Johnny Almond

Johnny Almond (29 July 1946 – 18 November 2009) was a British Saxaphonist, who is best known for his recordings with the Alan Price Set, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall and Mark-Almond.

Johnny Almond was born in Enfield, Middlesex, England. He played in Zoot Money's Big Roll Band and the Alan Price Set. Among others he worked as a session musician with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Chicken Shack and Fleetwood Mac.

In 1969 he had founded Johnny Almond's Music Machine and had recorded two solo records "Patent Pending" and "Hollywood Blues". On "Patent Pending" Almond is accompanied by Geoff Condon, Alan White, Jimmy Crawford, Steve Hammond, Roger Sutton and Johnny Wiggins. On "Hollywood Blues" he jams with Curtis Amy, Hadley Caliman, Joe Harris, Charles Kynard, Ray Neapolitan, Joe Pass, Earl Palmer und Vi Redd.

In the same year he joined John Mayall's (post-Bluesbreakers) with whom he toured and recorded The Turning Point (1969) and Empty Rooms (1969). There he met Jon Mark with whom he decided to form Mark-Almond.

Mark-Almond's first two albums, Mark-Almond (1971) and Mark-Almond II (1972) were recorded for Bob Krasnow's Blue Thumb label, and were noted for their embossed envelope-style album covers. For the first album, "The Ghetto" received many plaudits and from the second "One Way Sunday" was a hit for them in the United States and received radio airplay on album-oriented rock stations in Boston, Massachusetts in 1970. The group then recorded two albums for Columbia Records, Rising (1972) and the live album, Mark-Almond 73 (1973), by which time the group's members had grown to seven.

...
Wikipedia