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Topic: The bear and the owl Return to archive
1st April 2007 01:12 PM
Ten Thousand Motels Sunday April 1, 2007
The bear and the owl

By MARTIN VENGADESAN
The Star Online

Recalling yet another legendary blues band – Canned Heat, which was fronted by two talented guys, ‘Blind Owl’ and ‘The Bear’.

DEM blues sure be powerful fingerlickin’ stuff. And while the origins of classic blues tend to be in the southern United States, the simple tales of life … love, work, drink, etc … really do make blues the folk music of the oppressed.

Still, as I’ve recounted tales of blues legends in this column, I have realised there might just be a tendency for the stories to sound similar. After all, just trying counting on one hand the number of blues legends born in Mississippi between 1910 and 1920 and you’ll run out of space pretty quick (for starters there’s Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson).

Yet there’s no denying the power of the blues to affect people of different races and creeds. Perhaps no better example of this was the 1960s blues boom when white English rock bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds started “exporting” the blues back into the United States, this time reaching white audiences. This in turn spurred the development of American blues rock artistes. Arguably none of them were as fascinating as Canned Heat, who brought the blues to era-defining moments such as the Monterrey Pop Festival and Woodstock.

Now Canned Heat centred around the talents of two very different characters. First off you had Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson. A nerdy-looking Bostonian with thick glasses, Wilson was a typically displaced 1960s kid. A strange mixture of erudite (he was an expert at botany and an early environmentalist who slept in a sleeping bag in the woods at every opportunity) and the classic negative hippie stereotype (he did his share of narcotics and eschewed “conventional” pastimes such as bathing and brushing teeth), Wilson was a thoroughly gifted blues player when in 1965 he ran into a monster of a man.

Despite being only 20 at the time, Bob “The Bear” Hite, was tall, heavyset and covered in hair. He was also as much in love with the classic Delta blues as Wilson, and the pair found that they complemented each other. Wilson’s high tenor voice lent their songs a unique flavour, while live shows were driven by Hite’s larger-than-life blues stomper persona. Both men played the harmonica (Wilson was the superior player) and Wilson also played the guitar.

Their skills were supplemented by the underrated guitar-playing of Henry Vestine and a rhythm section of Larry Taylor (bass) and Frank Cook. Incidentally, Vestine and Taylor were also accorded nicknames, although The Sunflower and The Mule were rather less appropriate and memorable than Blind Owl and The Bear!

Initially, the group’s focus was cover material and it showed when the eponymous debut album in 1967 consisted of nothing but 11 classic blues tunes like Water’s Rollin’N’Tumblin’ and Guitar Slim’s Story of My Life reworked Canned Heat-style.

Things only got truly exciting for the second album, 1968’s Boogie with Canned Heat. By this point Fito De La Parra replaced Cook as drummer, cementing the group’s classic line-up. The album featured a wide range of blues stylings like Wilson’s querulous, somewhat sinister On the Road Again (which became a shock Top 10 hit), the raucous Amphetamine Annie (with its classic chorus chant of “speed kills”) and a massive stream of consciousness blues jam called Fried Hockey Boogie (in which Hite assumed an MC role).

The fun continued with the band’s third album, Living the Blues. By now Canned Heat was so popular that they could afford to put out a double album, including the flute-driven hit Goin’ Up the Country and a massive 20-minute suite called Parthenogenesis, which showed the band flirting with psychedelic and progressive stylings.

However, despite a triumphant appearance at Woodstock and a great collaboration with Hooker, the end came surprisingly quickly. Wilson slipped into depression and while still contributing excellent songs like Time Was and London Blues to the albums Hallelujah and Future Blues respectively, he was drifting away from his band members.

When in September 1970 Canned Heat left for a European tour on the back of another hit in Let’s Stay Together, Wilson failed to make the plane. Eventually, he was found dead in the woods behind Hite’s home in Topanga Canyon, California. While his death was due to an overdose, many felt that it was an act of suicide by a sensitive man not comfortable with the future.

Canned Heat pursued doggedly on, but the heart was ripped out of the band. Later incarnations including mainstay guitarists Harvey “The Snake” Mandel and Walter Trout, and Bear’s brother Richard continued touring and making records, but when Hite succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 36 it was the final blow for the “original” Canned Heat.

De La Parra now leads a touring band that still keeps the music alive, but for me, the band ended when Wilson decided to get off the road for the last time.
1st April 2007 01:37 PM
lotsajizz Canned Heat was a fine band...and not just for their well-known tunes.
1st April 2007 01:40 PM
Bloozehound so the bear wiped his ass with the rabbit
1st April 2007 02:54 PM
wisertime Fito de la Parra has written a book called "Livin' The Blues : The Story Of Canned Heat". I think you can order it on amazon.
The story of this band is fantastic !
1st April 2007 09:20 PM
glencar Harvey Mandel auditioned for the Stones in 1975.
1st April 2007 10:02 PM
Brainbell Jangler Larry Taylor's nickname was "The Mole," not "The Mule." BTW, he also did some work with John Mayall.
1st April 2007 10:20 PM
guitarman53 Canned Heat was one of my favorite bands in the Monterey Pop film, the slide guitar of Blind Owl was great.
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