January 31, 2014


1-29-2014 
Share show with Paul
 
Fifth Wednesdays have always been fun.  Since the show’s inception in 1990, it has become tradition that the alternating week’s host shares the show with me.  This week we did it a little differently.  Paul had done his homework and put together a half-show of music related to and including Ike Turner in his early years, pre-Tina because his show 50s R&B House Party usually is limited to that decade.
 
As I mentioned, Paul had put in more than his normal preparation so I suggested he take the first half of the show in order to get the continuity and also make sure he got enough time to fit in his whole storyline.  Now, I know a little about that time in Ike’s career and I would have interjected whenever I thought it would be helpful, but when Paul was done there was really nothing to say that he hadn’t covered.
 
Since Paul was doing a theme show I just picked out some favorite tunes from a couple of various artist (all of them American to give my listeners a reprieve from the ongoing Brit Blues series) CDs I’d compiled about a decade ago.  It was an entertaining and informative show.
 
I’d also like to congratulate Radio Re for picking up the show preceding us.  I have been fortunate to have had very little change in the shows at either end of my shift.  I’m not sure but I believe Eduardo and Nguyen took over the noon to 2pm slot directly from Patti McKay and I do know that the Razzberry took over 5-8pm immediately upon the retirement of Bill Hazzard.  While Ed and Nguyen will be missed, it will be nice to continue to have happy faces to facilitate my comings and goings.  Re will be on every week starting the first Wednesday in February.

January 21, 2014

Development of the British Blues ---- show 2 ---- (1-22-2014)


The Development of the British Blues, show 2
1-22-2014
Cyril Davies 
Long John Baldry
 
Much of Cyril Davies’ short history was given in the Alexis Korner information from two weeks ago.  He was born outside London in 1932 and was a more than competent 12-string guitarist and banjo player, but he was to make his mark as by far the most dominant blues harmonica man in the country.  While working days as owner of an auto body repair shop, he put in four years of nights playing banjo in the Trad Jazz band, Steve Lane’s Southern Stompers.  It was later, in 1955 when he ran the Skiffle club, that he began to learn the 12-string guitar.
 
Where we left off last show, Davies had split with Alexis Korner, who kept the name Blues Incorporated, to form his own band the All Stars in November of 1962.  Their original lineup included four members from Lord Sutch’s Savages: Bernie Watson on guitar (although Jimmy Page is also mentioned as having a very brief spot to start), Ricky Brown on bass, Carlo Little behind the drums and Nicky Hopkins on piano, plus Long John Baldry handling most of the vocals.  They quickly recorded two Davies originals for their first single in February 1963 for the Pye label, Country Line Special and Chicago Calling, followed in August by Preaching the Blues and Sweet Mary, and somewhere along the line they recorded Someday Baby, which Pye apparently did not release at the time, and Not Fade Away, possibly for another label.
 
In January ’63 to positive critical acclaim, the band added The Velvettes, a South African vocal trio who had just completed a London engagement of the musical King Kong, for at least a couple of gigs   For the first month of Davies’ Thursday night Marquee engagement, the Rolling Stones played during the intermissions but were let go by the club when they asked for more money.  The All Stars’ rhythm section of Little and Brown had gigged with the Stones on occasions during December and January and the Stones even offered Carlo membership in the band, but he chose to stay with Davies because the Stones appeared to be going more towards a Chuck Berry style than the All Stars.  Besides, Davies was better known.
 
But the band did not stay intact much longer.  Nicky Hopkins became ill in May of 1963 and had to be replaced by Keith Scott.  Brown left in June to rejoin Lord Sutch as did Little soon afterward and Watson left to join Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.  That amounts to the entire band save Baldry and Davies.  Page returned for another brief interlude, but soon the new cast was assembled with drummer Mickey Waller, bassist Cliff Barton and guitarist Geoff Bradford joining Scott on piano.  By the time Davies would pass away, Johnny Parker had taken over the piano role and Bob Wackett was doing the drumming.
 
Towards the end of 1963, Cyril was suffering from pleurisy and increased his intake of alcohol to manage the pain while not significantly decreasing the band’s playing schedule to get more rest.  He would die at the age of 31 in January 1964, officially of endocarditis but also often mentioned as resulting from leukemia.
 
