From 'Blue Resurrection'. To collectors Jeremy 'Dealthead' Spencer was only a revered name on rare Black Toad 78s which were recorded between 1929 in a loft belonging to the legendary guitarist Hot Cottage. Jeremy taught Hot all he knew in the same way that Hot taught Jeremy all he knew. On sweltering Southern summer day enthusiast Rorke O'Turmoil was interviewing Mama Shreveport Bottle in her tumbledown skirt out-back along dusty Highway 64 outside Villeville, Miss. He asked the laughing Mama and her 23 children for her views on reports of corruption in the Burmese government during the Oat Riots of 1843. She replied 'My man done caught that southbound train an' gone, yeah'. which was the first clue to the whereabouts of Deltahead since he.....
Nobody knows anything about Jeremy Spencer except that he wears odd things on stage.
From 'Radio-Tips' Guests on the Basil Valentine show all this week are chart newcomers the Fleetwood Mac. Four clean-cut boys from Brentwood they first met in a scout-hut in an apple-dipping rally to raise money for elderly............
Phone conversation between Richard Vernon and a Certain Disc-Jockey:
Richard (between sobs) - 'When are you going to finish the notes for the Fleetwood Mac L.P. They were due last Tuesday'.
A.C.D.J. 'well, you see I've been ill and someone stole the ribbon from Pete's type-writer and my mother's vanished again and what can you say anyway except tha they're almost a resident group on 'Top Gear' and I wish they'd record some of the rock things they do or the psychedelic send-up and they're such nice people and everyone knows how good they are anyway and I'll do it to-night'.
Richard 'Top Gear'?
From 'Pop Platters' Groovy, teenage, outasight John McVie helped our groovy reporter, Tempestua Orifice, through the crowd of weeping fans clustered, since last March, around the balsa-wood door of John's groovy Chelsea pad. Tempestua reports to PP. 'In the boos, tough mock-Peruvian hallway of John's gas pad hung a freaky 250 cc mortor-sickle. Wow. I caught a glimpse of a half-dozen dolly-chick-birds in chain-mail mini-skirts giggling at the top of the fur-lined stairs. 'It's a gas scene, man'. said John. 'wow, do you groove on this scene, baby?' His two tame panthers played with half an ostrich in the corner. 'What did you have for breakfast?'. I casually asked as I sank into......'
Peter Green loves animals (hampsters?) has a parrot called Parrot wants a highly coloured macaw - has a dad like Alf Garnett - hords rare black wax -
Mick Fleetwood is a classified giant - whatever that means. I expect it's good. He fires .22 pistols at 3o'clock in the morning. He wants an old house and thousands of children without having to get married. Help him.
Ramblings by John and Biscuit Peel
1989 CD Reissue Notes:
In 1968, post flower-power Britain was seized by a blues boom - and Fleetwood Mac were by far the finest of the groups that came in it's wake. Their first album had rocketed straight into the UK Top Five early that year and had established their reputation as one of the all-time great white blues bands.
Released that August, 'Mr. Wonderful' was their second LP, again on Mike and Richard Vernon's Blue Horizon label, and remarkable for a number of reasons. The band consisted of Mick Fleetwood on drums (whose naked presence graced the original gatefold sleeve of this record), John McVie on bass, Jeremy Spencer and Peter S. Green (sic) on guitars and vocal. This four-man line-up was augumented by Christine Perfect, (McVies wife) on piano - moonlighting from fellow stablemates Chicken Shack and in a real sense making her debut as a Mac musician - a horn section (Johnnie Almond, Steve Gregory, Dave Howard and Roland Vaughan) and Peter Green's protege Tony 'Duster' Bennett on mouth harp.
In retrospect, the album suffers from a peculiar, somewhat murky sound quality: both the group and producer Mike Vernon insisted on obtaining an authentic, almost 'live in a tiny basement' atmosphere to recreate a raw primitiveness radolent of the classic chess studio recordings. But this is still a great record.
As before, leader Peter Green allowed fellow guitarist Spencer room for his own idiosyncratic compositions and style - witness the toothsome slide work on the Elmore James standard, 'Dust My Broom'. Curiously, though, as on the previous long player and on all subsequent releases Spencer does not play on the Peter Green tracks.
Green himself arguably contributes the album's best cuts - the opening number 'Stop Messin' Round', is a typical Green rocker with gruff vocal and moody, restrained lead breaks - and while his songs here do not approach the stature of the contemporary 'Black Magic Woman' (available only as a single), there are hints of just how sensitive a tunesmith Green would eventually become. This is especially true of 'Trying So Hard to Forget', a piece of deep soul-searching by some wonderfully melancholic acoustic guitar and some equally angst-ridden harmonics from 'Duster' Bennett.
'Mr Wonderful' also marks the bands last concentrated foray into the pure blues form. Shortly after its appearance, Peter decided to expand the lineup by importing young guitar player Danny Kirwan - who'd been leading his own Brixton-based trio Boilerhouse - and widened the Mac's horizons to incorporate other styles such as elements of the free-flowing San Fransico sound and classical music.
A few months after this LP, the band had a huge commercial success with dreamy Green-penned instrumental 'Albatross' and followed this up with three futher hit singles that established them as a household name internationally that has lasted to this day.
Licensed from CBS Records
The copyright in this sound recording is owned by Blue Horizon Records
(P) 1969 Blue Horizon Records
(C) 1989 Castle Comminications Plc.
Units 15/16 Northfields Prospect
Putney Bridge Road
London
SW18 1PE
Essential! Records
Made in France
Stereo
This recording has been digitally transferred onto compact disc to obtain the best possible reproduction
WARNING: Copyright subsists in all recordings issued under this label.
All rights of the producer and of the owner of the work reproduced reserved.
Any unauthorised copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting or re-recording thereof in any manner whatsoever of this record prohibited and will constitute infringement of such copyright.
In the United Kingdom, licenses for the use of recordings for public performance many be obtained from:
Phonographic Performance Ltd.
Ganton House
14-22 Ganton Street
London
W1V JLB
Compact Disc Digital Audio
5 013428 75 0
