Canned Heat is not sleepy and it’s older than you
By Theo Douglas

You wonder how a band like Canned Heat—on its last original member, drummer Fito de la Parra—has survived, and on some level that will always be the mystery of why cells divide. A heart attack leveled Heat vocalist Bob “The Bear” Hite in 1981. Heat harmonica player Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson killed himself at age 27 in 1970. And there’s no real meaning of life in their sound except that it makes you feel alive by beating you senseless: as electric a brand of sweaty, druggy blues as anyone ever churned up. A blues that made Sunnyland Slim stop driving cabs and start playing music again. A blues that led to the late Long Beach resident John Lee Hooker’s favorite record ever, Hooker in Heat.

It’s also a blues that made Fito de la Parra supposedly say, “I was born to play with Canned Heat” after he’d already been with a slew of the coolest-sounding bands ever, in his native Mexico City. His book, Living the Blues, is a frightening read: four or five lives crammed into 42 years with one band. It’s the blueprint for something not yet built. Canned Heat—named after Sterno—is the patent for what everyone from Top Jimmy to ZZ Top knocked off: a blues tough enough to have flute in it (“Going Up the Country”) but tender enough to let you hear the notes. Truth is, the Heat got their schtick from Henry Thomas and men like him. He wrote “Going Up the Country.” Hite and Wilson, record collectors first, only borrowed it. But they made it their own, which is maybe the real secret of the Heat’s longevity: make the right music the right way, with the right guys. We’ll see if that’s still how they do it.

CANNED HEAT PERFORMS AT BLUE CAFE | 210 THE PROMENADE NORTH | LONG BEACH | 90802 | 562.983.7111 | THEBLUECAFE.COM. SAT 10:30PM. $15. 21+.