{"id":23564,"date":"2026-08-08T14:45:58","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T22:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=23564"},"modified":"2026-08-08T14:46:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T22:46:19","slug":"well-all-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2026\/08\/08\/well-all-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Well All Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Well All Right\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/3p0dqXyYn3ZpJmPiUpisCl?si=2da6aa1df0014a91&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oj5u3Yf28LE?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>This is the song I woke up with in my head this morning. Actually, it was the tail end of &#8220;Can\u2019t Find My Way Home,&#8221; which segued into &#8220;Well All Right.&#8221; And as I sat up in bed, I thought how that was the sequence on the album.<\/p>\n<p>No one ever talks about &#8220;Had to Cry Today&#8221; anymore. No one even talks about Blind Faith. It&#8217;s passed into history as an anomaly, a curio, except for &#8220;Can&#8217;t Find My Way Home,&#8221; party to Simon &#038; Garfunkel&#8217;s &#8220;For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her&#8221; as two of the most beautiful songs ever written. In the streaming era &#8220;Can&#8217;t Find My Way Home&#8221; is no longer uncommon, then again, it&#8217;s no longer special to me. I still like it, but my innards don&#8217;t resonate like they used to when I hear it.<\/p>\n<p>As for &#8220;Had to Cry Today&#8221;&#8230; It&#8217;s really about the guitar work that begins at 6:40, with the axes flying in the air like a halo of flies, with that &#8220;Itchykoo Park&#8221; effect to boot. This is when the track goes over the top, when it enters the stratosphere. I mean you&#8217;ve got Winwood and the riff, but when Clapton cuts loose&#8230;it exits the intellectual and becomes pure emotion.<\/p>\n<p>Now I think what kills the one and only Blind Faith album, denies it legendary status, is the fifteen plus minute &#8220;Do What You Like&#8221; on the second side. Every other track is a winner, &#8220;Do What You Like&#8221; is marginally better than &#8220;Toad.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And speaking of Cream, we were stunned they broke up. Don&#8217;t forget this was before the Beatles did so. Acts expired, but they didn&#8217;t call it quits at their peak. We found it hard to fathom, for we were invested, we believed&#8230;in the music more than the penumbra, unlike members of the BTS Army today. The music stood alone, and the people who made it were gods.<\/p>\n<p>As for Winwood&#8230; This was still when Traffic was for insiders, the act didn&#8217;t reach mainstream consciousness until after the band broke up and reunited, with &#8220;John Barleycorn&#8221; and &#8220;Low Spark.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now the thing about &#8220;Barleycorn&#8221; is it started out as a Winwood solo album. But even though the sound of the second Traffic album was full-bodied, we were not ready for this, the &#8220;Barleycorn&#8221; album is rich. And despite the deserved success of the title cut, the peak of that album for me was always &#8220;Empty Pages,&#8221; which started with a flourish, and then broke down into a lilting ditty, in your mind you could see the spark in Winwood&#8217;s step as the track played.<\/p>\n<p>And, of course, it was the seventies when Eric Clapton went solo. Had his peak with Duane Allman and the rest of the Dominos with &#8220;Layla,&#8221; but the interesting thing about both Winwood and Clapton is they had another peak in the eighties, Winwood&#8217;s career defining &#8220;Back in the High Life,&#8221; Clapton&#8230;Russ Titelman worked his magic with him too.<\/p>\n<p>But this was &#8217;69. Back before every act felt it deserved to produce itself. Which is another way to say that the man in control of the Blind Faith project was Jimmy Miller, a footnote today, but a monster before producers became stars outright. It was Miller who was in control when the Stones executed their legendary four album run, from &#8220;Beggars Banquet&#8221; to &#8220;Exile on Main Street.&#8221; The Stones went on to have success without him, but the sound changed. The latter day albums, especially the most recent, are noisier, more trebly, they don&#8217;t kick you in the gut the same way. The latter-day stuff tries to overpower you into submission, whereas the Miller stuff got into your gut and stayed there. Just think of the sound of &#8220;You Can&#8217;t Always Get What You Want&#8221;&#8230;you haven&#8217;t heard that full-bodied richness since Miller&#8217;s been gone. Ditto on the ethereal quality of &#8220;Gimmie Shelter.&#8221; When you listen to the Miller albums on a full-blown stereo it&#8217;s an experience, it squeezes out the rest of the life, it&#8217;s life itself.<\/p>\n<p>And you find a similar quality on the Miller produced second Traffic album, the best one they ever made, with &#8220;Forty Thousand Headmen&#8221; and &#8220;Cryin&#8217; to be Heard,&#8221; and the world-weary Dave Mason vocal on the original &#8220;Feelin&#8217; Alright?&#8221;&#8230;Joe Cocker made the song legendary, but it was this 1968 version that truly conveyed the feeling, of a man after a breakup, who wasn&#8217;t feelin&#8217; so good himself.<\/p>\n<p>Now you definitely feel that presence, that musical totality, that richness in the first side closer of the one and only Blind Faith album, &#8220;Presence of the Lord.&#8221; Miller took Clapton&#8217;s pipes beyond Cream, the range and emotion were wider, you could hear a three-dimensional person in the music.