Blues in Britain

As mentioned earlier, early-1960s London saw a large blues revival; many groups took part. I do not want to talk about chart singles here, but about what happened among underground blues enthusiasts.

When we talk about London we must remember: many of the blues records these people imitated were hard to get. Independents sold them in the U.S., and even at home distribution was shaky—let alone importing to Britain. So often you ordered by mail; weeks later you opened the package and maybe you were the only person in town—or one of very few—with that record. People gathered to play each other their records, a bit like record parties. Because collections differed, and without radio, it was practical—you heard music you had not bought yourself.

At night musicians faithfully recreated the music—mostly Chicago blues. Some very important players would later join the blues wing of the British Invasion; worth naming are the Rolling Stones. They took part in early blues bands led by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies—Blues Incorporated—who started blues nights at the Marquee, out in Ealing near London.

Those blues nights usually fell on quiet evenings—Sunday or Wednesday—when the club might be empty, so the owner let a blues band in; not on key Friday or Saturday nights. The shows strongly recreated Chess Records Chicago electric blues: voice, harmony, guitar, drums, piano, and so on.

If you hear surviving records by people like Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, and you did not know he was a tweed-jacket, pipe-smoking British middle-class man, you would swear he came from a late-1950s Chicago club—they paid deep homage to that blues. You would see people in their twenties, thirties, forties playing tribute, and young people too—Keith Richards and Mick Jagger (Rolling Stones)—sitting up front watching. In fact Mick’s first singing chance was filling in for someone else: Long John Baldry was due to sing with Blues Incorporated that night but got a BBC date, so Mick took his place. Having watched so long, Mick knew the tunes. This little stage of blues fanatics was much like London’s blues clubs; many young musicians in that world later joined the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, and so on—they learned blues in that setting.

That differs sharply from the Beatles’ path. The Beatles also heard a lot of American music, but because Liverpool is a port: as I said, sailors passing through America bought stacks of records knowing they would sell well back home—like eBay today. They bought in the U.S., brought them to Liverpool, sold them; so relative to London blues fans, the Beatles could access more American music. But the Beatles were not very interested in blues; if you hunt hard for prominent blues in their work you will not find much—they cared more about fine vocal songs. The Rolling Stones and others in the blues clubs truly loved Chicago electric blues. Next lecture: the Rolling Stones and how they broke through in Britain and America.