RIP: Blues Legend John Mayall Is Dead at 90.

Mayall’s Bluesbreakers were a clearinghouse for generational talent. Eric Clapton quit the Yardbirds and joined the band; his playing was featured on its debut LP, released in 1966. When Clapton left, Peter Green, later to found Fleetwood Mac, joined. And when Green left, Mick Taylor, later of the Rolling Stones, joined. Mayall was to British blues guitarists what Leo Castelli was to New York painters; his group was the blue-chip gallery you wanted to show your work in. The bassist Jack Bruce met Clapton in the Bluesbreakers, then went on to found Cream. Other future rock stars who were Mayall alumni: Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, later of Fleetwood Mac, and the well-traveled drummer Aynsley Dunbar. In these Bluesbreakers incarnations, and in many more that would follow, Mayall moved between guitar and keyboards, with spotlight moments to demonstrate his prowess on harmonica. Even so, Mayall’s chief talent may have been his uncanny, unselfish capacity for spotting it in others.

Clapton’s mating of a Les Paul and a Marshall amplifier on the Bluesbreakers album, in a homage to the guitar blues great Freddie King was seen playing in the 1950s went on to become the iconic rock guitar sound, until Eddie Van Halen arrived in the late 1970s with his heavily modified “Super-Stratocaster” style guitar, and remains highly sought after to this day.