The Rolling Stones, Cream, Led Zeppelin and a sizeable chunk of British rock music owe something to Alexis Korner. So why isn’t his name quite as familiar as theirs?
By Samuel H. | Music & Culture | The Classic Post
There’s a peculiar tradition in the music business. The person who gets everyone started is often the one who ends up watching everybody else drive away in expensive cars.
Alexis Korner knew something about that.
If you were hanging around London’s blues clubs in the early 1960s, there was a reasonable chance you’d encounter Alexis. There was also a reasonable chance that the young man standing next to you, looking rather pleased with his latest haircut, would eventually become a millionaire.
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Rod Stewart — the list of musicians who passed through Korner’s musical orbit is extraordinary. Some played with him, others learned from him, and many benefited from his encouragement.
Alexis himself never quite achieved the same commercial success. But then, commercial success and musical importance have never been particularly reliable companions.
A Rather Unfashionable Obsession
Born in Paris in 1928, Alexis Korner arrived in Britain as a boy and developed a fascination with American blues music. At a time when much of the British musical establishment was preoccupied with dance bands, traditional jazz and respectable entertainment, Korner was listening to records by musicians such as Jimmy Yancey and Muddy Waters.
This was music with rather more grit under its fingernails.
Korner wasn’t alone. Chris Barber, Cyril Davies and a small group of enthusiasts were helping introduce British audiences to music that had grown out of African American experience, but which remained largely unfamiliar to the average British listener.
There was an almost missionary enthusiasm about the whole business. Records were collected, argued over, played repeatedly and discussed with a seriousness normally reserved for international diplomacy.
Korner was particularly good at sharing his enthusiasm. He didn’t merely collect records or imitate the musicians he admired. He encouraged others to listen, learn and, most importantly, play.
Blues Incorporated — An Extraordinary Employment Agency
In 1961, Korner and harmonica player Cyril Davies formed Blues Incorporated, a group that would become one of the most influential outfits in British popular music.
It was less a conventional band than a constantly changing gathering of musicians. Charlie Watts played drums. Jack Bruce played bass. Ginger Baker came through the line-up. Long John Baldry sang. Others appeared, disappeared and returned, frequently on their way to something else.
Keeping track of the personnel must have been an administrative nightmare. Fortunately, the music was rather good.
In March 1962, Korner and Davies established their rhythm and blues nights at the Ealing Jazz Club. It became a meeting place for the young musicians who would soon transform British popular music.
Among the visitors were Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones, whose own band would take the blues in a rather more commercially rewarding direction.
Korner’s contribution wasn’t simply providing somewhere to play. He helped create an environment in which young British musicians could take American blues seriously and develop something of their own.
And he was generous with his knowledge.
This is worth remembering because the music business isn’t always celebrated for its generosity.
The Rolling Stones and the Great British Blues Explosion
By 1963, the Rolling Stones were on their way. Other groups followed, drawing on the same American blues records that Korner had been championing for years.
The Yardbirds, the Animals, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and eventually Cream and Led Zeppelin would help turn blues-influenced British rock into an international phenomenon.
There is a temptation to credit Alexis Korner with personally inventing the entire business. That would be unfair to Cyril Davies, Chris Barber, the American musicians who created the music in the first place, and the many others who helped build the British scene.
But Korner was one of its essential catalysts.
He opened doors, introduced musicians to one another and encouraged experimentation at a time when the commercial possibilities were far from obvious.
Of course, once those possibilities became obvious, everybody was suddenly terribly interested.
Not Quite the Elder Statesman He Was Supposed to Be
One of the ironies of Korner’s career is that he was being described as an elder statesman of British blues while still a comparatively young man.
By the time the groups he’d helped inspire were filling theatres and topping charts, Alexis was increasingly regarded as a respected pioneer rather than a contemporary star.
It was an odd position. Imagine helping establish an entire musical movement, only to discover that you’ve somehow become its historical department.
But Korner wasn’t simply a figure from the past.
He continued recording and performing, explored jazz and other musical forms, and enjoyed commercial success with CCS, the large ensemble whose version of Whole Lotta Love became familiar to millions as the theme to Top of the Pops.
There was a pleasing circularity about that. The man who had helped nurture British blues was now introducing the television programme on which so many of its commercially successful descendants appeared.
He also became a distinctive broadcaster, sharing his extraordinary knowledge of blues, jazz and soul with radio audiences.
Korner had the sort of voice that suggested he knew something you didn’t, but would be perfectly happy to tell you if you pulled up a chair.
Whispering Bob Remembers
Our RODtv documentary tells the story of Alexis Korner through archive material, with ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris appearing on screen and providing the narration.
Bob is an especially appropriate guide to Korner’s world. As one of Britain’s best-known music broadcasters, he belongs to a generation for whom the development of British blues and rock wasn’t simply a chapter in a history book. It was part of the musical landscape they knew.
And there’s something fitting about hearing one great British music broadcaster tell the story of another.
The documentary returns to the period when blues was moving from specialist clubs into the mainstream, and when musicians who would later become household names were still learning their trade.
It’s a reminder that music history isn’t always made in recording studios with enormous budgets. Sometimes it begins in a basement, with a handful of enthusiasts, an amplifier and somebody who knows which records are worth listening to.
The Man Behind the Music
Alexis Korner died on New Year’s Day 1984, aged just 55.
His influence, however, had already spread far beyond the London clubs where he’d helped establish the British blues scene.
He didn’t leave behind the sort of catalogue that automatically guarantees a place on every classic-rock playlist. His importance is found as much in other people’s records as in his own.
That’s perhaps the most unusual thing about his legacy.
Most musicians spend their careers trying to make a name for themselves. Alexis Korner helped a remarkable number of other people make theirs.
And when you consider just how famous some of those people became, it’s difficult not to think he deserved a rather larger share of the applause.
Watch on RODtv
