BRITISH

The next major development in blues music arrived in the 1960s and centers around the great British blues explosion. As records (and record players) became more widely available a new generation of young British and Irish musicians began to listen to the old blues greats who were already firmly entrenched in popular American culture. This coincided with Britain tours by some of the great Urban blues legends. In addition electric guitars were also becoming more popular and more affordable, and the amplifiers were getting louder too!

Young British and American musicians began to reproduce the older blues classics with their own twist, rhythm and energy, and a whole new sound was born. Laid back, exiting, loud, rebellious, energetic, it became the basis of the soundtrack to a generation experimenting with socialist and anarchical ideas, a youth who were trying to win their own emancipation, echoing the origins of the blues, although their fight was on an entirely different level it was still one that dealt with the dogmatic prejudice of the status quo and a search for freedom.

Artists like Jimi Hendrix and Paul Butterfield found that the US was not quite ready to embrace their new sound, whereas over the pond in Britain, audiences were going crazy for shows by the likes of John Mayall, Clapton, and The Rolling Stones. It is no suprise that the mid-sixties saw many American blues artists travel to Britain to take part in the new blues scene, and by the end of the decade the British style blues music had become huge in America too.

Artists to explore: Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, Cream, Paul Butterfield, John Mayall, Peter Green, Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin.