It was a damp November evening back in 68 when this writer first caught up with Alexis Korner. The Bedford Cellar was typical of the jazz and blues joints where the cream of the scene would perform for the faithful; small, dimly-lit and filled with smoke. Korner was clearly in his element, delivering some of the very best, most authentic rhythm and blues ever produced outside America.
In the late ’60s, Korner was hardly a new face on the jazz and blues scene. Back in the mid-’50s he had been playing in ‘trad’ bands with the likes of Ken Colyer and Chris Barber, sitting in on banjo and piano, and later guitar.
However, both he and Colyer wanted to embrace the new American jazz and blues, but things weren’t easy, as R&B and jazz were still regarded as genuinely depraved by a large section of British society. Alexis Korner had real, direct experience of this diseased and warped point of view.