We took our music for the Cyril Davies sets from two CDs listed as Alexis Korner featuring Cyril Davies.  The first set contained selections from the CD Blues from the Roundhouse, which contains not only the three original releases of that title but also all the other early Korner / Davies recordings through 1957, including all four songs from the Beryl Bryden sessions as well as the Ken Colyer Skiffle releases (which were just prior to Davies coming into the picture), following up later with another set taken from their historic 1962 album R&B from the Marquee (which also features vocals by Long John Baldry).  Why was Alexis given top billing?  Perhaps Korner was more influential as far as picking the rest of the band, but of the two founding members, Cyril was the better vocalist and musician, generally considered the best Blues harp player in the country. 
 
Sandwiched between these, we jump ahead to March 4th 1964 for three songs featuring Long John Baldry backed up by Chris Barber’s band and including Chris’ wife Ottilie Patterson and Rod Stewart joining him on the vocals, although Stewart is only on Up Above My Head, a song firmly in the repertoire when Rod and Long John would get together.  We immediately move on to the 1964 single of Willie Dixon’s You’ll Be Mine leading into selected tracks from the 1965 debut album Long John Baldry and his Hoochie Coochie Men.  This comes from the first of two discs, the cream of the CD Looking at Long John Baldry, The UA Years 1964-1966; the second disc is almost entirely not to my taste.
 
We return to Baldry later in the show with songs from the 1965 Steampacket album plus a few from the two later albums It Ain’t Easy and Everything Stops for Tea.  I expect to have enough time to wind the show up with a couple of studio tracks Davies recorded with his All Stars, Someday Baby and Not Fade Away.
 
At six foot seven inches tall, Long John Baldry was a standout in just about any crowd and when you stack him up alongside the singers who made the Blues popular in Great Britain, he is still the same imposing figure.  Baldry, born in January of 1941, began accompanying himself on 12-string guitar around the coffee houses of London and soon did it well enough to impress visiting piano players such as Memphis Slim and Champion Jack Dupree into inviting him to back them on their late 1950s concert tours of Britain.  Later, in February 1962, he joined Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies in Blues Incorporated as their lead singer until, in July, he opted to tour Germany with the Swiss Storyville Hot Six, among other groups.  Korner wanted him back so badly after the breakup with Davies that he paid Long John’s fare back home.  When he got back, Baldry sang with both Blues Incorporated and the All Stars until he opted for Davies’ group near the end of January, saying he went with Davies because, “Alexis was too hospitable to other musicians and I didn’t want to share the stage with twenty other singers”, but also claimed the decision was made on the toss of a coin.  When Davies passed away prematurely early in 1964, Baldry kept the band together and changed their name from the All Stars to the Hoochie Coochie Men because another Muddy Waters tune appeared to work well as the name for the Rolling Stones.
 
The original Hoochie Coochie Men are all heard on the album Long John’s Blues, although it doesn’t quite match up with my understanding of the All Stars at the time of Davies’ demise.  They include Billy Law, one of many drummers that would drift through the band; bassist Cliff Barton, who had turned down an offer from John Mayall in favor of Davies’ All Stars; pianist Ian Armit, who did not appear to be in the All Stars but would oftentimes accompany Long John through 1972; and guitarist Geoff Bradford.  Conspicuously missing from the album is Rod Stewart, but he is heard on Up Above My Head with Ottilie Patterson and the Chris Barber Band. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that when Stewart and Baldry sing together, it is more often than not a Gospel tune, as with this Sister Rosetta Tharpe example.

A longtime friendship was forged between Baldry and Stewart after Long John heard Rod singing a Muddy Waters tune at West London’s Twickenham station following a performance by the Hoochie Coochie Men at the Eel Pie Island nightclub in 1964(?).  Rod was with him in 1965 when vocalist Julie Driscoll and organist Brian Auger joined the band and transformed it into Steampacket.  (I have nothing to confirm this yet, but the only brief reference I have found made it sound more like a transition than a whole new band.)  The band broke up in 1966 and Long John then began another friendship, this time with Elton John, known then by his real name of Reginald Dwight, as the band Bluesology was formed.  Dwight combined the first names of guitarist Elton Dean and John Baldry to form his new stage name.

Baldry had long been known to be gay by his friends and associates, but stern British laws kept him from making it public until his 1979 album Baldry’s Out celebrated that fact and also his release from a mental institution where he had been briefly detained for mental problems in 1975.  In the meantime, Bluesology had broken up in 1968 but Baldry, now embarking on a solo career, was there to support Elton John when, in 1969, he attempted to commit suicide over a relationship with a woman.  Elton John was found by his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin and Baldry and the two convinced him not to marry the woman.  Elton’s song Someone Saved My Life Tonight came out of that situation.
 
