Originally published in Rhythms magazine, November/December 2019 (Issue #296)
Sounds of the City – The First Australian Blues/Rock Festival, 1975
By Ian McFarlane © 2019
Thanks to Sleepy Greg Lawrie, Adrian Anderson and Gerald McNamara
On the Australian rock music touring circuit, the international package tour has been a mainstay, and guaranteed crowd puller, since the advent of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s.
You only have to consider the likes of the Lee Gordon Big Shows, where you’d get Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran (1957) or Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Jerry Lee Lewis and Paul Anka (1958), with local support from Johnny O’Keefe and the Dee Jays.
The 1960s was the era of Roy Orbison, The Walker Brothers and The Yardbirds (1967), and The Who, The Small Faces and Paul Jones (1968). In 1971 you could have gone to see Deep Purple, Free and Manfred Mann, or The Giants of Jazz – Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, Sonny Stitt and Art Blakey. In 1973 it was Slade, Lindisfarne, Caravan and Status Quo. Moving on, there was the Legends of Rock (1989) with Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, The Everly Brothers and Lesley Gore. The 1990s saw the advent of the enormously successful Big Day Out travelling juggernaut, with just as many local acts as the big name international bands.
There are, no doubt, many more that you could remember but one lesser known event that has always intrigued me is the First Australian Blues/Rock Festival tour which took place in March 1975. The overseas contingent consisted of Freddie King and his Band, Alexis Korner, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers and Duster Bennett with local supports Phil Manning, Renee Geyer and Sanctuary, Matt Taylor, Smokestack Lightning and Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band. The tour was sponsored by Levi’s jeans with the banner reading Levi’s Presents the Blues. Renowned graphic designer Ian McCausland created the art for the banner and the concert handbill.
The full tour took in Brisbane (1 March), Sydney (2 March), Wollongong (3 March), Canberra (4 March), Adelaide (5 March), Perth (6 March) and Melbourne (9 March) and was described as the “biggest airlift of international talent since the days of Lee Gordon”. For the princely sum of $4.50 you got six hours of hot blues and R&B, indeed “a feast of incredible electric blues”. In between the main concerts a number of the artists did side gigs at various university campuses and small clubs.
Promoted by Evans Gudinski and Associates, it was the first time there’d been so many blues artists on the one tour. Many local musicians at the time were blues fanatics and Michael Gudinski, as well as being a shrewd record company CEO and tour promoter, was also a fan (he’d already toured Muddy Waters and his band with Chain and Matt Taylor as supports). Other international blues and R&B artists who had toured Australia previously – not necessarily through Gudinski’s company – included John Mayall, Canned Heat, Willie Dixon and the Chicago Blues All Stars, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and B. B. King, while Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee had already been to Australian four times. I’ve even heard mention that Josh White made it to Australia in the 1950s.
For decades in the States, the blues had only been associated with rural and working-class African-American audiences. It was only when young, white rock musicians and fans became enamoured with the blues during the 1950s and 1960s that black musicians were able to start transcending the typical racial and social barriers of the time. This lead to the rediscovery of many blues artists who’d been largely forgotten over the years.
One of the better know blues guitar giants of the day Freddie King – “The Electrifying Texas Cannonball” – headlined the tour. Known for his deep Texas blues and funk, he’d already released such influential examples of modern blues as ‘Hide Away’, ‘I’m Tore Down’, ‘The Welfare (Turns Its Back on You)’ and the original rendition of Don Nix’s oft-covered ‘Going Down’ (from the 1971, Leon-Russell produced album Getting Ready...). He was promoting his 1974 album Burglar.
French-born guitarist Alexis Korner – “Mr. Blues! The man responsible for The Rolling Stones and Cream” – was one of the most inspirational figures in British blues music. He’d formed Blues Incorporated in 1961 with Cyril Davies (harmonica), with the shifting line-up over the years featuring the likes of Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger, Art Wood, Long John Baldry, Jack Bruce, Graham Bond, Ginger Baker and Paul Jones. His encouragement was crucial to a generation of aspiring musicians. In the early 1970s he formed the pop-based big band C.C.S. (Collective Consciousness Society), scoring notable hits with a version of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘The Band Played the Boogie’.
Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee – “The world’s finest ethnic blues team” – had forged a long-term partnership since the 1940s, one of the most enduring in the blues. They proved enormously popular, having taken their folk blues to vast audiences worldwide. Sonny had been blinded as a teenager after two accidents. He was known for his distinctive singing voice, punctuated by falsetto whoops, and harmonica playing. Brownie played acoustic guitar and had already worked with the likes of Leadbelly and Josh White, recorded his own albums and later contributed electric lead guitar to albums by Champion Jack Dupree. By all accounts the duo never really got on and finally parted ways at the end of 1975.
Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers – “Chicago’s greatest boogie blues band” – was a three-piece powerhouse, comprising Taylor (slide guitar), Brewer Phillips (lead guitar) and Ted Harvey (drums). Theodore ‘Hound Dog’ Taylor had played with Elmore James in Mississippi, before heading to Chicago in 1942 where he regularly played at the Maxwell Street markets. By the early 1970s he and the HouseRockers had became known for high energy bottleneck guitar blues and rocking R&B. He’d push his cheap Kingston Japanese guitar through a Silvertone amp with cracked speakers which further drove the intense distortion. Blues aficionado Bruce Iglauer formed the famed Alligator Records specifically to produce and release the band’s self-titled, debut album (1971).
Duster Bennett – “The internationally acclaimed one man band” – was a relative newcomer to the scene. He’d signed to Mike Vernon’s Blue Horizon label in 1968 and recorded his debut album backed by Peter Green and John McVie of Fleetwood Mac. His fourth album, Fingertips, and single ‘Sweet Sympathy’ came out locally on the Toadstool label to coincide with the tour.
Gudinski had set up Toadstool as a Mushroom budget subsidiary imprint to issue various blues records, also including Hound Dog’s Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers and Natural Boogie and Korner’s Get Off My Cloud, plus albums by Flo and Eddie. The most intriguing release on Toadstool was the Levi’s Blues EP, featuring three tracks recorded live at the Melbourne Showgrounds concert by Armstrongs’ engineer Ian McKenzie. Essentially issued as a promotional release, you got handed a copy of the EP when you bought a new pair of Levi’s jeans.
Hound Dog says “Thank you, honey! I’ve been thinking about something, I don’t know what it is, but this is how the blues is, what you say?” and launches into a slow blues, ‘Everything’s Alright’. Korner does ‘Baby Doll’ and Bennett ‘Bright Lights, Big City’ with the audience clapping and singing along enthusiastically. Presumably the whole show was recorded so one wonders whatever happened to the mastertapes? Levi’s Blues is a great little period piece, a genuine collectors’ item, so if you ever see a copy second-hand be sure to snap it up.
In the wake of the tour, sadly three of the main participants died within the next 18 months – Hound Dog in December 1975, Bennett in March 1976 and King that December. It truly was the end of an era. Korner passed away in January 1984, Sonny in March 1986 and McGhee in February 1996.
Sleepy Greg Lawrie (Musician)
“I was playing guitar with Matt Taylor for that tour, it was after Carson had broken up. I remember the Sydney gig, at the Hordern Pavilion. It was great to watch Freddie King and his band play. They were one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen, absolutely incredible. They were like Weather Report but playing Texas blues. They were all seasoned, professional session players in that band, unapproachable in many ways. I’ve got a feeling they were doing a world tour, they’d been to England and Alexis Korner had helped them out. That’s why they had him on the Australian tour.
“Then there was Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers. Just two guitars and drums but what an incredible sound! They were one of the rock ’n’ rollinest bands ever; completely authentic, 100% raw blues, real rock ’n’ roll blues. Hound Dog tore the roof off every night with his slide guitar. He was a fantastic player, very basic but he hit what needed to be hit, no more, no less. He had Ted Harvey on drums, who’d been Elmore James’ drummer for years.
“So they combined the best elements of Elmore James, Robert Nighthawk and JB Hutto and the Hawks, just like they were playing in Maxwell Street, Chicago. As well as their own stuff, they played all Elmore’s big hits, ‘Dust My Broom’, ‘Shake Your Moneymaker’. Genuine rock ’n’ roll blues, straight out of the south side of Chicago, as raw as hell but played with great spirit and real heart and soul.
“Half way through his set he’d say, ‘We’re gonna have a break for five minutes, and I mean five minutes’. He was back on stage in three and a half minutes! Those guys really meant it. They weren’t just playing the blues for the fun of it, they were singing about their life. They really shed blood for their music, it came across in their playing and their singing. Young white guys like us might have thought we were playing the blues, but really we were barely learning how to crawl. It wasn’t just entertainment, they were singing about things like civil rights, impoverishment. That’s so rare now; it’s all about show business and making money, playing in big blues clubs. All those old blues guys lived hard lives, nobody comes close to those guys now. They were the real deal.
“When Hound Dog played at the Bondi Lifesaver, they played all night. I walked out just as the sun was coming up and I could still hear them roaring inside. Then Matt and I were doing a gig at Frenchs’ Tavern in Taylor Square and someone said that Hound Dog was listening outside. I went to see and sure enough there he was. He was pretty drunk but it seemed like he’d talk to anybody. He had this huge crucifix around his neck; something like the Pope would wear but Hound Dog’s crucifix was bigger than the Pope’s! I just said hello and he replied ‘Hiya, honey!’ and then went on his way. He was a real character.”
