Blues Incorporated Research Paper

Blues Incorporated (1961 – 1966) started as an intentionally fluid, loose house jam rhythm and blues band that played the Barrelhouse Club with an open door policy for talented players to sit in and play blues music. Davies and Korner received requests (many written with demos) from now well-known figures to play or sit in with Blues Incorporated, i.e., Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. Although Blues Incorporated is routinely acknowledged as Britain’s first electric blues band, the groups major contribution is that of a vehicle for the numerous artists to engage and rise into the germinating BBB. Artists such as Charlie Watts, Long John Baldry, Malcolm Cecil, Jack Bruce, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Art Wood, Ginger Baker, and Graham Bond were members of Blues Incorporated. In addition, numerous musicians such as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ian Stewart, Brian Jones, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page, and John Mayall routinely sat in and performed with the

“I would regularly participate in jam sessions that would happen between sets,” recalled Jimmy Page. Tolinski, p. 12. Page further describes the scene, “In the middle of ’62, Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies began organizing these blues jams at [London’s] Marque Club on Thursday nights. These became quite popular. In fact you could trace the whole beginning of the British blues boom to those jams.” Tolinski, p. 15. After an overwhelming amount of players, a second group from the revolving musicians sitting in with Blues Incorporated formed its own band- The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones left to become the house band at the Crawdaddy Club. Unsurprisingly, bands that can trace some of their members back to Blues Incorporated are John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Fleetwood Mac, Cream, the Graham Bond Organization and the