Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die

John Barleycorn Must Die represents a second coming for Traffic. Disbanded a few months after the second departure of guitarist Dave Mason in 1969, the group may not have come back together were it not for the collapse of the Steve Winwood-Eric Clapton supergroup, Blind Faith. Subsequently, Winwood laid down a few tracks for a prospective solo project, produced by the eventually legendary Guy Stevens and titled Mad Shadows. Winwood, wishing to work with more like-minded musicians, parted company with Steven and invited drummer Jim Capaldi and wind instrumentalist Chris Wood to join him in the studio. Thus was Traffic reborn.

The album resembles in many ways the tracks on the group's eponymous second album that were written without the involvement of Dave Mason, reflecting Winwood, Capaldi, and Wood's interest in mixing more traditional jazz with rock, rather than the bluesier and more psychedelic rock of Mason's direction. In fact, the album is quite remarkable due to an utter lack of guitar for the first three tracks. Propelled by the piano and Hammond organ of the multi-instrumentalist Winwood, John Barleycorn opens with the instrumental track "Glad." Immediately, each member of the group gets to establish themselves and their roles in the group clearly and in a most spirited manner.

There's a lot of overdubbing on John Barleycorn, a necessity considering Winwood's playing sometimes as many as three instruments on a track, plus providing vocals. His lyrics are serviceable but not particularly memorable, but Winwood's voice definitely is. Coming from the British R&B scene, which he joined at an early age as the vocalist for the Spencer Davis group, Winwood's voice is melodic and soulful, skillfully woven through the jazz-inspired noodlings of much of the album.

Despite the almost free-form jamming of the first three tracks of the album, it rarely loses focus. Winwood and Wood often play their melodies around each other, but it's Capaldi's steady, perky percussion that gives them an anchor. These are clearly three musicians who are comfortable working with each other and know what each is capable of; perhaps this is the reason why Winwood decided to turn his solo foray into a full-blown Traffic project.

Remember I said there's no guitar on the first three tracks of the album? Well, it finally returns at the midpoint of the album, but even here it's still nowhere near as prevalent as one might expect on what is ostensibly a rock album from 1970. On "Stranger to Himself," the only one of the Guy Stevens-produced songs on the original album, the guitar serves mostly as a counterpoint to Winwood's piano. It's a similar sound on the album closer, "Every Mother's Son," though it is stronger at points. The longer song's much more instrumentally complex, with the return of the Hammond. It dominates the middle of the album, with the guitar and piano blended seemlessly in the background. Oddly, Chris Wood is entirely absent from this track as his sax or flute is prominent on most of the rest of the album. Even so, it fits musically with most of John Barleycorn, save the preceding track.

"John Barleycorn" is as much of a departure from the rest of the album as the album itself is from the psychedelia-influenced days of Mr. Fantasy, the band's first album. It's a striking arrangement of a traditional English folk song. Often, because of it, John Barleycorn Must Die is categorized as a folk-rock album, something I take issue with because it's not a folk rock album. It's a jazz-fusion progressive rock album that just happens to feature a folk song. But it's such a prominent song in Traffic's category, and with good reason.

A personification of the barley crop, the song tells of how the titular John Barleycorn suffers indignity and death, yet in doing so provides both a necessary staple and luxury for medieval English life. A few versions cite the cruel treatment as revenge for being laid low by drink created from barley, but in the arrangement used by Traffic, it is John Barleycorn who has his revenge upon those who had tortured and killed him, as he "proved the strongest man at last."

I'll admit, I bought the album primarily for this song, as "John Barleycorn" has long been one of my favorite Traffic songs. As much as I love the musical complexity of the rest of the album, I can't get over how starkly different this track is in its minimalism. Probably the most complex thing on it is Winwood and Capaldi's harmony; the acoustic guitar is not overly complex, the only percussion is Capaldi's tambourine, and Winwood's otherwise omnipresent piano now fulfills the same counterpoint to the guitar that the it had been served by on other songs. Accentuating this is Wood's trilling flute. You can almost see the three of them sitting around a fire out in the English countryside performing this for the very farmers and millers about to subject John Barleycorn to his indignities. I hesitate to use the word "haunting," but it really is to a degree, almost performed as a funeral dirge. By comparison, the folk-rock outfit Fairport Convention does it as a much more upbeat drinking song, Jethro Tull does it well as, well, a Jethro Tull song. Traffic's version is certainly one of the better known.

My copy of the album is the 2001 US re-release that includes two additional tracks, "I Just Want You to Know" and "Sittin' Here Thinkin' of My Love," the only track from the Mad Shadows sessions to not be released on the original album. Both fit thematically and musically with the rest of the album. Unfortunately, the US re-release got shorted a few live tracks recorded in November of 1970 at the Filmore East.

And here we come to the end of another review. Join me next time as I stay in the days of crushed velvet jackets, frilly shirts, and bell-bottom trousers as I take a look at the earth-shattering debut of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced.