Origins In the early 1950s blues music was largely known in Britain through blues-influenced
boogie-woogie, and the
jump blues of
Fats Waller and
Louis Jordan. Imported recordings of American artists were brought over by African American servicemen stationed in Britain during and after World War II, merchant seamen visiting the ports of London,
Liverpool,
Newcastle on Tyne and
Belfast, and in a trickle of (illegal) imports. From 1955 major British record labels
His Master's Voice and
EMI (the latter, particularly through their subsidiary
Decca Records), began to distribute American jazz and increasingly blues records to the emerging market. Apart from recordings, occasional radio broadcasts were one of the few ways that British people could become familiar with the blues. A one-off broadcast by
Josh White while he was visiting Britain in 1951 was so popular that he was asked to perform for a series of programmes for the BBC, eventually titled
The Glory Road and broadcast in 1952. Later that year, folk song collector
Alan Lomax, then resident in London, produced a series of three programmes under the title
The Art of the Negro, of last of which, "Blues in the Mississippi Night" featured folk blues recordings by artists including Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker and was the first introduction of many later followers of the blues to the music and hardships of life for African Americans in the Southern US. The next year the
Jazz Club programme, hosted by Max Jones, included a recital of "Town and Country Blues", which played music by a wide range of blues artists.
Jazz , one of the major figures in the early popularisation of the blues in Britain, playing at the Musikhalle, Hamburg, 1972 The British rhythm and blues scene developed in London out of the related jazz, skiffle and
folk club scenes of the 1950s. The first of these scenes, that of jazz, had developed during the Second World War as a reaction to
swing, consciously re-introducing older elements of American jazz, particularly that of
New Orleans to produce
trad jazz. This music incorporated elements of the blues and occasional blues-influenced singles reached the British Charts, including
Humphrey Lyttelton's self-penned "
Bad Penny Blues" (1956), the first jazz record to reach the British top 20. British trad jazz band-leader
Chris Barber was one of the major figures in the development and popularisation of rhythm and blues in Britain the 1950s. His interest in the blues would help foster both the skiffle craze and the development of electric rhythm and blues, as members of his dance band would be fundamental to both movements. He founded the National Jazz League partly as a means of popularising the blues, served as co-director of the National Jazz Federation and helped establish the
Marquee Club, which would become one of the major venues for British R&B bands. He also brought over American folk and blues performers who found they were much better known and paid in Europe than America, a series of tours that began with Josh White and
Big Bill Broonzy in 1951, and would include
Brownie McGhee,
Sonny Terry,
Memphis Slim,
Muddy Waters and
Lonnie Johnson. Donegan became the key figure in the development of the British skiffle "craze", beginning in
Ken Colyer's Jazzmen by playing American folk and blues songs, particularly those derived from the recordings of Huddie Leadbetter, during intervals to the accompaniment of guitar,
washboard and
tea-chest bass in a lively style that emulated American
jug bands. and members of the band played "race blues" songs in concert intervals and recorded as the Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Group. Sales of guitars grew rapidly and groups performed on banjos,
tea chest bass guitars and
washboards in church halls, cafes and the flourishing coffee bars of
Soho, London. The fashion created a demand for opportunities to play versions of American folk, blues and jazz music that would contribute to the growth of a club scene.
Folk 's recordings were major part of British R&B repertoires: he never performed in the UK Skiffle clubs included the 'Ballad and Blues' club in a
pub in
Soho, co-founded by
Ewan MacColl. In its early stages these clubs saw the playing of British and American folk music that included folk blues. As the skiffle craze subsided from the mid-1950s many of these clubs, following the lead of MacColl, began to shift towards the performance of English traditional folk material, partly as a reaction to the growth of American dominated pop and rock n' roll music, often banning American music from performances and became more exclusively English
folk clubs. The more traditional American folk blues continued to provide 1960s British groups with material, particularly after the emergence of
Bob Dylan, who also popularised folk blues songs. In 1964, for example, the song-catalogue of
Lead Belly provided
the Animals with "
The House of the Rising Sun", Manfred Mann with "
John Hardy" and
the Four Pennies with "
Black Girl". British acoustic blues continued to develop as part of the folk scene. In the early 1960s,
folk guitar pioneers
Bert Jansch,
John Renbourn and particularly
Davy Graham, played blues, folk and jazz, developing a distinctive guitar style known as
folk baroque. It continued with figures like
Ian A. Anderson and his Country Blues Band, and
Al Jones. Most British acoustic blues players could achieve little commercial success and found it difficult to gain recognition for their "imitations" of the blues in the US, being overshadowed by the rhythm and blues and electric blues that had emerged in the later 1950s.
