Listen to these recordings, in this order and you will learn something interesting:
1. All Your Love by Otis Rush
2. All Your Love by John Mayall and Eric Clapton
3. Black Magic Woman by Fleetwood Mac
4. Black Magic Woman by Santana
The Otis Rush version of All Your Love may be hard to find. He recorded it many times, but in my opinion his best version was done in 1957 with Ike Turner’s band, and can be found on a Chess compilation of Otis Rush and Albert King cuts, Door to Door (still available on CD, according to Amazon). It’s a terrific song, alternating between a blues rumba and a shuffle, with impassioned vocals and well-thought-out guitar parts that are more composed than improvised. The first guitar break consists of a beautiful set of minor-chord arpeggios, and I’ll stop right there because reducing fine blues guitar playing to a phrase like that is a musical crime. If you don’t know about this record, you’re missing out. Note the time changes - they will be become important as we follow this trail. The composition is attributed to Otis Rush and Willie Dixon - and it’s not unlikely that in reality Rush was the sole songwriter, and Dixon was the first of many to profit from his effort.
The first recorded instance of a Les Paul played through a Marshall amplifier - THAT SOUND - is the John Mayall and Eric Clapton album, recorded in London and released in 1966. The first cut on the album is a cover of All Your Love. It’s practically a copy of the Otis Rush version, although the beat has been slowed down and simplified, and the vocals miss the original’s quality by a country mile. The guitar sound is stunning - thick and fluid, it will be possibly the single biggest influence on guitar sound from the ‘60’s up until the present day. The notes played are an almost slavish copy of what Otis Rush played. Note the time changes - still there in this version. This is another must-have record, so go find a copy if you’ve never heard it.
By the time the John Mayall and Eric Clapton album came out, Eric Clapton was no longer with the band, having gone on to bigger and better things with Cream. He had been replaced by Peter Green - a guitar player who some think matched if not bettered Clapton’s guitar prowess. It’s not much of a stretch here to assume that he knew All Your Love and played it live many times - it was the first track on his band’s current album. After playing on the next Mayall album (A Hard Road) he quit the band to create Fleetwood Mac, which in its early form was probably the best blues band to come out of England.
Now here’s the only item in our musical trail that requires a little creative analysis. In 1968 Peter Green wrote and recorded (with Fleetwood Mac) his composition, Black Magic Woman. It’s a different song, but the similarities to All Your Love are many - the latin-sounding beat, some of the melody, the overall feel, which is very like the Mayall recording, and the time change, in the form of a coda which turns into a shuffle. This song is All Your Love rewritten. As with all the songs we’ve mentioned so far, if you haven’t heard this, go find it. It’s on the Pious Bird of Good Omen CD.
Last, we come to the Santana version of Peter Green’s Black Magic Woman. If you haven’t heard this you’ve been living in a cave since the late ‘60’s. Probably the most recognizable Santana song, it was a massive hit single and made somebody (probably Columbia Records) quite a bit of change. Few people know who wrote it. Even fewer know where the song ultimately derived from - Otis Rush’s All Your Love. This version too includes a time change - in the place of Green’s shuffle we get a fast instrumental coda.
So there’s the trail, laid out for anyone to see who’s interested. A burst of creativity in 1957 leads to a series of fine records and an enormous amount of money. With any luck Otis Rush continues to receive royalties for his half of a composer’s credit on one song on the John Mayall and Eric Clapton album, which has sold somewhat steadily since its release. Other than that… not much.
Extra credit - play The Supernatural from John Mayall’s Hard Road album. It’s a Peter Green instrumental that sounds like the prototype for Santana - latin groove and a Les Paul with infinite sustain playing beautiful melodic lines.
