American Blues in England

ESSENTIAL QUESTION
OVERVIEW

In what ways did American Blues affect English musicians in the early 1960s?

"[Before the Beatles] The pop music in this country was very watery and weak, not worth talking about. Things like Cliff Richard."

-- Pete Townsend of the Who on British popular music in the early 1960s

This lesson looks at the Blues scene in England that prefigured the British Invasion. Though young people there were able to hear Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, and other artists associated with early American Rock and Roll, the music they could call their own, British popular music, sometimes left them dissatisfied. As Pete Townsend describes in the epigraph above, he was among those who found the home offerings "watery and weak."

But if one thing marked the U.K. at that time, it was a respect for American music. Yes, for Rock and Roll -- but also for the Blues tradition. Artists who had never left the States came over to England, France, and Germany and found themselves welcomed and celebrated. American Bluesmen like Big Bill Broonzy found they could have careers in Europe when in the States they had little going on. Starting in 1962, the European interest in American Blues was fed by the American Folk Blues Festival, an annual touring festival that brought Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, and many more to European audiences intermittently over the next few decades. In the audience for those first shows were future members of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and other major acts of the 1960s and 1970s.

Central to this lesson is a comparison of Cliff Richard and the Shadows, as an example of early 1960s British popular music, with the Blues that a young person in the U.K. might have seen at an American Folk Blues Festival. Students will get a chance to consider what the Blues might have meant to musicians like Cyril Davies, Alexis Korner, and Long John Baldry, all key figures in the British Blues explosion.

Today we will be watching two clips and taking notes about what you see, withholding your immediate response until both clips have been shown and you are able to do a focused comparison. 

1) Watch Cliff Richard and the Shadows performance of "The Young Ones" from 1962. 

2) Next watch the clip of Big Mama Thornton, with Buddy Guy, performing "Hound Dog."

Write a comparison of the two performances, either in columns or in sentence form. Questions to address:

How do the artists sound different?

How do they look different?

Which performance has more energy?

If you were a young person growing up in England, which performance might be more exciting and why?

Share answers to group.

Now watch the first minute or so of the interview with the Who's Pete Townsend, from which the epigraph above is taken. Answer the following questions:

How does Townsend describe the British popular music of the early 1960s, before the Beatles hit?

What is his characterization of Cliff Richard?

What does Townsend say about the music and culture of the States as an alternative to what he and others felt was "watery and weak" in English music? 

Next, read "Long John Meets John Lee Hooker," the Rock's Back pages article from 1964 in which American Bluesman John Lee Hooker meets young British Bluesman Long John Baldry. 

Lets break into groups of three to answer the following questions about the article:

1) How would you describe the relationship between the two musicians?

2) How old was Long John Baldry when he started listening to American Blues?

3) What seems to be Baldry's relationship to American Blues music?

4) What would you say are the differences between the two men?

5) How did Baldry come to know so much about John Lee Hooker?

6) Why do you think Hooker matters so much to Baldry?

Share their answers with the class.

Many American Blues performers came to England during the 1950s and 1960s and that Long John Baldry and others got to see many of them in concert.

One series of traveling performances, called the American Folk Blues Festival, would visit France, Germany, and England for many years, starting in 1962. Members of the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin attended some of these shows, as did Long John Baldry. What follows is a clip from one of those shows:

Watch Muddy Waters performing "Got My Mojo Working" as a part of the American Folk Blues Festival.

What do you think Long John Baldry might have liked about the performance, based on the article you read.

After discussing the answers,  watch Baldry perform the same song with Cyril Davies. 

Discuss the following questions:

1) What do Davies and Baldry borrow from Muddy Waters' version of "Got My Mojo Working"?

2) What is different in Baldry and Davies' version of the song?

3) How does the Davies/Baldry performance differ from what you saw of Cliff Richard earlier?

4) How you you say their version of "Got My Mojo Working" is a reaction to the kind of Pop played by Cliff Richard?

Formative Assessment: S. write a short paragraph summarizing how they what they think the American Blues brought to young people in England?

Closure: S. share paragraphs from above.