jaxson50 Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 if you listen to the British bands of the 1960s and 70s it is obvious their sound was shaped by more then just American rockers. The Yardbirds, the Animals, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Cream, artist like Peter Green and Eric Clapton were using classic Blues hits long forgotten in the US, many bands like The Yardbirds and the Stones even toured with some of the senior American Blues masters.So just how did these young British people get exposed to a form of music that had been ignored for so long here in the US?It all started when Joachim-Ernst Berndt, a German music publicist presented the idea of bringing original African American Blues performed to Europe, promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau bought into the idea, contacted Willie Dixion with the proposed tour and The American Blues and Folk Festival was created. These tours became annual events that thrived from 1962?to 1966, then were revived in 1971 and continued till 1980. The artist list was made up of the best of the Blues and the audience included a whose whose list of every British artist imaginable. We here in the US owe a great debt to these people who breathed new life into a art form created in our own nation and ignored by the mainstream music industry.If you look on Youtube you can find entire shows from the TV series that were broadcast across Europe and film of live concerts.thank God for Youtube. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BZMoikK3ct8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaxson50 Posted January 16, 2015 Author Share Posted January 16, 2015 Part two http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pXyVv9RqbW0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 True... Â But even before that, there were U.S. Jazz/blues influences in Europe even as there were European influences here. Â After the war... yup, a lot more, but there was a lot more going on in Europe, too. I can't forget the German ag ministry type who told me about the mixup on English words from the UK vs US, and how the German wish for "corn" brought surprises when it showed up with big yellow kernels such as few there had seen. Â Django came to the U.S. Lots of US musicians went to Europe. Etc. Â Add Brit musical tradition and some swing and early rock, rhythm&Blues and "Rockabilly," and... meanwhile in the US, even as pre and WWII era factories remained in use, so also did pre and WWII musical feel. The Brits and Europeans were starting off pretty new - with a lot of U.S. influence. Â m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgm Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 In those days the British Musician's Union had insisted that American musicians could only come to the UK if the same number British musicians went to work in the States. A very restrictive policy and eventually untenable after the Beatles and Stones conquered the USA. However the English trombonist Chris Barber - who is still playing! - had brought Muddy Waters to England on a couple of occasions and Big Bill Broonzy and a handful of others made it over here too. Â I have 2 videos of the American Folk-Blues Festival which feature great performances by some of the greatest blues artists active at the time. I also read more about it in Joe Boyd's book 'White Bicycles' and here is the almost surreal video of Sister Rosetta Tharpe (with her white SG) and others from one of the tours performing at an English railway station near Manchester. Â http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR2gR6SZC2M Â Those were momentous times..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 It also was an interesting time in that soon after the war, U.S. President Harry Truman fully racially integrated (in theory at least) the U.S. armed forces. Â That seemed to have been forgotten in the U.S. even by '63, just a relatively few years later. Hmmmm. That's when I got to meet the former president and shake his hand. The Beatles were just... a shadow on the horizon. Â m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zigzag Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Â But even before that, there were U.S. Jazz/blues influences in Europe even as there were European influences here. Â Â Charlie (Bird) Parker was more popular in Paris than in Los Angeles. Many black jazzers went to Europe and stayed; they were treated better, and though they weren't paid all that well on average, the work was steady. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Yeah... Â There were some interesting concept swaps and influences back and forth in Europe before WWII too. Django was influenced by them... and unlike some, remained in France during the occupation. Others moved from France and... in the UK and US, the European influence and the reverse were almost aided by WWII. Certainly thereafter. Â m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rct Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 And they repaid us by dropping off that shrieking Sharon Osborne. Â rct Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabs Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 yeah I love all this stuff.. ive watched all of those Blues Festival vids... great great stuff And its so cool that its available for us to watch...  I love this one with Matt Guitar Murphy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfiA_TO6qJw  another cool one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-xiB6gjg-c Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 yeah I love all this stuff.. ive watched all of those Blues Festival vids... great great stuff And its so cool that its available for us to watch...  another cool one   I love that one! Especially the axe-man...  It was 50 years ago... And he's still goin' strong!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyskMMtIrTQ   He was one of the original influences on the Brits!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDXAlOQ_-jY   Simply amazing!