Development Blues Incorporated in Hamburg in 1972 Blues harpist
Cyril Davies ran the London Skiffle Club at the Roundhouse public house in London's
Soho, which served as a focal point for British skiffle acts. Like guitarist
Alexis Korner, he had worked for Chris Barber, playing in the
R&B segment Barber introduced to his show and as part of the supporting band for visiting US artists. The visit of
Muddy Waters in 1958 had a major impact on the duo and on the nature of British R&B in general. Initially British audiences were shocked by Waters's amplified
electric blues, but he was soon playing to ecstatic crowds and receiving rave reviews. Where British blues had often emulated
Delta blues and
country blues in the emerging
British folk revival, Davies and Korner, who had supported Waters on tour, now began to play high-powered electric blues, forming the band Blues Incorporated. Korner was also a historian, writer and record collector pivotal in the growth of the movement, and often referred to as "the father of British blues". Blues Incorporated established a regular "Rhythm and Blues Night" at the
Ealing Jazz Club and were given a residency at the Marquee Club, from which in 1962 they took the name of the first British blues album,
R&B from the Marquee (Decca), but Korner and Davies had split over the issue of including horn sections in the Blues Incorporated sound before its release. Early British rhythm and blues bands like Blues Incorporated found that folk clubs would not accept amplified blues performances. However, many London trad jazz clubs moved over to the style. In addition to the Roundhouse and the Marquee in central London, these included
The Flamingo, the
Crawdaddy Club, Richmond, where the Rolling Stones first began to gain attention,
Klooks Kleek,
The Ealing Club and the
Eel Pie Island Hotel. Blues clubs were appearing in the capital at such a rate that in 1963
Melody Maker declared London "The New Chicago!". From 1962 demand for blues recordings in Britain and Europe led to new outlets for American recordings, Chicago recordings that were now available included
Vee Jay Records through EMI's
Stateside label and Chess Records through
Pye International's R&B series. These records were enthusiastically sought and collected by a new generation of enthusiasts. The increasing appetite for rhythm and blues was reflected in the growing numbers of Afro-American artists visiting the country. From 1962 the
American Folk Blues Festival, organised by German promoters
Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau, brought American blues stars including Waters, Wolf,
Sonny Boy Williamson, and
John Lee Hooker to the country. Later that year, the first of what was to become the annual
National Jazz and Blues Festival was held at Reading in Berkshire.
Peak 1964 was the year of most rapid expansion and the peak of the British R&B boom. The song was chosen by
the Spencer Davis Group as their May 1964 debut single and
the Animals covered it on
their first album.
Howling Wolf's "
Smokestack Lightning", released in the UK by
Pye International Records that year, peaked at number 42 in the singles chart and was covered by the Yardbirds, Manfred Mann, the Animals and
the Who. On 5 December 1964 the Rolling Stones version of
Willie Dixon's "Little Red Rooster", based on Howlin' Wolf's 1961 version and recorded at Chess Records in Chicago, topped the UK chart for one week.
Major acts The Rolling Stones The most commercially successful act in the genre, were the Rolling Stones. Formed in London in 1962, Jones took their name from a track on the cover of a Muddy Waters album and they abandoned blues purism before their line-up solidified to focus on a wide range of rhythm and blues artists. They debuted at The Marquee and soon gained a residency at the Crawdaddy Club, building up a reputation as a live act. They produced their first album,
The Rolling Stones, in 1964, which largely consisted of rhythm and blues standards. Following in the wake of the Beatles' national and then international success, the Rolling Stones established themselves as the second most popular UK band and joined the British Invasion of the American record charts as leaders of a second wave of R&B oriented bands. In addition to Chicago blues numbers, the Rolling Stones also covered songs by Chuck Berry and
Bobby and Shirley Womack, the latter's, "
It's All Over Now", giving them their first UK number one in 1964. After the success of their cover of "Little Red Rooster" in 1964, the song-writing partnership between Jagger and Richards gradually began to dominate the band's output, giving them their breakthrough international hit "
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965), a song which borrowed phrases and rhythms from R&B standards, and would be covered by both
Otis Redding and
Aretha Franklin. The importance of the writing partnership contributed to the marginalisation of Jones and marked a shift away from R&B material. They would investigate a series of new musical styles in their long career, but blues songs and influences continued to surface in the Rolling Stones' music. After an early lack of success with R&B standards, the Kinks enjoyed their breakthrough with the single "
You Really Got Me" (1964). Influenced by
the Kingsmen's version of "
Louie, Louie", it reached number one in the UK and the top 10 in the US. The follow-up "
All Day and All of the Night" (1964) reached number two in the US, while the band also released two full-length albums and several EPs in this period. The Downliners Sect formed in 1963, and developed a strong reputation in London clubs, but had less commercial success than many of their contemporaries. The Pretty Things had UK hits with "
Don't Bring Me Down" (1964) and the self penned "Honey I Need" (1965), which both reached the top twenty, but they failed to break into the American market and would be chiefly remembered for their later psychedelic work. Pink Floyd began as a rhythm and blues outfit, the Tea Set, adopting a new name based on those of blues musicians
Floyd Council and
Pink Anderson and playing London blues clubs from 1966. By the time they began to record they had already moved on to psychedelic compositions and jams that would make them a central feature of the emerging
London Underground scene.
