This is, for a number of reasons, a very hard album to write about, which is why it's taken me so long to get around to it. First and foremost of these reasons is, of course, the death of Al Wilson, the man who made Canned Heat, as far as I'm concerned. His harp and guitar stylings represented a brilliant answer to the question of how a white band, playing the blues, yet respecting the black men who made the originals, could have any integrity at all. The answer, for a genius like Wilson, was simple—don't imitate, don't fall into the ego-tripping soloist trap, but synthesize elements from past blues into a kind of future blues. Canned Heat did this so well that I tend to think of them as a rock band rather than a blues band. You probably have your own idea of them.

But if you're a Canned Heat fan, you'll find this effort to be right up there with their finest. Helped along on two cuts by Dr. John, the boys show that in spite of all kinds of personnel changes in the period just before this album was made, they were still capable of functioning as a tight band. My favorite cuts are Wilson's "Skat," which has some delightfully loony scat singing, and "Let's Work Together," the Wilbert Harrison number that's currently riding the charts.

Whether Canned Heat will survive Wilson's tragic death is uncertain. What is certain, though, is that they've made some fine music in their time, and there's a lot of it on Future Blues. (RS 72)

ED WARD