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabs Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 I love that one! Especially the axe-man... Â It was 50 years ago... And he's still goin' strong! Â Â Simply amazing!!! Lol.. did you notice Matt Murphy's famous dancing eyebrows... I cant watch it without laughing :) Â And I think this vid has some good explanations of what happened Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IanHenry Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 A good indication of how it was at the time can be found in Keith Richards book Life, which I'm currently re-reading. It gives a fascinating insight into young British kids hungry for the latest American blues music. Well worth the read, it encapsulates the birth of modern rock music as we know it. Â Â Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feldkeen4 Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 When I think of the structure of a rock and roll song. Dust my broom comes to mind. Â Â Â Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brundaddy Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 The British Imitation. Call me crazy, but no thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rct Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 The British Imitation. Call me crazy, but no thanks. Â Call me crazier, I prefer the British Imitation. They took it a lot of places it needed to go. Call me craziest, but I've played way too many nights of 12 bar blues without even a good turnaround or two, by the acknowledged masters. I like music to move a little. A large part of arranging for large bands and strings and stuff is substitution, creating harmonic structures that maintain the overall center, but use something other than I IV V with the rare IIImin. Changing key without even changing key, that stuff. The Brits did that, subtly, and well. We are forever in their debt for makin it a tad whack now and then. They had fun with it I guess. Â rct Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duane v Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 What has always amazed me is why you don't hear a Brits accent when they are singing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Thing is, I think, that some of the "blues" greats weren't always playing 12-bar, three chord blues. Neither were the country "old time" outfits where the fiddler was just as happy if the piano player or guitar picker never moved from one backup chord. Â Leadbelly, John Hurt, Gary Davis... Not 12-bar blues, but often more country-like stories, "pop" songs for dancing, modifying Souza into a guitar gee-whiz solo. Â I'm convinced that what happened in the U.K. also was happening in the U.S., but with the addition of the music hall tradition that lasted longer there than here in vaudeville - and with the subtraction of the real thing next door and the social dynamics involved. Â Bluegrass, early recorded "country," the early "race" records with those black blues guys... swing, "art" songs, Dixieland, western swing - when those things started happening in the U.S., they fed upon each other in a continental environment. You'd often hear a blues singer do the same piece as the bluegrass band and variations by regional dance bands with whatever instrumentation they had. Â Ever hear the old "Lawrence Welk" television show? Notice the dozens of musical styles of arrangements and pieces? Welk was from my area of the country and his early bands would bounce across styles from song to song and dance to dance as they went town to town or - on radio as folks got amplified radios and updated their Victrolas. Â The "rock" thing itself in the U.S. was evolving with batches of different material that "we" called "rock" when I was a kid, but now isn't recognized as anything that would run even on a "oldies" station. Â Now take some of those same musical factors into the Brit environment, they were then messed with by the stuff on those islands with the often already transmuted material from the U.S. even with "traditional" known blues pickers. Â That made the Beatles, Stones, Clapton, etc., use that different "take" and social environment to do their own versions of what they heard around them. Â Introducing the British-ized material simply added another ingredient to the stew. Â m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Call me crazier, I prefer the British Imitation. They took it a lot of places it needed to go. Call me craziest, but I've played way too many nights of 12 bar blues without even a good turnaround or two, by the acknowledged masters. I like music to move a little. A large part of arranging for large bands and strings and stuff is substitution, creating harmonic structures that maintain the overall center, but use something other than I IV V with the rare IIImin. Changing key without even changing key, that stuff. The Brits did that, subtly, and well. We are forever in their debt for makin it a tad whack now and then. They had fun with it I guess.  rct  That!!!  Amen Bro! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 The British Imitation. Call me crazy, but no thanks. Â OK, you're crazy... And in my personal opinion (of which we're all entitled-to) you're rather ignorant if that's the depth of your opinion on that... (I don't mean to sound harsh and it is not my intention to offend, I think you are missing a huge piece of the pie and the ignorance issimply a lack of information and understanding and not an insult) Â Just to recap: Â "Blues! Â More specifically, British Blues from the 2nd wave of The British Invasion... Â The Pop/Rock stuff flooded our shores, but it was what that aftermaths riptide left us stranded and vulnerable-to that drowned me with the Tsunami of soul and the coolest sounds in guitar history! I know tons of folks talk about the Brits as emulators, but to me they're the real deal. They don't have to be the originators or pioneers, because even the folks they got their ideas from weren't the originals... I think there's a century or two of poor