The album you can wake me up at night for is Boogie with Canned Heat. In 1969 I was 15 years old and that’s when the American blues band came to Castle Duurstede in Wijk bij Duurstede. The reason for their coming was that a weekend of filming was being made of their performances. Buses full of hippies came, there was drug use, music and dancing. At that time, I myself also looked like a hippie and it was not difficult to attend the performance at the castle. The Canned Heat performance was my first introduction to the blues/boogie and set me on the path to the blues. I was impressed by the performance and the first thing I did as a fifteen-year-old after the performance was to buy an album by Canned Heat.
It became the LP Boogie with Canned Heat. This album is the second studio album by the American blues and rock band Canned Heat. Released in 1968, it contains mostly original material, unlike their debut album. It was the band’s most commercially successful album, reaching No. 16 in the US and No. 5 in the UK. Boogie with Canned Heat includes the top 10 hit ” On the Road Again “, one of their best-known songs. Also “Amphetamine Annie,” a warning about the dangers of amphetamine abuse and was widely played on the radio. “Fried Hockey Boogie” was the first example of one of Canned Heat’s boogies.
Canned Heat emerged in 1966 and was founded by blues historians and record collectors Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson and Bob “The Bear” Hite. The Bear took the name “Canned Heat” from a 1928 recording by Tommy Johnson. They were joined by Henry “The Sunflower” Vestine. The band was completed in 1967 by Larry “The Mole” Taylor on bass, an experienced session musician who had played with Jerry Lee Lewis and The Monkees. Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra played on drums.
With their performances at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival (along with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Who) and headlining the original Woodstock Festival in 1969, the band secured a place in the pages of rock ‘n roll history. The band collaborated with Jon Mayall, Little Richard and later blues icon John Lee Hooker, the musician from whom they initially drew much of their musical inspiration.
The band achieved three worldwide hits, “On The Road Again” in 1968, “Let’s Work Together” in 1970 and “Going Up The Country” in 1969 became rock anthems around the world, with the latter song being adopted as the unofficial theme song for the movie Woodstock and the “Woodstock Generation.