Don't let the dragon eat your mother

John McLaughlin : Marbles and Dragon Song
From Devotion (Douglas, 1970)

Feat. : Buddy Miles (drums, percussion), Jerry Goodman (violin), Billy Rich (bass) and Larry Young (organ, electric piano)

In the last post you can listen his new release, here this post is about a classic of Alan Douglas production. It is not my favourite album, but i'm so curious about these jazz-rock pioneers, and in particularly the contemporaries with Miles Davis's Bitches Brew album, Jimi Hendrix acid (jazz) rock projects (Nine to the Universe) and Tony Williams's Lifetime band, so I couldn't go through John McLaughlin's Devotion album. Moreover, Larry Young, on electric piano, was involved on each sessions. See also Larry Young's Fuel on earfuzz.

Before he featured on several jazz-rock sessions in New York, during the mid-sixties in UK McLaughlin was jamming with the Graham Bond and Jack Bruce. Here Marbles is certainly the most known of this album. In 1972, Buddy Miles and Carlos Santana, before he met McLaughlin, played together Marbles in a Santana's style.

When he was recording Devotion, McLaughlin just kept Lifetime and Bitches Brew's sessions, soon he will perform for the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Devotion represent a period of transition in his discography. It's sounds like Hendrix when he was jamming with Larry Young and McLaughlin's solo at the end of "Right Off" (see A Tribute to Jack Johnson).