Canned Heat

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Canned Heat is a blues-rock/boogie band that formed in Los Angeles in 1965. The importance of the group lies not only with their blues-based music, but with their efforts to reintroduce and revive the careers of some of the great old bluesmen, and their improvisational abilities.

The group was led by Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson (guitar, harmonica, vocals) and Bob Hite ("The Bear") (vocals, harmonica). Henry Vestine (a.k.a Sunflower) also played guitar and was an ex-member of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. Larry Taylor ("The Mole") (best known up until then as the Monkees session bassist), was their studio bassist, (joining full time through 1970), along with drummer Frank Cook for their first album. Guitarist Harvey Mandel toured with the band extensively through the late 1960's. Canned Heat took their name from Tommy Johnson's 1928 "Canned Heat Blues", a song about an alcoholic who has desperately turned to drinking Sterno, which is generically called canned heat.

Further reading: Canned Heat