<\/p>\n<p>As for &#8220;Well All Right,&#8221; those older than me knew it was originally a Buddy Holly song. I mean at this point, I knew a bunch of Holly&#8217;s hits, but what was originally titled &#8220;Well&#8230;All Right&#8221; was the b-side to the 1958 track &#8220;Heartbeat,&#8221; which only made it to #82 on the &#8220;Billboard&#8221; Hot 100. And many of us baby boomers&#8230;we really started with the Beatles. We knew the earlier hits, but the Beatles had wiped the slate clean, our eyes pointed forward. But the Brits had always looked back, and played our history back to us. Which the Beatle generation ultimately got hooked on with the advent of Cream and the rest of the FM bands in the second half of the sixties.<\/p>\n<p>Which is all to say when I first heard &#8220;Well All Right&#8221; as done by Blind Faith, I was not comparing it to the original.<\/p>\n<p>Now it&#8217;s all there in the original, but it&#8217;s more of a blueprint than a final version for Blind Faith. Blind Faith lays down an undeniable, subtle groove that gets your head nodding, and keeps it moving.<\/p>\n<p>Also, there&#8217;s that pregnant intro to the vocal, unlike Holly&#8217;s take, this track is not a two minute romp. We know something is coming, and we know it&#8217;s not going to be downbeat and downtrodden, and when Winwood starts singing, it&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well all right so I&#8217;ve been foolish<br \/>\nWell all right let people know&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Once again, this is not the fifties, this version of the song is positively rooted in the sixties, when the music was no longer a sideshow, but the main show. There&#8217;s no subtlety involved, just pure joy, you hear it in Winwood&#8217;s vocal, even though the words themselves might not be that positive. But the song&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Once again, Jimmy Miller creates a full-bodied sound, there&#8217;s treble, but it doesn&#8217;t overwhelm the middle and the bottom.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, you&#8217;re not being overpowered, this track is not made to appeal to an ignorant Top 40 audience, this recording is for people in the know, those who purchased those Cream and Traffic albums, who had respect for the music.<\/p>\n<p>And just like in &#8220;Had to Cry Today,&#8221; it&#8217;s the guitar work that separates this remake from the original. Actually, it all starts at 2:50 with the keyboard, and then the guitar, and then the interplay for the rest of the number. This was the breakthrough of FM rock, the stretching out of songs. But this was neither the Dead nor the latter-day jam bands, at least on records, the instrumental section, in this case fading out at the end of the song, was not indulgent, not overblown, rather it was relatively concise, while being delectable at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>The Buddy Holly version of &#8220;Well&#8230;All Right&#8221; is 2:14. And the Blind Faith take contains all of that, but goes on for two plus minutes more, which makes all the difference, Blind Faith makes the song its own.<\/p>\n<p>And think about it&#8230; You&#8217;ve got Winwood on vocals (and more!), and Clapton on guitars, never mind Ginger Banker holding down the beat. This was the promise of Blind Faith. Which turned out to be a better idea on paper than in real life. It was the tour that killed the band. Because it was more of an idea than a true group. And billed as the first supergroup, Clapton grew tired of the overwhelming attention and retreated into Delaney &#038; Bonnie and it was one and done.<\/p>\n<p>But that does not mean that great work was not delivered. Winwood and Clapton did push each other, the songs on the Blind Faith album are superior to so much of the stuff filling out the albums of the two thereafter.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, this was album rock. Traffic&#8217;s only hit was in the U.K., the Dave Mason penned &#8220;Hole in My Shoe,&#8221; which the rest of the band disowned. As great as &#8220;Dear Mr. Fantasy&#8221; was, only musos knew it, the live version by Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield two years later spread the word to more, when FM rock started to truly burgeon across America. Traffic had the goods, just look at the covers, especially Three Dog Night&#8217;s &#8220;Heaven Is in Your Mind&#8221; and Al Kooper&#8217;s &#8220;Coloured Rain,&#8221; never mind Blood, Sweat &#038; Tears&#8217; &#8220;Smiling Phases,&#8221; but sans AM hits at the time&#8230;the band was not a household name.<\/p>\n<p>And it was the same with Cream until the summer of 1968, when &#8220;Sunshine of Your Love&#8221; crossed over, which is one of the reasons Clapton didn&#8217;t want to continue, he wasn&#8217;t in it for the hits.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, as time marches on, fewer and fewer albums and songs are remembered. And the focus devolves into chart hits. But that&#8217;s not what it was about in the late sixties and seventies. Then again, when it comes to classic rock oldies, radio does play &#8220;Can&#8217;t Find Your Way Home&#8221; a bit, but the rest of the Blind Faith album may as well not even exist. As big as it was in the summer of Woodstock, when the whole nation was becoming aware of the power of rock and roll.<\/p>\n<p>So ask a youngster who knows the Doors and the Dead about the tracks on the Blind Faith album and they&#8217;re going to be flummoxed. Blind Faith has been excised from the canon. Seen mostly as a footnote of excess. But there was a lot more than that, a lot more.<\/p>\n<p>Just listen to &#8220;Well All Right.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the song I woke up with in my head this morning. Actually, it was the tail end of &#8220;Can\u2019t Find My Way Home,&#8221; which segued into &#8220;Well All Right.&#8221; And as I sat up in bed, I thought how that was the sequence on the album. No one ever talks about &#8220;Had to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-684","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23564"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23566,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23564\/revisions\/23566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}