A Rockapaedia Obituary
Larry Taylor
Band: Canned Heat
Larry Taylor died aged seventy-seven on 19th August 2019 from cancer at Lake Balboa, California, U.S.A.
Larry was born in New York, USA to a Jewish mother on 26th June 1942. As a young man Larry Taylor played bass guitar in The Gamblers, one of the earliest pioneering rock groups to play instrumental surf music. . The Gamblers had a local hit in the Los Angeles area with "Moon Dawg" and Larry Taylor did play on the recording.
Larry Taylor, before joining Canned Heat, had been a session bassist for both The Monkees and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Larry played with Canned Heat from 1967 to 1970, and appeared with them at various festivals including the Monterey International Pop Festival, held from 16th to 18th June 1967 near Monterey, California, and the Woodstock music festival held from 15th to 18th of August, 1969 at Max Yasgur's six hundred acre dairy farm in Bethnal, New York State, U.S.A.
Larry's Canned Heat nickname was "The Mole." In addition to playing bass, Larry also played lead guitar on occasion. An example can be heard on the track "Down In the Gutter, But Free," on the album Hallelujah. In 1970, when John Mayall moved to Los Angeles, Larry Taylor and Harvey Mandel quit Canned Heat to join John in the Bluesbreakers. After the Bluesbreakers tours, Larry Taylor played briefly with the Sugarcane Harris Band (later called Pure Food and Drug Act).
In 1974, Larry Taylor became part of The Hollywood Fats Band led by Mike "Hollywood Fats" Mann. The pair joined Canned Heat for a King Biscuit Flower Hour concert in 1979. Larry Taylor recorded Reheated in 1988, again with Canned Heat. He toured and recorded with his former ban
d a few more times until 1999. In 2007, Larry Taylor and Harvey Mandel reunited with Fito de la Parra and the rest of the current Canned Heat line-up to perform certain shows. Larry Taylor, Harvey Mandel and de la Parra were all in the line-up that played a later Woodstock. The three members of Canned Heat's Woodstock line-up toured extensively from 2009 to 2013.
Larry Taylor became a leading exponent and practitioner of the acoustic upright bass in the contemporary blues scene. He was quite prominently seen with his upright bass in the live blues film, 'Lightning in a Bottle'. He was also featured in a concert DVD released in winter 2013, from the album Time Brings About A Change by Floyd Dixon.
Larry Taylor played on numerous Tom Waits albums and was the bass player in Tom's touring band.
In 2014, Taylor was nominated for a Blues Music Award in the 'Best Instrumentalist – Bass' category.