Adrian Anderson (Tour manager)
“That was some tour! I’ve still got the T-shirt. Because it was sponsored by Levi’s jeans, we had these huge banners with Levi’s Blues across them. When we went to Perth, we got fitted out with new Levi’s jeans, the whole crew. Matt Taylor and Phil Manning were on that tour, they still remember it.
“We had Eric Robinson from Jands looking after the stage set-up. Prior to the tour we’d been sending faxes to Freddie King’s manager, asking what speakers they wanted to use. They replied ‘we want Lansing Lansing speakers’ but we kept saying there’s no such thing, we can supply you with J.B.L. Lansing speakers. The tour started in New Zealand, so we’d just landed to meet the bands and the first thing Freddie’s tour manager did was he walked straight up to me, didn’t say ‘how you going?’, he just handed me this piece of paper and said ‘here’s the bill for the freight costs, we’ve brought our own speakers’. Everything was on a tight budget, but he hands me this bill for $350.00 or whatever it was in those days. So that wasn’t a great start.
“But Freddie King was just incredible. One of my favourite songs is ‘She’s a Burglar’, ‘She’s a burglar / she broke into my mind / she’s a burglar / she took ev’rything she could find’. I love that whole album, Burglar. See, all the great guitarists, whether it’s Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, they all have a signature sound. It comes from their fingers, through their guitars, into the valves, out through the amps. They’re getting a sound that no one else can copy; everyone just tries to emulate it. Freddie King was like that. It was just the sound he got out of those speakers, these Lansing Lansing speakers they had. Mr Lansing had made these speakers just for Freddie, which is why they were so unique. That baffled Eric at first but he knew he could work with that set-up.
“Hound Dog was something else. He also had his signature guitar sound but just raw as anything. I remember when we were going through Customs, when he had to sign something he held the pen like a knife and signed with an X. He couldn’t write. I tried to keep clear of Hound Dog a bit, he was an outrageous character. He was having this disagreement with one of the other musicians. One night this guy had taken a girl up to his hotel room and Hound Dog sat on the steps outside the room and played his harmonica all night. There he was going ‘wha-wha-wha-wheeze-wha’, wailing away mournfully, at four o’clock in the bloody morning!
“In between the main concert dates, the tour broke up into three parts. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Alexis Korner and Hound Dog all played dates at the Bondi Lifesaver in Sydney. Sonny and Brownie did RMIT and La Trobe uni (Agora Theatre) and Hound Dog played at a Caulfield Institute union night. We even got Freddie King on radio 3XY in Melbourne, for an interview on the Sunday night Album Show. “It was the Moomba long weekend, so the concert at the Melbourne showgrounds was on that Monday. That went from 6pm to midnight, while the Hordern Pavilion show in Sydney went from 1pm to 6pm. That same weekend I had to go and collect the guys from Tangerine Dream for the start of their Australian tour. Not long after that I was looking after Split Enz, they’d just made the move from New Zealand. It was all systems go in those days.”
Gerald McNamara (Punter)
“The First Australian Blues/Rock tour was a brilliant idea. I’d started at Caulfield Institute and they had a Friday Union night in the old union building, a federation style building that was adjacent to the main institute. Hound Dog Taylor played that night. There wasn’t even a stage, they just set up on the floor in the corner. I’d forgotten this but Pat Wilson reminded me a few years ago that her band, Rock Granite and the Profiles, were the support act that night.
“The whole thing was pretty spectacular. Hound Dog was a mischievous old bugger. He had this beaten up, old no-name guitar that had once been in tune many years ago; he didn’t worry about the intricacies of actually tuning his guitar. It was only two guitars and drums but it was fabulous stuff, just raucous, outrageous rock ’n’ roll. He only knew how to play slide guitar one way, that raw gut bucket sound just roaring away.
“After every song he’d say to the crowd, ‘thank you, mama!’. He was swigging away on this bottle of whisky and when he finished that he opened his guitar case and there was another bottle in there, ready to go. He was always well equipped for any eventuality.
“As well as having played all night at the Bondi Lifesaver, there’s the legendary anecdote about when he walked on the stage in Perth, he said to the crowd ‘Hello Paris!’. He’d been on tour for so long all he could remember was that he was overseas somewhere and the city started with the letter ‘P’. There’s also the famous story about him shooting one of his guitar players after they’d had an argument, this was back in the States.
“I also went to the concert at the Melbourne showgrounds on the Monday. It was great to see the whole show. Duster Bennett was a one-man band, just him, his guitar, harmonica on a rack and a bass drum. He walked a fine line between being a genuine blues artist and a circus act. Alexis Korner was a real professional, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee were relatively erudite in comparison to Hound Dog. Brownie would lead Sonny on stage, he was blind and could hardly walk but they made a great team. Apparently they used to argue all the time. Those old blues guys all came from the deep south so they’d lead hard lives. It was fabulous to have seen Freddie King, ’cause most people wouldn’t have even known he ever came out to Australia.”
