blues britannia

[Ostrich Man]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kc752

 

Documentary telling the story of what happened to blues music on its journey from the southern states of America to the heart of British pop and rock culture, providing an in-depth look at what this music really meant to a generation of kids desperate for an antidote to their experiences of living in post-war suburban Britain.

 

Narrated by Nigel Planer and structured in three parts, the first, Born Under a Bad Sign, focuses on the arrival of American blues in Britain in the late 50s and the first performances here by such legends as Muddy Waters, Sonnie Terry and Brownie McGhee.

 

Part two, Sittin' on Top of the World, charts the birth of the first British blues boom in the early 60s, spearheaded by the Rolling Stones and groups such as the Yardbirds, Manfred Mann, the Animals and the Pretty Things.

 

The final section, Crossroads, looks at the next, more hardcore British blues boom of the mid-to-late 60s, with guitarists Eric Clapton and Peter Green and the international dominance of their respective bands, Cream and Fleetwood Mac.

 

Featuring archive performances and interviews with Keith Richards, Paul Jones, Chris Dreja, Bill Wyman, Phil May, John Mayall, Jack Bruce, Mick Fleetwood, Ian Anderson, Tony McPhee, Mike Vernon, Tom McGuinness, Mick Abrahams, Dick Taylor, Val Wilmer, Chris Barber, Pete Brown, Bob Brunning, Dave Kelly and Phil Ryan.

 

 

 

well theres friday nights sorted for a few weeks..

[muleskinner]

Thanks for that, will give that a go.

[Tosh]

OK, sad confession time....

 

I downloaded a whole bunch of Chris Rea albums - Blue Guitars

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blue-Guitars-11CD-...s/dp/3937406328

 

It is really really good. Not to sit down and listen to all of it in one go but per album it really is very very good. Not that it's british blues....

[cymrococh]

The Rolling Stones may have stolen some blues songs, but they're hardly a blues band. Unless they're including the 'rhythm &' derivative.

[DanielS]

The Rolling Stones may have stolen some blues songs, but they're hardly a blues band. Unless they're including the 'rhythm &' derivative.

 

Mr Richards, in his own words:

 

GU Linkle

 

'I loved rock'n'roll - but then we found the blues'It was a great day for music when the young Rolling Stones discovered the blues. Keith Richards looks back on a lifelong love affair

Keith Richards The Guardian, Friday 1 May 2009 Article history

 

On first hearing the blues

 

It's very difficult to say - when did I identify the blues as a particular form of music? My mum was playing me jazz - a lot of Billie Holiday, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan. I mean, it's not your country blues but, as I went on, I realised that I was brought up on a broad basis of blues music without even knowing it, so, in a way, I'm a result of what my mum played. I had a natural affinity for it, I think, so it wasn't like a conscious thing or anything like that. You know, I didn't think in terms of black or white then. You didn't know whether Chuck Berry was black or white - it was not a concern. It was just what came in the ears and, my, what it did to you. And then I slowly realised that what these cats were doing was closely related to what I'd grown up listening to. You know, it was more stripped down, it was more rural. And then I went into this thing of finding out - where did he get it from? And without actually being able to call up Chuck Berry - I was 15 - and say, "Hey, Chuck, where do you get that from?", you went through record labels and [found out] Muddy Waters had been the guy to introduce Chuck Berry to Chess Records - then there's a connection. Then I got into Muddy Waters and then, before I knew it, that leads you immediately to Robert Johnson, and then you're before the war and you're into this other stuff - and a lot of it's, like, pretty rubbish.

 

On trying to hear more of the blues

 

