Dirty Blues Band - Dirty Blues Band 1967 , Blues Rock
The Dirty Blues Band was a white blues outfit best known as the stamping grounds, for a time, for Rod Piazza and Glenn Ross Campbell. The group was spawned in Riverside, CA, from a convergence of members of a handful of notable local outfits their rhythm section, John Millikan (drums) and Les Morrison (bass), were high school classmates who’d previously played in the L-J’s, whence also came keyboard player Pat Moloney.
The L-J’s had started out playing jazz in 1964, but by the end of 1965 had evolved into the Mystics, a much more blues-focused outfit, whose ranks included Bob Sandell on rhythm guitar and Rod Piazza on lead vocals and harp.
Their main influences were such British Invasion bands as Them (whose “Mystic Eyes” had provided their name), the Animals, the Yardbirds, and the Rolling Stones — although nominally a blues band, their sound was really more an amalgam of blues and R&B as done by those groups
That all changed when Piazza and a couple of his bandmates went to a performance by the Byrds at The Trip in Los Angeles, where the opening act was the still mostly unknown Paul Butterfield Blues Band. What they saw and heard that night convinced the Mystics, especially Piazza, that they had to switch over to playing a purer form of blues. They ceased being the Mystics, taking on the name House of DBS (meaning Dirty Blues Sound) in 1966.
There followed a lot of gigs in and around Los Angeles, where they honed their new sound and also lost their original lead guitarist, Jeff Ray — in his place, Piazza recruited a friend of his from a band he’d once hung out with, the Misunderstood, named Glenn Ross Campbell.
The Misunderstood had broken up and he was available and willing, and once he joined, the group’s sound fairly blossomed, as Campbell became known for stretching out on his solos and improvisations for long minutes at their shows.
By the summer of 1967, with the beginnings of a serious rock music press, the House of DBS was getting proper coverage, and by the end of that season, they had a management and production deal with Lee Magid, who was best known in the business at that time as the manager of singer Della Reese.
Magid produced their debut album and sold it to ABC Records, also facilitating a name-change to the Dirty Blues Band. Their self-titled debut album appeared in early 1968 on the ABC imprint Bluesway, and although the members weren’t entirely happy with the results of the two days of rushed recording, they seemed to have a promising future ahead of them.
01. Don’t Start Me To Talkin’ 0:00
02. What Is Soul, Babe 0:58
03. Hound Dog 6:56
04. New Orleans Woman 9:50
05. I’ll Do Anything Babe 11:44
06. Checking Up On My Baby 16:06
07. Shake It Babe 19:49
08. Worry, Worry Blues 22:48
09. Born Under A Bad Sign 26:35
10. Spoonful 29:24
11. Chicken Shack 33:16
Personnel:
Rod Piazza (vocals, harp)
Jimmy Forrest (tenor saxophone)
Willie Green (baritone saxop
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