“British Blues?” I hear you ask. “Surely that is a contradiction in terms?” Well, I am not saying that the Thames Basin and the Mississippi Delta are exactly twinned, but if you have ever heard Peter Green singing and playing guitar in his prime, you will know that there was something happening with him that tapped into the source. He was not alone, but before we get to Peter and beyond, let’s go back in time and discover how a music that was predominantly enjoyed by Black Americans in the early 50s, was being so studiously listened to and copied by white middle class British folk, only a decade or so later!

There had been a few visits to these shores by authentic blues performers. Leadbelly had visited the Albert Hall around 1949, and in the early 50’s, Big Bill Broonzy had taken up residence in Chelsea, a bohemian area of London. There is amazing b&w footage available of him playing in smoky clubs. The films seem to suggest that Big Bill had been accepted by the arty crowd as one of their own, but the truth was that he had a sad time in London, rejected by the local community.

The story really starts a few years later. There were several music crazes in the mid to late fifties. Skiffle was one, a music owing more than a little to early blues, and Trad Jazz. One of the most popular exponents of the latter was a guy called Chris Barber. He had his own band, and would perform lengthy sets, in clubs, and in theatres across the country. During the interval, he would allow two musicians to play a short set of amplified blues. The two were Alexis Korner, and Cyril Davis.

Korner played guitar and sang, whilst Davis, a panel beater by trade, would play mouth harp. The music they made was of varying quality, Korner was an evangelist of the blues, rather than an ace performer of it, but Davis was something else, a wild, passionate player, he was making sounds that had never been made on Elizabeth’s Island before. Little did any of them know what was to follow!
 
 

2. Mojo Workin’

John Mayall

Round about the time that Alexis Korner’s Blues incorporated became the first real British blues band, albeit with a sound that would not be instantly recognisable round about Maxwell Street Market, there was a man who was just finishing his military service before returning home to Manchester, England. The restrictions of life in an ordinary suburban house proved too much, and so he decided, as legend has it, to live in a tree house for a couple of years. Before long, he too would be forming his own embryonic blues band, trying out such guitarists as fellow eccentric Davy Graham, before finally featuring a successive trio of lead guitarists that would help to bring British blues to a wider audience. The name of this tree dwelling blues lover? John Mayall.

How did people in the UK at this time (late 50s, coming up to 1960) get to hear the blues? Well, there was precious little pop and rock and roll played on BBC radio at the time. There does seem to have been an enclave of blues fans up in the North West of the country, not too far from Mayall at the time. One possible reason for this would be that black seaman from America would bring blues records in through commercial ports such as Liverpool. 20 odd years later, this route would also be an early source of reggae music.

There were other ways. Some people had their appetites sharpened by visits in the late 50s by such acts as Muddy Waters, brought over under the auspices of Chris Barber whose use of blues players during the intervals of his jazz shows had exposed a home audience to home grown blues players for the first time. People like Keith Richard, an art student in Gravesend, had managed to get hold of the Chess records catalogue, and were getting orders filled from Chicago by Marshall Chess himself. These records would be shared between many people, and in this way the gospel spread. Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Eric Clapton, many of these people were getting turned on to the blues.

By the early 60s, Blues Incorporated were going strong, and a club circuit was growing. Sometimes Mick Jagger would sit in with the band. Early versions of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers were also gigging. Skiffle was fading fast, and blues clubs seemed to fill the gap. In London, venues like Klooks Kleek and The Crawdaddy Club were emerging, with The Marquee Club and The Flamingo to follow.

Blues bands began springing up all around, all white, many from middle class backgrounds. One player who did not conform to the latter requirement of the mould was a young Jewish trainee butcher from the East End of London. Peter Green was by this time starting to play in semi pro bands, such as The Muskrats. As yet, he was on bass, but that was all to change.

Down south, there were The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds and Manfred Mann, up North, there were the Animals. All playing a blues based live repertoire leaning heavily on the Chess back catalogue. Smokestack Lightning and Mojo Working! It would not be long before these particular bands would find more mainstream pop music fame, but not before some of them had gotten the chance to play with some of their heroes.
 
 

3. BOOM BOOM

In these early days of the 60s, many of the members of bands were interchangeable. For instance, three members of the most popular line up of Blues Incorporated would go on to make up three quarters of The Graham Bond organisation. The three, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, would all feature in other bands as the decade progressed.

