Table Of ContentThe British Blues Network
The British Blues Network
Adoption, Emulation, and Creativity
Andrew Kellett
University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
Copyright © 2017 by Andrew Kellett
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by the
University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid- free paper
2020 2019 2018 2017 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978- 0- 472- 13052- 8 (Hardcover : alk paper)
ISBN: 978- 0- 472- 03699- 8 (Paper : alk paper)
ISBN: 978- 0- 472- 12320- 9 (E- book)
Acknowledgments
This book began life as my doctoral dissertation in modern European his-
tory, which I earned from the University of Maryland- College Park in 2008.
The research, writing, and revision process has thus been quite a long one,
and as a result I have incurred debts of gratitude for the assistance of literally
dozens of people.
I should like to thank the numerous professors, colleagues, and friends at
the University of Maryland- College Park for their support and helpful feed-
back at every stage of the project. Special thanks are due to my graduate advi-
sor, Jeffrey Herf, for being among the first to see the potential contributions
to European and transatlantic intellectual and cultural history of a disserta-
tion on British blues and rock music and for being a continued advocate of
my work.
I have been the beneficiary of generous funding to see this project through
to the end, and for that I must thank the Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center
for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland- College Park, the Mel-
lon Foundation, the Center for the Study of Popular Music at Case Western
Reserve University, and Harford Community College.
I was extremely fortunate to have had the assistance of the archival staff at
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum Library and Archives, particu-
larly Jennie Thomas, the head archivist. These archives are a wealth of useful
information, including rare publications and other important ephemera, and
I could not have navigated and made use of them without her or her staff.
I would also like to thank three friends and colleagues who provided ab-
solutely crucial assistance in the latter stages in proofreading and editing the
book: Kurt Doan, Kelley Fann, and Chas Reed. This book is much more
fluid, well written, and concise than it was as a dissertation, and they played
no small part in that.
vi • Acknowledgments
Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Julie Mancine, for her support, her
encouragement, her thorough critical feedback, and her enthusiasm for the
subject matter.
To everyone I have left unnamed, rest assured that I also owe you my deep
gratitude. This book could not be what it is without your help, support, and
advice.
Contents
Introduction 1
1 • Talkin’ ’Bout My Generation: The Socioeconomic
and Cultural Background 24
2 • Trying to Make London My Home: Introductory
Encounters with the Blues 49
3 • But My Dad Was Black: Masculinity, Mobility,
and Blues Culture in Britain 74
4 • Blues Brothers: Camaraderie, Collaboration,
and Competition in the British Blues Network 106
5 • I Just Can’t Be Satisfied: Between Authenticity and Creativity 142
Conclusions 176
Notes 187
Selected Bibliography 223
Index 249
Introduction
Since the early 1960s people in the States have seemingly depended
on the British to chew our meat for us . . . well, we shouldn’t hold a
grudge against our cousins just because they appreciate American
blues music more than we do!
— Chris Douring and Chip Stern (1981)1
This book is about the blues and its impact in Great Britain, and it is also about
the rock music made in the 1960s and 1970s by young, mostly male British
musicians who were inspired by the blues. It is, at heart, a way of making sense
of two distinct yet related historical statements about that music. The first is
cultural historian David Christopher’s assertion that “by the mid-1 970s all the
major [rock] bands in the world were British.” The second is music critic and
historian Robert Shelton’s argument that “musical developments” made by
British groups such as Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin
were “more imaginative” than those made by their American counterparts.
Christopher’s statement is misleading; of course there were popular and
important American bands during this period, and there had been for a de-
cade or more. But one can make the less strident, but more accurate, argu-
ment that by the 1970s popular musical expression was dominated by British
groups and the music they had been recording since the previous decade.
Christopher’s and Shelton’s claims are all the more striking when one consid-
ers that the United States is the place where rock ‘n’ roll was invented, and yet
by the 1970s British bands were arguably outpacing their transatlantic coun-
terparts with more imaginative and innovative musical expression. The Brit-
ish Blues Network will explain how and why this happened.2
In order to do so, it will be first necessary to explain the unique methods
by which some young, white, mostly middle- class British men consumed and
appropriated African- American blues music. The British Blues Network re-
lates how and why, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a subset of these con-
sumers formed a more or less cohesive social network and attempted to emu-