Baldry’s 1971 LP It Ain’t Easy had Rod Stewart and Elton John each producing a side, as they did again on the 1972 follow-up, Everything Stops for Tea.  It Ain’t Easy was well received in the U.S., making the top 100 album list, and its song Don’t Try to Lay No Boogie Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll became his best known hit.
 
Baldry had other hits, but none as big.  In 1967 he had hit number one in the British pop charts with Let the Heartaches Begin and the next year’s top twenty number, Mexico, became the 1968 UK Olympic team’s theme song.  His duet version of You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling with Seattle songstress Kathi MacDonald barely made the US charts but ran up to #5 in Australia in 1980, although the same Wikipedia article says it reached #2.  MacDonald toured with Long John for decades afterwards.  His album Right to Sing the Blues won a 1997 Juno Award in the category of Blues albums.  I recently purchased the album and I can easily see how they came to that opinion.  John went all the way back to his earliest musical inspiration for what would be his final album, 2002’s Tribute to Leadbelly. 
 
Baldry spent some time in New York City and Los Angeles but, in 1978, found my birthplace of Vancouver, British Columbia more to his liking and became a Canadian citizen.  Wikipedia lists his last live show being in Columbus, Ohio, on July 19th 2004, at Barristers Hall with guitarist Bobby Cameron, but also says his final UK Tour as 'The Long John Baldry Trio' concluded on November 13th 2004 at The King's Lynn Arts Centre in Norfolk, England. The trio consisted of LJB, Butch Coulter on harmonica and Dave Kelly on slide guitar.  Last time I looked at my calendar, I thought November came after July.  Oh well ….
 
Baldry died on 21 July 2005, in Vancouver of a chest infection.  In addition to his musical career, he also did voice over’s for animated projects and, I believe, documentaries.  One thing I gleaned from an interview on the Right to Sing the Blues CD was that he shared vocals with Willie Dixon in Willie Dixon’s Dream Band right before Willie passed away with the impressive cast of Mose Allison at the piano, Carey Bell on blues harp, Al Duncan sitting at the drums, Rob Wasserman playing bass and Cash McCall on guitar.
 
Here I would like to add a little more about bandleader Chris Barber before we get too far removed from his relevance.  Although very little of his music has appeared on these shows, so many of the musicians we have thus far discussed appeared in his bands and it was while under his tutelage that their decisions to go more deeply into the blues became firmly grounded.  This multi-talented music man (trombone, bass trumpet, bass, vocalist, composer and arranger) set up his first band in 1948.  He attempted a merger with Ken Colyer in 1953, but as George Melly stated, “the whole band was sacked or sacked Ken, depending on who was telling the story”.  Key members of the early band were his future wife and vocalist Ottilie Patterson, guitarist Lonnie Donegan, trumpeter Pat Halcox (who stayed with him for decades) and clarinetist Monty Sunshine.  Sunshine’s Petite Fleur did much to establish the popularity of Trad Jazz, much as Donegan’s version of Rock Island Line did for Skiffle, both numbers having been recorded as part of the Barber ensemble.
 
Barber’s appreciation for the Blues and his willingness to incorporate it into their routine, and before that Skiffle, helped him to maintain his audience even in the face of competition from the new force in British music headed up by the Beatles.  He was not averse to putting rock musicians alongside his Jazzmen (such as drummer Peter York after his time with the Stevie Winwood era Spencer Davis Group) while continuing with his Jazz projects including, in the 80s, a collaboration with Dr. John on Take Me Back to New Orleans which included recording and concert appearances.

British Invasion celebration & fundraiser (1-19-2014)


Brit Invasion celebration & fundraiser
1-19-2014
Beatles
Dave Clark Five
Hollies
Kinks
Who
 
It was in January 1964, fifty years ago, that the Beatles (and the Dave Clark Five) released their first American 45s, and since many of the KKUP DJs and listeners are of an age to remember the events impact on our musical appreciation we put on a special 24-hour celebration in which I was anxious to participate.  Considering it went up against the two NFL conference championship games (including one with the 49ers), it was received well by our listeners and brought in almost $4,000 to the KKUP coffers, possibly sufficient to make it more than just a onetime event.

