Shake Down 1967 Album

Savoy Brown

Yes, they still exist today, and their debut record came out originally issued in the UK only at the tail end of the “Summer of Love” when they were still being called the Savoy Brown Blues Band. The other general consensus is people seem to dig this without question – possibly because the band’s shtick is a novel item here? The tone is cleaner than just about any other blues-rock group of the day, Simmonds’ leads sear, and lead singer Brice Portius has a soulful set of pipes. And yet – like a whole lot of other Savoy Brown albums – what is collected here is really nothing too special, unless you were a hardcore aficionado of the British “blooze” boom. As it pertains to this record, they were damn near choirboys, in many ways, compared to Canned Heat and Fleetwood Mac – their closest competition. I am not going to spend much more time on this, and neither would Simmonds, who would jettison most of the lineup that recorded this one, and move onto slightly more ambitious material. In retrospect, a fairly representative indicator of what was to come, despite all of the future lineup changes.