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Please explain the popularity of Canned Heat.

rasputin1963

By rasputin1963
in Sound, Stage, and Studio

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blue2blue Newbie

blue2blue

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Led Zeppelin have never acknowledged the Willie Dixon tunes they ripped off.

They were credited as "Traditional. Arranged : Page Plant Bonham Jones"

or something like that.

No, actually they did -- and Robert Plant was publicly on record as being very contrite. He mumbled something about how they thought that was just how the blues was done, a line from this a line from that, a riff from here and one from there... and then their publisher sent off a big check.

 

Willie Dixon was one of the big beneficiaries of that bit of fiscal catch-up and, while he was quite pointed in his comments going into the legal action, he was quite complimentary to Plant and Zep after it was over. His part of the reparations helped buy him a nice house in Whittier (IIRC), set up a small 8 track studio (one of my friends was the tech who put it in and ended up being Dixon's 'personal engineer' for a few years before Dixon's passing). Some of the money went to help found Dixon's pet project, the Blues Heaven Foundation, with the goal of taking care of aging blues players who hadn't profited from the industry or who'd lost what little they'd received.

 

 

Another example of Plant "catching up" with older artists was his use of the "Honeydrippers" name for an album of oldies covers in the late 80s or early 90s.

 

The "Original Honeydripper," pianist/vocalist Joe Liggins had had a big hit with "Honeydrippin'" right at the end of WWII and named his band the Honeydrippers [Amusingly, if you go to the Honeydripper's AllMusic page linked from their Joe Liggins article you end up on Plant's Honeydripper's page -- which has an 'alternative' explanation about the name of that band. It's not the one I read at the time nor what I heard from Liggins himself. And, if inaccurate, it certainly would be far from the only inaccuracy in a mostly useful if extremely clumsily designed and engineered site.]

 

I met Joe when he was playing piano bar in the early 80s at what was then a disco in Long Beach called Bogarts (it would later become a rock venue that hosted many of the biggest alt-rock touring bands of the mid-late 80s/early 90s, including Nirvana, Nick Cave, etc). At that point, Joe had no band and was doing a very relaxed and charming act, covering standards, doing requests and being generally genial and fatherly. (When I mentioned him to my dad, since I knew Joe had had a long ago hit, my dad was beside himself -- he'd gone to high school with Joe, then a trumpeter, in San Diego in the late 30's [san Diego schools were integrated, even back then] and had shown Joe his first few piano chords; according to my dad he came in a few months later when he heard some rocking stride piano coming out of the band room and there was Joe... who could now play circles around my old man. :D I mentioned the story to Liggins and he very graciously said he remembered the story well. I wasn't absolutely, entirely sure I believed him but I certainly told my dad that Liggins had sent along his greetings. They're both gone now.)

 

Anyhow, when Liggins heard about the Zep album he contacted a lawyer and the lawyer contacted Plant and his label. Plant was very contrite -- he thought Joe had passed years before -- and very complimentary to Joe, paid him deep props, told him that the UK Honeydrippers were a one-shot/one-tour band and that he wasn't staking any claim to the name, and there was some money, too, which allowed Joe to put together a working band, which he led until his death in '87. He was reportedly very happy with how it all worked out and thanked Plant for helping revive his career.

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philbo Newbie

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Canned Heat was one of my favorite bands when I was 13 or so (around '67 or '68). And they still are. They are raw and unrefined. They never used Autotune. They play what they play without worrying about whether it'll make teenyboppers and A&R people salivate. They're not everyone's cup of tea. But I like 'em. I've bought every album of theirs that I've ever found. Just one of my quirks, I guess...

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Professor Tom Newbie

Professor Tom

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I saw Canned Heat quite a few times back in the day. Although Henry Vestine was one of the most ham-fisted guitar players around the band were a lot of fun and had a great attitude. The were perfect for the times and I have fond memories of lying in a sleeping bag bombed out of my brain along with two hundred thousand other freaks being woken up with "Hi kids, this is the Bear" at 6am.

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indigo_dave Newbie

indigo_dave

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I stumbled on the double album "Livin' The Blues" in my youth (around 1968). It was a fresh and new sound - to me at that time. I was 15. I used to sometimes buy "Hit Parader" magazine back then. I remember reading a little piece by Bob Hite (the Bear). As I remember it, he told a story of the band playing in some southern town and he and Alan Wilson rented a car to drive a couple hundred miles someplace to search out some old records. He said (again, as I remember it) that Alan Wilson had several thousand old blues records in his collection.

 

These guys were a new sound to a young baby boomer. About a year later I bought "Fathers and Sons" by Muddy Waters, Mike Bloomfield, Otis Spann, and others. A GREAT record. Canned Heat were the "gateway drug" for this.

 

I just think you have to judge Canned Heat in the context of their times and in that context I think they were great. They were part of a blues as a quasi-religion thing back then. I don't think they were consiously steeling. But stealing and borrowing has always been part of any art form.

 

Again, I think their stuff still stands up. Alan Wilson commited suicide with drugs. Seems like he was one of the early casualties of that whole scene.

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