John Mayall didn’t see the British blues boom coming, but when it arrived he was ready.
“I don’t think anybody could have forecast that. It happened so quickly. One moment it was 10 years of New Orleans jazz and then all of a sudden there was a new electrified music coming out of the clubs,” says Mayall, whose band The Bluesbreakers were at the forefront of the blues movement
A decade older than most of the blues musicians who came out of Britain in the ‘60s, Mayall was surprised to discover that his 20-year passion was now the fashion.
“Music was always a hobby till I was 30 years old. At that time the music that I’d been playing, pretty much privately, now became something that was a viable means of starting a professional career,” Mayall says.
Mayall credits Alexis Korner, a musician, radio broadcaster and seminal figure in British blues with giving him the means to bring his music to the public.
“He was very helpful. He lived in London and I was up in Manchester but he was very instrumental in introducing me to the clubs,” Mayall says.
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