Blog
May 6, 2024
John Mayall turned 90 a few weeks ago and is being awarded the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame Musical Influence Award in 2024. About time he gets put into the Hall of Fame after so many musicians he helped start out are in there after being part of the John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers band.
Had the pleasure of photographing John and many of the musicians he had with him in his band in the early 1970's several times.
We can thank John for bringing us Mick Fleetwood who would then do his own band Fleetwood Mac with another Bluesbreakers musician John McVie.
Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce who would form Cream. Keef Hartley the drummer seen below, Mick Taylor, Harvey Mandel, John Almond and so many others I could mention but John Mayall really influenced the blues and music starting in 1963 and still going!
The photos here are all from Milwaukee in 1971, 1972, 1973 and 1975 when I was working for the Bugle American newspaper and had my photo studio.
John Mayall influenced my taste of music greatly I believe starting with his most famous tune "Room to Move".
His harmonica and guitar playing are really, really good and checkout the harmonica holder he wears and his guitar full of holes. Very cool plus he always seemed to have a Fox tail hanging around his belt!
Enjoy a look at the master and influencer WAY before there were influencers.
Thanks,
Rich Zimmermann
April 22, 2024
The weekend of September 11, 1994 at Road America, the CART Indy Cars raced in the the Texaco Havoline 200.
That was a big year of change in CART because of the formation of the IRL series starting up. It was trying to take over the series. That is a whole story in itself someday for another blog, book or movie, but 1994 was a great year of CART racing.
On that nice Fall weekend at Road America we got to see a Canadian in the front row with Paul Tracy in the pole position and a young superstar named Jacques Villeneuve right next to him.
Nigel Mansell was on his last visit to Road America and had the fastest lap of the race but Jacques Villeneuve won it that day.
Team Penske showed up with Emerson Fittipaldi, Paul Tracy and Al Unser Jr. who won the Indy 500 that year with the very secret Mercedes Benz 500I engine that had 1,100hp! Al would end up winning the 1994 championship.
Michael Andretti came back to CART after a year in F1 that didn't go so well. Michael came back driving for Chip Ganassi's new team and won the first race of the year. This was also the last year of Mario Andretti racing in CART and Indy Cars.
Some other great racers you will see here in my photos are Stefan Johansson, Raul Boesel, Arie Luyendyk, Teo Fabi, Adrian Fernandez, Willy T. Ribbs, Scott Goodyear, Mauricio Gugelmin and Bobby Rahal in his beautiful Miller Genuine Draft race car.
Nice to see and remember Dick Simon who was a great team owner for several years for multiple drivers.
Notice the top of Al Unser Jr.'s helmet full of tire rubber and someone else's oil leak!!
Enjoy a look and some beautiful sounding and great looking Indy Cars.
Thanks,
Rich Zimmermann
April 8, 2024
I've been a music and rock'n'roll photographer since I was 16 years old (1970) for several newspapers, bands, record companies, Summerfest and more. I wanted to work for Rolling Stone Magazine as a music photographer but it was never meant to be apparently.
An album cover was another item that I ALWAYS wanted but never achieved until this week! I have done photos inside of albums, books and several publications but have never gotten the elusive album cover until now.
On June 3, 1973 at Milwaukee's Performing Arts Center, Foghat played with the Thomas Jefferson Kaye band as the opening act. I photographed the show for the Bugle American newspaper here in Milwaukee.
Bearsville Records Inc. along with Rhino Entertainment Company, a Warner Music Group Company, contacted me a few months ago for usage of my photos for a Record Store Day Foghat album release on April 20th.
Thanks to using metadata in all of my photos on my website, they found me.
The album called Foghat-Permission to Jam-Live in New Orleans is from a show they recorded on September 1 and 2, 1973. This is my first ever album cover and they used three other photos on the back cover. It is a huge honor and only took me 54 years of photography to get'er done.
The album cover is a nice full photo of the band in black and white and the three photos of mine on the back cover were color but they made them black and white.
Lonesome Dave Peverett was the vocalist, leader of the band and a character. Dave was a lot of fun and had the energy to ROCK!
So enjoy a peak at the only copy that is in our house here but you can pick one up soon at your record store.
Thanks,
Rich Zimmermann
