Alexis Korner - Bootleg Him! 1972

Alexis Korner was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a founding father of British blues".  A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s, The best of all the Korner anthologies, boasting unreleased tapes and a lot of interesting one-off recordings from the various nooks and crannies of his career. AMG.

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Alexis Korner - Get Off My Cloud 1975

The lineup makes this album virtually an offshoot of Korner's participation on B.B. King In London from four years earlier, including Steve Marriott, Peter Frampton etc., with Keith Richards making a guest appearance. Songs include the Rolling Stones title hit, and a cover of the Doors' "The Wasp (Texas Radio)." Nothing to make anyone forget the originals, nor is the new material terribly memorable, but everyone sounds like they're having fun here. AMG.

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Alexis Korner & Peter Thorup With Snape - Live On Tour In German 1973

Alexis Korner was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a founding father of British blues". A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s, Korner was instrumental in the formation of several notable British bands including The Rolling Stones and Free. Here on Tour with Peter Thorup, danish blues guitarist, and Snape.

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Alexis Korner - I Wonder Who 1967

Recorded in a mere two sessions, this had the potential to be a decent, if hardly innovative, effort. At this point, Korner's group was in one its most stripped-down phases, featuring just Alexis on guitar, Danny Thompson on bass, and Terry Cox on drums. Very shortly after this disc, Thompson and Cox would form the rhythm section of Pentangle, so these cuts are somewhat akin to hearing the bare bones of Pentangle in a much more blues/jazz-based context. The musical backing is not the problem, nor is the material, divided between Korner originals and blues standards by the likes of Jimmy Smith, Percy Mayfield, Ma Rainey, and Jelly Roll Morton. The problem is that Korner elected to sing these himself in his gruff, scraggly croak. It's not like listening to Dylan or Buffy Sainte-Marie, who take some getting used to, but have considerable, idiosyncratic talent -- Korner simply cannot, objectively speaking, sing. (His butchering of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" has to be heard to be believed.) And that makes this album downright difficult to bear, despite the fine, spare musical arrangements (the instrumental cover of Jimmy Smith's "Chicken Shack Back Home" is a major standout in this context). If Korner had the wisdom to employ even a minor-league British bluesman like, say, Duffy Power (who guested with him occasionally during this time) as his singer for these sessions, the results would have been immeasurably better. AMG.

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Alexis Korner - A New Generation Of Blues 1968

A basically competent, though hardly enthralling, effort from the British bluesman that alternates between minimal, acoustic-flavored production and fuller arrangements with jazzy touches of flute and upright bass. Korner wrote about half of the material, leaving the rest of the space open for R&B/blues covers and adaptations of traditional standards. "The Same for You" has a strange, ever-so-slight psychedelic influence, with its swirling flute, fake fadeout, and odd antiestablishment lyrics. Korner's voice is (and always would be) a tuneless bark, but it sounds better here than it did on the first album to prominently feature his vocals (I Wonder Who, 1967). As such, this album is one of the best representations of Korner as a frontman. AMG.

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Alexis Korner - Both Sides 1970

By 1970, there were certain things you could count on with an Alexis Korner album. Those included an almost manic stylistic diversity that ran from near-trad jazz and blues to near-blues-rock; a top-notch cast of supporting musicians; and seriously inconsistent quality, in large part because of Korner's hoarse lead vocals. Both Sides has all of these, and remains one of his more obscure efforts, in part because it was issued only in Germany and Holland. Certainly Korner enlisted some top talent, including Free's Andy Fraser on bass; Paul Rodgers (also of Free) on backing vocals; Lol Coxhill on tenor and soprano sax; John Marshall on drums; and Ray Warleigh on sax. Give Korner credit, too, for trying to move with the times, including some nods to soul and heavy rock music along with the blues and jazz that were at his musical core, and making substantial use of a horn section within a loosely blues-oriented format. Still, it must be acknowledged that the material was both erratic and wildly eclectic in nature, including a cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Mighty-Mighty Spade and Whitey"; a generic soul-rock instrumental (the Korner-penned "Funky"); a Free cover "Wild Injun Woman" that was much better suited to Free themselves; and yet another cover, of the Staple Singers' "I See It," that couldn't help but pale next to the original. Adding to the unevenness are a couple of live cuts, one of them a jazzy eight-minute instrumental duet between Warleigh and bassist Colin Hodgkinson, the other a ragged, overlong twelve-minute performance of the traditional blues "Rosie." Korner came off best on the gentle folk-blues of his self-penned "To Whom It May Concern" and an interpretation of William Bell's "You Don't Miss Your Water (Til Your Well Runs Dry)" that, while again no match for other versions, is heartfelt and doesn't over-reach itself. The 2006 CD reissue of the album added historical liner notes by Korner biographer Harry Shapiro and nine bonus tracks from 1969 studio and BBC sessions. AMG.

