(Credits: Far Out / Showtime Documentary Films)
People often talk about British invasion music, as though over on this side of the pond, we were the creators of all things original, but I can’t help but feel as though that attitude overlooks one very important element of music history.
Led by The Beatles and followed closely behind by The Kinks, Britain flooded the American charts with a refreshed band of rock music in the 1960s, wherein the decades before the music that would later be dubbed as the British invasion were dominated by Americans and their creation of the blues, which ultimately showed us the way with the movement.
The heady blues scene that populated most of London in the 1960s and gave way to icons like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton was rooted in ideas that had originated from across the pond, with legends of the American blues scene like Muddy Waters, BB King, and Howlin’ Wolf laying down tracks that would ultimately inspire a generation of legendary British rockers.
Eric Clapton, in particular, wore that influence proudly on his sleeve. For a young Clapton, forming his understanding of music in the very limited UK charts of the 1950s, the work of these aforementioned legends would have been truly transcendent. Their guitar playing added colour to what was an otherwise monochromatic world and provided a musical pathway for someone like Clapton to follow.
“The first one who got to me was Hubert, by virtue of having the earlier records on Chess that Howlin’ Wolf made, which Hubert was on,” Clapton explained when highlighting his major influences.
He added, “I’d never heard anything like that kind of guitar playing before. It seemed to me almost impossible to define how he was getting those effects. Buddy later came to London and I saw him play live, and got a whole other take of what Chicago blues was like live, and what kind of guitar player he was.”
He continued how his interests were developed off the backs of “primitive classics” from the country blues to the Chicago scene that was bolstered with interesting production techniques, “or background singers, even horns. It took me a while to digest Bobby Bland and Little Junior Parker, because they had orchestras. I was interested in Muddy’s kind of thing, small combos, with two guitars, harmonica, bass and drums.”
Muddy and Wolf were the two big names of that incredible Chicago blues scene that provided the foundation for Clapton’s influence, but there was also Big Bill Broonzy floating in and around the bars of the Midwestern city, and his presence is perhaps the most underrated of all. His prowling style of blues guitar playing, combined with his raw, gravelly vocal style, caught the ear of not only Clapton, but Keith Richards too, who claimed Broonzy “encapsulated everything I wanted to be”.
Sure, our ‘British invasion’ music is something to be forever proud of, but let’s not forget where the foundations of that takeover really began.
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