The Birth of British Blues
But the same passion that young American whites showed for learning and playing blues was simultaneously spreading across the Atlantic to Britain. People we think of as the great British rock legends were all blues players—Clapton (of course), Jimmy Page, David Gilmore, Jeff Beck, Kim Simmonds, Keith Richards, John Mayall, Brian Jones, Long John Baldry, Ritchie Blackmore, Tony Iommi, Marc Bolan as well as Ian Anderson, Jack Bruce, Robert Plant, Keef Hartley, Rod Stewart, Gary Thain, Mick Jagger and Ringo Starr. When Ringo was once offered a job to go to America to repair roads in Alabama, Ringo said he would go only if they sent him to Texas. Why Texas? the interviewer asked. “Because,” said Ringo, “that’s where Lightnin’ Hopkins lives and if Texas is good enough for Lightnin’ Hopkins, it’s good enough for me.” Starr didn’t get the job but two years later was touring America as a Beatle.
Mick Jagger was a young blues singer in the 50s who delighted in collecting rocknroll and blues records and couldn’t wait to play them for his friend, Keith Richards. One day, Mick ran into Keith who asked him what new records he had. “Oh, I’ve got a new Chuck Berry and a Muddy Waters,” Mick exclaimed.
“Muddy Waters?” asked Keith. “Who the hell is Muddy Waters?”
“You’ve never heard of Muddy Waters?” asked Mick, incredulous. “You have to hear this!”
They went to Mick’s house and he played the Chuck Berry and then the Muddy Waters. Keith took out his guitar (which he never went anywhere without) and started learning the licks. When the record ended, Keith ordered Mick to play it again. Mick started the record again. When it finished, Keith said, “Again!” and Mick played it again—and again and again and again. Jagger said Richards would listen to Muddy Waters records nonstop, playing them over and over and over for hours until he mastered every lick. Neither Mick nor Keith would dare to imagine that they would be playing onstage with Muddy by 1978.
Muddy Waters went to Britain for the first time in 1958. Big Bill Broonzy had gone there seven years earlier and encouraged Muddy to go but Muddy wouldn’t consider it. He couldn’t fathom that people across the ocean could possibly care about him or his music. Dixieland jazz had been in Britain for some time such as Chris Barber’s band. They were the closest thing they had to blues so they backed whatever jazz or blues acts toured the country including Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and the Modern Jazz Quartet. But young guitarists as Alexis Korner began learning Big Bill Broonzy after he came through Britain. Soon a new crop of aspiring guitarists were looking for any blues they could find. Muddy decided to go to Britain after Chuck Berry had taken America by storm making his style of blues sound dated to American ears.
Their first concert was in Leeds. Most of the British had no idea what to make of Muddy Waters. They expected him to be like his friend, Big Bill Broozny, but Muddy was unlike anything they were used to. It was new and unexpected yet most of the Britons liked it but not all. Some thought Muddy was too raw, rough-edged and unpolished. The band featured Muddy’s longtime friend, Otis Spann, on the piano. The rest of the outfit was Chris Barber’s. Overall, Muddy took Britain by storm. A young man named Eric Burdon learned to play guitar by learning Muddy’s “Honey Bee.” Burdon was a student at the Newcastle College of Art. One day, he stood up in class and held up two tickets to a Muddy Waters show and asked who else was going. Another student named John Steel said he was. Burdon and Steel then formed a band called the Animals.
Soon Britons were crowding around Muddy and following him dutifully from town to town. Muddy, in turn, eased up and his shows got better at each stop. Young Brits would mob Muddy for his autograph and to ask him questions about other bluesmen they longed to see. Muddy was always the consummate gentleman and never treated his British hosts with anything but quiet, respectful behavior. He posed for photographs, granted interviews, encouraged young Brits to take up the blues and even asked some of them, such as Alexis Korner, to play a little for him and would praise their knowledge of and talent playing a music that was new to them but had also lit a fire in them.
Muddy, like other black American musicians who came to Britain, was a little stunned and pleased that the British girls would approach them so openly, asking for autographs, giving them hugs and kisses and would sit with them and chat with no self-consciousness whatsoever. The British men didn't get uptight about it. This simply did not happen in America and certainly not in Mississippi. Although, like many bluesmen, Muddy was quite the womanizer, he was smart enough to be a perfect gentleman on his tour and stayed cool and reserved but always smiling and friendly. Quite simply, the British loved him.
19-year-old Mick Jagger sings the blues in the band Blues, Incorporated. The bassist is Jack Bruce (later of Cream), the harpist is Cyril Davies (the first British blues harpist) and the guitarist is Alexis Korner who was the original lead singer of the New Yardbirds (they recorded two numbers which have never been released before Robert Plant took over singing duties and the band changed its named to Led Zeppelin).
Korner is considered to be “the founding father of British blues.” Jagger would always credit Korner and Davies as being his mentors in blues but then so did the Yardbirds, Mayall, Zeppelin, Cream, Savoy Brown, Foghat, the Animals, etc. British blues gave birth to progressive rock when Keith Relf left the Yardbirds to form Renaissance along with John Hawken who went onto co-found Strawbs. Virtually any British rock band of the 60s or 70s was actually made up of bluesmen.
The original Jethro Tull was a straight-up blues band. The original Black Sabbath (then called Polka Tulk) played amplified blues. Fleetwood Mac was also originally a hardcore blues band under Peter Green. Pink Floyd was named after two bluesmen—Pink Anderson and Floyd Council—who were cohorts of Blind Boy Fuller whom Syd Barrett listened to quite a bit in his early days. We would not be far off to say that the blues forever changed Britain very profoundly. When Blues, Incorporated recruited younger members and started gravitating towards rock, the band transformed into the Rolling Stones who never fully shed their blues roots.
Why were the British so adoring of American bluesmen? Because they didn’t share the white American class disdain towards blacks. To them, these black bluesmen were musical saviors and cultural heroes (which was, in many ways, true). John Lennon stated in an interview that, to the British, America was this exotic foreign place where this great music was made and the whole thing reached mythic proportions in the minds of British musicians. This music was so honest and so visceral that British kids, in search of something far better than what their parents listened to, were utterly taken with it. And since the blues and rocknroll records were not easy to get, there was a sort of prestige in owning them. A lot of British musicians also had short wave radios to tune into American stations playing blues and rocknroll especially King Biscuit Time.
Many of these British kids felt that had the blues never entered their lives, they would have ended up dead or in prison and, in some cases, it was definitely true. Others had never even thought about taking up music until they heard American blues and then could not think of doing anything else. They grew so infatuated with the music that when they finally had a chance to see the true blues legends whose records they adored, such as Waters or Hooker, it was too much for them. They were overcome with emotion and wanted to properly greet these men who had so fundamentally changed their lives forever through the power of their music.
Both and Muddy and John Lee Hooker reported fanatical devotion among the British blues fans. People genuflected before them. Some would say hello and when the greeting was returned, would simply faint. Some even tossed rose petals in front of them as they walked. Once a posse of British blues fanatics followed Muddy down the street and when he stopped into a place to have breakfast, they all ordered the same thing he did. When Muddy was done eating, they bought the dishes, cup, silverware and anything he had consumed his breakfast from and wouldn't allow them to be washed. One man even bought the stool Muddy had sat on and had it removed from the establishment.
While there were certainly many white American artists into the blues--Canned Heat, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Mose Allison--Americans as a whole did not know how to embrace blues. The British did though with every fiber of their being. The blues is so fundamental to the average Briton's approach to music that it is impossible to know what course British music would have taken without it.
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