Also, as these bands grew in popularity, so blues artistes from the USA were brought over to tour with some of them. In this way, Sonny Boy Williamson 11 got to be backed by both The Yardbirds and The Animals. British blues guitarist Tony S McPhee actually formed a band specifically to back another regular visitor to the UK, one John Lee Hooker. The band was named after one of  John Lee’s songs, ‘Groundhog Blues’. The Groundhogs certainly outlasted that first tour, and a version of the band, still with Tony McPhee, exists to this day.

John Lee Hooker was unique amongst visiting Blues acts in that he did have some minor chart success in the UK with ‘Boom Boom’. Other blues  flavoured bands who had chart action in the earlier part of the 60’s included The Rolling Stones, as well as Manfred Mann, and the Yardbirds themselves, although their first major single, ‘For Your Love’ bore little relationship to the blues as lead guitarist Eric Clapton saw it, and so he left!

In the earlier days of British Blues, there were no real guitar heroes, but by the mid 60s that was all changing! One man more than any other was responsible for this. Eric Clapton. Following his departure from The Yardbirds, he joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. His impact as a soloist was soon far reaching. Trading on a style that leant heavily on such guitarists as Freddie King, and to a lesser extent, B B King, Clapton forged an awesome following on the blues circuit in England. I can remember, as an 8 year old, seeing graffiti appear on the walls and bridges of London. ‘CLAPTON IS GOD’

Whilst Clapton was quickly headed into a different sphere of adoration, fans grasping every jagged note as a rare and precious thing, other guitarists were honing their skills. Peter Green had made the switch from bass to lead guitar whilst playing for the Peter B’s, and there were other players in the wings, such as Stan Webb, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and many others.

As far as album releases were concerned, the John Mayall album featuring Clapton, known worldwide to fans as ‘the Beano album’ was the most well known example of British Blues, although the first Rolling Stones album took them to Chicago influenced territory that they would soon be leaving. It was the Mayall recording though, which seemed to herald the coming of age of British Blues. The producer of that set, Mike Vernon, would have considerable influence in what happened next…
 
 

4. A GREEN GOD OVER THE BLUE HORIZON

Peter Green

When Eric Clapton left John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, many UK blues fans felt that the bubble had burst, that just maybe this was the end of their fun. In fact the reverse was true, the fun, the Blues Boom, was just beginning.

Clapton’s replacement in the Bluesbreakers was Peter Green. Here was a British guitarist, influenced by many of the greats such as BB King, Otis Rush and Freddie King, but who had his own unique voice.  Clapton the God was gone from Mayall now, but in his place was the Green God. I am biased, Peter Green is my favourite guitarist of all time, but if you have never heard him play, well, you should. He soon forged his own style within Mayall’s regimented framework. The Bluesbreakers album that features Peter, “A Hard Road” contains the seeds of Peter’s glories to come, including a wonderful version of the Freddie King instrumental, “The Stumble”, and a wonderful self penned number called “The Supernatural”. Here was a British blues band taking well known material, mixing it with original compositions, and creating something that whilst remaining within the confines of ‘Blues music’, was just that little bit different!

Mike Vernon was a producer for Decca records. He had produced the “Beano” album for Mayall, the one featuring Eric Clapton, as well as “A Hard Road”. Soon after, however, Vernon and his brother decided to strike out on their own, and found a UK based blues label that would present the best of visiting American blues men, some interesting back catalogue, but best of all, feature the best of contemporary British blues!

Blue Horizon records were born. Peter Green had an idea that maybe he could be the house guitarist for Blue Horizon, maybe fulfil a similar role to that which Buddy Guy had enjoyed with Chess. Mike Vernon was looking for a band to be the spearhead of the new company, though.

So it was that Peter Green and Mick Fleetwood, ( a member of The Bluesbreakers alongside Green and John McVie) formed Fleetwood Mac, using bass player Bob Brunning temporarily, till McVie became available. Elmore James devotee Jeremy Spencer was added soon after, to be followed by another singer guitarist, the 17 year old Danny Kirwan, early in 1968. The music they were to make together between 1967 and 1970 would be amongst the most strident and significant in the whole British Blues Canon.

Blue Horizon also signed other UK acts such as Duster Bennett, and Chicken Shack, featuring Stan Webb and Christine Perfect, soon to become Christine McVie. Vernon also recorded American blues artists alongside UK sidemen. Whilst still at Decca, he had recorded Eddie Boyd, using the Bluesbreakers, and now he recorded Boyd again, this time using Fleetwood Mac as the backing band. Peter Green’s guitar playing on both outings is outstanding. During their time on Blue Horizon, Fleetwood Mac would go on to work with many blues greats on the ‘Blues Jam At Chess’ double album, as well as playing on an Otis Spann album.

