He disappeared a few months after joining the band, then reappeared later the same year, sidelining the newly arrived Peter Green, then left for good in 1966 with Bruce to form Cream, which rocketed to commercial success, leaving Mayall far behind.

British Blues pioneer John Mayall performs with his band The Bluesbreakers at the Deutsche Museum in Munich, West Germany, on Jan.

21, 1970.

Clapton, interviewed for a BBC documentary on Mayall in 2003, confessed that “to a certain extent I have used his hospitality, used his band and his reputation to launch my own career,” Mick Taylor, who succeeded Green as a Bluesbreaker in the late 1960s, valued the wide latitude which Mayall allowed his soloists.

“You’d have complete freedom to do whatever you wanted,” Taylor said in a 1979 interview with writer Jas Obrecht.

“You could make as many mistakes as you wanted, too.

”Mayall’s 1968 album “Blues from Laurel Canyon” signaled a permanent move to the United States and a change in direction.

He disbanded The Bluesbreakers and worked with two guitars and drums.

The following year he released “The Turning Point,” arguably his most successful release, with an atypical four-man acoustic lineup including Mark and Almond.

“Room to Move,” a song from that album, was a frequent audience favorite in Mayall’s later career.

The 1970s found Mayall at a low ebb personally, but still touring and doing more than 100 shows a year.

“Throughout the ’70s, I performed most of my shows drunk,” Mayall said in an interview with Dan Ouellette for DownBeat magazine in 1990.

One consequence was an attempt to jump from a balcony into a swimming pool that missed—shattering one of Mayall’s heels and leaving him with a limp.

In 1982, he reformed The Bluesbreakers, recruiting Taylor and McVie, but after two years the personnel changed again.

In 2008, Mayall announced that he was permanently retiring The Bluesbreaker name, and in 2013 he was leading the John Mayall Band.