Today, we’re bringing the boom.
Welcome back to another edition of British Invasion, the column that dives into British music history. Today’s programming will be on the blues boom of the 1960’s (and a tiny bit more). Let’s dive in, shall we?
At first, blues arrived in the UK hand in hand with jazz from America, often from African American GIs stationed in the UK during World War II or as illegally imported records across the Atlantic.
In the 1950’s, a “revival” scene started to emerge as more Brits became enamored with the sounds of American folk blues and jazz.
Bandleader Chris Barber brought in a teenage Lonnie Donegan to play guitar for his popular trad jazz band. In between sets, Donegan, with his folk and blues influences, would perform “skiffle breaks” for the audience in between sets of jazz, which the audience ate up in droves.
The progenitor of the skiffle craze of the late 50’s was arguably the single “Rock Island Line,” recorded by Donegan and Barber’s jazz band in 1955. The single went to the top 10 in both the UK and USA; it became the first debut record to go gold in the UK and a generation of musicians realized you can succeed with little musical experience and cheap equipment. Donegan and his crew made a transatlantic hit record with a cheap Spanish guitar, a washboard and a whole lotta love.
Skiffle bands appeared up and down the country as working-class men took up instruments and played in the numerous skiffle clubs that popped up. Barber, recognizing this increased attention in skiffle and in turn blues music, invited skiffle’s originators to tour with him across Europe.
These blues artists found a new audience and enthusiasm for their music in Europe and more tours ensued. Labels re-released old blues records and forgotten geniuses came into the light. Music festivals were created that showcased a whole host of blues artists.
The most influential of these tours was arguably Muddy Waters’ tour of England in 1958. Waters enraptured audiences with his heavy blues sound and the blaring screeches of his Fender Telecaster. To an audience that only knew of country blues and acoustic ditties, it was mind blowing.
As skiffle started losing steam, skiffle musicians started to move towards the blues, especially the electric blues of Waters. In 1961, harmonica player Cyril Davies and multi-instrumentalist Alexis Korner formed the Ealing Blues Club in London after they were kicked out of a skiffle club for playing too loud. Ealing has the distinction of being the first UK club to have regular blues nights. It’s also where Korner and Davies formed seminal blues group Blues Incorporated.
Blues Incorporated had many future British blues musicians sitting in on rehearsals and at Ealing for blues night. You could go in and find the nucleus of The Rolling Stones mucking about, or guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton have a drink. Speaking of Eric Clapton, he soon joined forces with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers after he left The Yardbirds. Mayall was a Mancunian who moved down to London on the advice of Korner who asked him to get in on the burgeoning blues scene.
The Bluesbreakers became one of the first popular British Blues groups, off the back of their self-titled debut in 1966. Clapton’s bluesy guitar playing carries this album, with all of his licks and flourishes distorted beyond repair by a Marshall amplifier. It also provided a blueprint for the guitar tone of future blues and rock bands. It cemented the guitar – and the guitarist – as the main character of British blues.
Clapton and the Bluesbreakers weren’t for long though, as he left to create the first supergroup Cream with two other members from blues band Graham Bond Organization. The Bluesbreakers didn’t lose a step, though, as they had Peter Green waiting in the sidelines, who was a terrific guitarist in his own right. Mayall thought he was even better than Eric Clapton, who at this point was widely regarded as one of the best guitarists in the world.
Green recorded one album with them, “A Hard Road,” in 1967 before he left to create his own band. Before the rumours came true, Fleetwood Mac was a London blues band comprised of former Bluesbreakers Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, who were all dissatisfied with the direction their previous band was taking.
What set Fleetwood Mac apart was their unique take on the Chicago blues Waters played, taking more inspiration from the rock bands that were beginning to rule the world like skiffle band The Quarrymen, who now go by The Beatles. Green and company managed to create their own audience to rival the Beatles, as they created hit record after hit record in the late 60’s that showcased the band’s tight chemistry and Green’s prodigious guitar playing.
Their instrumental single “Albatross” was seen by many as the commercial peak of the blues boom. British blues soon underwent another evolution as new bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, which were comprised of blues musicians, each had their own ideas of where the genre should go.
The Yardbirds were another British blues band of the mid 60s who split in 1968 over creative differences. Guitarist Jimmy Page wanted to pursue an even heavier sound than the acoustic blues of the Yardbirds. This culminated in the creation of Led Zeppelin, fusing heavy blues and rock to create some of the first hard rock records with their self-titled debut and “Led Zeppelin II” in 1969.
Black Sabbath was the third incarnation of The Polka Tulk Blues Band formed in 1968. Their early work included blues standards, but by the release of “Paranoid” in 1970, they became pioneers of heavy metal with the inclusion of down-tuned guitars and occult influences.
This, along with the nascent sounds of soul and Motown coming over from America, eventually relegated British blues artists into the background. Even if blues didn’t stay popular for long, it served as a starting point for some of the UK’s greatest bands and instrumentalists of the 1960s and 1970s. All the great blues music that became long forgotten in American managed to find a second home across the pond.