The American Folk Blues Festival was a blues festival that toured Europe annually for several years beginning in 1962. It was significant in that it introduced audiences in Europe to blues performers such as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson and contributed greatly to the appreciation of blues music on that continent. Back then, this was music most Britons were unfamiliar with.
The idea for the festival originated with a German jazz publicist named Joachim-Ernst Berendt, who was a fan of the blues and conceived of bringing original African-American blues performers to Europe to play a series of concerts. Jazz and rock and roll were the popular forms of music at the time, and Berendt wanted to showcase how both genres could trace their roots back to the blues. He thought European audiences would flock to concert halls to see authentic blues performers in person.
He shared his idea with promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau, who liked it and contacted Willie Dixon, whom they entrusted to put together a roster of authentic artists. Dixon knew almost everybody with even just a single toe in the blues scene, so it was a smart move to bring him onboard. And he didn't disappoint. The concerts featured some of the best blues artists of the 1960s, including Willie Dixon himself, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson. T-Bone Walker and Memphis Slim were also there, as was Otis Rush, Junior Wells and Little Walter, among many others.
There is a film of Little Walter playing at the festival, and it is the only known existing footage of the artist in action.
In Manchester, UK, in 1962, the first English date of the tour, members of the audience are said to have included Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jimmy Page. At the London shows, Eric Burdon, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood were supposedly in attendance. These people being at these shows is worthy of note, considering they would soon become the British blues scene.
Sonny Boy Williamson visited London in 1963 with the festival and ended up spending a year in Europe, during which he recorded Sonny Boy Williamson and The Yardbirds, which was released in 1965 on Star Club records. Williamson also recorded with The Animals while in England.
On May 07, 1964, Granada Television broadcast a show called Blues and Gospel Train, featuring Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Rev. Gary Davis, Cousin Joe and Otis Spann. The decommissioned Wilbraham Road railway station was dressed up as something that was supposed to lend it the appearance of a southern U.S. railway station, and about 200 fans were chugged in by train. After the performance was interrupted by rain, Tharpe played the gospel song Didn't It Rain.
Over the years the list of blues musicians who performed on the American Folk Blues Festival tours was impressive: Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf (with a band comprised of Sunnyland Slim, Hubert Sumlin, Willie Dixon and drummer Clifton James), Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker, Otis Rush, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Little Walter, Buddy Guy, Sippie Wallace, Memphis Slim, Big Walter Horton, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sleepy John Estes, Jimmy Reed, Junior Wells, Carey Bell, Lonnie Johnson, Otis Spann, Archie Edwards, Eddie Boyd, Big Joe Williams, Son House, Skip James, Big Mama Thornton, Bukka White, Champion Jack Dupree, Little Brother Montgomery, Victoria Spivey, J. B. Lenoir, Louisiana Red, Joe Turner, Magic Sam, Lee Jackson, Matt Guitar Murphy, Roosevelt Sykes, Doctor Ross, Koko Taylor, Hound Dog Taylor, and Sugar Pie DeSanto.
It must have been incredible, and I would have attended if I hadn't just turned two-years-old at the time.
This is a 5-CD box set, although several individual records have been released, including one of performances from the 1964 festival on Pure Pleasure Records which must sound amazing given Pure Pleasure's attention to detail. But this box set is a wonderful document of the festival's first four years and it sounds great. I so enjoy listening to it! The performances are top notch and it's not something you get to hear much anymore, especially sounding this good. While I love almost all live blues compilations, this one is beyond excellent - among the best I've heard - not only because of the sound quality but also because of what it really is: a document of the introduction of the blues into England and Europe.
The influence these shows had on popular music was enormous, and they can be at least partially credited with inspiring Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to keep playing the blues. The concerts also influenced many other artists who saw them and went on to form such bands as Led Zeppelin and Traffic. It can, I think, be argued that popular music as we know it today would have been very different had these tours not taken place when they did.
