British rhythm and blues (or R&B) was a musical movement that developed in the United Kingdom between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, and reached a peak in the mid-1960s. It overlapped with, but was distinct from, the broader British beat and more purist British blues scenes, attempting to emulate the music of American blues and rock and roll pioneers, such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. It often placed greater emphasis on guitars and was often played with greater energy.
The origins of the movement were in the British jazz, skiffle and folk movements of the 1950s. The 1958 visit of Muddy Waters influenced key figures Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner to turn to electric blues and form the band Blues Incorporated, which became something of a clearing house for British rhythm and blues musicians. A flourishing scene of clubs and groups emerged in the later 1950s and 1960s and bands began to break through into mainstream success. Major acts included the Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann, the Animals, the Yardbirds, Them, and the Spencer Davis Group, who dominated the UK and US charts from 1964, in the wake of the Merseybeat craze, becoming central to the beatnik and mod subculture in the UK and a second wave of British Invasion acts in the US.
Several of the bands and their members went on to become leading rock music performers of the late 1960s and early 1970s, helping to create psychedelic, progressive and hard rock and making rhythm and blues a key component of that music. In the mid to late-1970s, British R&B enjoyed a revival through the British soul and disco scenes, the pub rock circuit, new wave music and the mod revival, and has enjoyed a resurgence of interest since the late 1980s. In the 2000s, a British version of contemporary R&B began gaining popularity, and since the late 2000s the success of British female singers influenced by soul and R&B led to talk of another "R&B British invasion".
Characteristics
Commentators often distinguish British rhythm and blues bands from beat bands (who were influenced by rock and roll and rockabilly) on the one hand, and, from "purist" British blues (which particularly emulated Chicago electric blues artists), on the other, although there was considerable crossover between the three sets of musicians. Merseybeat bands like the Beatles, or from the parallel beat scene in Manchester, were influenced by American forms of music that included rockabilly, girl groups and the early Motown sound, helping them to produce commercial orientated form of music that began to dominate the British charts from 1963. However, bands from the developing London club scene were mainly concerned to emulate black rhythm and blues performers, including the work of Chess Records' blues artists like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, but also wider rhythm and blues singer and rock and roll pioneers like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley resulting in a "rawer" or "grittier" sound.
British rhythm and blues differed in tone from that of American artists, often with more emphasis on guitars and sometimes with greater energy. British rhythm and blues singers were criticised for their emulation of rhythm and blues vocal styles, with shouts, glottal stops, moans and cries.R. F. Schwartz, How Britain Got the Blues: the Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style in the United Kingdom (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), , p. 244. However, vocalists such as Van Morrison, Mick Jagger, Eric Burdon and Steve Winwood did not attempt to emulate a particular singer and were seen by critics as able to sing the blues convincingly and with some power.D. Weissman, Which Side Are You On?: An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America (London: Continuum, 2005), , p. 199. In cover versions of R&B songs, riffs were often simplified or used less frequently.M. Hicks, Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), , p. 133. The object of the music was usually to whip up energy, rather than to produce musical finesse. Many groups were based around guitars (rhythm, lead and bass) and drumsB. Longhurst, Popular Music and Society (London: Polity, 2nd edn., 2007), , p. 98. and as a result arrangements tended to be guitar-oriented and at higher tempos than the originals.R. Unterberger, "Early British R&B", in V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), , pp. 1315–6. Amplification of guitars to the highest levels of underpowered amplifiers created the over-driven guitar sound that would become characteristic of rock music.
Nick Logan and Bob Woffinden noted that after the split of Blues Incorporated at the end of 1962, four main strands could be discerned in British Rhythm and Blues. Cyril Davies left to attempt to recreate the Chicago electric blues of Muddy Waters. The style would be the major influence on the later emergence of the blues boom, particularly through the work of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Alexis Korner continued with Blues Incorporated, bringing in jazz saxophonist Graham Bond and developing a more jazz orientated sound. This strand would be taken up by acts including the Graham Bond Organisation, Manfred Mann and Zoot Money. A unique form was pursued by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, who as the resident band at the Flamingo club on Wardour Street, unusual in having a predominantly black audience of American GIs and locals, also utilised jazz, but mixed R&B with elements of Caribbean music, including Ska and bluebeat. The Rolling Stones and others focused on rocking guitar music based on the work of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and would be followed by many small guitar and drum based groups, many of which would rapidly move into rock music.N. Logan and B. Woffinden, The NME Book of Rock 2 (London: W. H. Allen, 1977), , pp. 74–6.R. F. Schwartz, How Britain Got the Blues: the Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style in the United Kingdom (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), , p. 131.
History 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.R. F. Schwartz, How Britain Got the Blues: the Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style in the United Kingdom (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), , pp. 22 and 44. 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.R. F. Schwartz, How Britain Got the Blues: the Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style in the United Kingdom (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), , p. 28. 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.R. F. Schwartz, How Britain Got the Blues: the Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style in the United Kingdom (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), , pp. 22 and 49.
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.R. F. Schwartz, "Preaching the Gospel of the Blues", in N. A. Wynn, ed., Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe (University Press of Mississippi, 2007), , pp. 155–59.
Jazz
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.M. Brocken, The British Folk Revival, 1944–2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), , p. 70. 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.J. R. Brown, A Concise History of Jazz (Bunker, Missouri: Mel Bay, 2004), , p. 86.
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.
Skiffle