[...]... teenagers across the Atlantic? The seminal importance of Britain in the blues revival the of the 1960s, when the blues was embraced by “a large and appreciative white audience,” has been acknowledged since the publication of Bob Groom’s 1971 monograph The Blues Revival.2 Most discussions of British rock and roll in the 1960s recognize the enormous impact of American blues artists, the widespread popularity... song; in other parts of the book blues was used to describe boogie-woogie, swing and jazz based on the 12-bar form The next month the American clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow, whose autobiography Really the Blues was making the rounds of the revivalist crowd, asserted that the blues was nothing less than the blueprint for authentic jazz: Blues are the simplest form of jazz The blues leave so much room for improvisation... different war, the one between the revivalists and the modernists, heated up that the blues began to attract a wider audience The factional conflict between the “mouldy fygges” who believed that New Orleans jazz was the only true jazz and fans of the new bebop style was similar to the one raging in the United States, but in Britain: the struggle was conducted at an altogether higher pressure There were... Edward Smith (eds), Jazzmen, (NY, 1939), p 289 36 HOW BRITAIN GOT THE BLUES 16 the desire to learn everything possible about the disc and its contents In fact, the devotion to the minutiae pertaining to recordings might be read as a devotion to the discs themselves, which took on the status of fetish objects in the high church of the jazz diaspora.37 The British dependence on recordings did have negative... “rhythm and blues bands and the influence these groups had on American rock and roll during the British invasion Often missing from these discussions is how and when the blues arrived in Britain, how the music was received, and how, by 1963, it had filtered down to a small but significant segment of the 16–25 age group Those sources that do engage in some discussion of transmission disagree on how it took... Twelve of the World’s Foremost Jazz Critics and Scholars (NY,1961), p 307 8 Humphrey Lyttelton, I Play as I Please: The Memoirs of an Old Etonian Trumpeter (London, 1954), p 73 7 HOW BRITAIN GOT THE BLUES 20 The roots of jazz Although a handful of recordings were available in the 1930s it wasn’t until after the war that serious interest in the blues started to spread There had been some interest in the genre... hear these performances as jazz, or they did not valorize them in the same way as they did African American jazz 17 Godbolt, Jazz in Britain, pp 15, 59 18 Parsonage, “Responses to Early Jazz.” HOW BRITAIN GOT THE BLUES 8 line-rhythm section model of the small New Orleans and Chicago ensembles but adding a swinging, four-to -the- bar feel “had an ever-increasing number of adherents, and although the vast... BRITAIN GOT THE BLUES releases on the first Monday of each month These were perhaps modeled on the informal record recitals that Dave Toff, the manager of bandleader Billy Cotton, occasionally presented at the Majestic Theatre At one such listening session Eric Ballard met Bill Elliot, a fellow jazz fan and record collector “Not unnaturally they got talking about the music they both loved, and one day they... portrait of the blues diaspora” in Britain Earlier studies have made this task much easier Bob Groom’s seminal study explores aspects of the 1960s revival in the United States and Britain and broadly outlines the parameters of white interest in the genre Blues :The British Connection by Bob Brunning, an original member of Fleetwood Mac, provides an insider’s description of the British blues scene of the late... facsimile of the classic New Orleans ensemble style, and they were embraced by the hot jazz fans in the greater London area Some championed the group for reasons other than their music To those who objected to the commercial orientation of popular British swing the Dixielanders “represented the clear shining light of purity and conviction these Quixotes from Subtopia were tilting their lances against the evils . h1" alt="" HOW BRITAIN GOT THE BLUES: THE TRANSMISSION AND RECEPTION OF AMERICAN BLUES STYLE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM This page intentionally left blank How Britain Got the Blues: The Transmission. The First Time I Met the Blues: Blues Arrives in Britain 17 The roots of jazz 20 Spreading the gospel of the blues 22 Blues on the record 29 Blues Come Walkin’ Like a Man’ 34 The blues. Goin’?’: the modern blues 228 “Can a white man sing the blues? ” 231 ‘It’s Still Called the Blues : the British idiom 237 ‘All Out and Down’: the end of the blues revival 242 Postlude: How Britain