I had to stick people up. We would borrow records and lend records, and stuff. Some guys had interesting sounds, and you sort of gravitated towards people that had a collection of records. And you try and steal one here and there, or just borrow. Let's put it like that: borrow. It wasn't just necessarily blues - there was a lot of folk music involved. We'd pick up anything we could listen to. I mean, my experience of art school is basically sitting in the john all day playing guitar when I wasn't forced to draw some fat old lady. And there I found a whole hotbed of music, where we distilled this stuff and listened and tried to figure out what we've been missing out on. You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music. You started to search out certain guys that had more knowledge, more material than you did, and you had to know where it came from. So then I went to study this stuff and I realised that these blues men, they're talking about getting laid. And there's me studying what they're doing, but I ain't getting laid. I mean, there was something missing in my life - obviously, to be a bluesman I have to go see what this lemon juice is, running down your leg. And you know, these guys are actually living a life - they're not studying. I loved rock'n'roll but there's got to be something behind the rock'n'roll. There had to be. We found, of course, that it was the blues. And, therefore, if you really want to learn the basics, then you've got to do some homework. We all felt there was a certain gap in our education, so we all scrambled back to the 20s and 30s to figure out how Charlie Patton did this, or Robert Johnson, who, after all, was and still probably is the supremo. Blues didn't just mean doing one thing or another - there was a lot of room to manoeuvre around the blues.

 

On blues singers' names

 

It made me sick - my name's Keith Richards. It hardly makes it against Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters, does it? On my first guitar I had Boy Blue written - just pathetic. But that was as good as I got at the time.

 

On learning to play the blues

 

Once you start to play, you realise you've got to know how he did that. "This man just bent the string three yards! And made it sound simple! And he's got a rhythm going here that is unbelievable and he's blind and he's ... " I mean, it's just something you've got to do. You have no choice. I mean, we had other things to do and everything, but once you got bitten by the bug, you had to find out how it's done, and every three minutes of soundbite would be like an education. We did learn our stuff, though and, quite honestly, the blues ain't just necessarily black. We found that out eventually.

 

On the Stones' love of the blues

 

Mick was as much of a maniac. Brian as well, an absolute maniac. Charlie was more broad-based - that is, more jazz - but very much in this. We turned Charlie Watts on to Jimmy Reed, which, for a drummer, on the surface of it is the most boring job in the world. But it was the sheer monotony, the sheer non-stop throttling hypnotism that got Charlie into the blues. And these cats are great. After all, they were all jazz drummers in one form or another. The thing we didn't realise then is that cats in the States didn't put everybody in a bag. In England, you were put in a bag - he's jazz, he's this, he's pop, he's rock, da-da-da.

 

On recording the Stones' first demos, and recording the blues

 

I very barely remember it, because, to me, I was in heaven, 'cause I was actually in a recording studio. I mean, to me, that was the whole point - you'd died and gone to heaven. You're actually in a room built to make sounds, and there's actual microphones. Another thing to do with the blues is how they were recorded. They were done on the quick, and some of that stuff was made on wire, not even tape, let alone digital. So you'd have to work out where to put the microphone to get the sound of the room - you know, where John Lee Hooker would put his foot. And you'd sort of work your area. Making regular records - orchestrated and produced records - you didn't get a chance to figure out the room, and figure out what you can do. Every room is different - you get a bounce back here, and you put the microphone a little further back. You could hear on Robert Johnson records where they'd deliberately pulled the microphone back to get more guitar, and so he's wailing over the top. It's one thing doing it, another thing to capture it. And I think, in England, a lot of us got interested in how to capture it. How to get that sound right. These cats would leave a microphone over the back of the room, and then there'd be a drummer slapping around over there. And it's the best drum sound you ever heard. You know, there's not just one way to make a record, there's not just one way to record an instrument. If you had Beethoven going, and 50 violins, then you'd treat it a different way. You got one cat with a foot and maybe some guy slapping a bass somewhere round the back, and you could hear them playing the room, as well, and not just the instrument. And I think making records was really the other great drive for most of us English blokes to get in a studio and figure out eventually how it's done. [in English studios] you had to fight this whole other system of how records are made - it was: "Mind my microphone!" Well, I'm not trying to hurt it, you know. "You're playing too loud into it, and you've moved it!" and all that sort of stuff, but that's called learning how to record. They were applying European techniques to recording, to making music, that don't apply to that system at all. So you did find yourself, for quite a while, head to head with this sort of monolithic idea of British recording engineers. You just learned by trial and error. Trying to transfer it on to tape was a pain for years. I mean, anybody will tell you you're up against this monolithic idea of, like, the correct method of recording. But we're not looking for the correct method, we're looking for the incorrect method: I want to see how much that microphone can take; if a guy is over there and yelling, I want to see whether the voice still carries. It's trial and error, trial and error, and mostly error.