Carefully avoiding the groups I will be profiling on my regular show for my half of a three hour show that I shared with One Eyed Jack, who had no such self-imposed restrictions, I had a lot of fun playing the music I was brought up on with one of my favorite people at KKUP.  In order for it to have been any better it would have needed to be much longer because it was extremely difficult to limit these five bands to merely fifteen minute sets.

Development of the British Blues --- show 1 ---- (1-8-2014)


The Development of the British Blues, show 1
1-8-2014
Skiffle
Alexis Korner
Graham Bond
 
In the mid ‘50s, the Brits were enamored of a music they referred to as Trad Jazz.  Exactly what this was, whether it was what we call Dixieland or maybe Swing I am not sure, but out of these Jazz ensembles came a musical expression called Skiffle.  One of the popular practitioners of Trad Jazz was Chris Barber, a bandleader since 1948, and he assembled from the ranks of his Jazz band a handful of players to perform between the Jazz sets a music with guitar and/or banjo, percussion and often harmonica as the dominant instruments and based upon a combination of American folk traditions, particularly Blues, Gospel and work chants with many similarities to the jug bands of the 30s.
 
Probably the most popular of the Skiffle singers was Tony Donegan who, while performing on the same bill as Lonnie Johnson, was erroneously introduced as Lonnie Donegan and opted to maintain that as his stage name, presumably out of respect for the great American Jazz/Blues guitarist.  While he released his early recordings under his own name, he was still a member of the Barber band, but upon returning from a highly successful ten week US tour with the intention of remaining with Barber, he found himself priced out of Chris’ range, who had a policy of equal pay for all his personnel.  Although all the tunes we hear in these two sets were released between 1954 and 1956 (and taken from disc two of Proper’s 4CD Rock ‘n’ Skiffle, whose liner notes also provided this information), Lonnie went on to a successful career lasting long after the Skiffle craze had waned around 1958.
 
Only Donegan was more successful than the Vipers, who had a half dozen hits since their start in 1956.  By the time the band folded in 1958, they had added Hank Marvin, Tony Meehan and Jet Harris to the lineup who continued together and ultimately became the Shadows, one of the most influential Brit bands of the era and backed up some of the popular singers of the time.  Vipers’ founder Wally Whyton went on to have a long BBC career, active until one month before his death in 1997.
 
Pianist Johnny Parker was intrigued by Boogie Woogie and Blues, and while part of the Humphrey Lyttleton Band was able to indulge when the band broke into its Skiffle sets and was actually the first to regularly perform as such during his Skiffle night at the Latin Quarter in Soho, predating Barber by a few months.  He also played in bands with Barber, Colyer and Korner.
 
Emerging out of these groups was Alexis Korner, whom we hear here with Beryl Bryden’s Backroom Skiffle band.  Washboard player and vocalist Bryden, dubbed by Ella Fitzgerald as the British Queen of the Blues, was herself a graduate of the Barber band. 
 
Alexis was born in Paris in 1928 and moved around Europe and North Africa until settling in England in 1939.  He had been taught piano from age five, but as a teen he discovered Jimmy Yancey (by stealing an album) and that boogie woogie led to a lifelong love for the Blues.  When his father heard him trying to play Yancey’s licks on their grand piano he locked up the lid and forbade Alexis from ever playing the family instrument again.  1947 saw Alexis serving in the British version of the draft and stationed in West Germany where he was exposed to more Jazz and Blues through the U.S. Armed Forces radio as well as the American servicemen’s private collections of V-disks (special morale-boosting releases for the military made when there was a recording ban during WWII) and records.  That experience, coupled with the opportunity to see a Leadbelly concert, made up Korner’s mind to become a musician fulltime.
 
With Tony (later Lonnie) Donegan leaving to do his National Service in 1949, Korner replaced him in the Chris Barber band as a guitarist and occasionally as a harmonica player.  As Korner later put it, “I was one of the first and one of the worst harmonica players in the country”.  By the time Donegan returned, Alexis had built himself a sufficient reputation to open up other musical opportunities.  He could be found performing solo around the coffee houses or other night spots in London and then showing up at the after hours clubs to seek out fellow Blues-minded musicians, but pretty soon Ken Colyer split from the Barber band and set up his own Jazz band.  Alexis was immediately installed as guitar and mandolin player for their Skiffle offshoot which very shortly recorded three songs included on Colyer’s full band LP Back to the Delta in June of 1954.  In July the following year they returned to the studio and Colyer’s Skiffle Group put out their own EP.
 