plantation slaves and share-croppers that inspired and pioneered that genre of music and as far as I'm concerned it is an encompassing, open, and inclusive genre and not exclusive or divisive! Frankly if it wasn't for Clapton, I'd never have discovered Buddy Guy, Albert King, Otis Rush, Muddy Waters, or Howlin' Wolf! Â I, and frankly those American Blues originals of the electric guitar age, owe a debt of gratitude to the British Blues boom for reigniting a fire in America for the Blues Music, Pioneers, and greatness that was a home-grown original and right under our noses! Â They didn't emulate it to steal it or take credit for it, they did it for the love, passion, and celebration of what it was/is. They revived it out of a love and reverence for it for the amazing and original thing that it truly is! We Americans (for the most part, but clearly not en-total) had neglected and lost sight of it and what it truly was for ourselves and needed that Limey helping hand to regain that holy grail of understanding for ourselves... My hat is off to my Limey Blue brethren! Â I've seen Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmy Rogers, Johnny Copeland, and a whole host of our American originals live and in person for myself, thanks, in no small part, to Eric Clapton and John Mayall and his Blues Breakers! Without them I'd never have found my way to Albert King, Freddy King, BB King, Elmore James, JB Hutto, and untold dozens more... Â I owe it all to John Mayall, Eric Clapton, John McVie, Hughie Flint, and that dang "Beano" album! Â It opened up the universe to me..." Â Again, you are absolutely entitled to your own opinion, it is the thing American Liberty and the aftermath that swept the globe is made-of... Â Because off our American way, and what it led the rest of the globe to become, of the freedom of the individual to speak one's mind without fear of Draconian repercussion, we can say what's in our hearts and stand proud behind it! Â Thank God for British Blues!!! (and rock for that matter) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimi Mac Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Thing is, I think, that some of the "blues" greats weren't always playing 12-bar, three chord blues. Neither were the country "old time" outfits where the fiddler was just as happy if the piano player or guitar picker never moved from one backup chord.  Leadbelly, John Hurt, Gary Davis... Not 12-bar blues, but often more country-like stories, "pop" songs for dancing, modifying Souza into a guitar gee-whiz solo.  I'm convinced that what happened in the U.K. also was happening in the U.S., but with the addition of the music hall tradition that lasted longer there than here in vaudeville - and with the subtraction of the real thing next door and the social dynamics involved.  Bluegrass, early recorded "country," the early "race" records with those black blues guys... swing, "art" songs, Dixieland, western swing - when those things started happening in the U.S., they fed upon each other in a continental environment. You'd often hear a blues singer do the same piece as the bluegrass band and variations by regional dance bands with whatever instrumentation they had.  Ever hear the old "Lawrence Welk" television show? Notice the dozens of musical styles of arrangements and pieces? Welk was from my area of the country and his early bands would bounce across styles from song to song and dance to dance as they went town to town or - on radio as folks got amplified radios and updated their Victrolas.  The "rock" thing itself in the U.S. was evolving with batches of different material that "we" called "rock" when I was a kid, but now isn't recognized as anything that would run even on a "oldies" station.  Now take some of those same musical factors into the Brit environment, they were then messed with by the stuff on those islands with the often already transmuted material from the U.S. even with "traditional" known blues pickers.  That made the Beatles, Stones, Clapton, etc., use that different "take" and social environment to do their own versions of what they heard around them.  Introducing the British-ized material simply added another ingredient to the stew.  m  A number of the real pioneers of such music not only couldn't read music, a number of them actually couldn't read or write. And a number of them had zero grasp of music theory in it's accepted structure. There's a pretty famous story of the earlier days of the electric/Chicago Blues movement and just one of those stories revolved around JB Hutto a pioneering slide guitarist from Chicago in a Blues Shouter style of Elmore James. He was backed by "professional" musicians on a traveling show in a big concert for a high-society audience on one occasion and the "professional" musicians had a terrible time following him because he would play what he felt and change when he felt and play things like a 14-bar Blues or however many bars he felt before the changes. One of the professionals told him there was no such thing as a 14-bar Blues and JB Hutto's response was; "What man say dat?!?"  They played what was in their souls! It had no specified measures and the structure was often freestyle as one chose... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zigzag Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Call me crazier, I prefer the British Imitation. They took it a lot of places it needed to go. Call me craziest, but I've played way too many nights of 12 bar blues without even a good turnaround or two, by the acknowledged masters. I like music to move a little. A large part of arranging for large bands and strings and stuff is substitution, creating harmonic structures that maintain the overall center, but use something other than I IV V with the rare IIImin. Changing key without even changing key, that stuff. The Brits did that, subtly, and well. We are forever in their debt for makin it a tad whack now and then. They had fun with it I guess.  