Page 57 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2025 Digital Edition

Jeff Beck. Photo by Arnie Goodman Photography

heroes – blues-rock band The Groundhogs, founded in 1963,
was inspired by John Lee Hooker’s song “Ground Hog Blues;”
rock band The Pretty Things got their name from Bo Diddley’s
1955 song “Pretty Thing;” Pink Floyd named themselves after
Piedmont bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council; and
The Rolling Stones got their name from Muddy Waters’ song
“Rollin’ Stone.”
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards met and bonded after Mick
showed Keith his Chuck Berry LP he had just imported from Jimmy Page at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, CA, 1983.
the U.S. Mick was to join Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, Photo by Dana Wullenwaber, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/
which also featured singer Long John Baldry, harp player Cyril licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Davies, bassist Jack Bruce (later in Cream), multi-instrumentalist
Graham Bond and drummer Charlie Watts. Alexis was the blues was everywhere and the hungry Brits just couldn’t get
mentor and bandleader, but was quickly eclipsed by the enough. The Yardbirds would feature guitarists Eric Clapton,
talent he assembled in Blues Incorporated. Gomelsky began Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page – who would each later find fame
booking bands like the Animals (Eric Burdon on vocals) and and fortune, respectively, in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers
the Yardbirds into the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, which and Cream, the Jeff Beck Group (featuring Rod Stewart on
became THE place to play and hear this amazing new music. vocals and Ron Wood on bass, both later in Faces) and Led
This was the start of the British Blues Boom, as the blues Zeppelin. Mayall’s Bluesbreakers also had a triumvirate of
became the most popular music in the U.K. in the mid-‘60s. The great guitar players in Clapton, Peter Green (who founded

Mick Taylor. Photo by Arnie Goodman Photography John Mayall. Photo by Jack de Nijs for Anefo/Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

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