Korner’s next recording session was in November of 1956 for the Beryl Bryden single we heard at the end of our Skiffle portion of this show.  It was significant in part because it was the first studio session for Cyril Davies, who would be a key factor in the Korner story as his harmonica and guitar playing accompanist over the next few years.  The band returned to  the studio a couple of months later and laid down two more tracks that would remain on the shelf for a half century.
 
Davies had been running the London Skiffle Club in its performances every Thursday night in the upstairs pub in the Roundhouse and in 1955 he took in Alexis as a partner, changing it to the London Blues and Barrelhouse Club, which became the first club for the Blues and was visited by American bluesmen when in town including Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Champion Jack Dupree.  It didn’t hurt that Chris Barber was instrumental in bringing these players to England, [and Davies and Korner remained working members of Barber’s band. (verify?)]  In February of 1957 the first of three releases that went under the title Blues from the Roundhouse was recorded, this as a seven track LP with Korner and Davies backed by Terry Plant on string bass and Mike Collins on washboard, calling the band Alexis Korner’s Breakdown Group featuring Cyril Davies.  This came out on the 77 label who, in order to avoid a sales tax, limited the pressing to 99 copies which were sold only through Doug Dobel’s Jazz Shop.  July 1957 found them recording Volume 1, the first of two four song EPs for Decca’s Tempo label.   To the label’s demands and against the band’s wishes, it was credited to Alexis Korner’s Skiffle Group including Chris Capon on bass and Dave Stevens on piano.  Stevens was on hand for Volume 2 along with Collins and bassist Jim Bray for an April 1958 session.  This was the first time the name Blues Incorporated was used.  Personal differences had taken its toll and Korner went back to the Barber band while Davies also continued performing, most often in a duo setting with guitarist Geoff Bradford.
 
By the end of summer 1961, the Barber band had changed the Skiffle break to an R&B set, oftentimes backing Chris’ wife Ottilie Patterson.  This was also the first time Alexis had played using amplified equipment.  The success of these performances provided the impetus to form his own electric band.  Getting together again in March of 1962, Korner and Davies opened the Ealing Club in London and formed again Blues Incorporated with saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith, Hoogonboom on bass and on drums Charlie Watts.  Long John Baldry was brought in to allow Davies to pay more attention to his harmonica playing and was the only paid vocalist  among many sit-ins, including at varying times Mick Jagger, Paul Jones, Eric Burdon and Art Wood.  Among the instrumentalists who would also join the band onstage were Keith Richard and Brian Jones and all of these would play a part in propelling the Blues to the status where it was the predominant Brit musical form of the late 60s and further. 
 
They also got a prestigious booking on Thursday nights beginning in May at the Marquee while maintaining their Saturday night gig at the Ealing Club.  By September, the Marquee was drawing 1,000 people attending the Thursday events.  Even adding Monday night shows in December could not stem the overflowing crowds.  In June, they recorded the studio album titled R&B from the Marquee, but by October, musical differences arose, and once again the two took separate paths, Korner still under the banner of Blues Incorporated and Cyril Davies with his All Stars.
 
At one point, the entire band backing Korner for Blues Incorporated were members of the future Graham Bond Organization, a four-piece group whose drummer and bass player (Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce) would later form Cream with guitarist Eric Clapton.  Saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith would himself join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and later Colosseum.  In fact, these three represented exactly what Davies felt was the wrong direction Blues Incorporated was headed, just too strong a Jazz influence for Davies’ purist vision of the Blues. 
 
When Cyril left, Graham Bond joined the band as well.  While Bond was signed on as an alto sax player and to share in the vocals, he quickly convinced Korner that he should lead a trio while playing the Hammond organ (he later created a keyboard instrument he called the mellotron) accompanied by Baker and Bruce during  the full band’s breaks.  The trio was received sufficiently well that they decided there was more money to be made on their own than with Blues Incorporated.  They also invited Heckstall-Smith to join them, but at the time he wished to immerse himself a little longer in the Blues.

NOTE:  from here on, this post is still a work in progress but it should be completed by the end of the month.  Just need to input and verify more information, particularly on the Bond Organization.  My apologies.
 
