Cyril Davies... British Blues Harp PioneerBlues From The Roundhouse #2
John Baldry was a tall, gangly 14-year-old when Lonnie Donegan blazed onto the pop charts with “Rock Island Line”, one of the most off-the-wall hits of all time. It was enough to incite his conviction that American music resonated 3,500 miles across an ocean; that the music of [Leadbelly] an infamous "hard man" - twice convicted and jailed for murder - spoke clearly to young British musicians looking for music they could adapt and call their own...the sources of his youthful inspiration: Donegan, of course, and jazz cornetist Ken Colyer, folk-singer Alex Campbell, and early musical visitors to Britain like Rambling Jack Elliott and Derroll Adams. - Richard Flohil-2002 (Stony Plain Records) A young John Baldry at Brighton Beach, 1956 Long John recorded Remembering Leadbelly in 2002. On the release of the disc Baldry said of his hero..."His songs touched me when I was a kid; they still talk to me, all these years later. His music is timeless; they can be tackled in many different ways,and there is an amazing variety in the topics and themes he wrote about. Leadbelly was a bluesman, a storyteller, a folk singer, a social activist, aballadeer, and a man who wrote children's songs with the same conviction that he wrote about his travels through America 65 years ago. He was a unique artist,and I am honoured - and humbled - to perform his music." John William Baldry (b. January 12, 1941 - d. July 21, 2005) grew up in a middle-class family in Queensbury, north London, attending the local grammar school and singing in the choir at St Lawrence's, Edgware. Listening to a neighbour's collection of jazz and blues records, he was entranced by the voice and 12-string guitar playing of the black American songster Huddie Leadbetter ("Leadbelly"). He also heard New Orleans jazz, recreated by the Crane River Jazz Band at Kingsbury baths hall. Baldry acquired his first guitar at 14 and taught himself to play in Leadbelly's style, often practising in nearby Canon's Park. Aged 16, in 1957 he discovered the skiffle and folk scene of Soho, where his 6ft 7in frame earned him the nickname "Long John". He soon formed a duo with the guitar virtuoso Davy Graham and bought, for £15, a 12-string guitar built by a furniture maker and blues fan, Tony Zemaitis. A year later, he found himself billed at a Bradford folk club as "the world's greatest white, 12-string guitarist". By the late 1950s, Baldry was a leading figure on the Soho scene and the only regular performer at both the blues club of Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies and the folk-song sessions run by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. [Dave Laing (The Guardian)- 07/23/2005] Long John Baldry "Alexis Korner is often hailed as the father of the British blues scene, but if that's the case then Chris Barber must be hailed as the great-grandfather. For Chris put together the band with Cyril Davies and Alexis and told them what to do. Chris is monstrously underrated for his contribution to the music scene in Britain"[Harold Pendleton to Melody Maker magazine]. At the suggestion of John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Harold Pendleton and Chris Barber brought over the legendary US bluesman Muddy Waters in October 1958. Legend has it that this was the first time that an audience ever saw an electric guitar in a London club. Chris Barber [Decca Records (1980)] To say that Chris Barber was instrumental to the general acceptance and success of the blues form in Britain is a massive understatement. Although Big Bill Broonzy appeared in London in September 1951 with Mahalia Jackson it was Bill’s three weeks with Chris Barber in 1954, his (Barber arranged) visits in both October 1955 and the 1957 shows featuring Broonzy and Brother John Sellers that lit a fire under an entire generation of British youth. Barber also brought to England’s shore, Sister Rosetta Tharpe in November 1957; the Modern Jazz Quartet in February 1958 and Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee in May 1958. The personal and musical impact of these visiting American blues artists on Cyril Davies & Alexis Korner was to galvanize their resolve to perfect the blues craft and pursue the lifestyle.Alexis - "Muddy Waters played up there when he played in Britain in ’58; the only club he played in London was the Roundhouse. Memphis Slim and Speckled Red and Roosevelt Sykes, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee were president and vice president of the club. And masses of people came and played, and we got a chance to learn our blues at that time accompanying the men whose records we had been trying to learn for the last ten years, or fifteen years or however long it was. To be accompanying Jack Dupree, or Little Brother Montgomery, or Memphis Slim, or Roosevelt Sykes was quite something else. Better teachers – there just weren’t any better teachers and that’s all there was to it. On the whole, the critics all laughed at us. We were totally unimpressed by their laughter because, quite honestly, the only people whose opinions we were interested in…were encouraging us. We just carried on and carried on and carried on". Alexis, Cyril & company recorded four new tracks at the Decca West Hampstead Studios, London, April 29 1958. “Blues From The Roundhouse Volume 2”, produced by Geoff Milne, was released on Tempo Records in December '58 under the new and more acceptable moniker, 'Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated'. The four songs were: Sail On (Leadbelly); National Defence Blues (Leadbelly); Go Down Sunshine (Johnson); and Death Letter (Trad.arr. Leadbelly). Alexis played acoustic guitar and was the vocalist on ‘Go Down Sunshine’; Cyril did all vocals and played guitar except for ‘Go Down Sunshine’ where he contributed harmonica only. Rounding out the quintet was Jim Bray (string bass), David Stevens [piano (‘National Defence Blues’)] and Mike Collins (washboard). Charles Fox, author and music critic, was born at Weymouth, England in 1921. Fox lived in the Korner household as a lodger from the late ‘50’s until his death in 1991. Well versed in the jazz idiom, Fox once again added the liner notes to the this latest ‘Roundhouse’ installment. “Once is was believed that only Americans could play jazz. At one time this was true, but today jazz is becoming more and more of an international idiom. Something very similar is now being said about blues, and it must be admitted that it is more difficult for a non-American to sing blues than to play jazz. It’s largely a question of accent; the rhymes in many well-known Negro blues depend upon the words being sung in the way they would be in Mississippi or Louisiana. Nevertheless, authenticity in blues-singing and playing springs from the performance rather than the musician’s pigmentation. And that is why Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies can be described as genuine blues artists. For many years these two British musicians have been studying and playing blues. Their absorption in the idiom has become so complete that now they can think and work naturally within it. That explains why visiting American blues artists like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters and Otis Spann, have been so enthusiastic about their playing. Sonny Terry, in particular, is a great admirer of Cyril Davies. Whenever he and Brownie McGhee are in London they go regularly to the Roundhouse, the public house at the corner of Brewer and Wardour Streets where the Alexis Korner group performs every Thursday night. And they go to listen, not to play. Naturally enough, both Korner and Davies have been heavily influenced by the great Negro blues artists. There is a great deal of Blind Boy Fuller’s style (emphasized by the use of a steel guitar) in Alexis Korner’s performance of Go Down Sunshine. (Alexis uses the steel guitar again, incidentally, in Sail On.) In the case of Cyril Davies, it is Leadbelly who had provided the inspiration, and Sail On, Death Letter and National Defence have all been recorded, at one time or another, by Leadbelly himself. Dave Stevens was added to the group for the last-named track, but it’s noticeable that his piano-playing is much closer to Big Maceo Merriweather’s than to that of Willie “The Lion” Smith, the pianist who played on Leadbelly’s version. Details of the musicians’ lives and opinions have already been outlined on the sleeve of a previous Alexis Korner EP (“Blues At The Roundhouse”, Tempo EXA76). To some people it may still seem strange that British performers like these can sound as authentic as some Negro blues artists. The only way of proving it is to shut your eyes and listen”.
Web site navigation This page and all its contents, ©2008, all rights reserved. Webmaster: Roger Trobridge |