 

On what the bluesmen thought when the Stones visited Chess Records studios, the home of Chicago blues

 

They went, "Ah, man, I don't believe it, you're playing our music." They were just so effusive, so sweet - "Come over to the house," you know. I mean, you'd died and gone to heaven - it was the cats, gentlemen in the truest sense of the term. They'd stab you in the back, but gentlemen. They were so interested in what we were doing, and realising, at the same time, that we didn't know s***, really. They would all help, it was all encouragement, and that. To me, that was one of the most heartwarming things. 'Cause you figure you're gonna walk in [and they'd think], "Snooty little English guys and a couple of hit records." Not at all. I got the chance to sit around with Muddy Waters and Bobby Womack, and they just wanted to share ideas. And you were expecting, "Oh, English kids making money out of me," and it could well have happened. But they wanted to know how we were doing it, and why we wanted to do it, you know.

 

On the relative status of the bluesmen in the US and Europe

 

Their US audience was getting smaller every year because they were now considered old hat. They liked Europe - they'd come over once a year. American black music was starting to slide into Motown, which was far more slick and more organised. [The bluesmen] felt they were being a little left out by their own, and this influx of interest from Europe, especially England, really caught their interest. I've no doubt they all looked at each other and said: "Well, that's the strangest audience I've ever seen - they're a bunch of wimpy English guys with long hair going 'Ooh!'"

 

On making a No 1 out of Howlin' Wolf's Little Red Rooster

 

We must have been wearing brass balls that day, when we decided to put that out as a single. I think we just thought it was our job to pay back, to give them what they've given us. They've given us the music and the friendship, and let's stand up, be men, and give them a blues, and it went to No 1. Mr Howlin' Wolf, he didn't mind at all. It was maybe a moment of bravado, in retrospect, but it worked. We have been blessed by the music that we listened to, and let's see if we can actually spin it back around and make American white kids listen to Little Red Rooster. You had it all the time, pal, you know. You just didn't listen.

 

• These are edited extracts from an interview with Keith Richards for Blues Britannia: Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?, tonight on BBC4 at 9pm, showing as part of the Blues Britannia weekend

 

----

 

So not a blues band then. More a bunch of blues groupies.

Edited May 1, 2009 by DanielS

[fyds]

Great series - really enjoyed it seeing some old favourites both original and followers.

[Coyler]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kc752

Narrated by Nigel Planer and structured in three parts, the first, Born Under a Bad Sign...

 

Part two, Sittin' on Top of the World...

 

The final section, Crossroads, ...

 

well theres friday nights sorted for a few weeks...

All part of the one programme last night, I think! I was wondering at the end what scope they had left for the other two programmes but that was it.

 

Enjoyable. Portrayed them as honest acolytes and their awe and appreciation was communicated in a very flattering light. Softened my cynicism a bit, although it was hard not to harrumph at Richards's account of the big-balled courage of the Stones releasing Little Red Rooster. "Just give them the blues." Rebels.

[Snookie]

All part of the one programme last night, I think! I was wondering at the end what scope they had left for the other two programmes but that was it.

 

Enjoyable. Portrayed them as honest acolytes and their awe and appreciation was communicated in a very flattering light. Softened my cynicism a bit, although it was hard not to harrumph at Richards's account of the big-balled courage of the Stones releasing Little Red Rooster. "Just give them the blues." Rebels.

 

I enjoyed it too but how Ian Anderson could honestly think his 'standing on one legged, playing his flute and gurning a lot' act had a legitimate connection to the blues I don't know. Richard's now seems to made up of at least two personalities, both of which appeared on the programme and are in permanent conflict. You'd 'intelligent Keith' who clearly articulated his love and appreciation of the music and the drug-damaged aged believer in his own myth 'Keef 'who had difficulty forming even random words from incoherent noises. Often they'd appear in the same sentence.

 

Really looking forward to tonight's documentary about Bobby Bland though. His voice on his 50s and 60s recordings is as close to perfect as it gets.

[charlie clown]

To be fair Snookie, Tull's first album or two had a fair amount of blues rock, influence if not out and out blues tracks. Clearly it didn't filter through much into their Kahnee-a-like period.

