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falsetto stuff. So I was immersed in all that stuff as a young boy, really, and it just continued
throughout the early 60s, when the Pye International R&B label started with releasing the Chess
stuff by Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson and John Lee Hooker and all that. We had some
fantastic record shops in Liverpool. There was NEMS and Rushworth’s and Beaver Radio, and
we’d just go into town every Saturday and they'd allow you to listen to these records in the booths.
So we didn't have to buy them [laughs], and we couldn't afford it, you know.

BiTS: When did you start hearing live blues music?

RC: Well, let's see now. We, when I say we, my older brother and sister, we went to see a package
show with Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins. This is in 1964. We'd already seen The Beatles live, but
then came Carl Perkins and Chuck Berry, and The Animals were on the bill as well. But the big

thing for me was when I went to a small basement club in Liverpool called Hope Hall to see Alexis
Korner’s Blues Incorporated. This was in September 1964, and I was still at school, and I'd been
reading about his sessions there, you see, and I was strangely interested. I'd already heard some
Muddy Water stuff on the radio and Alexis Korner Blues Incorporated was being written about
as the best R&B band in the land. So I just wanted to hear them, Ian, and I hadn't heard anything
by them. I went along to this Saturday afternoon session, and I was absolutely blown away. The
bass player in the band was Danny
Blues Incorporated, Left to Right: Dick Heckstall-Smith (sax), Thompson, who you might have heard
Alexis Korner (guitar), Jack Bruce (bass), Mick Jagger (vocals) of because he went on to play in
and Cyril Davies (harmonica). Pentangle and of couse with Blues
Incorporated. The band at the time
had this American, black, former GI
named Herbie Goins , who was the
featured singer. He was great on
James Brown stuff, but then Alexis
started to sing this slow blues ’Little
Bitty Girl’, and I was completely
galvanised. I'd never heard anything

so moving in my life, and to be quite
honest with you, the tears were rolling
down my cheek. It was incredibly
moving, and not only his singing, wich
was sensational, but his guitar playing.

BiTS: I had the pleasure of going to a club called the Troubadour in London in the late 1950s, and
I played on a number of occasions in impromptu sets with Alexis Korner, Martin Carthy and others
that turned up. They're absolutely fabulous. It was great stuff.

RC: Oh, wow! They were great days, and they can't really be repeated.

BiTS: That’s true.

RC: So I'm very, very grateful that I lived through that era because it set me up for what I was
going to do with my life. That was 1964; I saw Howlin’ Wolf at The Cavern in 1964 and then Big
Joe Turner in a little ballroom in Liverpool. So it was all building up to this journey that I was about
to go on, you know.

BiTS: You were still at school, of course, when all this was happening. I imagine so anyway.

RC: Yeah, I was. Yeah.

BiTS: Did you ever have a career? Did you plan to work at something?