The style of music known as The Blues began as an African-American art form in the United States around the turn of the century, emerging out of slave work chants, what would come to be known as gospel music and continental African music. The blues grew in popularity during the 1920s, with a dramatic peak in the early to mid-1950s thanks to Chicago practitioners on the Chess Records label such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Little Walter.
After a retreat into relative obscurity, the blues were re-introduced to young American audiences in the 1960s by several of the British Invasion bands, particularly groups like The Animals, The Yardbirds, Manfred Mann, and the Rolling Stones. These young Englishmen brought our own music back to us without our realizing its native roots.
How did that happen? What ignited the 1960s blues boom in Great Britain?
Chris Barber (1930–) is Ground Zero for the British Blues. Barber founded a “Traditional” or “Trad” (what we in America call “Dixieland”) jazz orchestra in 1950s England (playing together since 1954, Barber and Pat Halcox share the honor of the longest continuing partnership in the history of jazz). Chris was interested in all forms of African-American music, especially jazz and blues. He was instrumental in being the first Brit to bring American blues performers like Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Muddy Waters to perform in England, exposing young Englishmen to live authentic American blues for the very first time.
The dawn of the British interest in the blues (at least from the musicians’ end of it) began as an almost entirely male affair. A major exception, however, was Chris’ wife, the soft-spoken Northern Irish white woman Ottilie Patterson (1932-2011). She joined the Barber band in 1955 and became the first singer to record blues LPs in the UK. Ironically, this mimicked a bit of blues history in the United States, where the very first blues singing stars were all women, i.e., Bessie Smith (Ottilie’s first major singing influence), Ethel 
Waters, and Ma Rainey. In fact, “Crazy Blues” a 1920 hit sung by Mamie Smith, is considered by most blues historians to be the first blues song ever recorded by an African American. Patterson paved the way for future female blues singers from the UK, most 
notably Jo Ann Kelly, Christine Perfect (later Christine McVie), Maggie Bell (from Stone the Crows), and Elkie Brooks.
Banjo and guitar player Lonnie Donegan (1931-2002; originally Tony Donegan, he renamed himself “Lonnie” in tribute to American blues guitarist extraordinaire Lonnie Johnson) was first exposed to the blues when he heard American blues musician Josh White on BBC radio. Lonnie was asked by Chris Barber to join his band in the early 1950s. A stripped down version of the Barber band, the Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group, used to perform a skiffle (skiffle was a 
combination of American blues and folk songs) set in between the orchestra’s jazz sets. The skiffle music soon began to attract as many audience members as the jazz sets. The Chris Barber Jazz Band’s first LP, New Orleans Joy (1954), was the first debut LP to go gold in the UK and the first UK LP to enter the U.S. Top Ten. Lonnie had a massive hit with a song pulled from the album, “Rock Island Line.” That single sold more than three million copies and Lonnie became the first UK male to score two Top Ten hits in America. The skiffle boom was launched. Lonnie Donegan, “The King of Skiffle,” scored 24 UK Top 30 hits. A shared love of skiffle inspired John Lennon and Paul McCartney to form their first band together.
Trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton (1921-2008), another trad jazz band leader, fell in love with the blues while attending Eton College. To the horror of jazz purists Humph began to regularly incorporate blues and more mainstream numbers into his band’s jazz sets. Lyttelton’s “Bad Penny Blues” (1956), the first jazz record to reach the UK Top 20, inspired The Beatles’ “Lady Madonna.” Humph hosted and backed a number of female blues singers, the most prominent of whom was Elkie Brooks. Elkie later sang lead with Robert Palmer in the rowdy band Vinegar Joe before she launched one of the most successful female solo careers in UK history. In 2002 Brooks recorded Trouble in Mind, an entire blues LP backed by Lyttelton.
As soon as guitarist Alexis Korner (1928-1984) heard American blues pianist Jimmy Yancey’s “Slow and Easy Blues,” Alexis became hooked on the blues. Korner and harmonica player and Chicago blues enthusiast Cyril Davies (1932-1964) were invited into the Barber band in 1961. Korner and Davies then opened and maintained the London Blues and Barrelhouse Club. Alexis was quite generous when it came to allowing young musicians like Eric Burdon, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and Keith Richards a chance to perform their blues on stage.
Alexis formed Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated with 6’7” singer Long John 
Baldry (1941-2005). They recorded 1962’s R&B from the Marquee, considered by many blues historians as the first male British blues LP. In 1963 Baldry joined the Cyril Davies R&B All Stars with Jimmy Page (guitar) and Nicky Hopkins (piano). Renamed Long John Baldry and His Hoochie Coochie Men after Davies’ death, Baldry recruited subway busker Rod Stewart into his band as a second male vocalist. In 1966 Baldry formed Bluesology with Reg Dwight on piano and (future Soft Machine member) Elton Dean and Caleb Quaye on guitars. Dwight later became Elton John (“Elton” as in Dean; “John” as in Baldry). Upon Bluesology’s 1968 break-up, Baldry went solo, recording successful blues as well as even more successful MOR (middle of the road) LPs.
Another Blues Incorporated alum was organist-saxophonist-singer Graham Bond (1937-1974), who formed the Graham Bond Quartet (later renamed the Graham Bond Organisation or GBO) in 1963 with three of the best UK jazz and blues musicians of that early musical era: Jack Bruce was on bass; guitarist John McLaughlin had a brief tenure before being replaced by saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith; and drummer Ginger Baker led the band. Eventually Bruce and Baker broke away to form Cream with Eric Clapton.
Alexis Korner persuaded fellow blues enthusiast John Mayall (1933–) to move 
to London, then helped him to get gigs. In 1963 the Marquee Club booked Mayall’s new band, the Bluesbreakers (with John McVie on bass). Mayall mentored and groomed many young blues musicians in the Bluesbreakers, including Eric Clapton (previously of The Yardbirds), Peter Green (later founder of Fleetwood Mac) and Mick Taylor (1970s lead guitarist for the Rolling Stones).
Often sitting in with John Mayall, the wildly talented acoustic blues guitar player Davy Graham (1940-2008) influenced an entire generation of acoustic blues players (as well as guitarists like Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page), most of whom eventually formed prominent English folk rock bands such as Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, and Pentangle. Those bands may have embraced English folk music but their guitarists all began by playing the blues. Alexis Korner arranged for Davy’s first recording. Graham eventually branched out from the blues with one of the first comprehensive repertoires of what is now known as World Music.
All of these key players and singers preceded and then participated in what became known as the first great
British blues boom of the mid-to-late 1960s. The bands of that genre who rose to prominence then and a bit later include The Animals, Cream, the Spencer Davis Group, Fleetwood Mac, Free, Rory Gallagher, Humble Pie, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Manfred Mann, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, the Pretty Things, the Rolling Stones, Ten Years After, (Van Morrison’s) Them and The Yardbirds. They all served an important purpose in re-introducing us Americans to one of our own greatest homegrown genres of music, while establishing a rich, vital music legacy of their own.
William Stout is the author-illustrator of Legends of the Blues from Abrams ComicArts. His second blues volume, Legends of the British Blues, is forthcoming.
This article is a part of the 2018 June / July issue of Whole Life Times.