British blues

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British Blues
Stylistic origins	The blues - British jazz - Skiffle - Electric blues
Cultural origins	Mid-twentieth-century UK
Typical instruments	Guitar · Piano · Harmonica · Bass guitar · Drums · Saxophone · Vocals ·
Mainstream popularity	1960s
Derivative forms	British acoustic blues British electric blues
Fusion genres
Blues-rock

British blues is a form of music derived from American blues that originated in the late 1950s and which reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1960s, when it developed a distinctive and influential style dominated by electric guitar and made international stars of several proponents of the genre including The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin. A number of these moved into mainstream rock music and as a result British blues helped to form many of the sub-genres of rock. Since then direct interest in the blues in Britain has declined, but many of the key performers have returned to it in recent years, new acts have emerged and there have been a renewed interest in the genre.

Contents 1 Origins 2 The British blues boom 3 Survival and resurgence 4 Impact 5 Notes 6 References 7 See also

[edit] Origins

American blues became known in Britain from the 1930s onwards through a number of routes, including records brought to Britain, particularly by Black GIs stationed in there in the Second World War and Cold War, and through a trickle of (illegal) imports.^[1] Blues music was relatively well known to British Jazz musicians and fans, particularly in the works of figures like female singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and the blues influenced Boogie Woogie of Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller.^[1] From 1955 major British record labels HMV and EMI, the latter, particularly through their subsidiary Decca Records, began to distribute American jazz and increasingly blues records to what was emerging market.^[1] Many encountered it for the first time through the skiffle craze of the second half of the 1950s, particularly the songs of Leadbelly covered by acts like Lonnie Donegan. As skiffle began to decline in the late 1950s, and British Rock and Roll began to dominate the charts, a number of skiffle musicians moved towards playing purely blues music.^[2]

Among these were guitarist and blues harpist Cyril Davies, who ran the London Skiffle Club at the Roundhouse public house in London’s Soho and guitarist Alexis Korner, both of whom worked for jazz band leader Chris Barber, playing in the R&B segment he introduced to his show.^[3] The club served as a focal point for British skiffle acts and Barber was responsible for bringing over American folk and blues performers, who found they were much better known and paid in Europe than America. The first major artist was Big Bill Broonzy, who visited England in the mid-1950s, but who, rather than his electric Chicago blues, played a folk blues set to fit in with British expectations of American blues as a form of folk music. In 1957 Davies and Korner decided that their central interest was the blues and closed the skiffle club, reopening a month later as The London Blues and Barrelhouse Club.^[4] To this point British blues was acoustically played emulating Delta blues and country blues styles and often part of the emerging second British folk revival. Critical in changing this was the visit of Muddy Waters in 1958, who initially shocked British audiences by playing amplified electric blues, but who was soon playing to ecstatic crowds and rave reviews.^[3] Davies and Korner, having already split with Barber, now plugged in and began to play high powered electric blues that became the model for the sub-genre, forming the band Blues Incorporated.^[3]

Blues Incorporated became something of a clearing house for British blues musicians in the later 1950s and early 1960s, with many joining, or sitting in on sessions. These included future Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Brian Jones; as well as Cream founders Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker; beside Graham Bond and Long John Baldry.^[3] Blues Incorporated were given a residency at the Marquee Club and it was from there that in 1962 they took the name of the first British Blues album, R&B from the Marquee for Decca, but split before its release.^[3] The model of electric blues was emulated by a number of bands including The Rolling Stones, The Animals and The Yardbirds.

The culmination of this first movement of blues^[5] came with John Mayall, who moved to London in the early 1960s, eventually forming the Bluesbreakers, whose members at various times included, Jack Bruce, Aynsley Dunbar and Mick Taylor.^[3] Particularly significant was the Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings.^[6] It was notable for its driving rhythms and Clapton's rapid blues licks with a full distorted sound derived from a Gibson Les Paul and a Marshall amp, which became something of a classic combination for British blues (and later rock) guitarists.^[7] It also made clear the primacy of the guitar, seen as a distinctive characteristic of the sub-genre.^[3] Peter Green started what is called "second great epoch of British blues."^[5] Green replaced Clapton in the Bluesbreakers; Clapton had left to form Cream. In 1967, after one record with the Bluesbreakers, Green, with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.^[8] One key factor in developing the popularity and development of the music in the UK and across Europe in the early 1960s was the success of the American Folk Blues Festival tours, organised by German promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau.^[9]

The rise of electric blues, and its eventual mainstream success, meant that British acoustic blues was completely overshadowed. In the early 1960s folk guitar pioneers Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and particularly Davy Graham (who played and recorded with Korner), played blues, folk and jazz, developing a distinctive guitar style known as folk baroque.^[10] British acoustic blues continued to develop as part of the folk scene, with figures like Ian A. Anderson and his Country Blues Band,^[11] Al Jones^[12] and Mike Cooper.^[13] Most British acoustic blues players could achieve little commercial success and, with a few exceptions, found it difficult to gain any recognition for their "imitations" of the blues in the US.^[14]