Provincial groups in 1964 Bands to emerge from other major British cities included
the Animals from Newcastle,
Them from Belfast and
the Spencer Davis Group and
the Moody Blues from
Birmingham. None of these bands played exclusively rhythm and blues, often relying on sources that included
Brill Building and girl group songs for their hit singles, but it remained at the core of their early albums.
Them, with their vocalist and multi-instrumentalist
Van Morrison, had a series of hits with "
Baby, Please Don't Go" (1964), which reached number 10 in the UK, and "
Here Comes the Night" (1965), which charted at number 2 in the UK and made the top 40 in the US, but perhaps their most enduring legacy was the B-side "
Gloria", which became a
garage rock standard. The Spencer Davis Group had their first UK number one with the
Jackie Edwards penned "
Keep on Running" (1965), but became largely a vehicle for the young keyboard player and vocalist
Steve Winwood, who at only 18 co-wrote "
Gimme Some Lovin'" (1967) and "
I'm a Man" (1967), both of which reached the
Billboard 100 top 10 and became R&B standards. The Moody Blues had only one major R&B hit with a cover of "
Go Now" (1964), which reached number one in the UK and number ten in the US. Subsequent singles failed to penetrate the top 20 and hardly broke the top 100 in the US, marking a steep decline in the band's fortunes. However, they would return after line-up changes to be one of the most important psychedelic rock bands and a major influence on
progressive rock.
Mod groups , leader of one of the most widely influenced R&B groups, in 1968 The British Mod subculture, which was at its height in 1965 and 1966, was musically centred on rhythm and blues and later
soul music, but the artists that performed the original music were not available in small London clubs around which the scene was based. British R&B bands like the Stones, Yardbirds and Kinks had a following among mods but a large number of specifically mod bands also emerged to fill this gap.
Jazz-influenced acts Among more jazz-influenced acts the Organisation were led by
Graham Bond's organ and saxophone playing and gruff vocals. Their rhythm section of
Jack Bruce and
Ginger Baker would go on to form Cream with
Eric Clapton in 1967. Manfred Mann had a much smoother sound and one of the most highly rated vocalists in the scene in
Paul Jones. They enjoyed their first success with covers of girl group songs "
Do Wah Diddy Diddy" (1964) and "
Sha La La" (1964), the first of which reached number one in both the UK and the US, but largely stuck to rhythm and blues standards on their albums. Zoot Money, whose Big Roll Band mixed R&B, soul, rock and roll and jazz, and was one of the most popular live acts of the era, made little impact in terms of record sales, but is noted for the later successes of its members, including guitarist
Andy Summers, pianist
Dave Greenslade, drummer
Jon Hiseman, bassist
Tony Reeves and saxophonist Clive Burrows.
Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames mixed jazz,
ska and bluebeat into his music and had three number one singles in the UK, beginning with "
Yeh Yeh" (1965).
African-Caribbean and Afro-American artists performing on Dutch television in 1967 A number of visiting black stars became part of the British R&B scene. These included
Geno Washington, an American singer stationed in England with the Air Force. He was invited to join what became
Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band by guitarist
Pete Gage in 1965 and enjoyed top 40 hit singles and two top 10 albums before the band split up in 1969. Another American
GI,
Herbie Goins, sang with Blues Incorporated before leading his own band, the Nightimers.
