Various – American Folk Blues Festival 1964 (Pure Pleasure)

The organisers Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau made the idea a reality. They contacted Willie Dixon, an influential blues composer and bassist from Chicago, which gave them access to southern blues culture. The first festival took place in 1962 and continued almost every year until 1972; After an eight-year hiatus, the festival revived in 1980 until it was last held in 1985.

The concerts featured some of the leading blues musicians of the 1960s, such as Muddy Waters, Howlin 'Wolf, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson, also blues legends from an earlier period such as Sleepy John Estes, John Henry Barbee & Lightnin 'Hopkins.

Contributors in 1962 in Manchester, the very first venue for the festival in Great Britain, included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jimmy Page. At the first festivals later in London, it is said that influential musicians such as Eric Burdon, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood were among the participants. Taken as a whole, these were the ones who started the blues explosion, which in turn would lead to the high hit parade presence and intense airplay of British pop music known in North America as the British Invasion.

Reviews

"Excellent pressed." (Good Times, December 2014 / January 2015)