[edit] The British blues boom

While Blues Incorporated and Mayall's Bluesbreakers were well known in the London Jazz and emerging R&B circuits, the next generation of British blues bands were able to move much into mainstream popularity. The Rolling Stones and Yardbirds benefited form the British Beat Boom that began to break through nationally from about 1962 and which spearheaded the British Invasion from about 1964. In addition to Chicago blues numbers, the Rolling Stones also covered songs by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Bobby and Shirley Womack, the last of which earned them their first UK number one in 1964.^[15] Blues songs and influences continued to surface in the Rolling Stones' music – their release of Little Red Rooster as a single went to number one on the UK pop charts in December 1964 – but they were not solely a blues group. The Yardbirds enjoyed little success with blues based music and the pop overtones of their breakthrough single "For Your Love" in 1965 caused Eric Clapton to quit the band.^[16] Like The Stones, the blues continued to be a major influence among many others on the Yardbirds with their subsequent line-ups, which included Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page as replacements for Clapton.^[3] The other band that had a similar impact in this period were the Newcastle-upon-Tyne based The Animals, who were unusual in having a sound dominated by the keyboards of Alan Price and one of the few voices that could rival American blues singers for impact in the vocals of Eric Burdon. They moved to London in 1964 and released a series of successful singles beginning with transatlantic hit "House of the Rising Sun", mixing more commercial folk and soul, while their albums were dominated by blues standards.^[17]

In contrast the next wave of bands, formed from about 1967, like Cream, Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After and Free, pursued a different route, retaining blues standards in their repertoire and producing original material that often shied away from obvious pop influences, placing an emphasis on individual virtuosity.^[18] The result has been characterised as Blues-rock and arguably marked the beginnings of a separation of pop and rock music that was to be a characteristic of the record industry for several decades.^[18]

Fleetwood Mac are often considered to have produced some of the finest work in the sub-genre, with inventive interpretations of Chicago Blues.^[3] They were also the most commercially successful group, with their eponymous début album reaching the UK top 5 in early 1968 in 1979 the instrumental "Albatross" reached number one in the single charts. This was, as Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz put it, "The commercial apex of the British blues Boom".^[19] A rapid decline followed, as surviving bands and musicians tended to move into other expanding areas of rock music. Some, like Korner and Mayall, continued to play a "pure" form of the blues, but largely outside of mainstream notice. The structure of clubs, venues and festivals that had grown up in the early 1950s in Britain virtually disappeared in the 1970s.^[20]

[edit] Survival and resurgence

Although overshadowed by the growth of rock music the blues did not disappear in Britain, with American bluesmen like John Lee Hooker, Eddie Taylor, and Freddie King continuing to be well received in the UK and an active home scene led by figures including Dave Kelly and his sister Jo Ann Kelly, who helped keep the acoustic blues alive on the British folk circuit.^[21] Dave Kelly was also a founder of The Blues Band with former Manfred Mann members Paul Jones and Tom McGuinness, Hughie Flint and Gary Fletcher.^[21] The Blues Band was credited with kicking off a second blues boom in Britain, which by the 90s led to festivals all around the country, including The Swanage Blues Festival, The Burnley National Blues Festival, The Gloucester Blues and Heritage Festival and The Great British Rhythm and Blues Festival at Colne.^[21] The twenty-first century has seen an upsurge in interest in the blues in Britain that can be seen in the success of previously unknown acts like Seasick Steve,^[22] in the return to the blues by major figures who began in the first boom, including Peter Green,^[23] Mick Fleetwood,^[24] Chris Rea^[25] and Eric Clapton,^[26] as well as the arrival of younger artists like Matt Schofield and Aynsley Lister.^[27]

[edit] Impact

Beside giving a start to many important blues, pop and rock musicians, in spawning blues-rock it also ultimately gave rise to a host of sub-genres of rock, including particularly psychedelic rock, progressive rock.^[18] The pursuit of this line of development from the late 1970s by the next generation of blues based rock bands, including Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, would lead to the development of Hard rock and ultimately Heavy rock and Heavy metal.^[28] Perhaps the most important contribution of British blues was the surprising re-exportation of American blues back to America, where, in the wake of the success of bands like the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac, white audiences began to look again at black blues musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker, who suddenly began to appeal to middle class white Americans.^[28] The result was a re-evaluation of the blues in America which enabled white Americans much more easily to become blues musicians, opening the door to Southern rock and the development of Texas blues musicians like Stevie Ray Vaughan.^[3]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Bane, M., (1982) White boy singin' the blues, London: Penguin, 1982, ISBN 0-14-006045-6.
• Brunning, B., (1986) Blues: The British Connection, 2nd edn., London: Helter Skelter, 2002, ISBN 1-900924412
• Fancourt, L., (1989) British blues on record (1957-1970), Retrack Books.
• Heckstall-Smith, R., (2004) The safest place in the world: A personal history of British Rhythm and blues, 2nd edn., Clear Books, ISBN 0-7043-2696-5.
• Hjort, C., (2007) Strange brew: Eric Clapton and the British blues boom, 1965-1970 Jawbone, ISBN 1-906002002.
• McStravick, S., and Roos, J., (2001) eds, Blues-rock explosion Old Goat, ISBN 0-9701332-7-8.
• Schwartz, R. F., (2007) How Britain got the blues : The transmission and reception of American blues style in the United Kingdom Ashgate, ISBN 0-754655806.

[edit] See also

List of British blues musicians

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