This is a clip, or rather a collection of many clips, from a BBC documentary called "Blues Britannia". I received a copy as a gift from my daughter's boyfriend who lives in Scotland, and it's fantastic . If it's at all possible to get your hands on a copy, I highly recommend watching it. If not, it can actually be viewed in it's entirety on Youtube(click link to view). It's a BBC production so it goes without saying that it's absolutely topnotch.
I was particularly impressed with some of the commentary by Kieth (Keef) Richards. Say what you will about him, the man knows his blues. This Youtube clip features many of his comments featured in the doc.
A lot of my reading is on the subject of the history of this great music form. I find the blues craze of post war Britain to be an extremely interesting and unexpected twist in the story of the blues.
Surreal in fact. I bet Muddy, Wolf et al., could have never imagined as young men, hollerin' at a Saturday night fish fry or picking cotton under the punishing Delta sun, that one day they would be performing in great halls for crowds of screaming white kids on the other side of the ocean.
Stranger still, is the fact that these pasty faced English kids introduced a generation of young Americans to a music that was born in their very own backyard. Irony is certainly not lost on the blues.
