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Ten Years Are Gone

John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers
2 discs

0. DISC 1:
1. Ten Years Are Gone
2. Driving Till the Break of Day
3. Drifting
4. Better Pass You By
5. California Campground
6. Undecided
7. Good Looking Stranger
8. I Still Care
9. Don't Hang Me Up
0. DISC 2:
1. Introduction
2. Sitting Here Thinking
3. Harmonica Free Form
4. Burning Sun
5. Dark of the Night
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Additional Info

Manufacturer Part Number (MPN): 115
Credits

Producer Don Nix
Engineer Wayne Dailey
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
Critic Reviews

Record Collector (magazine) (p.87) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "The studio works have an organic feel, representative of the way Mayall liked to record and allow his players to improvise within minimal restraints."