The year is 1970. The cultural hangover from the sixties—the idealism, the dust of Woodstock, the quiet collapse of a utopian dream—is thick in the air. Music, that ever-reliable seismograph of the collective unconscious, was shifting. Bands once content to ride the psychedelic wave were either crashing or doubling down on their roots.
Enter Canned Heat. They were, in many ways, the ultimate connoisseurs of pre-war blues, two musicologists, Bob “The Bear” Hite and Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson, who just happened to front an electrified band. They had already scored massive, counter-cultural hits with “Going Up the Country” and “On the Road Again,” songs that distilled the band’s ethos of escape and authentic living.
But their next massive single would trade the whimsical wanderlust of those tunes for a guttural, shout-it-out plea for unity. The track was “Let’s Work Together,” a blistering, short-form masterclass in boogie-rock released initially in the UK in January 1970, and later in the US as a single preceding and anchoring their fifth studio album, Future Blues (August 1970).
The song’s lineage is crucial: it wasn’t an original. The bones of this powerful piece of music belong to Wilbert Harrison, who had first recorded a version titled “Let’s Stick Together” in 1962, and then a re-cut as “Let’s Work Together” in 1969. Canned Heat’s genius lay not in invention, but in amplification—taking Harrison’s sincere, soulful groove and turning it into a stadium-sized clarion call.
🎙️ The Raw Power of the Rhythm Section
When you listen through good premium audio equipment, the first thing that hits you isn’t the melody; it’s the sheer physical momentum of the band. Unlike the delicate, almost mournful purity of Alan Wilson’s voice on their earlier hits, “Let’s Work Together” is a vehicle for Bob Hite’s formidable, gravelly roar. His delivery is pure, unvarnished blues shouter—a sound that cuts through the noise of a turbulent era.
The production, handled by Skip Taylor and the band, sounds immediate and unpolished, capturing the group’s live energy. It’s raw, but not muddy. Every component of the rhythm section feels perfectly locked: Adolfo de la Parra’s drums are crisp, emphasizing a driving backbeat, while Larry Taylor’s bassline thumps with the tireless, hypnotic pulse of a vintage boogie.
There is no subtle ornamentation here. This is a band stripped down to its essential, energetic core.
The arrangement is a masterclass in economy. It’s a fast, rolling 12-bar blues riff that barely deviates, creating a relentless, forward motion. It’s the kind of arrangement that sounds simple, but requires absolute discipline to execute with this level of visceral excitement.
🎸 Blind Owl’s Slide and The Missing Piano
The sound palette is dominated by the twin electric guitar attack, but it’s Alan Wilson’s slide work that truly provides the color. While Hite handles the gruff, primary vocal, Wilson’s contribution is a series of shimmering, bottleneck slide licks, darting in and out of the vocal phrases like a playful counter-melody.
The slide guitar has a thin, bright tone that is unmistakably country-blues, a contrast to the thicker, distorted tones of the developing hard rock scene. This texture keeps the song firmly rooted in its Delta past, even as the decibel level pushes it into the new decade. It’s a bridge between the authenticity Hite and Wilson revered and the mainstream rock acceptance the Liberty label desired.
Curiously, there is no prominent piano on this track, which is often a foundational element in boogie-woogie blues. Its absence leaves a clear, open space in the middle frequencies, allowing the interplay between Hite’s voice, the harmonica bursts, and the dual guitars to be unimpeded. This is intentional: the groove itself becomes the percussive, harmonic anchor.
“It is a sound that demands to be heard not as a quaint relic, but as an active, vital force capable of sparking an immediate physical response.”
The track, with its relentless, positive message, became a substantial international hit, reaching the upper rungs of the charts in the US and the UK. This success served as a testament to the band’s enduring popularity, but sadly marked the final phase of their “classic” lineup, preceding the tragic death of Alan Wilson later that same year. Listening back, there’s a poignant sense of a golden era reaching its electrifying conclusion.
🛠️ Micro-Stories: The Enduring Message
A song built on such a fundamental rhythm survives changing tastes and formats. Today, “Let’s Work Together” resonates not as a call to communal farm living, but as a practical, everyday directive.
You hear it in a small business owner’s garage, the radio cranked up high while they wrestle with complex sheet music for a band rehearsal. The lyric’s straightforward plea cuts through the tedium of administrative work and reminds them of the core collaborative energy.
You hear it at a large-scale community cleanup drive, where people from different neighborhoods are hauling refuse. The infectious, can’t-stop-moving boogie functions as the perfect, unstated motivational tool. The sentiment, like the groove, is universal: drop the differences and focus on the task at hand.
The song’s genius lies in its sheer, unpretentious energy. It doesn’t lecture or moralize; it simply moves. It’s a pure shot of adrenaline, a reminder that the simplest ideas—like working side-by-side—are often the most powerful. It is a song that proves that even the most obscure blues material, when delivered with absolute conviction and a driving rhythm, can become a populist anthem. The power resides in the boogie, that cyclical, unstoppable force that Canned Heat learned, mastered, and then made famous across the globe.
Let’s Work Together became a cornerstone of the blues-rock genre, ensuring Canned Heat’s legacy as more than just a fleeting counter-culture footnote. The track is a perfect capstone for their career arc: a band of passionate, slightly scruffy blues purists who managed to sneak their musical obsession onto the biggest radio stations in the world.
🎧 Listening Recommendations
- Wilbert Harrison – Let’s Work Together (1969): To hear the song in its initial, more R&B-focused form, a smoother contrast to Canned Heat’s rock aggression.
- ZZ Top – La Grange (1973): Shares the same relentless, minimalist, Texan-boogie rhythm that defines the Canned Heat track.
- The Rolling Stones – Happy (1972): A raw, joyous rock anthem with a similarly loose and celebratory feel, driven by a simple, effective riff.
- Creedence Clearwater Revival – Down on the Corner (1969): Features a similar structure and focus on a communal, driving rhythm with a catchy, simple lyric.
- George Thorogood & The Destroyers – Move It On Over (1978): Captures the loud, swaggering, electrified blues-rock simplicity and covers a Hank Williams original with similar intensity.
- Ten Years After – I’m Going Home (1968): Shares the high-energy, speed-demon blues-boogie aesthetic that Canned Heat channeled in their performance.