Jimmy James, born in Jamaica, moved to London after two local number one hits with the Vagabonds in 1960 and built a strong reputation as a live act, releasing a live album and their debut
The New Religion in 1966 and achieving moderate success with singles before the original Vagabonds broke up in 1970.
Champion Jack Dupree was a
New Orleans blues and
boogie woogie pianist, who toured Europe and settled there from 1960, living in Switzerland and Denmark, then in Halifax, England in the 1970s and 1980s, before finally settling in Germany. The most significant and successful visiting artist was
Jimi Hendrix who in early 1966, after years on the
chitlin circuit as sideman for major R&B acts as well as playing in bands in New York, was invited to England to record as a solo artist by former Animals bassist
Chas Chandler. With
Mitch Mitchell on drums and
Noel Redding on bass, the band formed around him as
the Jimi Hendrix Experience became major stars in the UK, with three top ten hits in early 1967. it was followed later that year by the psychedelic album
Are You Experienced [sic], which became a major hit in the US after Hendrix's triumphant return at the Monterey Pop Festival and made him one of the major figures of late 60s rock.
Solo artists A number of solo artists who emerged from the British R&B scene would go on to highly successful careers in the later 1960s and 1970s. These included
Long John Baldry,
Rod Stewart and
Elton John. After the dissolution of Blues Incorporated in 1962 Long John Baldry joined the
Cyril Davies R&B All Stars, and after Davies' death in early 1964 took over leadership of the group, renaming it Long John Baldry and His Hoochie Coochie Men. The band featured Rod Stewart as a second vocalist, with whom Baldry formed short lived proto-
supergroup Steampacket in 1965. Baldry moved on to front
Bluesology, which had originally been formed as an R&B band in 1962 by teenage keyboardist Reggie Dwight, later better known as Elton John. Baldry enjoyed his greatest success with pop ballads, beginning with "Let the Heartaches Begin" (1967), which reached number one in Britain, but, despite supporting the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, he remained virtually unknown outside of the UK. After Steampacket dissolved in 1966, Rod Stewart joined blues-rock combo
Shotgun Express and then
the Jeff Beck Group, and when that broke up in 1969 he moved on to the Small Faces, which became the Faces, and also began to pursue his solo career, mixing R&B with rock and folk, to become one of the most successful British solo artists of the 1970s. Elton John, taking his first name from Bluesology saxophonist Elton Dean and his last from John Baldry, formed a partnership with lyricist
Bernie Taupin in 1968 and after writing hits for major pop artists embarked on a solo career that would be the most commercially successful of the early 1970s and one of the most sustained in pop music.
British blues boom of
Fleetwood Mac onstage in 1970 The wider rhythm and blues boom overlapped, both chronologically and in terms of personnel, with the later and more narrowly focused British blues boom. The blues boom began to come to prominence in the mid-1960s as the rhythm and blues movement began to peter out leaving a nucleus of instrumentalists with a wide knowledge of blues forms and techniques. Central to the blues boom were
John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, who began to gain national and international attention after the release of
Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (
Beano) album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings.
Peter Green started a "second great epoch of British blues", as he replaced Clapton in the Bluesbreakers after Clapton's departure to form Cream. In 1967, after one record with the Bluesbreakers, Green, with the Bluesbreakers' rhythm section
Mick Fleetwood and
John McVie, formed Peter Green's
Fleetwood Mac.
Mike Vernon, who had produced the "
Beano" album set up the
Blue Horizon record label and signed Fleetwood Mac and other emerging blues acts. Fleetwood Mac's
eponymous début album reached the UK top 5 in early 1968 and as the instrumental "
Albatross" reached number one in the single charts in early 1969. Chicken Shack, formed at the peak of the boom in 1965 by
Stan Webb, were unusual in having a female vocalist and keyboard player in
Christine Perfect. They had a British hit with
Etta James' R&B classic "
I'd Rather Go Blind" in 1969, before Perfect left to join her husband
John McVie in
Fleetwood Mac, but remained largely focused on blues standards. The band then suffered a series of line-up changes and, although managing a comeback on the club circuit, they never achieved another mainstream breakthrough and split up in 1973. The last years of the 1960s were, as Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz put it, "the commercial apex of the British blues boom".
