Comments on: Blues Incorporated: How British R&B Trashed Trad

By: Jonh Ingham

Jonh Ingham — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:31:25 +0000

I’m really enjoying these histories/reminiscences. The detail is astounding. History may be written by the victors, but the real story often seems to be found down in the cracks and forgotten places.

By: Richard Riegel

Richard Riegel — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:13:55 +0000

Fine history of British R&B in general, with Long John Baldry’s simile for short-haired Mick Jagger’s earliest concert presence — “all lips and ears – he looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy up there on stage” — almost worth the price of admission alone. That image would definitely be the “pull quote” if this ran in CREEM.

By: Joss Hutton

Joss Hutton — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:35:45 +0000

John, that’s brilliant, thanks very much.

As a plobby (good Leicester word, that) 15-year-old, I bought the then still on catalogue LP of “R&B From the Marquee” for the regulation price of £2.99 and, although it wasn’t as wild as The Pretty Things and Howlin’ Wolf records that my cousin had introduced me to, I really loved Cyril Davis’s harmonica and the way that the band swung (although I wouldn’t have used that word at the time). I guess that would’ve been around 1984, no wonder I wasn’t very impressed by The Smiths!

“Country Line Special” is still a top spin in my house, too…

By: Ed Jackson

Ed Jackson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:03:13 +0000

I enjoyed reading this article very much. I was a Barber fan from the age of 14 in 1960 (still am, for that matter, and I now manage his website), but not so much directly of trad, with a couple of exceptions (the Saints, from Manchester, and Alex Welsh; Acker Bilk’s band was good in the 1950s before it got very pop-y, and I could never see the attraction of Kenny Ball’s band). Anyway, more to the point, you do seem to implicitly hint at Chris Barber’s band being a little different from the rest, and there is no question that they were more dedicated to the music than to success in the charts (after all, the band is still playing, almost 50 years later, and the music, though different, is very good too!). However, you might also acknowledge that Korner was a member of one of Chris’s earliest bands (they had also attended the same school for a short time), and, most importantly, it was Chris Barber himself who brought Muddy Waters to Britain, and in fact paid for it out of his own pocket. This fundamental contribution to the course of British music is, often, I am sad to say, overlooked, and it is only recently and in some rare quarters (see Pete Frame’s book, The Restless Generation) that this has been acknowledged. Having said all that, I did enjoy your article and it gave me some new insights as to what happened back then. I’d like to reproduce it on the Barber site or, failing that, to link to it.
Ed Jackson (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, but writing this in Reykjavik, Iceland)