John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers - A Sense Of Place

A Sense Of Place is a studio album by blues musician John Mayall (featuring The Bluesbreakers), originally released in 1990 via Island Records.

We owe a lot to John Mayall. His Bluesbreakers, the prototypical 60s British blues band, helped open the eyes and ears of an entire generation of rock-and-roll lovers to the origins of their music.

A Sense Of Place is a testament to Mayall’s dedication to the blues, but it also shows him spinning off in some intriguing new directions. "I Want To Go" with its attractive acoustic slide guitar solo has a delicate country wistfulness. "Congo Square" is an ambitious attempt to conjure up a portrait of the fabled New Orleans grounds where slaves danced and held voodoo rituals and where the sense of place is still nearly overpowering.

Mayall's fusion of bluesy energy with the rowdy adventurousness of rock makes "Jacksboro Highway" a delight, while still being capable of a more basic approach, resurrecting Canned Heat's old theme "Let's Work Together" in a way that manages to be true to the original while making its blues roots even more obvious.

Though probably best known as a harmonica player, Mayall is also an accomplished blues pianist. In fact, some of his most eloquent tributes to blues tradition have been acoustic piano outings. He includes one here, a nod to Cripple Clarence Lofton entitled "Send Me Down To Vicksburg." He's got Lofton's pumping boogie-woogie style and eccentric right-hand rhythms down perfectly, and he even refers to the master in the lyrics. 

Interestingly, the album's high point isn't a blues but the J.J. Cale ballad "Sensitive Kind." A haunting minor-key masterpiece announced by a watery electric-guitar intro and sung by Mayall in a gentle croon tinged with darkness and aching desire, it's a rare and astonishing testimony to masculine tenderness. There's an ethereal slide statement, and a soaring guitar solo of fluid grace and slow-burning intensity. Cale's lyrics, admonishing a man to show gentleness and respect to a lady who's "having a hard time," are wise without being preachy and sound utterly heartfelt. 

It’s the tasteful and intelligent, exploration laced with deep feeling and unafraid to be adult in its sensibilities that makes A Sense Of Place such a good album.

Check out the tracks: “Sensitive Kind”; “Congo Square” and “I Want To Go”.

This reissued LP record is pressed in Germany on 180 gram heavyweight vinyl.