Blues - John Crampton

It’s Saturday night blues at the Lansdown, and tonight John Crampton is back in town. Crampton originally made his name playing with the legendary Brighton skiffle band Daddy Yum Yum. When they split up, he decided to go it alone. Since the late eighties he’s been gigging the world, either in his own right, or supporting the likes of Van Morrison, Dr. Feelgood and Nine Below Zero. He cites Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Ry Cooder as his influences. And they’re pretty keen on him too. The man is basically a bona-fide blues legend. Crampton rocks.

He’s also quiet-spoken and unassuming, so when he initially takes to the stage with his 1930’s steel guitar, harmonica strapped into a rack around his neck, and a stomp box, you frankly wonder what all the fuss is about. But then he gets started. His music is what music reviewers love to call ‘low-down and dirty’. His voice has the sort of quart-of-whisky-and-a-packet-of-filterless quality that makes Tom Waits Tom Waits. Pretty soon he’s making the sort of racket you’d expect a four-man band to make, whippin’ up a pitch of frenzy that has this reviewer tempted to take the ‘g’s off all his ‘ings’.(listen) Crampton is a prodigious blues talent, a Londoner with a heart as big as the North Mississippi Delta, and whose largely self-penned repertoire inevitably gets the crowd up on its feet. Can’t think of a better way to follow on from England’s inevitable opening World Cup victory… NW