Blues might be many things, but there’s no denying it was a pivotal influence on rock music from the 1950’s onward. Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Big Bill Broonzy, Lightning Hopkins, Leadbelly and many more were seminal influences on Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Stevie Ray Vaughn and so many others. Those influences were filtered through Chuck Berry, Little Richard , Jerry Lee Lewis and a few other rock pioneers in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.

With better amps and guitars, rock and blues were a perfect blend of old and new. The 1960’s yielded some great music, along with some disasters, like Vanilla Fudge, Strawberry Alarm Clock and other awful bands.

Some groups were notable for pioneering, even though not super-stars. Grand Funk Railroad and Mountain were two of them. Grand Funk sold out Shea Stadium faster than the Beatles, they were that popular. Mountain featured Leslie West, lead guitar and most vocals, accompanied by Felix Pappalardi, a producer, bass player and singer, who worked with Cream, Joan Baez, and the Youngbloods.

These two bands are notable because they captured the zeitgeist in loud blues-rock, which can now be seen as classic power trio, and a prelude to heavy metal. Times were almost as turbulent in the late 1960’s as now in 2020, so the desire grew for faster, louder music to drown out the chaos.

The best examples from those bands are in three songs:

Mountain
Mississippi Queen
The original more cowbell song. Leslie West at his best.

Mountain
Theme for an Imaginary Western
A simple ballad, a somewhat rare live performance from Leslie West with Felix Pappalardi, they mostly worked together in studio sessions. Felix had a great voice, very influential as an arranger.

Grand Funk Railroad
I’m Your Captain
You could just relegate this to the bin with other cheesy arena rock songs, but the fading chorus at the end, repeating "I'm getting closer to my home.." was a song all by itself, and lifted this one out of the mundane.