''Halfbreed'' is the debut album by the

Keef Hartley Band Keith "Keef" Hartley (8 April 1944 – 26 November 2011)
was an English drummer and bandleader. He fronted his own band ...

. The band was formed when

Keef Hartley Keith "Keef" Hartley (8 April 1944 – 26 November 2011)
was an English drummer and bandleader. He fronted his own band ...

left

John Mayall John Mayall, OBE (born 29 November 1933) is an English blues singer, musician and songwriter, whose musical career spans over sixty years. In the 1960s, he was the founder of John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, a band that has counted among it ...

's band after touring and playing on seven albums (some issued later), including being the only performer besides Mayall on ''

The Blues Alone ''The Blues Alone'' is a 1967 electric blues album recorded by John Mayall on which he recorded all the parts himself, with the exception of percussion which was provided by longtime collaborator Keef Hartley. The cover art and the original L ...

''. Halfbreed includes two spoken passages featuring Mayall, as well as several notable British jazz-rock players. It was voted number 3 in the All-Time 50 Long Forgotten Gems from

Colin Larkin Colin Larkin (born 1949) is a British writer and entrepreneur. He founded, and was the editor-in-chief of, the ''Encyclopedia of Popular Music'', described by ''The Times'' as "the standard against which all others must be judged". Along wit ...

's ''

All Time Top 1000 Albums ''All Time Top 1000 Albums'' is a book by Colin Larkin, creator and editor of the ''Encyclopedia of Popular Music''. The book was first published by Guinness Publishing in 1994. The list presented is the result of over 200,000 votes cast by the ...

''.

Track listing

1969 LP

Deram SML 1037 (UK), DES 18024 (US) # "Sacked (Introducing Hearts and Flowers)" (Arranged by Keef Hartley) – 0:40 # "Confusion Theme" (Hartley, Ian Cruikshank) – 1:05 # "The Halfbreed" (Hartley, Peter Dines, Cruikshank) – 6:07 # "Born to Die" (Dines, Hartley, Gary Thain, Fiona Hewitson) – 9:58 # "Sinnin' For You" (Hartley, Dines, Hewitson, Owen Finnegan) – 5:51 # "Leavin' Trunk" (

Sleepy John Estes John Adam Estes (January 25, 1899 or 1900June 5, 1977),
known as Sleepy John Estes, was an Am ...

) – 5:55 # "Just to Cry" ( Henry Lowther, Finnegan) – 6:20 # "Too Much Thinking" (Finnegan, Dines, Thain) – 5:30 # "Think it Over" (

B.B. King Riley B. King (September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015), known professionally as B.B. King, was an American blues singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. He introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, shi ...

) – 4:59 # "Too Much to Take (Speech)" – 0:32

1995 CD reissue

One Way Records One Way Records was an independent record label based in Albany, New York that specialized in budget reissues of classic rock albums. In the 1990s, it gained business pressing reissues of those records that had "fallen through the cracks" in the t ...

OW 30332 # "Sacked (Introducing Hearts and Flowers)" # "Confusion Theme" # "Halfbreed" # "Born to Die" # "Sinnin' for you" # "Leavin' Trunk" # "Just to Cry" # "Too Much Thinking" # "Leave it 'til the Morning" # "Think it Over" # "Too Much to Take"

Personnel

The Keef Hartley Band

* Miller Anderson –

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

* Peter Dines – organ,

harpsichord A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...

* "Spit James" (real name:

Ian Cruickshank Ian Cruickshank (1947 – 29 April 2017) was an English electric and acoustic guitarist most associated with the blues-rock and gypsy jazz genres, also well known in the U.K. as an educator, author and columnist, record producer and record label ...

) – guitar * Gary Thain –

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

Keef Hartley Keith "Keef" Hartley (8 April 1944 – 26 November 2011)
was an English drummer and bandleader. He fronted his own band ...

–

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

* Henry Lowther –

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

, brass arrangements *

Harry Beckett Harold Winston "Harry" Beckett (30 May 1935 – 22 July 2010) was a British trumpeter and flugelhorn player of Barbadian origin. Biography Born in Bridgetown, Saint Michael, Barbados, Harry Beckett learned to play music in a Salvation Army ...

– trumpet *

Lyn Dobson Lyn Dobson (born 22 June 1939 in Bedford) is an English musician, noted as a jazz-rock flautist and saxophonist. He appeared with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames and Manfred Mann in the mid-1960s, and then with Soft Machine and Keef Hartley, as w ...

–

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

flute The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

* Chris Mercer – tenor saxophone *

– voice on "Sacked" and "Too Much to Take"

Technical

* Neil Slaven – producer * Derek Varnals –

recording engineer An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproduction, ...

* Adrian Martins – assistant engineer * Bob Baker – front cover photography * Richard Sacks – inside sleeve photography

References

1969 debut albums Keef Hartley Band albums Deram Records albums One Way Records albums {{1960s-rock-album-stub