Eric Clapton meanwhile had moved on to pastures new. He had formed Cream with former Graham Bond sidemen Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. Cream was a blues based band, but one that was headed into different territories, and this was what was happening with so many UK bands. Jimi Hendrix had also arrived on the London scene, and was likewise taking blues and shaping it in new and hitherto unexplored ways.  In so many cases, early commitment to the blues was giving way to experimentation with new rock based musical forms! It is my own opinion that this fragmentation of  musical form in the late 60s is one of the reasons that British blues is not taken as seriously as I feel it deserves. British Blues was not dead though, by any means, as we shall see in part 5.
 
 

5. THE BLUES HAD A BABY…

Mick Taylor

As the 1960s drew to a close, the British Blues scene certainly looked more precarious than it had done for most of the decade. Many of the bands and artistes that had emerged carrying the blues banner were now playing a mixture of blues and rock. Eric Clapton for instance had experienced a couple of years of success with Cream, a band that although blues based, had explored other areas. In fact their output would in one way reflect many bands that once had been all blues, in that blues performances such as “Crossroads” would be performed alongside more rock orientated material such as “White Room”.

Jimmy Page had emerged from The Yardbirds with a new project, Led Zeppelin. Again, blues numbers vied for attention with rockier stuff. New bands such as Free, featuring the wildly talented guitarist Paul Kossoff, did likewise. Even peter Green with Fleetwood Mac seemed to be leaving the blues to some extent.

In 1969, they had recorded with many blues greats in Chicago, and had played behind Otis Spann on an album, but shortly afterwards, they had left Mike Vernon’s Blue Horizon label, and were releasing ‘Then Play On’ a rock based album. Peter Green’s guitar style was also changing away from the reverb laden style heavily influenced by Otis Rush and the Kings Freddie and BB to something that almost owed as much to the improvised jamming techniques of Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead.

John Mayall was keeping the faith, although by the end of the decade he had relocated to Laurel Canyon in the USA. His album, “Blues From Laurel Canyon” showcased the guitarist who had replaced Peter Green in the Bluesbreakers, Mick Taylor. A wonderful blues player, on a par with former Bluesbreakers such as Clapton and Green, his recordings with Mayall are possibly amongst the finest British blues recordings of all time! However, in 1969, Taylor left for the Rolling Stones. For a time, he helped to rekindle something of blues sensitivity to the group, but for many years now, the Stones had been much more than an English R&B band.

Even at a more grass roots level, many of the diehards of the British blues were drifting away from the form. As the 70s were heralded, Duster Bennett, friend of Peter Green, would step away to some extent from his one-man blues band approach to try recording a pop record with strings. There were no longer blues specific venues in London or the rest of the country. It did seem as if the bastard son of the blues, Rock, was about to swallow the Blues whole, in the UK at least!

As the Seventies began, things did indeed look bleak. Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac, and despite, or maybe partly because of Christine McVie joining the band from Chicken Shack, that band moved slowly on until they found a new musical identity which was a million miles away from the blues. As for Peter Green himself, he started a descent into illness that would see him away from the music business, only to emerge in 1978, a solo performer on the PVK label.

After a wonderful blues fuelled sojourn as ‘Derek’ in Derek and The Dominoes, Eric Clapton also disappeared for a couple of years to exorcise his own demons, only to come back as a different, somewhat less dynamic solo performer, who for some years virtually shied away from any kind of meaningful lead guitar work, let alone the blues. The initial British Blues Boom was over, but interest and passion for the blues was not!
 
 

6. PREACHIN’ BLUES

Lee Brilleaux - Dr Feelgood

Up to now, we have been concentrating on the better-known British Blues performers, and really only some of them. Throughout the 60s, there had been smaller scale bands, dedicated to the blues, but having only limited commercial impact. One example would be ‘Dr K’s Blues Band’. Gigging from the late 60s, a version of this band could still be found on the minor pub scene some 20 years later. By the end of the 70s, however, it would be many of these smaller scale bands that were the flag bearers for British Blues.

Into the early 70s, two of the three most celebrated of John Mayall’s former guitarists has disappeared temporarily from view. Peter Green had all but withdrawn from the music business, whilst Clapton was enduring a different kind of withdrawal. The third, Mick Taylor, was enjoying (if that is the word) his brief stint with The Rolling Stones.

Bands like Savoy Brown and Chicken Shack continued to display their blues roots to diminishing commercial effect. One or two other bands had emerged, such as Climax Chicago Blues Band. They would not really achieve much in the way of commercial success until they dropped the ‘Chicago’ from their name, and also the blues numbers from their albums.