 

 

The British blues stuff has always been a bit of a musical blind spot for me.... as important as it obviously is in terms of the development of music generally, it's just never really appealed to me as something to listen to. If I'm going to listen to the blues I'd much rather listen to the original stuff.

[fyds]

To be fair Snookie, Tull's first album or two had a fair amount of blues rock, influence if not out and out blues tracks. Clearly it didn't filter through much into their Kahnee-a-like period.

The British blues stuff has always been a bit of a musical blind spot for me.... as important as it obviously is in terms of the development of music generally, it's just never really appealed to me as something to listen to. If I'm going to listen to the blues I'd much rather listen to the original stuff.

Agreed - I never thought - maybe Alexis Korner aside, that British blues was real blues...it was always going to be through a filter anyway, and it was, by and large excellent stuff - but not real blues...original R&B, Rocked-up blues whatever, honest stuff - but very anglicized in it's execution as it was bound to be by definition with a hint of the jazzist's love of virtuosoism about it. Early Tull, Fleetwood Mac, Cream, Kevin Ayers and even early Led Zep were the natural progression of this. Nothing wrong with that mind, it just isn't quite the ultra-purist nirvana nostalgia lovers sometimes make out.

[Snookie]

To be fair Snookie, Tull's first album or two had a fair amount of blues rock, influence if not out and out blues tracks. Clearly it didn't filter through much into their Kahnee-a-like period.

The British blues stuff has always been a bit of a musical blind spot for me.... as important as it obviously is in terms of the development of music generally, it's just never really appealed to me as something to listen to. If I'm going to listen to the blues I'd much rather listen to the original stuff.

 

I've pretty much the same opinion about British blues. I like that were so inspired and passionate about it. The idea of people going around to other people's houses simply to hold a record is great (do kids still go to other people's houses to listen to records or is it done it from the isolated comfort of their bedrooms?). But I can never get away from the fact that they took what is an essentially poor man's musical form and turned it into a key part of 'rock stardom'. Eric Clapton as 'God' or Led Zep as Rock Gods would not have been really possible without their 'blues' component. It conferred an authenticity they didn't really possess at the time. Oddly though Robert Plant, and Clapton to a slightly lesser extent, have spent a large part of their recent career successfully connecting to 'folk musics'.

 

Anderson, though, comes across as a horrible self-satisfied human being. In his lord of the manner world you just get the feeling that if he attempted to write a blues song today it would go sometime like:

 

Woke up this morning

Got into my 4x4

Drove down to the crossroads

The devil was waiting for me there....

 

Yeah, I got those blues

Those immigrant blues

I got those immigrant blues

they are following me everywhere

 

I watched the Fleetwood Mac programme with my 17 year old niece and she asked how come Derek Smalls was the bass player. The whole thing was a freak show. Stevie Nicks appeared to have a nest on her head and just about everyone with the exception of Fleetwood seemed to be heavily medicated.

 

The Bobby Bland documentary was excellent despite Mick Hucknell appearing in it. He looks more and more like Fat Sam as a drag artist, which may be God's revenge for his recording career. There is a gentle sadness to Bland's 50s and 60s recordings that came across in the interview with him and some of the stage performances, particularly with BB King were great.

[fyds]

Saw the Fleetwood mac thing too - hysterically funny at times - Nick's barnet and dress sense making her look like a muggle trying to sneak onto a Harry Potter set, but best of all, funniest of all is the planet John McVie lives on - a living, breathing Rock n' Roll dinosaur cliché :

 

'and it was just - woah - and.........heavy (hard, slow look to camera) and...(shrugs) yeah...so...(shrugs again) and so I said, well, that's sort of done, just...rage - you know?' (shrugs again)'

 

So what was he talking about - Peter Green leaving? His wife running off with the lighting technician? Lindsey Buckingham trying to kill Stevie Nicks (good on him)? Nope - John Mayall having the temerity to play a few minor chords in place of sevenths.

[cymrococh]

Anderson, though, comes across as a horrible self-satisfied human being. In his lord of the manner world you just get the feeling that if he attempted to write a blues song today it would go sometime like:

manor