« Back to Top Level | Various Artists

Various Artists - Decca Originals - The UK Blues Scene (1969)

Track listing:
  1. Curly The Bluesbreakers 4:49
  2. Key To The Highway Eddie Boyd 2:34
  3. The Super-Natural John Mayall & Peter Green 2:56
  4. Pretty Girls Everywhere Otis Spann 2:51
  5. Blue Coat Man Eddie Boyd 2:32
  6. Third Degree Champion Jack Dupree 3:17
  7. Steppin´out John Mayall & Eric Clapton 2:29
  8. Train To Nowhere Savoy Brown 4:12
  9. Roll Me Over Curtis Jones 2:37
  10. Get On The Right Track Baby Zoot Money 1:52
  11. Night Time Is The Right Time Alexis Korner 4:19
  12. Sweet Little Angel Mae Mercer 3:21
  13. Strut Around Graham Bond Organization 2:37
  14. Long Night Steve Anglo & John Mayall 2:02
  15. Goin´down Slow Davy Graham 2:27
  16. Taste & Try Before You Buy Savoy Brown 2:22
  17. Me And My Woman Keef Hartley 5:05
  18. Dust My Broom Eddie Boyd 2:39
  19. Barrel House Woman Champion Jack Dupree 2:02
  20. I´m Gonna Move Rod Stewart 2:56
  21. Double Trouble John Mayall & Peter Green 3:21
  22. 24 Hours Champion Jack Dupree 4:06
  23. Early In The Morning Alexis Korner Blues Inc 2:58
  24. Early In The Morning Savoy Brown Blues Band 3:04
  25. I Need Your Love John Mayall 4:13

Notes

Freakbeat is a rock music genre that peaked approximately between 1966 and 1967.

The term was invented in the 1980s by the music journalist Phil Smee, to retroactively describe a music style that has been described as a missing link between the early to mid-1960s mod R&B scene and the psychedelic rock and progressive rock genres that emerged in the late-1960s with bands such as Pink Floyd. Freakbeat music was typically created by four-piece bands experimenting with studio production techniques. Elements of the freakbeat sound include strong direct drum beats, loud and frenzied guitar riffs, and extreme effects such as: fuzztone, flanging, distortion and compression or phasing on the vocal or drum tracks. Often used almost synonymously with garage rock, the term is usually applied to music originating in the UK (unlike garage, which is most commonly used to describe American groups). Early albums by The Who and The Kinks supplied the blueprints for freakbeat bands that followed, such as The Creation, The Sorrows and The Move.

Mod (originally modernist, sometimes capitalised) is a subculture that originated in London in the late 1950s and peaked in the early to mid 1960s.

Significant elements of the mod lifestyle included pop music, such as African American soul, Jamaican ska, and British beat music and R&B; fashion (often tailor-made suits); and Italian motor scooters. The mod scene was also associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night dancing at clubs. The mod scene developed when British teenagers began to reject the "dull, timid, old-fashioned, and uninspired" British culture around them, with its repressed and class-obsessed mentality and its "naffness". From the mid to late 1960s onwards, the mass media often used the term mod in a wider sense to describe anything that was believed to be popular, fashionable or modern.

Beat music, also known as Merseybeat (for bands from Liverpool beside the River Mersey), is a pop music genre that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll, doo wop, skiffle, R&B and soul. Beat groups characteristically had simple guitar-dominated line-ups, with vocal harmonies and catchy tunes. Beat music has little to do with the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s, and more to do with driving rhythms, which the bands had adopted from their rhythm and blues and soul music influences.

In the late 1950s, beat groups began to thrive in Liverpool in ballrooms and halls, and it is estimated that any one time there were around 350 different bands active in the Merseyside area. Many Liverpool beat groups went to Hamburg, Germany to hone their skills.[1] The local scene was recorded in the magazine Mersey Beat, started in 1961 by Bill Harry. Harry claims to have coined the term Mersey Beat "based on a policeman's beat and not that of the music".[1] The Merseybeat sound remained popular only locally until the breakthrough success of The Beatles, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Cilla Black and other artists. In 1964, a British Invasion of acts led by The Beatles swept across the Atlantic Ocean and stormed the charts in North America. By 1966, Merseybeat was considered passé, and had given way to the psychedelic rock of the mid- to late 1960s.

The most common instrumentation of beat groups featured lead, rhythm and bass guitars plus drums, as popularized by The Beatles, The Searchers, Gerry & The Pacemakers and others. Beat groups - even those with a separate lead singer - often sang both verses and choruses in close harmony. The vocal harmony style often resembles doo wop, with nonsense syllables in the backing vocals. Unlike in doo-wop, falsetto and bass harmonies were rare. Unlike typical rock and roll, Merseybeat was more likely to incorporate secondary harmony, especially in the middle eight. Merseybeat is typified by the synchronization of the bass guitar (usually playing only the root and fifth notes of the chords) and the bass drum, although often the bass guitar will play walking and boogie basslines. Although there are instrumental breaks, the focus is on the presentation of the song rather than instrumental prowess.

Beat bands were heavily influenced by American bands of the era, such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets (whose name inspired The Beatles' name), as well as earlier British groups such as The Shadows. In turn, the beat bands influenced younger American and British musicians, especially the early garage rock bands of the late 1960s. Other styles of music, including show tunes such as "You'll Never Walk Alone" and "Till There Was You", were also adapted.

The British blues is a type of blues music that originated in the late 1950s. American blues musicians like B.B. King and Howlin' Wolf were massively popular in Britain at the time. Muddy Waters is said to have been the first electric blues player to have performed in front of British audiences circa 1959, and others like Sonny Boy Williamson, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry followed him. British teenagers began playing the blues, imitating various styles of American blues. Gradually, a new distinctly British sound arose by the mid-1960s, called Beat. This form of the blues, and various derivatives, became massively popular in the US, leading to the British Invasion and British R&B.

The scene coalesced around two figures, Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, who started a blues club in London’s Soho, The London Blues and Barrelhouse Club, at a time when many American blues artists were also playing in London. The Marquee Club was also central to the scene, and a popular place for bands to play. Skiffle had run its course, and some musicians were seeking the real American roots music.

It was through the clubs Korner and Davies ran that the original Rolling Stones came together in 1962 at The Ealing Club, where Korner introduced Brian Jones to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (Charlie Watts, at the time, was drumming with Korner’s group, Blues Incorporated). Korner's London blues scene, as well as suburban venues like Klook’s Kleek, gave a start to many of Britain's blues-influenced musicians in the 1960s, including Long John Baldry and the Yardbirds. Acoustic guitarist Davy Graham, regarded as one of the early heroes of the instrument, performed widely, but had come to the music independently

Curiously, the other towering figure of British blues, John Mayall, came to the music on his own, while living in Manchester, but he recorded his first album live in London, on 7 December 1964.

The acoustic blues boom in Britain fully came together a little later, in the mid 1960s, as blues clubs sprang up around the country, forming a touring circuit for young musicians such as Jo Ann Kelly and Mike Cooper. Everything culminated in the National Jazz & Blues Festival in Plumpton, with its 9th edition in August 1969 and tenth in August 1970, after which it faded away rapidly, although several musicians and bands kept on holding high the blues torch for many years.