There would be other tours - I have another CD of the American Folk Blues Festival from 1970 - and there was another one in 1972. Then there's a gap of several years before another tour was launched in 1980, with others in 1982 and 1983. One last tour was put together in 1985, but after that it was over and nothing really measures up to the original tours in the 1960s. We're so enormously lucky that someone thought to record the shows with such attention to detail. It certainly wasn't done with an eye towards making money by pressing them into records and selling them. They wouldn't see release until the 1990s - this set was released in 1995 - but when they did finally show up they received considerable critical acclaim. I bought my mine as soon as I saw it on the shelf at Sam's, in Toronto.
The best part is that you can still buy the CDs for a very affordable price. As documents of authentic blues music goes, this box set (and the other CDs of the other shows, too) really can't be beat. They really are that good.
The American Folk Blues Festival was a blues festival that toured Europe annually for several years beginning in 1962. It was significant in that it introduced audiences in Europe to blues performers such as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson and contributed greatly to the appreciation of blues music on that continent. Back then, this was music most Britons were unfamiliar with.
The idea for the festival originated with a German jazz publicist named Joachim-Ernst Berendt, who was a fan of the blues and conceived of bringing original African-American blues performers to Europe to play a series of concerts. Jazz and rock and roll were the popular forms of music at the time, and Berendt wanted to showcase how both genres could trace their roots back to the blues. He thought European audiences would flock to concert halls to see authentic blues performers in person.
He shared his idea with promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau, who liked it and contacted Willie Dixon, whom they entrusted to put together a roster of authentic artists. Dixon knew almost everybody with even just a single toe in the blues scene, so it was a smart move to bring him onboard. And he didn't disappoint. The concerts featured some of the best blues artists of the 1960s, including Willie Dixon himself, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson. T-Bone Walker and Memphis Slim were also there, as was Otis Rush, Junior Wells and Little Walter, among many others.
There is a film of Little Walter playing at the festival, and it is the only known existing footage of the artist in action.
In Manchester, UK, in 1962, the first English date of the tour, members of the audience are said to have included Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jimmy Page. At the London shows, Eric Burdon, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood were supposedly in attendance. These people being at these shows is worthy of note, considering they would soon become the British blues scene.
Sonny Boy Williamson visited London in 1963 with the festival and ended up spending a year in Europe, during which he recorded Sonny Boy Williamson and The Yardbirds, which was released in 1965 on Star Club records. Williamson also recorded with The Animals while in England.
On May 07, 1964, Granada Television broadcast a show called Blues and Gospel Train, featuring Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Rev. Gary Davis, Cousin Joe and Otis Spann. The decommissioned Wilbraham Road railway station was dressed up as something that was supposed to lend it the appearance of a southern U.S. railway station, and about 200 fans were chugged in by train. After the performance was interrupted by rain, Tharpe played the gospel song Didn't It Rain.
Over the years the list of blues musicians who performed on the American Folk Blues Festival tours was impressive: Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf (with a band comprised of Sunnyland Slim, Hubert Sumlin, Willie Dixon and drummer Clifton James), Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker, Otis Rush, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Little Walter, Buddy Guy, Sippie Wallace, Memphis Slim, Big Walter Horton, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sleepy John Estes, Jimmy Reed, Junior Wells, Carey Bell, Lonnie Johnson, Otis Spann, Archie Edwards, Eddie Boyd, Big Joe Williams, Son House, Skip James, Big Mama Thornton, Bukka White, Champion Jack Dupree, Little Brother Montgomery, Victoria Spivey, J. B. Lenoir, Louisiana Red, Joe Turner, Magic Sam, Lee Jackson, Matt Guitar Murphy, Roosevelt Sykes, Doctor Ross, Koko Taylor, Hound Dog Taylor, and Sugar Pie DeSanto.
It must have been incredible, and I would have attended if I hadn't just turned two-years-old at the time.
This is a 5-CD box set, although several individual records have been released, including one of performances from the 1964 festival on Pure Pleasure Records which must sound amazing given Pure Pleasure's attention to detail. But this box set is a wonderful document of the festival's first four years and it sounds great. I so enjoy listening to it! The performances are top notch and it's not something you get to hear much anymore, especially sounding this good. While I love almost all live blues compilations, this one is beyond excellent - among the best I've heard - not only because of the sound quality but also because of what it really is: a document of the introduction of the blues into England and Europe.
