24/07/24 - I was very sad to hear from John Mayall's sister, yesterday that John had died. We had known him for many years when he lived in Cheadle Hulme and he played in the band, Mart Rodger's Hounds of Sound! We visited him in California some years ago and one of the times he played in Manchester at the Bridgewater Hall he phoned Mart in advance and said he would like Mart to join the Bluesbreakers for one number. Mart did this and John said to him to do the same at Buxton Opera House the next night. Afterwards John said he did very well with the keys for the tune they played. Mart said "I took my A flat clarinet! - Janet. Rodger

25/07/24 - Sad news indeed! As a teenager in the mid-1960s I used to hear The Bluesbreakers regularly in The White Hart Hotel, a lovely old coaching inn in Brentwood, Essex, permanently disfigured and unrecognisable now as The Sugar Hut, the setting for the television programme TOWIE (slurp, spit)! There was a wonderfully atmospheric room there with a mural painted by Jason Monet (a descendant of Claude) featuring caricatures of local people, no doubt painted over now, and that was the home of Brentwood Jazz Club, where I heard my first live jazzband, Terry Lightfoot's, and was hooked for life.

John's band played in the same room but on a different night of the week in what became known as Brentwood Bluesville. Other bands that performed on those nights included Zoot Money and his Big Roll Band, and The Cheynes, whose charismatic drummer was Mick Fleetwood, but it's John's band that I remember most vividly. While other people were dancing, I'd be standing at the front like a nerd with my eyes fixed on bass-guitarist John McVie - apart from when they were drawn to the astounding guitar playing of Eric Clapton!

When Clapton left the Bluesbreakers to form Cream (with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker), he was replaced by another guitar wizz-kid, Peter Green. When he in turn left he took John McVie with him and, together with Mick Fleetwood, formed the blues band Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac (geddit?). That's the band that had the big instrumental hit Albatross (with Peter Green on guitar) and went on to become the pop band Fleetwood Mac after Peter had left.

I wonder how many Fleetwood Mac fans are aware of the pervading influence of John Mayall, a sort of godfather to all of them I suspect. As I stood gawping at his band as a raw youngster, little did I know that I would one day get to play with Mart Rodger, with whom he had also played. I guess that makes him my godfather too!-

Allan Wilcox,