The role of Macclesfield in the development of American traditional music is rarely overstated. Blues, with its historic roots in places like Mississippi, New Orleans, Texas and Chicago, seems far removed from Cheshire, but that peculiar English phenomenon of the 1960s was a very important one indeed. As those young devotees like Alexis Korner unwittingly set off an unlikely blues boom, they were soon feeding the music back into America itself, forcing the world to listen, and lifting giants like Muddy Waters from a depressing obscurity.
Born in 1933, John Mayall (along with others such as Korner) is certainly due his title of "father of British blues". From his art-school days with the Powerhouse Four, through the Blues Syndicate and eventually the Bluesbreakers, Mayall was always at the heart of the English blues craze, shining the enthusiast's light on what was, at first, a struggling form.
Later, as blues entered the mainstream, and musician after musician began to pass through the Bluesbreakers and out into the world scene, Mayall found himself at the centre of a stellar orbit - Eric Clapton, John McVie, Mick Taylor, Peter Green - all Mayall graduates most likely to succeed. The one constant, however, was Mayall himself, and not for nothing was his 1967 album entitled Crusade.
"We believed in it," he says, "and we wanted to spread the word and draw attention to American blues artists who were not quite so well known as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker. I was championing the causes of people like Freddie King and Buddy Guy and Junior Wells - people like that. They were the lesser known at the time, but of course everybody knows them now."
Mayall was by no means England's first fan of jazz and blues. Trad jazz was already alive and well and people were discovering singers such as Leadbelly, Josh White and Bill Broonzy. This was the territory Lonnie Donegan quickly made his own, the music suddenly exploding into the skiffle phenomenon which launched so much of English pop.
In fact, Mayall recalls seeing Donegan even in his pre-hit days - a memory which dates the 68-year-old bluesman pretty solidly.
"I really was right there at the beginning. I remember Donegan playing banjo with Chris Barber because I went to all those jazz clubs and lapped it all up really. I loved a lot of the trad bands - Kenny Ball and Chris Barber. Good music is good music.
"In Manchester there were the Saints, who I thought were brilliant, and I loved all of it. But I had a good grounding. My father had been into the music too. It was Django Reinhardt first and foremost - and Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong of course. It was a general background of jazz that I got - Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, Dick McDonough, Charlie Christian and all the greats of that time. And as soon as I was old enough to buy my own 78s, I just got into boogie-woogie. That was really my first path into it. I think it has always been the case that Europeans had a far bigger interest in American music than the Americans did."
The British jazz scene was certainly throwing up some blues, but it wasn't quite the sort of thing Mayall, and others like him, had in mind. After spending his national service in Korea, he attended art school where his own musical approach finally began to take shape.
Greatly inspired by Alexis Korner's band, Blues Incorporated (whose floating membership included future members of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Cream and Manfred Mann), Mayall eventually gave up his job in graphic design and moved permanently to London.
It was 1963 and the "the beat scene" was already up and running. Mayall's strictly blues approach was hard to ignore and, a year later, he released his first single on Decca - Crawling Up A Hill.
"I think the music had its own life. It had a stronger following and domination than any kind of what they called 'beat' music. I don't even know what you'd call 'beat' music because all the clubs that we were in - the Flamingo and the Marquee - were all blues clubs. We were all doing the same circuit, everybody knew each other and we were all on the same team. It was such a small place that everybody knew everybody."
But that was also part of the problem. Soon it seemed as if everybody was playing in everybody else's band, and it began to get increasingly difficult for Mayall to hang on to his top-notch personnel. John McVie and Mick Fleetwood left to form Fleetwood Mac.
Eric Clapton left to form Cream. Then his replacement, Peter Green, joined Fleetwood Mac. Mick Taylor joined from the Gods but left for the Stones and so it continued. People came and went as Mayall continued to perform and record. It must have been frustrating in the extreme? "Not really, no. As a band leader I made my choices but that's all way in the past."
At this point, the Father of British Blues is clearly tired of talking about the old days. "What about the new stuff?" he asks (politely but firmly), pointing out that we haven't got much time left and that the whole idea of the interview is to promote his latest album and his upcoming show in Dublin with Van Morrison. I'm tempted to assert (politely but firmly) that I don't work in advertising and that, as far as I'm concerned, the interview has no such purpose, but I let it go.But it does serve to highlight the problem with artists of Mayall's stature, vintage and history. The reality is that the interesting stuff really is way, way in the past. And while Mayall is still a fully functioning artist, those uncomfortable questions linger about the actual relevance of a bluesman in today's world. In fairness, he still writes his own stuff and although Hideaway and Room To Move are still in the set, he's promising more than just a tired, greatest-hits rehash. But it's a tricky one even so and it's a stand-off full of contradictions. He doesn't want to talk any more about the past and that's fair enough - but his preferred topic of the new album provokes exactly the same questions.
John Mayall and Friends - Along for the Ride is a gathering together of assorted Mayall alumni in what is a thoroughly nostalgic exercise. It's a star-studded affair with McVie, Fleetwood, Green, Taylor, Andy Fairweather Low, Chris Rea, Davey Graham, plus a few US veterans such as Otis Rush, Billy Preston, Billy Gibbons and Steve Cropper. Younger blues players like Jeff Healey and Jonny Lang also get the nod but it's basically an old boys' reunion, which also takes us into yet further murky territory.
Star-studded albums tend to be thoroughly commercial affairs with great music often edged out by great names - the celebrity glitter used only to dazzle and to cover a multitude. Mayall agrees.
"I don't really approve of that. It seems that it's mostly done as a gimmicky type thing and so it doesn't have that reality thing to it. But this album was really people doing it for the love of it. A lot of the guests never took any money for it - they just wanted to be part of this historic get-together. We had the regular Bluesbreakers do the foundation except for the tracks with McVie and Mick Fleetwood, and it was a very wonderful session.
"The whole idea was to get everybody doing their first impressions and first-takes and keep that spontaneity so that we wouldn't end up with a gimmicky album. Nobody was in the studio for more than a couple of hours and most of that time was spent renewing friendships."
That constant tension between nostalgia and meaningful music will always be a challenge for blues musicians: that tricky balance between past and present even more pronounced for those whose initial impulse was to play and even rescue a music which was seriously slipping away.
Mayall's role in that rescue was a huge one. Not only was he a major mover in the introduction of the blues to Britain, he also helped to re-introduce it to America itself.
For that, all due respect and, with apologies for leaving the story way, way I the past, those two albums: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, Blues Breakers and John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers, A Hard Road, are as good a set of white, blues albums ever slapped on a deck.
John Mayall plays Smithfield, Dublin, with Van Morrison on Sunday July 22nd