Having A Rave-Up! The British R&B Sounds Of 1964 (Grapefruit/Cherry Red)

Here ya go! Four hours of some of the rawest, most blueswailing tracks to be recorded in the UK in 1964 now spread over 3 CDs…91 songs in all.

Thanks to folks like John Mayall, Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies along with The Rolling Stones and TheYardbirds, 1964 saw an explosion of R&B infused garage rock.

Some bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals and The Kinks have become legends, while other, less fortunate, but not necessarily less talented, such as The Betterdays, The Primitives and The Talismen had a brief, but loud, moment of glory, before fading into oblivion…maybe they just needed better names.

The liner notes, written by David Wells, detail the transition in England from the Beat Groups of 1963…led by The Beatles…to the R&B movement of 1964…led by The Stones.

Now, due to licencing restrictions, you won’t hear any early Rolling Stones, but there is more than enough good stuff from big names like The Yardbirds, The Animals, Manfred Mann and The Kinks and a treasure trove of tracks you probably never heard before, many of which feature a young Jimmy Page, who seemed to be everywhere at once.

Disc one opens up with the first of two tracks from The Pretty Things, Rosalyn. This and Don’t Bring Me Down (found on disc 33) were both covered by David Bowie on his Pinups album and this early version of The Pretty Things rocked like nobody’s business.

Many of the songs are covers of black blues artists from the previous decade such as Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and of course Bo Diddley.

Make your way through these discs and you’ll discover a harder-edge version of pop groups like The Hollies, The Searchers and The Zombies.

You’ll also stumble across early attempts at stardom by the likes of Rod Stewart (with The Hoochie Coochie Men), his future Faces bandmate Ron Wood with The Birds and Steve Marriott singing with a band called The Moments.

Oh, and The Who were briefly The High Numbers (after starting out as The Detours) and they can be heard on their July ’64 single, I’m The Face.

There’s a lot to take in here, the liner notes are detailed and well-written while the music itself will rock your socks off.

Rod, Steve, Roger and Jimmy all went on to bigger things but who’s to say this box set doesn’t contain some of their best work.

Marty Duda

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