JOHN McLAUGHLIN

Writer of a killer soul record

OFF TOPIC with Steve Mixup. A place for me to tell the odd story or two about the post war rock generation. If they couldn’t change the world at least they brought us some wonderful music.

LISTEN TO CRUISIN’

Sixties soul music and the later Northern Soul scene is not something you might associate with John McLaughlin and why would you. He is as far removed from the dance floor grooves as you could imagine. I first came across the name of John McLaughlin when the group Mahavishnu Orchestra burst onto the scene in the early seventies. I bought the live album “Between Nothingness & Eternity” in 1973 followed by a few more as I pondered the extremely complex jazz fusion that was a part of the seventies tapestry of grandiose sounds that flowered after the sixties explosion.

I am either blessed or cursed in liking so much different music and although old enough to know better will still defend some artists to the hilt when in a conversation about music. Yes, I guess it’s a bloke thing. Well, John McLaughlin isn’t an artist I readily reach for when playing music nowadays but his career is impressive, a Yorkshireman not afraid to explore the world both externally and internally, and we need some of those artists who can explore places most of us could never even dream to reach. A virtuoso guitarist of some magnitude and serious composer he seems the most unlikeliest writer of a bone fide soul tune. But that he did. There is a single from 1966 that will sit in many a Northern Soul or Mod DJ’s record box that still gets plenty of plays on the dance floor. That single is by Herbie Goins & The Night-Timers and John was a member of the band. The A side, No. 1 In Your Heart, written by Wilburt Jackson and Clyde Wilson is a sure fire R’n’B soul stomper and the B side, Cruisin’, written by John McLaughlin is an equally brilliant slice of grooving soul. Listen to No.1 In Your Heart on YouTube.

When you look back into the mid sixties it is not uncommon to find many of the later famous rock gods of the seventies in small blues, mod or soul groups doing the rounds on the club circuit, a learning curve so many of the later household names would pass through. The arrival of the American Blues artists in the sixties, needing a British backing band, meant plenty of work for budding guitarists, keyboard players and drummers to learn and hone down their skills. It was not only blues singers that needed a group and there were many American soul singers heading for Britain and the bubbling live scene up and down the country. Of the many American artists that settled upon our shores was Herbie Goins, a rhythm and blues singer, and in a similar way to his British counterparts, he took up a role in “Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated” of the early sixties. I have an original copy of the “Live at the Cavern” album from 1964 where Herbie takes the lead vocals, apart from a couple of songs where Alexis took the spotlight, and it is very much a blues affair but a important historical document of our own blues scene as it was developing. There is a review of the album here and you can hear Herbie singing on the track Every Day I Have The Blues here.

Alexis Korner is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the British Blues scene and Herbie trod the boards of the blues and soul clubs, finding his way around until he was able to form his own group Herbie Goins & The Night-Timers. Formed in 1965 they featured among their ranks a 23 year old John McLaughlin on guitar. As a child John McLaughlin, born in 1942, listened to Alan Lomax, the esteemed ethnomusicologist, on the radio in the early 50’s where he heard a cross section of folk music from blues to South Indian temple music. He bought his first record in 1954, a Muddy Waters album. Soon hearing Django Reinhardt and then Miles Davis and Coltrane and playing guitar he was on a trajectory that would see him join Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames in 1961. Also a member of the Graham Bond Organisation he moved from group to group and he was, for a short time, in a Brian Auger jazz group that also featured later Mahavishnu man Rick Laird and Nottingham drummer Phil Kinorra later to release a Northern stomper himself as Julien Covey. Eventually John joined Herbie Goins new group and toured the clubs of Britain. They played the Dungeon in Nottingham four times and the Beachcomber before John left in June 1966 for session work.

The melting pot of the sixties London scene saw him work as a session man on the hits of the day alongside such venerable giants as Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Jimmy Page on such names as Donovan, Sandie Shaw, Petula Clark, Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. John had given a 15 year old Jimmy Page guitar lessons back in 1960. Herbie Goins & The Night-Timers carried on playing many more times in Nottingham (a soul loving city) at the Dungeon, Beach and Poly, supporting Otis Redding on tour, and then, in 1969, the group landed in Italy and Herbie decided to make it his home and continuing to make records and perform throughout his life in Italy. See Herbie live in 1968 (not with John McLaughlin) performing “Same Old Song” and see a plotted history of Herbie’s history here. By 1969 John McLaughlin was in New York in the “Tony Williams Lifetime” and it wouldn’t be long before he launched the super group of jazz fusion musicians that became Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Herbie Goins passed away in 2015 but John is still going strong composing and performing to this day. Maybe this whole story shouldn’t be seen as that unusual really. The optimism of the era, the talent and experimentation, the thriving live scene threw up many more stories like this one but surely this is the strangest of bedfellows, John McLaughlin and a killer soul record. September 2024.