This was the era when I started going to gigs and concerts, and some of my memories of live blues at this time revolve around the American acts I saw, such as Lowell Fulson and Muddy Waters. As far as the local scene was concerned, there was the ‘pub rock’ phenomenon.

A chain of venues based in pubs had grown up in London, offering fresh bands, different from the multi millionaire super groups that had emerged. Places like The Nashville Rooms in Fulham, the Hope And Anchor in Islington, and the Torrington, in my hometown of Finchley, provided access to these new rough and ready bands. Although the focus was not on the blues, there were a few second generation blues and R&B bands doing the rounds. These were bands that had been brought up not only on the Chess records of the 50s, but early Rolling Stones albums of the 60s.

An example would be The Count Bishops, led by slide guitarist Zenon De Fleur. Never really breaking out of the pub circuit, they nonetheless presented a far more strident and noisy interpretation of the blues. I particularly liked their recorded version of ‘Don’t Start Me Talking’.

Another pub performer of this time was a throwback to late 50s British Rock and Roll act ‘Johnny Kidd and The Pirates’, who had hit big with ‘Shakin’ All Over’. Johnny Kidd had died in 1966, but now his backing band, ‘The Pirates’, were playing the circuit with their uncompromising form of R&B. Then, there was Dr Feelgood.

The original members of this band came from Canvey Island, close to Southend on the Eastern coast of England. There were two focal points at a Feelgoods show. Wilco Johnson, the manic guitarist, dressed all in black, would charge robotically round the stage, playing a sparky form of R&B that came across as John Lee Hooker on speed. His guitar style, similar to that of Mick Green in the Pirates, featured lead and rhythm guitar playing at the same time. Then there was singer, harp player and occasional slide guitarist, Lee Brilleaux. His onstage persona was that of a deranged bank clerk. Their first album, ‘Down By The Jetty’ recorded in mono, seemed to owe a lot to the first Stones album, and yet there was an energy to this band that was all their own.

As well as the Feelgoods, there were other bands on the pub scene such as Lew Lewis reformer who kept the blues alive. Lew Lewis came from the same area as the Feelgoods, and blowed a mean harp.

As the decade progressed the London pub scene helped spawn another music, diametrically opposed to blues, and yet containing much of the energy of bands like The Feelgoods. Punk had arrived!

7. GOING DOWN SLOW

The Blues Band, live at The Golden Lion, Fulham

By the late 70s, Punk had come, and to some extent gone as well. Blues in Britain was still something that in the main was confined to the clubs. New acts were still breaking through, but only on a small scale. Blues and Trouble from Scotland had formed, and would make a living for many years playing the circuit and supporting visiting Blues legends when they visited.

Another band that formed in the late 70s was Nine Below Zero, with Dennis Greaves on vocals and lead guitar, and the amazing Mark Feltham on mouth harp. This was a rougher and readier version of the blues than the blues boom bands of a decade and a half since, but they still paid lip service to those that had gone before. On the bands debut EP; for instance, they performed a rip-roaring version of the classic “Rocket 88”.

A pattern was emerging now, whereby players and bands that had been around near the beginning of everything were re-emerging either in their old bands or in new combinations. For instance, Paul Jones and Tom McGuiness of Manfred Mann had got together with another British blues stalwart, Dave Kelly (brother of Jo-Ann Kelly) to form the Blues Band. With a diet of snappy versions of old classics, the Blues Band proved to be a popular act, both live and on record, and they continue to this day!

Blues radio in the UK did exist after a fashion. In the early 70s, there had been a blues show on radio presented by Mike Raven. In the late 70s, up to his death in the 80s, the main blues man was Alexis Korner, with his Sunday evening Radio One blues show!

But what of the three guitarists from Mayall’s mid 60s line-ups? Eric Clapton had been reinvented as a solo performer. There were traces of the blues in his act, but at this time, he seemed more interested in exploring a more laid back approach.

Peter Green had retreated from the music business, but despite illness, had been tempted back to record in the late 70s by Peter Vernon-Kell. Although some of Peter’s earlier fire had been extinguished, and the material he was playing varied widely both in style and quality, there were signs of what we had been missing, such as the heart rending version of “A Fool No More” on his “In The Skies Album”.

Mick Taylor had had around five years as a Rolling Stone, before retreating from that gig, and had embarked on an intermittent but still bluesy lower key career that continues to this day.

In the clubs and pubs of the UK, however, the blues was still alive!
 

EPISODE 8 on the way!
 
 

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