Henri Vestine… 25 years later!

At the end of the 1960s, the psychedelic movement flooded the American record market. The fusion of genres is the priority of creators who impose no limits. Blues, rock, jazz become one in this universe of intensive and unbridled experimentation. Five young blues-loving people imagine revitalizing the repertoire of their African-American elders. These five musicians, still inexperienced, have just created the group Canned Heat. It is an electric folk song that will make them famous from 1968. On the Road Again becomes a classic and the name of Henri Vestine enters the legend.

We are in the mid-1940s in the United States, little Henry Charles Vestine has just been born and will grow up in post-war white America. Its sound environment does not really enter into The epic of black music but, imperceptibly, his ear as a future instrumentalist picks up the sound of the guitars, and more precisely, that of the blues and country music that is played in the American countryside. He doesn’t really realize it, but he unconsciously develops an interest in the traditional music of his elders. At school, with his friend John Fahey, he discovered the rural blues of John Lee Hooker. This authentic music, so representative of the social reality of the black community in the United States, captivates him. He was passionate about this heritage that the America of the time considered secondary and of little interest. During the 1940s and 1950s, segregation was sadly the norm across the Atlantic and the African-American culture born during the time of slavery should not be exposed on a large scale. However, the young Henry Vestine, from a middle-class white family living in Washington, defied the prohibitions and listened with relish to the records of “Race Music”, “racial music” as it was then called.

At the dawn of the 1960s, the Vestine family moved to California. While his father became a recognized geologist and astronomer (a crater on the Moon would bear his name), Henry Vestine set up his first group. He was 17 and began performing in local clubs often frequented by African-American audiences. Like any rebellious teenager, he wants to live at 100 kilometers per hour, try experiments and let himself be guided by his desires and his excesses. The first tattoos, the first illicit substances, the first drifts, orient his destiny on a rocky path, but his vitality as a fiery young man does not yet alert him to the risks of an overly hectic life. He prefers to devote himself to music without thinking about the next day. His new crush is called Skip James. This bluesman from Mississippi is, for him, an essential pioneer that he wants to meet at all costs. In June 1964, he travels to Tunica, Mississippi and manages to converse with his hero. Skip James was then 62 years old, ill, but kindly welcomed the young Henry Vestine, 20, who bombarded him with questions. Skip James will die five years later and Henri Vestine will keep fond memories of this unexpected meeting in a hospital in Tunica.

The years pass and the musical landscape changes. A very talented guitarist and conductor then works on an ambitious project. His name is Frank Zappa. He wants to revolutionize society through an awareness that his music must carry. For this, he needs young virtuosos capable of magnifying his compositions. Henry Vestine, who is destined for the blues, receives an offer that will disconcert him. He will try to honor the invitation of the intrepid Frank Zappa, but will finally choose to continue his journey while his ephemeral running mate becomes an imminent figure of the American counter-culture. After this risky parenthesis, Henry Vestine will embark on another adventure that will make him famous, the group Canned Heat.

Henry Vestine will remain only four years in this formation preferring to indulge in a more sincere blues in the company of his heroes that his young notoriety now allows him to rub shoulders with. When he left the group Canned Heat in 1969, he missed the opportunity to shine at the Woodstock festival. Whatever, he will find his friends a few years later for the recording of a disc in the presence of the patriarch, John Lee Hooker. Henry Vestine will punctually agree to join his former partners, but his aspirations will gradually take him away from the star system. One of his last albums, Guitar Gangsters, appeared in 1991. With his counterpart Evan Johns, he had wanted to reconnect with the electric blues of yesteryear. Henry Vestine unfortunately left us on October 20, 1997 in a Paris hotel, the victim of a heart attack at the age of 52. The day before, he was still on stage at Gouvy in Belgium…