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Alexis Korner - Accidentally Born In New Orleans 1973

years after its initial release on Warner Bros. Credit must be given to Water for the care that was put into this project via remastered tracks and new and informative liner notes by Ian Wallace. Unfortunately, the music itself hasn't improved with age. What could have been an astounding collaboration between British blues granddaddy Alexis Korner and Snape, featuring CCS slide guitarist Peter Thorup and formerKing Crimson members Mel Collins, Ian Wallace, and Boz Burrell, never gets up to speed. The musicians fail to match the emotional fervor that tracks like "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer" or "Rock Me" demand, while the remaining tunes definitely needed to be brightened up. Part of what makes this date so frustrating are the few shining moments that provide a window into what could have been. For instance, the overdubbed horn section in the middle of "Country Shoes" begins to boil with a dynamic blend of R&B and free jazz, before the tune inexplicably droops into generic hard rock filler. Evidently the chemistry of the band's short existence was lost somewhere between the initial tracks recorded in San Francisco and the finishing touches applied in a London studio with a smattering of special guests who included Steve Marriott, Zoot Money, Patto members Ollie Halsall and Mike Patto, and keyboardist Tim Hinkley, who was working at the time with Alvin Lee and Humble Pie. With that kind of talent, you would have expected more from this aggregation than the flat production and the overall forgettable arrangements. AMG.

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Alexis Korner - I Wonder Who 1967

Recorded in a mere two sessions, this had the potential to be a decent, if hardly innovative, effort. At this point, Korner's group was in one its most stripped-down phases, featuring just Alexis on guitar, Danny Thompson on bass, and Terry Cox on drums. Very shortly after this disc, Thompson and Cox would form the rhythm section of Pentangle, so these cuts are somewhat akin to hearing the bare bones of Pentangle in a much more blues/jazz-based context. The musical backing is not the problem, nor is the material, divided between Korner originals and blues standards by the likes of Jimmy Smith, Percy Mayfield, Ma Rainey, and Jelly Roll Morton. The problem is that Korner elected to sing these himself in his gruff, scraggly croak. It's not like listening to Dylan or Buffy Sainte-Marie, who take some getting used to, but have considerable, idiosyncratic talent -- Korner simply cannot, objectively speaking, sing. (His butchering of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" has to be heard to be believed.) And that makes this album downright difficult to bear, despite the fine, spare musical arrangements (the instrumental cover of Jimmy Smith's "Chicken Shack Back Home" is a major standout in this context). If Korner had the wisdom to employ even a minor-league British bluesman like, say, Duffy Power (who guested with him occasionally during this time) as his singer for these sessions, the results would have been immeasurably better. AMG.

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Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated - R&B from The Marquee 1962

Its title notwithstanding, R&B from the Marquee was not a live album, nor was it cut at the Marquee: it was actually done at Decca Records' London studio, albeit in one long day's work and effectively live-in-the-studio. It was also the place where British blues began, at least as a recording proposition. Blues played by Britons had been part of the underground music scene since the mid-'50s, and Blues Incorporated had been a going concern in one form or another, initially guitarist Alexis Korner and harpist/singer Cyril Davies (actually, maybe the first two Britons to play blues); but by this time, the group also included Dick Heckstall-Smith (tenor sax, backing vocals), Keith Scott (piano), Spike Heatley (upright bass), and Graham Burbridge (drums), with Long John Baldry handling some lead vocals. For this record, Big Jim Sullivan also sang backup, and Teddy Wadmore provides a key cameo appearance for the electric bass guitar (then a new and alien instrument in this music). The sound here is mostly out of late-'40s and early-'50s Chicago blues; in later years -- Blues Incorporated would embrace more diverse branches of the music in their performances -- and the outfit swings with a surprising degree of authenticity; they're somewhat stiffer than any actual Chicago outfit would be, but in England in 1962, this was as down-and-dirty as any homegrown outfit ever sounded. Korner's guitar leads things off with his own "Gotta Move," an instrumental that showcases the whole outfit, including a bracing duet between Davies' harmonica and Heckstall-Smith's sax: they give each give plenty of space to work around the other, here and also on Davies' own "Spooky But Nice," and it's easy to see why the two got along so well despite Davies' well-known antipathy to reed instruments and horns. Blues Incorporated was at its peak during the time this album was done, with its best and most powerful lineup, and never stronger in the vocal department -- Baldry has more flexibility, and is more a potential star (which he became) for his singing, while Davies is a pure, raw bluesman, with no concessions to pop music, and he sounds uncannily like Muddy Waters on "I Got My Brand on You." And this band swings, but it also rocks. "I Wanna Put a Tiger in Your Tank" is a forceful blues workout for its time, and when Wadmore's electric bass shows up on "Got My Mojo Working," you can hear the first recorded manifestation of what would become blues-rock in the hands of Blues Incorporated member/acolytes the Rolling Stones and the Pretty Things. Spike Heatley gets the spotlight briefly on the instrumental "Down Town," and lest anyone think that Alexis Korner is only a supporting player in his own band, nothing could be farther from the truth: his guitar, acoustic and mostly unamplified, helps drive everything here, and "Finkle's Café" and "Hoochie Coochie Man," among other tracks, give him the spotlight. AMG.

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