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Al compas del mundo – programa # 65 - British blues

 A whole bunch of big groups from overseas owed a substantial debt to the blues born on these shores. We’re talking Fleetwood Mac (pre-McVie), Animals, Them, Stones, Kinks, Mayall, Yardbirds, Zeppelin, and yes, the Beatles too. Less famous, in most cases, were the progenitors: Big Joe Williams (Baby, Please Don’t Go), Ma Rainey (See See Rider), Junior Wells (You Don’t Love Me), Willie Dixon (I Can’t Quit You Baby), Memphis Slim (Every Day I Have the Blues), Slim Harpo (Shake Your Hips), and Sonny Boy Williamson (Checkin’ On My Baby). Of course, these are amongst the top names in the history of the blues, but if fame for a musician was measured by their bank account, they’d be also-rans to the willing young Brits who “discovered” them. Another good reason to have the blues. Though admittedly, the notoriety of these British Invasion legionnaires playing the music of Black blues artists led to youthful music lovers in places like Racine, Wisconsin, to embrace the genre and a whole new habit of record buying (so near to Chicago and yet so far).

With a backwards telescope we can clearly see how the legacy of the blues has passed from Robert Johnson, to Eric Clapton, to the Bold Stumps. Who’d a thunk it?



TRACKLIST British Blues - the 1960s broadcast on RadioActiva Feb 23, 2023

01 Fleetwood Mac - My Baby's Good to Me

02 Savoy Brown - Made Up My Mind

03 The Taste (with Rory Gallagher) - You've Got To Pay

04 Them (with Van Morrison) - Baby Please Don't Go

05 Animals - See See Rider

06 Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated - Spooky but Nice

07 John Mayall & the Blues Breakers - You Don't Love Me

08 Rolling Stones - Mona (I Need You Baby)

09 Led Zeppelin - I Can't Quit You Baby

10 Steamhammer - Junior's Wailing

11 Beatles - Dizzy Miss Lizzy

12 Bluesology (with Elton John (Reg Dwight) – Every Day I Have the Blues (1966)

13 Spencer Davis Group - Here Right Now

14 The Kinks - Milk Cow Blues

15 Love Sculpture - Shake Your Hips

16 Yardbirds - I Ain't Done Wrong

17 Dr Feelgood – Checkin' On My Baby

Blues entusiast [2nd from left] reads The Beano comic.


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