Requested Albums Part 1: Genuine John (1970), Tetsu Yamauchi in 3 (1972 to 1976)

 

Again some wonderful cover art, the head of John the Baptist represents Genuine John. (Cover art by Fred Marcellino.)  You can see this is a one-off LP from 1970.  It's wholly blues rock, as you will correctly conclude from my sample, the instrumental Inside Out:

Moving on to bassist Tetsu Yamauchi:

Tetsu Yamauchi (山内 テツ, Yamauchi Tetsu; 21 October 1946 in Fukuoka, Japan – 4 December 2025) was a Japanese musician. In the 1970s, he was a member of several popular rock bands, including Free, where he replaced original bassist Andy Fraser before the band's final album Heartbreaker, and Faces, where he replaced Ronnie Lane and appears on the band's final single, "You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything", as well as touring with them and playing on the live album Coast to Coast: Overture and Beginners. He also recorded various solo albums and did extensive work as a session musician before retiring from the music sometime in the late 1990s.

How sad to note he passed away last Dec.

Sammy's Allright from the 1970 collab album, which is eminently approachable and listenable, basically classic mild-rock ssw stuff (think early 70s Rod Stewart type stuff, Badfinger):

In the end this record which is basically the British band Free, plus Tatsu as fill-in bassist, is the best of the 3 here, perhaps because of the strength of composition from the Free members, that is Simon Kirke, Paul Kossoff, keyboardist "Rabbit".  Surprising to me that it's better than any Free album though, so far as I can tell, both in the quality of the songs and the stretching past ordinary rock chord progressions (I mean like I IV V).

From the first solo Yamauchi, 1972's Tetsu, in my not so humble opinion the best composition is Alexander Stone, with its lushly oceanic hammond organ rolling in the warm surf in the left channel, the female vocals here are by [?] no one bothered to update the discogs page with credits:

Plus a lot of groovy funky bluesy numbers, along the lines of sometimes just 2-3 chords per song.

The 1976 album Kikyou, again minimal credits info, sounds like the intervening half decade had never happened, with the same early 1970s British blues-rock ssw songs.  There is barely any hint of prog rock despite the silly description as such on the discogs page.  I am not sure what their idea of prog is but it's not mine.  Rather it's a mix of country/folk/blues/plain rock.

The River has a nice pipes of pan intro (always a surprise to make that statement), augmented by the electric arpeggios and dual acoustic rhythm guitars:

So the arranging is beautiful, and reminiscent of the classic rock hits of an earlier era.  Enjoyable records though altogether, and little to barely known at all.