In the early 1960s, very few people outside the US knew anything about blues music. Even as an obvious source of rock 'n' roll, it had remained very much in the background - unknown and unavailable. The more investigative folkies had some information, thanks to performers like Leadbelly, a singer who was also the touchstone for the skiffle craze which Lonnie Donegan railroaded through the 1950s. But apart from that, perhaps only the jazzers had any real knowledge of blues, thanks mainly to Chris Barber, who brought Big Bill Broonzy to Britain in 1948 and later invited Muddy Waters in 1952. For the general pop audience, however, it would take bands like the Rolling Stones to introduce the great names of black blues into pop consciousness.
Bill Wyman was the Stones' bass player. He didn't say much. He didn't move much, but he had a passion for American music which clearly still sustains him in his post-Stones retirement. His new book, Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey, tells the story of the music that first affected him as a teenager and would later become the source of his career and fame. But this is much more than just a pop star's scrapbook. This is well-researched and evangelical stuff which proves that the Stones knew what they were talking about when they first played blues for a world which knew very little about it.
"Well, until I joined Mick and Keith and Brian I didn't know anything about it either," says Wyman. "They'd just been getting together for a few odd gigs and that's when I first heard Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley. It was all pretty new to me and very simple - 12-bar stuff. Of course, I had been in a skiffle band and so I was playing blues, but the thing is I didn't know it. At that time there was only about 40 people in England who really knew anything about blues music. But there were American servicemen around and they knew what was going on. And when they heard Brian Jones on slide guitar playing Dust My Broom, they were saying: 'Boy, that really sounds like the real thing!' "
The Stones were not entirely alone, however. Musicians such as Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies had played a major role in nurturing young blues players who would later bring the music to a wider pop audience. There were also, as Wyman recalls with glee, "a lot of duff bands who were half-trad and half-bluesey - like Hogsnort Rupert". But there were good bands too, such as Manfred Mann and The Yardbirds and, as Wyman puts it, "soon everybody was doing it".
In June 1964, the Rolling Stones travelled to Chicago to try to capture the Chess Records sound which had inspired them. Just being in the US, never mind being in the Rolling Stones, was an extraordinary thrill for Wyman the fan. He loved the music made at Chess - particularly Chuck Berry, whose performance of You Can't Catch Me in the movie Rock, Rock, Rock had been one of the revelations of his teens. The whole Chicago experience was therefore quite overwhelming.
"During our first session at Chess, in walks Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon and Buddy Guy! And the next day, Muddy Waters comes in and he's helping us in with the gear! You tried to be cool but you were in shock! Of course, we got to know all those people later, which was wonderful, because they treated us as fellow musicians. But this was incredible. You idolise these people and what can I say? I would never have had the chance to see them or meet them if I hadn't been in the Stones."
The Rolling Stones were certainly an education for everyone. Any Stones fan who bothered to do a little background research was soon familiar with names like Chester Burnett, Slim Harpo, Elmore James, Little Walter, Irma Thomas, Don Covay and more. Although the band always gave due credit to their heroes and inspirations, there was that inevitable suggestion of rip-off - that this was just another example of white music taking a profitable ride on the back of black music. It was unfair in this case, but it was said.
"Yes, and we got it from Lonnie Donegan!" laughs Wyman. "He was on television and when they mentioned the Rolling Stones, he spat on the floor. And Lonnie took everything himself and put 'trad/arranged Donegan' on it! I know him now and we've had a laugh about it, but he was accusing us of stealing from the black man whereas we were giving them full credit and they were getting all the royalties. He wasn't. And in all our interviews in the music press we always talked about how wonderful people like Muddy and Sonny Boy Williamson were. We started to make white kids aware of these other musicians and then these people started to tour. We helped to put them back on the map. In America, kids were asking: 'Where can we find these people?' And we'd say, well, just go across the river!"
It was, of course, a two-way process. Keith Richards once said that he got everything from Chuck Berry and Mick got everything from Don Covay - and this is certainly obvious to anyone who hears Berry or Covay. But the real advantage black music gave The Stones was in that massive store of music, unknown outside black America, from which the Stones could pick and choose. Not everything in the Stones back catalogue is written by Jagger/Richards.
"Well, me, Charlie and Ian Stewart used to jump in a taxi and go to the black areas of Chicago or Atlanta, and we'd stop at the first record shop we could find," says Wyman. "We'd jump out, run in, grab handfuls of singles and albums, pay for them really quickly and rush back to the hotel. You had to do it in that way. Often the taxi driver took a lot of persuasion to even take us there in the first place. You couldn't just stroll about in them days. But you'd come up with gems like Lazy Lester or Lonesome Sundown and then you'd record it. And we were way ahead of a lot of bands because we were able to find these artists when we were on our tours.
"The Beatles would find things too and they might have used a few ideas like a guitar riff, but we actually did the songs - Solomon Burke, Otis Redding, Irma Thomas. We incorporated it into our music, and our scope in music was more varied than theirs. The Beatles just played pure pop, but we covered r 'n' b, blues, soul, gospel, a bit of country and folk."
These days, Wyman plays with his band, the Rhythm Kings. Here, with Georgie Fame, Gary Brooker, Albert Lee and others, he pursues his hobby of uncovering the complicated travels of US music. The book, with its wonderful photographs, maps, illustrations, anecdotes and information, follows the same twisted routes and is a delight for any blues fan. Just about every base is covered as Wyman continues to proselytise, not with the dull regard of the academic, or the buffoonery of a pop star, but with the enthusiasm of a fan who can talk forever about this endlessly rewarding music.
"My favourite stuff is late 1920s through the 1930s," he says. "There is so much great blues, great jazz and great dance bands, even the British dance bands like Ambrose. In America, you had Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Robert Johnson, Peatie Wheatstraw, Bob Wills, Hank Williams, Cliff Carlisle, Frank Hutchinson, Jimmie Rodgers, all that yodelling . . . and I just keep finding gems. You just keep finding it.
"It's like when you go fishing, you never know what's going to be on the end of the line. And nowadays they don't give young people much scope to hear any music from the past. But if you're in any other part of the entertainment world, you can. If you want to be an actor, you can watch old Humphrey Bogart; if you want to be a sportsman, you can watch old films of Pele and George Best; if you want to be an artist, you can go and look at Van Gogh. But if you want to be a musician, you're not able to listen to anything that's more than 10 years old. And that's wrong."
Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey is published by Dorling Kindersley