, and Joe Mendelson answered it mostly to tell him that finding musicians through the want ads was hopelessly naive. They got on anyway. With Tony Nolasco on drums and former Paupers bassist Denny Gerrard, the band debuted at the Night Owl in Yorkville that August and recorded these sessions the following month.

It's a young band playing hard and loose, electric blues straight out of the Yorkville clubs. "Drive You" and "Toilet Bowl Blues" sit next to the blues standards "Ramblin' On My Mind," "Born Under a Bad Sign" and "Help Me," with John C. Irvine producing (and taking the photos, too).

Within months they were in England, playing the Utrecht Pop Festival and the same club circuit as a newly formed Led Zeppelin, and cutting Stink for Liberty. Mendelson later became just as well known as the painter Mendelson Joe. Not bad going for a band put together through the classifieds.

Also at Kops: more McKenna Mendelson Mainline on vinyl · browse CDN Pop / Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Pacemaker (cat# PACLP-012), a reissue of the 1969 album.