The influence these shows had on popular music was enormous, and they can be at least partially credited with inspiring Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to keep playing the blues. The concerts also influenced many other artists who saw them and went on to form such bands as Led Zeppelin and Traffic. It can, I think, be argued that popular music as we know it today would have been very different had these tours not taken place when they did.
There would be other tours - I have another CD of the American Folk Blues Festival from 1970 - and there was another one in 1972. Then there's a gap of several years before another tour was launched in 1980, with others in 1982 and 1983. One last tour was put together in 1985, but after that it was over and nothing really measures up to the original tours in the 1960s. We're so enormously lucky that someone thought to record the shows with such attention to detail. It certainly wasn't done with an eye towards making money by pressing them into records and selling them. They wouldn't see release until the 1990s - this set was released in 1995 - but when they did finally show up they received considerable critical acclaim. I bought my mine as soon as I saw it on the shelf at Sam's, in Toronto.
The best part is that you can still buy the CDs for a very affordable price. As documents of authentic blues music goes, this box set (and the other CDs of the other shows, too) really can't be beat. They really are that good.
BONUS TRACK
In the late 50s and early 60s, British merchant seamen would bring back blues records from overseas, helping the genre gain a foothold in Britain. Then the HMV and EMI labels began to officially distribute American blues records in the U.K., and among those who were inspired by the music was Cyril Davies, who ran the London Skiffle Club in London's Soho, and guitarist Alexis Korner. Many young musicians who would later have enormous impact on the British (and world) blues scene played alongside these men when they first started out. Call it an apprenticeship of sorts.
In 1957 Davies and Korner decided their primary interest was the blues and closed the skiffle club, reopening it a month later as the London Blues and Barrelhouse Club, which focused mostly on country (acoustic) blues.
Then along came Muddy Waters with his electric guitar, which caused Davies and Korner to plug in and and form Blues Incorporated, which ignited the British blues scene and became a sort of clearing house for up-and-coming blues musicians including Long John Baldry, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Brian Jones, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker.
Blues Incorporated were given a residency at the Marquee Club, and it was there in 1962 thatr they recorded what is, essentially, the first British Blues album - R&B from the Marquee, a copy of which I have (on the Mobile Fidelity label).
John Mayall moved to London around this time and formed the Bluesbreakers, whose members at various times included, Jack Bruce, Aynsley Dunbar, Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor. There has been criticism levelled at the early British blues bands for exploiting African American music, but they also popularized it and caused America to look inward and discover what we didn't know we already had.
In the late 50s and early 60s, British merchant seamen would bring back blues records from overseas, helping the genre gain a foothold in Britain. Then the HMV and EMI labels began to officially distribute American blues records in the U.K., and among those who were inspired by the music was Cyril Davies, who ran the London Skiffle Club in London's Soho, and guitarist Alexis Korner. Many young musicians who would later have enormous impact on the British (and world) blues scene played alongside these men when they first started out. Call it an apprenticeship of sorts.
In 1957 Davies and Korner decided their primary interest was the blues and closed the skiffle club, reopening it a month later as the London Blues and Barrelhouse Club, which focused mostly on country (acoustic) blues.
Then along came Muddy Waters with his electric guitar, which caused Davies and Korner to plug in and and form Blues Incorporated, which ignited the British blues scene and became a sort of clearing house for up-and-coming blues musicians including Long John Baldry, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Brian Jones, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker.
Blues Incorporated were given a residency at the Marquee Club, and it was there in 1962 thatr they recorded what is, essentially, the first British Blues album - R&B from the Marquee, a copy of which I have (on the Mobile Fidelity label).
John Mayall moved to London around this time and formed the Bluesbreakers, whose members at various times included, Jack Bruce, Aynsley Dunbar, Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor. There has been criticism levelled at the early British blues bands for exploiting African American music, but they also popularized it and caused America to look inward and discover what we didn't know we already had.
