Canned Heat, "Living the Blues" (Liberty, 1968)

The radio in the photo department at work is perpetually tuned to the local oldies station, which is good until you stop to consider just what qualifies these days as "oldies." (Especially if you can remember when those songs were new.)

On my way past the department this afternoon, I caught a quick earful of a melodic flute line that could mean only one tune: "Goin' Up the Country," the happy-go-lucky ditty that represents the high-water mark of Canned Heat's success, nearly cracking the Top Ten.

Thanks to its presence in the "Woodstock" movie and sporadic appearance on TV commercials, the song has become somewhat emblematic of the fun, carefree side of '60s hippiedom, with Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson's falsetto vocals putting it on the fringe of novelty. (Wilson apparently wasn't having that much fun being a hippie rock star; he died at age 27 in the garden of bandmate Bob "The Bear" Hite, and it's long been speculated that he caused it to happen.)

At any rate, Wilson was mining a very old vein for "Goin' Up the Country": The tune is almost note-for-note an adaptation of "Bull Doze Blues," as recorded in the late '20s by Henry Thomas, who got his start as a musician back in the 19th century.

As "Goin' Up the Country" climbed the charts in 1968, so did the Canned Heat long-player on which it appears, "Living the Blues." Fans were eager to buy the two-record set, figuring they'd hear a large quantity of songs featuring the band's blues-rock sound.

What they got was an LP side's worth of what they expected, including "Goin' Up the Country"; another side featuring a 19-minute suite of sound experiments by each band member; and two more sides consisting of a 40-plus-minute improvisation recorded during one of the group's California club engagements.

"Refried Boogie" stands as a document of a Canned Heat performance staple of the time: taking a basic I-III-IV chord progression (done in more succinct form in "Fried Hockey Boogie" on the "Boogie With Canned Heat" album) and highlighting each band member in his own segment. Hite would improvise vocals - in this case, a story about a drug bust - and each of the instrumentalists would do his thing. In the case of "Refried Boogie," the order is Wilson on a relatively restrained guitar solo, Larry "The Mole" Taylor stretching out on bass, Henry "Sunflower" Vestine taking up about half of the final LP side with a not-so-restrained guitar solo, and drummer Adolpho "Fito" de la Parra bashing away before Hite joining back in to wrap up proceedings.

Needless to say, all that might have seemed pretty cool while sitting in a bar tossing back several beers. But if you put it on the turntable to play, chances are you're not going to flip the record to keep on going another 20 minutes.

"Parthenogenesis," the other extended work on "Living the Blues," works much better because the musicians generally take a more experimental approach. Wilson, for example, plays Muddy Waters' "Rollin' and Tumblin'" on a jew's harp; Vestine plays five overdubbed guitars simultaneously for his part of the puzzle, "Sunflower Power"; and Hite does a takeoff on what John Mayall sounds like on his "Bare Wires" album, calling it "Bear Wires."

The rest of the album is more conventional fare, with Canned Heat ripping through a number of three- and four-minute blues-based tunes, including a hard-rocking version of Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," here called "One Kind Favor." (And known to listeners as the B-side to "Goin' Up the Country.")

Canned Heat went on to a well-received performance at Woodstock, with the boogie du jour, "Woodstock Boogie," later appearing as one of the highlights of Cotillion's "Woodstock Two" album. Unfortunately, the song did not appear on the supposedly definitive four-CD set from the legendary festival. Another song, a cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," is on the director's cut of Michael Wadleigh's "Woodstock" film.

The band had one more hit single, "Let's Work Together" (No. 2 in Britain), in 1970, but it was all downhill after Wilson's death. Hite followed him to the grave in 1981, and Vestine in 1998.

But a version of Canned Heat, featuring Fito, still performs today, with "Goin' Up the Country" still in the repertoire. It never sounds the same, though, without the Blind Owl's falsetto and particularly his flute.