How the Brits Revitalized the Blues

One of the curious stories in the history of 20th century popular music is the one concerning the great British Blues revival of the 1960’s, when a handful of young British musicians managed to help preserve and restore the importance of a musical genre that was in serious decline, while creating a new foundation for musical exploration and re-introducing an American genre to Americans who had a dim understanding and seemingly little respect for one the country’s important indigenous art forms.



Millions of baby boomers such as myself got their first real dose of Blues from nasal-voiced white-skinned British lads who somehow discovered the wealth of music recorded by African-Americans in many forms by many artists over a period of years starting in the 1920’s and leading up to the electric Blues of the 50’s and 60’s, and who began recording their own interpretations which ended up being sold in great numbers of American youth who were enamoured of the "British Invasion" that reached its frenzied peak with the Beatles’s phenomenal success.



The Beatles were not really a Blues band, though the Blues was a more than passing influence to them, but the Rolling Stones were essentially a Blues cover band in their inception and it was the combined Blues fanaticism of Brian Jones, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger that, as much as anyone did, helped fuel the British-fueled Blues revival that took place in those years.



There were earlier Blues-influenced bands in England, led by seminal figures like Alexis Korner and John Mayall, who certainly had a great influence in Britain and on bands like the Stones, but it was the Stones that first had the idea to import some of the American Blues legends to England to record with, and who created records of Blues covers that became hugely popular in the States, leading young musicians like me to re-explore our own American musical heritage.



Stories abound about the early meetings of those young Brits with the great (and sometimes ornery) Blues legends like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and others who must have felt a little out of place hanging out in studios and hotels in London with these skinny, long-haired kids with their funny accents and customs, and more than one of the London hotels had issues with the Bluesmen attempting to cook soul food in their rooms. The Brits had a lot to learn according to the old legends, though - Muddy Waters famously said "These English boys want to play the Blues real bad, and they do!"