Here’s a band I once loved that I had completely forgotten about, though I still have this album in my vinyl collection.

In their day Sassafras were literally the hardest-working band in showbusiness. They still hold the record for the most UK gigs in a year in the early Seventies (332… one ahead of Slade).

They formed in 1970 and released their third and final album five years later, and were still going as recently as 2006.
This is the opening track from their 1973 debut album, Expecting Company, which I bought at the time and played to death.

Even the cover photo, of a virginal female figure in a bonnet, her ghostlike figure presiding over an abandoned banquet, is instantly familiar even though I have not set eyes on it in nearly 50 years.

Sassafras formed in 1970 as a trio of Ralph Evans (guitar), Ricky John Holt (bass) and Rob Reynolds (drums), adding vocalist Terry Bennett and second guitarist, Dai Shell, replacing Reynolds with former Love Sculpture drummer Bob ‘Congo’ Jones.

It’s not my natural musical habitat but I’m enjoying listening to them again after all these years. Their sound is a kind of hard-rocking boogie, with two alternating lead guitarists – inviting comparisons to Wishbone Ash – and harmony vocals that recall West Coast bands of the era.

They also had a country element that occasionally came to the fore, such as a track called Busted Country Blues, in which a beardy Welshman in a cheesecloth shirt pretends to be “a fingerpickin’ guitar man.”

I preferred them when they weren’t pretending to be American. Those two guitarists, Dai Shell and Ralph Evans, definitely deserve to have a higher profile than they ever achieved – especially considering all the hard work they put into performing live.