Dick Heckstall-Smith had been the first of the quartet to join Blues Incorporated.  The Rough Guide for Jazz considered him “a pioneer in his 1960s commuting between Jazz and Blues” and “a crucially important, if not relatively undersung, figure in UK Jazz-related music”.  They list a resume that includes being co-leader of the Cambridge University’s Jazz Band in 1954 and touring with them in Switzerland in 1956.  Among his accomplishments in the London Jazz scene were a 1958 stint with Sandy Brown’s band and an 18-week membership in the Ronnie Scott Quintet, also in 1958.  He then freelanced until joining Blues Incorporated in 1962, then on to the Bond Organization and ultimately to Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in 1967.  As Mayall was moving his focus (and residency) to American musicians, he became part of Jon Hiseman’s Colosseum from August ’68 to November of ’71, after which he began his solo career.  He went on to get a social sciences degree, form his own bands and tour Europe with Bo Diddley in 1983.
 
Long before their association with Korner, Heckstall-Smith and Ginger Baker had played together in numerous of the London Jazz bands and jam sessions.  Baker came into the Korner ensemble as the recipient of the bizarre situation where Watts felt Baker was the best fit for the band and offered to drop out.  Watts thought himself not that good a drummer and wasn’t really ready for the professional musician’s life, but immediately after his departure he fell into a band that would soon become the Rolling Stones.
 
Jack Bruce came into contact with Korner and company when he approached the band requesting to sit in.  Alexis was in a mood to allow him to join in on the last set.  The first tune was a relatively simple one and Bruce impressed so the next ones got progressively faster and more complicated structurally and Jack continued to shine.  Korner knew then that he had found the bass player he wanted.  After his 1963-65 service with Bond, Bruce worked briefly with Mayall and Manfred Mann before the startup of Cream.
 
Although Graham Bond was the front man, namesake for the group and no less talented musically than anyone in the band, no small feat in itself, it was Ginger Baker who gradually dominated most of the business-related decisions.  Complaining that in spite of their grueling playing schedule (x gigs in x days plus studio sessions fit in between) the band seemed to never have enough money left over, he took over finances saying Bond was, “ “  He also fired John McLaughlin, who had been with the band only a short time before Heckstall-Smith joined them, because he was “a whiner and a moaner” and Bruce at knifepoint
 
 
In January of 1963, Korner gave up his Thursday night slot at the Marquee in favor of Thursdays at the Flamingo; Davies quickly snatched up the Marquee opening.  May 1963 saw the recording of an album titled Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated with only Heckstall-Smith a familiar name on the all-instrumental album.  To replace the alto sax of Bond, Heckstall-Smith recommended Art Themen whom Dick had performed with

Zoot Money until October 1963, then Goins; ex-GI had sung with BB King and Bobby Bland; Cavern included DHS, David Castle on alto sax, Malcolm Saul on organ, drummer Mike Scott and bass; joining Alexis at the BBC studio November ‘64 were Goins, DHS, Ray Warleigh on alto, Thompson and Cox
 
But to replace Bond’s vocal participation Korner found the fix in a black American ex-GI, Herbie Goins.
 
This revamping of the lineup occurred in time for their February 64 live album recording, At the Cavern, but Goins would stick through the follow-up (recording date not known, but released in 1964) Red Hot from Alex as well as a couple of singles released in 1964 and 1965.  Making his first appearance on the Alex album was bass player Danny Thompson.  He and drummer Terry Cox would form the foundation of the next era of Blues Incorporated, even performing often as a trio, before the duo went on to a higher level of commercial acceptance with the folk-rock band, Pentangle.
 
We took the first Korner set from the 1967 Sky High album (so named because there was apparently a copious amount of pot ingested during the session) while the second Korner set is BBC material recorded about the same time and included in that excellent CD.  The Graham Bond sets are from his excellent LPs The Sounds of ’65 and There’s a Bond Between Us, which have been combined on a single CD.
 
While Korner was never considered a great musician, the legacy of his utilization of local Blues and Jazz talent established his reputation as the “Father of British Blues”, a title of which he did not approve.  He was often known to say that the genre had been overrun by players, many of whom he had inspired, who wanted to bloviate on extended solos rather than the basics of the Blues.  He never made much money from his musical efforts, so it was a wise decision back in 1955 to sign on with the British Broadcasting Corporation as a trainee studio manager in order to put food on the table for his family.  It set him up for a highly successful radio career (and some television as well) leading up to 1977, when he wrote his own scripts for The Alexis Korner Blues and Soul Show.  I am not sure exactly, but I believe he was still with the BBC right up to October 1983 when he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital, passing away on New Year’s Day of 1984 at the age of 55.  Just another way he turned people on to his love for the Blues and music in general.