Decline in January 1975|alt=A colour photograph of the four members of Led Zeppelin performing onstage, with some other figures visible in the background By 1967 most of the surviving major British R&B acts had moved away from covers and R&B-inspired music to psychedelic rock, and from there they would shift into new subgenres. Some, like
Jethro Tull followed bands like the Moody Blues away from 12-bar structures and harmonicas into complex, classical-influenced
progressive rock. Members of the next generation of blues-based bands, including
Led Zeppelin,
Deep Purple and
Black Sabbath, played a loud form of blues-influenced rock, would lead to the development of
hard rock and ultimately
heavy metal. Some, like Mayall, continued to play a "pure" form of the blues, but largely outside of mainstream notice. The structure of clubs, venues and festivals that had grown up in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Britain virtually disappeared in the 1970s. Rhythm and blues bands began to find it very difficult to achieve serious album sales, even in the UK.
Vinegar Joe, formed in 1971 around the vocals of
Elkie Brooks and
Robert Palmer and the instrumental talents of
Pete Gage and Steve York, despite popular stage performances, broke up after only three albums with disappointing sales two years later.
Revivals in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1982 British R&B continued to be played in the
Northern Soul club scene, where early soul records, particularly those of
Motown, were highly prized. There were also bands on the London
pub rock circuit. Occasional R&B-based pub rock acts like
Dr Feelgood managed to build a following through tireless touring. They topped the British charts with live album
Stupidity (1976), but failed to make a significant impact in the US.
1970s With the rise of
disco music,
British soul music became popular in the mid-late 1970s. A handful of pub rock acts managed to achieve mainstream success after the advent of
punk rock, often being re-categorised as
new wave music, including
Graham Parker and the Rumour,
Nick Lowe,
Squeeze and
Elvis Costello. London-based R&B pub rock bands received a major boost when
the Jam kicked off the
mod revival in 1977 with their debut album
In the City, which mixed R&B standards with originals modelled on
the Who's early singles. They confirmed their status as the leading mod revival band with their third album
All Mod Cons (1978), on which
Paul Weller's song-writing drew heavily on the British-focused narratives of the Kinks. Pub rock bands like Red Beans and Rice, the Little Roosters,
the Inmates,
Nine Below Zero and
Eddie and the Hot Rods, became major acts in the growing mod revival scene in London. Other bands grew up to feed the desire for mod music, often combining the music of '60s mod groups with elements of punk music, including
the Lambrettas,
the Merton Parkas, Squire, and
Purple Hearts. These acts managed to develop cult followings and some had pop hits, before the revival petered out in the early '80s. In 1979, Dave Kelly, who had been a member of the
John Dummer Blues Band formed
the Blues Band with ex-Manfred Mann vocalist Paul Jones and Gary Fletcher, who continued to tour and record rhythm and blues into the new millennium.
1980s Paul Weller broke up the Jam in 1982 and formed
the Style Council, who abandoned most of the elements of punk to adopt music much more based in R&B and early soul. Some major figures of the movement, including Robert Palmer and Steve Winwood, re-emerged as solo artists in the early 1980s, being as defined as
blue-eyed soul singers. During the 1980s and 1990s, musicians, particularly African Americans, mixed pop with disco like beats and high tech
electronic production to produce the new genre of
contemporary R&B, adding elements of other genres, including
funk,
hip hop, and
soul music. at Middelburg in 2009
1990s Roots music, including rhythm and blues, began to enjoy another resurgence of interest towards the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s. Annual blues festivals were established, including The Great British Rhythm and Blues Festival, held at Colne in Lancashire from 1989, which hosts both US and British R&B acts. In 1994,
Jools Holland, former keyboard player with Squeeze and presenter of the TV show
Later... with Jools Holland, reshaped his backing band as
Jools Holland's Rhythm and Blues Orchestra and, as well as supporting him on the show, they embarked on a series of tours. After leaving the Rolling Stones in 1997,
Bill Wyman formed the
Rhythm Kings, which featured guitarists
Peter Frampton and
Albert Lee as well former
Procol Harum keyboardist
Gary Brooker, touring and producing a series of R&B based albums. By 2000, the fanzine
Blues Matters! had managed to become a regular glossy magazine. and
Estelle. Much of the music produced by modern British R&B artists tend to incorporate
electropop sounds, as exemplified by artists such as
Jay Sean and
Taio Cruz. In the 2000s, there was success in the US for British female artists who mixed soul music with elements of rhythm and blues, including
Amy Winehouse,
Duffy,
Leona Lewis and
Adele, leading to talk of another British Invasion, known as the "
Third British Invasion", "R&B British Invasion" or "British Soul Invasion".
Ella Mai won three awards at the
2019 Billboard Music Awards, including
Top R&B Artist. ==Significance==