rct  Some say that jazz owes its heritage to the blues. The blues offered the framework for the more sophisticated improvisation and harmonization/chord substitution found in jazz. Bessie Smith, one of the original blues singers to be recorded, employed Louis Armstrong, and jazzmen from Jelly Roll Morton to Duke Ellington to Miles Davis to Herbie Hancock played their own versions of the blues. Blues rock was just the natural evolution of that significant, grass roots art form. Can't remember who it was that said that jazz was just blues that swings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brundaddy Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 OK, you're crazy... And in my personal opinion (of which we're all entitled-to) you're rather ignorant if that's the depth of your opinion on that... (I don't mean to sound harsh and it is not my intention to offend, I think you are missing a huge piece of the pie and the ignorance issimply a lack of information and understanding and not an insult) Â Just to recap: Â "Blues! Â More specifically, British Blues from the 2nd wave of The British Invasion... Â The Pop/Rock stuff flooded our shores, but it was what that aftermaths riptide left us stranded and vulnerable-to that drowned me with the Tsunami of soul and the coolest sounds in guitar history! I know tons of folks talk about the Brits as emulators, but to me they're the real deal. They don't have to be the originators or pioneers, because even the folks they got their ideas from weren't the originals... I think there's a century or two of poor plantation slaves and share-croppers that inspired and pioneered that genre of music and as far as I'm concerned it is an encompassing, open, and inclusive genre and not exclusive or divisive! Frankly if it wasn't for Clapton, I'd never have discovered Buddy Guy, Albert King, Otis Rush, Muddy Waters, or Howlin' Wolf! Â I, and frankly those American Blues originals of the electric guitar age, owe a debt of gratitude to the British Blues boom for reigniting a fire in America for the Blues Music, Pioneers, and greatness that was a home-grown original and right under our noses! Â They didn't emulate it to steal it or take credit for it, they did it for the love, passion, and celebration of what it was/is. They revived it out of a love and reverence for it for the amazing and original thing that it truly is! We Americans (for the most part, but clearly not en-total) had neglected and lost sight of it and what it truly was for ourselves and needed that Limey helping hand to regain that holy grail of understanding for ourselves... My hat is off to my Limey Blue brethren! Â I've seen Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmy Rogers, Johnny Copeland, and a whole host of our American originals live and in person for myself, thanks, in no small part, to Eric Clapton and John Mayall and his Blues Breakers! Without them I'd never have found my way to Albert King, Freddy King, BB King, Elmore James, JB Hutto, and untold dozens more... Â I owe it all to John Mayall, Eric Clapton, John McVie, Hughie Flint, and that dang "Beano" album! Â It opened up the universe to me..." Â Again, you are absolutely entitled to your own opinion, it is the thing American Liberty and the aftermath that swept the globe is made-of... Â Because off our American way, and what it led the rest of the globe to become, of the freedom of the individual to speak one's mind without fear of Draconian repercussion, we can say what's in our hearts and stand proud behind it! Â Thank God for British Blues!!! (and rock for that matter) Â I'll take Fats Domino, Little Richard, Slim Harpo, Guitar Slim, T-Bone Walker, Link Wray, and the all the other American originators of Blues, R&B, and rock and roll over British imitators all day every day, and twice on Sunday . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zigzag Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 I'll take Fats Domino, Little Richard, Slim Harpo, Guitar Slim, T-Bone Walker, Link Wray, and the all the other American originators of Blues, R&B, and rock and roll over British imitators all day every day, and twice on Sunday . Â Twice?... Â Remember that Jimi also believes that women can't sing blues with any authenticity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabs Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Well the rock thing and the evolution of blues was happening in America but no one was interested at that time.. Â That's why Jimi Hendrix had to come to the UK to get noticed where it was all happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaxson50 Posted January 19, 2015 Author Share Posted January 19, 2015 1421601853[/url]' post='1616754']Well the rock thing and the evolution of blues was happening in America but no one was interested at that time.. Â That's why Jimi Hendrix had to come to the UK to get noticed where it was all happening. Â So the Doors, The Greatfull Dead, Blood Sweat and Tears, The Jefferson Airplane, Steppenwolf, Steve Miller, The Byrds, and many others were not happening until Jimi returned? How do we explain the fact that Jimi had been playing in American rock bands before he went to England? I would say that from 61 to 64 rock in the US had been a bit "lost". The producers had taken over, guys like Spector. What The Beatles did more then anything else was to take rock back to its roots, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, they and the stones did many covers of those artist. But we are drifting away from the op, which is about the influence of Blues on British rock. It is true that during WWII big band music was introduced into Great Britain,, but I do not think Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page and Peter Green were learning Blues classics such as Cats Squirrle and Crossroads by spinning Glenn Millers greatest hits. The American Blues and Folk Festival series of concerts were very popular through Europe and it sparked a interest in America that Blues had never seen before. That is a good thing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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