Page "British blues" Paragraph 3

Among these were guitarist and blues harpist Cyril Davies, who ran the London Skiffle Club at the Roundhouse public house in London ’ s Soho and guitarist Alexis Korner, both of whom worked for jazz band leader Chris Barber, playing in the R & B segment he introduced to his show.

The club served as a focal point for British skiffle acts and Barber was responsible for bringing over American folk and blues performers, who found they were much better known and paid in Europe than America.

The first major artist was Big Bill Broonzy, who visited England in the mid-1950s, but who, rather than his electric Chicago blues, played a folk blues set to fit in with British expectations of American blues as a form of folk music.

In 1957 Davies and Korner decided that their central interest was the blues and closed the skiffle club, reopening a month later as The London Blues and Barrelhouse Club.

To this point British blues was acoustically played emulating Delta blues and country blues styles and often part of the emerging second British folk revival.

Critical in changing this was the visit of Muddy Waters in 1958, who initially shocked British audiences by playing amplified electric blues, but who was soon playing to ecstatic crowds and rave reviews.

Davies and Korner, having already split with Barber, now plugged in and began to play high powered electric blues that became the model for the sub-genre, forming the band Blues Incorporated.