ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: FATHERS AND SONS: AMERICAN BLUES AND BRITISH ROCK MUSIC, 1960-1970 Andrew James Kellett, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Dissertation directed by: Professor Jeffrey Herf Department of History This dissertation examines the unique cultural phenomenon of British blues-based rock music in the 1960s. It provides answers to two important questions of trans-Atlantic intellectual and cultural history. First, this dissertation will provide answers to two questions. First, it interrogates how and why African-American blues music became so popular amongst a segment of young, primarily middle-class men in Great Britain. It maps out ―blues trade routes‖—that is, the methods by which the music was transmitted to Britain. It explains the enthusiasm shown by young male Britishers largely in terms of their alienation from, and dissatisfaction with, mainstream British masculinity. Seen in this light, the ―adoption‖ of African-American bluesmen as replacement ―fathers‖ can be seen as an attempt to fill a perceived cultural need. This dissertation will also examine how these young British men, having formed bands to perform their own music, began in the mid-1960s to branch out from the blues. In a developing dialogue with like-minded bands from the United States, bands such as the Rolling Stones and Yardbirds started combining the lessons of the blues with other cultural influences such as jazz, classical music and English folk. The resulting cultural bricolage innovated popular music on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1970s onward. The dissertation draws on a variety of primary sources, including the popular music press, published interviews with key musicians, and, of course, the recorded music itself. Fathers and Sons uses the development of popular music to address issues that have traditionally been central to the study of ideas and cultures. These include: the role of interpersonal relationships in disseminating ideas and culture; the impact of distance and proximity in impelling cultural innovation; the occurrences of bursts of creativity in distinct places at distinct times; and the ways in which gender and sexual identity are performed and negotiated through mass consumer culture. These are salient issues with which intellectual and cultural historians have dealt for decades. Thus, Fathers and Sons seeks a broader audience than merely that which would be interested in American blues, British rock music, or both. FATHERS AND SONS: AMERICAN BLUES AND BRITISH ROCK MUSIC, 1960-1970 by Andrew James Kellett Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2008 Advisory Committee: Professor Jeffrey Herf, Chair Professor Saverio Giovacchini Professor Barry Lee Pearson Professor Richard Price Professor Julie Anne Taddeo © Copyright by Andrew James Kellett 2008 DEDICATION For my mother, from whom I learnt about the likes of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton and Elton John in the first place, and to whom they mean something more than just the topic of a doctoral dissertation in history. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Throughout the research and writing of this dissertation, I have incurred debts of gratitude for the assistance of literally dozens of people. Space does not permit me to acknowledge all of them properly, except in a list form which would not do justice to the role they have played in this project coming to fruition. I should like to thank all five members of my examining committee for their unstinting support and helpful feedback at every stage of this project. Special thanks are due to my advisor, Professor Jeffrey Herf, for seeing the potential contributions to European and trans-Atlantic intellectual and cultural history of a dissertation on British blues, and for his continuing advocacy of my work. Through the course of informal discussions and more formal conference and colloquium presentations, I have been able to better shape my research and hone my arguments. And so thanks are due, broadly speaking, to the graduate student body in the departments of history, English and ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland; to the British Studies seminar group assembled at Columbia University in the summer of 2007 under the auspices of the Mellon Foundation; and to the North American Conference on British Studies. My work has been enriched by my interaction with all of these individuals. I have also been the beneficiary of generous funding to see this project through to the end, and for that I must thank the Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland; the North American Conference on British Studies; the Mellon Foundation; and Harford Community College. This work rests on the shoulders of three giants in the world of cultural history—Greil Marcus, Charles Shaar Murray and Peter Guralnick. I have not personally interacted with these scholars, but their work has provided an invaluable model for my own, and so to them I am also grateful. Finally, I must thank my partner, Julie Mancine, for her support, her encouragement, her expertise in American cultural history, and her enthusiastic and thorough critical feedback. To the dozens of professors, colleagues, archivists, family and friends whom I have left unnamed, rest assured that I also owe you my deep gratitude. This dissertation could not be what it is without your help, support and advice. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication………………………………………………………………………...……….ii Acknowledgements...…………………………………………………………………….iii Table of Contents...…………………………………………………….…………………iv Introduction…….….………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter One: Talkin‘ ‗Bout My Generation: The British Blues Network and Its Environs..…………..42 Chapter Two: Tryin‘ to Make London My Home: Transmissions and Introductory Encounters With the Blues.…………..……………………………………………………………..………98 Chapter Three: But My Dad Was Black: Masculinity, Modernity and Blues Culture in Britain….……155 Chapter Four: The Cult of the Delta Blues Singer: Robert Johnson and British Cultural Mythmaking…………………………………………………………………………….231 Chapter Five: Call and Response: American Challenges to the British Blues Network……………....275 Chapter Six: Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Music and English-British Identities………………354 Chapter Seven: Just Can‘t Be Satisfied: Between Creativity and Authenticity…………...…………….425 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………..486 Appendix: A Representative Roster of the Anglo-American Blues-Rock Network…...510 Bibliography (including Discography)…………………...………………………….…511 iv INTRODUCTION ―Well I hope we‘re not too messianic/ Or a trifle too satanic/ We love to play the blues!‖ —The Rolling Stones, ―Monkey Man‖ (1968)1 This dissertation will attempt to explain two distinct yet related statements about the blues-based rock music of the post-Second World War period. The first is cultural historian David Christopher‘s assertion that ―by the mid-1970s all the major [rock] bands in the world were British.‖2 This statement is misleading—of course there were popular and important American bands during this period, and there had been for a decade or more. But one can make the slightly less strident, but more accurate, argument that by the mid-1970s, popular music expression was dominated by British groups and the examples they set in the mid-to-late 1960s. The second is music critic and historian Robert Shelton‘s argument that ―musical developments‖ made by British musicians such as Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin were ―more imaginative‖ than those made by American musicians. Both Christopher and Shelton‘s claims are all the more striking when one considers that the United States was the nation where rock ‗n‘ roll was invented—and yet by the 1970s, British bands were dominating popular music expression with imaginative and innovative fare.3 One of the tasks of Fathers and Sons will be explain how and why this happened. 1 Epigram: The Rolling Stones, ―Monkey Man,‖ Let It Bleed (Abkco, 1968). 2 David Christopher, British Culture: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 272. 3 Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (New York: Da Capo Press, 1986), p. 314. 1 In order to do so, I argue that it is necessary first to explain the unique methods by which young, white, mostly middle-class British men consumed and appropriated African-American blues music. Fathers and Sons relates how and why, beginning in the early 1960s, a more or less cohesive social network of such consumers received and adopted the blues, to the point of attempting to emulate it by forming their own blues bands. However, groups such as the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and Cream were not content merely to churn out covers, however earnestly respectful, of Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. If they had, it is likely that the world at-large would no longer find the music they made worthwhile. So the second story is one of synthesis, recombination and innovation. Fathers and Sons examines how the members of this network used the tropes, vocabulary and mythology of the blues to create a new, innovative form of popular music that was clearly influenced by the blues, without being completely derivative of it. The rock music produced by British rock musicians would dominate listeners and audiences on both sides of the Atlantic into the twenty-first century. Fathers and Sons is a work of trans-Atlantic intellectual