Life [41]
Alexis Korner was the daddy of the London blues scene—not a great player himself, but a generous man and a real promoter of talent. Also something of an intellectual in the musical world. He lectured on jazz and blues at such places as the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He used to work for the BBC—DJ’ing and interviewing musicians, which meant he was in close contact with God. He knew his stuff backwards; he knew every player who was worth his salt. He was part Austrian, part Greek and had been brought up in North Africa. He had a real Gypsy-looking face with long sideburns, but he spoke with a really rich “I say, old boy” voice, very precise English.
Alexis’s band was damn good. Cyril Davies was a hell of a harp player, one of the best harp players you’ve ever heard. Cyril was a panel beater from Wembley, and his manners and his way of coming on were exactly what you’d expect of a panel beater from Wembley, with a huge thirst for bourbon. He had this aura because he’d actually been to Chicago and he’d seen Muddy and Little Walter so he came back with a halo round him. Cyril didn’t like anybody. He didn’t like us because he felt the winds of change coming and he didn’t want it. He died very soon afterwards, in 1964, but he’d already broken away from Alexis’s band in 1963 to form the R&B All-Stars, with a weekly gig at the Marquee.
The Ealing Club was a trad jazz club that Blues Incorporated took over on Saturday nights. It was a funky room, sometimes ankle deep in condensation. It was under Ealing tube station, and the roof over the stage was one of those thick glass cobbled pavements, so there’s all these people walking over your head. And every now and again, Alexis would say, “You want to come up and play?” And you’re playing an electric guitar and you’re ankle deep in water, and you’re just hoping everything’s grounded right, otherwise sparks will fly. My equipment was always on a knife edge. When I got round to wire strings, they were expensive. If one broke, you’d keep another one and then loop them together and extend it and put it back on, and it would work! If the string could at least cover the fret board, you knotted it just above the nut and then extended it to cover the tuning pegs. It did affect tuning to a certain extent! Half a string here and half a string there. Thank God for scouting and knotting.
I had a thing called a DeArmond pickup. And it was unique. You could clamp it above the soundboard and it slid up and down on a spindle. You didn’t have a bass pickup or a treble pickup. If you wanted a softer sound, you slid the fucker up the spindle towards the neck and so you got a bassier sound up there. And if you wanted treble, you slid it down the pole again. And of course this played havoc with its wiring. I used to carry a soldering kit for emergencies, because you’d be sliding this thing up and down, and it was just so breakable. I was always soldering and rewiring behind the amp—a Little Giant amp the size of a radio. I was one of the first to get an amp. We were all using tape recorders before that. Dick Taylor used to plug into his sister’s Bush record player. My first amp was a radio; I just took that apart. My mother was pissed off. The radio’s not working because I’ve got it apart and I’m plugging, zzzz, just trying to get a sound. In that respect good training for later on—honing your sound, matching guitars to amps. We started from scratch, with the tubes and valves. Sometimes if you take one valve out, you can get this really raunchy, dirty sound because you’re pushing the machine and it’s got to work overtime. If you put the double-A valve back in, then you’ve got this sweeter sound. That’s how I got electrocuted so many times. I kept