I don’t recall the original version (or subsequent covers by anyone) to include a verse that goes: “I won’t bore you, yeah Baby, I won’t bore you all night long/ Yes, I do Baby, I want to ball you/ I want to ball you all night long/ Tell your mama and your papa/ Baby, baby, doing nothing wrong, child/ I’m doing nothing wrong, yeah.” In Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, a blues standard first recorded in the 1930s by the harmonica player, Sonny Boy Williamson, Lee takes the lyrics and gives it a ribald twist. But the covers all have the distinctive Ten Years After touch – Alvin Lee’s scorching breakneck-speed lead riffs, of course, but also little touches to the lyrics. As in many of their performances, that album has originals as well as covers. The band’s line-up then – the two Lees on guitar and drums, along with Chick Churchill on organ and Leo Lyons on bass – was their best and Undead is an album worth a dive into.Īfter Woodstock brought fame for them in the US, they released a few more live albums, including the stellar Live at the Fillmore East 1970.
Besides plying their own compositions, they played a few standards, including a unique version of George Gershwin’s Summertime that segues into a tune titled Shantung Cabbage, composed by drummer Ric Lee (no relation to Alvin). The band members were in their early-to-mid 20s, the sound is raw, but the music is amazing. The year before the band played their set at Woodstock on August 17, 1969, sandwiched between Country Joe & the Fish and The Band, Ten Years After released Undead, a live recording from a performance in a small London club. There are eight great studio albums by them to check out all released between 19 and at least four live ones that are even better. That’s a pity also because there is no dearth of albums to explore the sound of Ten Years After.
It’s a pity though that Lee has remained an underrated guitar player and Ten Years After, a group that isn’t the instant go-to band that it should be for anyone interested in the blues-rock genre. The YouTube video mentioned above has garnered nearly eight million views and Lee’s lead lines in that nearly 12-minute song have, for many rock guitarists, become a sort of Holy Grail.
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