Transatlantic Blues

How American Bluesmen Energized British Rock and Roll

In its earliest incarnation, rock and roll had brought the meteoric rise of Bill Haley & The Comets, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and other movers and shakers. Their music was raucous, thrilling, and unstoppable, but the initial ride was short-lived. By the late 1950s, Haley was washed up. Elvis was in the army. Chuck Berry was in jail. Little Richard had abandoned rock to preach gospel, and Buddy Holly was dead. Payola scandals had ended the careers of Alan Freed and other seminal DJs. Fundamentalist preachers were publicly burning records that, they rabidly frothed, brought white youths “down to the level of the Negro.” As a result, American rock and roll was nearly sanitized to death.

By 1963, it had hit its nadir. Month after month, syrupy pop fare like Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet,” Paul & Paula’s “Hey Paula,” Jimmy Gilmer’s “Sugar Shack,” and the Singing Nun’s “Dominique” dominated the charts. Across the Atlantic, though, something earthy and primal was taking shape as young British groups such as the Beatles, Animals, Rolling Stones, and Yardbirds drew inspiration from Chuck Berry and American blues artists. In an ironic yet welcome twist of fate, most kids in America became aware of the great bluesmen via cover songs and songwriting credits on albums by their favorite rock bands. “That’s a funny damn thing,” Muddy Waters exclaimed. “Had to get somebody from out of another country to let my white kids over here know where we stand. They’re crying for bread and got it in their backyard.”

In Great Britain, though, some listeners had been enthusiastic about blues since World War II, when the BBC played programs featuring records by Lead Belly, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and Josh White to help soothe nerves rattled by nighttime bombing raids. American servicemen disembarked in Liverpool and other ports with recordings of American blues, swing, and Dixieland, and many these 78s found their way into the hands of British record collectors and radio programmers.

After the war, these records inspired the creation of trad jazz, a lite re-creation of Dixieland. Chris Barber, a leading trad bandleader and trombonist, had the foresight to arrange British club gigs for some of the original blues artists.

The first to arrive, Big Bill Broonzy in 1951, managed to convince many concert-goers that he was “the last American bluesman,” but Lonnie Johnson’s breakthrough solo set at Royal Festival Hall the following year put an end to that publicity stunt, as did appearances by Josh White, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. These artists became musical touchstones for Britain’s first pop guitar stars, Big Jim Sullivan and Hank Marvin. Idolized by young Jimmy Page, studio legend Sullivan was steeped in records by Lead Belly and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. “When I was starting the guitar,” Sullivan recalled, “we used to go out on the Thames in a big riverboat with people like Sonny and Brownie and Big Bill Broonzy. They would be playing, and I’d just sit there watching them. That was the highlight for me.” Instrumental star Hank Marvin, who formed the Shadows with Cliff Richard in 1958, cited Broonzy and Lead Belly as his main influences.

By the mid 1950s, British youths were enamored with skiffle, a folksy, bluesy, somewhat heavy-handed answer to America’s folk boom. In England, the movement reportedly got its name from Dan Burley and His Skiffle Boys’ 1946 recordings, including “Skiffle Blues.” In America, the term first showed up in blues circles on a 1929 release by Paramount Records. Credited to the Paramount All Stars, the zany two-part “Hometown Skiffle” presented samples of songs performed by Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Will Ezell, Papa Charlie Jackson, and other blues celebrities. The skiffle craze reached its zenith in England with Lonnie Donegan’s 1956 cover of Lead Belly’s “Rock Island Line.”

Dozens of future British stars got their start performing skiffle. “Lonnie Donegan set all them kids on the road,” remembered George Harrison. “Everybody was in a skiffle group. You only needed two chords.” Or three chords, if you wanted to focus on acoustic blues, which is exactly what some members of the British audiences wanted to hear.