Reliving the music of ‘Blind Owl’ on his 50th death anniversary

This year marks precisely half a century of the departure of hippiedom’s most celebrated celestial beings. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin both died within about a fortnight of each other in 1970 — he, on September 18 and she on October 4. And while every aficionado worth his salt will be writing epitaphs on two of rock-n-roll’s most beloved, little, I am presuming, will be written about a lesser god whose contribution to the music of the turbulent 1960s was nevertheless monumental.

Hyderabad, early 1980s. My cousin takes me to a cinema playing Woodstock, a movie I had heard much about and had been dying to watch, as it featured Santana, Hendrix, CSNY (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) and a whole lot other performers on whose music I grew up. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the sweet sound of chromatic flutes begins invading the hall, followed by some rapid shuffles on the bass guitar and an infectious nasal voice whose lyrics stood testimony to the flower-power mindset that had captured America’s imagination for most of the Vietnam War years.

They weren’t showing the band, but threw forth a silhouette of the audience swaying to the blues under a moonlit night. I would also learn later that the song wasn’t a live act but a studio recording of one of Canned Heat’s biggest hits, Going Up the Country. And the voice was Alan Wilson’s, the band’s co-founder who was noted more for his dexterity on electrified six strings and 22 frets than for his vocals. And he wasn’t shredding.

Back in Bombay, as the city was then called, I asked my best friend and rock music mentor, Raman, to get me deeper into this band. He gave me a cassette version of their Greatest Hits compilation that had the Woodstock song and a host of other numbers, many of which had simple yet incisive work coming out of Wilson’s guitar. He sang on a few with his signature clothespin-on-the-nose vocals, and left most of the others to the band’s raspy crooner, Bob ‘The bear’ Hite. Wilson was exceptionally good with the strings, with quick riffs on the typically boogie-woogie stuff, and some melodic slide work on the more bluesy offerings. Check him out on Roll and Tumble and Bull Frog Blues to see what I mean. These two were also rendered by Eric Clapton and Rory Gallagher, respectively, but at the risk of inviting brickbats, I’d say categorically that neither was a patch on Heat and Wilson.

Over the years, Raman would get me cassettes of the band’s music that he had downloaded from LPS that I never got to see. So I didn’t really know what Wilson and the gang looked like and had to use my imagination to make mental pictures of them — long, shaggy hair, probably blonde, with a beard maybe. And, of course, torn jeans and outrageously colourful, flowing upper garments. I knew that Wilson had lost his sight at a very young age, which explains the moniker “Blind Owl” attached to his name. So I guessed he also wore shades.

Imagine my surprise when I saw him on Youtube several years later, with neatly combed short hair, a full-sleeve shirt in single quasi-executive colours, tucked into a pair of smart trousers — can’t remember if they were bellbottoms. And no, there were no dark glasses. Most of the others, however, were a lot more “unkempt”, if you will, in true Child-of-god spirit. But, come on, how can physical appearances take away the man’s musical acumen, I asked myself.

Wilson died, at 27, of accidental barbiturate intoxication on September 3, 1970, just two weeks before Hendrix and a month ahead of Joplin. While much would have been written about him then and in subsequent years, there is little doubt that he did not have the kind of popular appeal the other two did — Alan Wilson who, ask many of my musically inclined colleagues and friends. Canned Heat, in fact, had far too many tragedies in rapid succession for Wilson to stay relevant. The band would lose its front man Bob Hite in 1981, and guitarists Mike ‘Hollywood Fats’ Mann and Henry ‘Sunflower’ Vestine in 1986 and 1997, respectively. Most of the others passed away in the current millennium, and the group exists with a completely different lineup today.

While I love the Canned Heat of the 1960s, they weren’t in my top-5 list ever. But I do owe it to them, and to Wilson, to get me addicted to the delta music and other forms of Afroamerican expression that had their roots in the cotton fields of the great south. As I finish this piece, I’m forced to heave a sigh of despondency when it dawns on me that Wilson and Steely Dan’s Walter Becker — another one of my heroes — died the same day, 47 years apart.

Wilson was exceptionally good with the strings, with quick riffs on the typically boogiewoogie stuff, and some melodic slide work on the more bluesy offerings