Koerner, Ray & Glover

In early 1963 the Rolling Stones were wowing London with their blues covers. Ever since the generally held opinion is that Britain exported the blues back to America through the Rolling Stones s in the so-called ‘Sixties Invasion’. While Rolling Stones covers were some of the first blues records that many Americans heard it was not as though there were not plenty of young white Americans high on the blues.

On 24 March 1964, as The Stones were playing The Station Hotel in Richmond, three Americans in their early to mid twenties were recording at the Woman’s Club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. John Koerner, Dave Ray and Tony Glover had all met at the University of Minnesota where Koerner and Ray were taking classes; Glover simply hanging out in search of like-minded Blues fans.

They met E.D. Nunn, the heir to the Nunn-Bush Shoe Company fortune who had his own record label, Audiophile, – their previous biggest seller was an album with one side devoted to a thunderstorm. On their album, Koerner, Ray and Glover covered Lead Belly, Muddy Waters and Blind Lemon Jefferson among others. Linin’ Track is a Lead Belly song, one he collected on his travels and dates back to the early days of black workers building America’s railroads.

The album came out in June 1963; just 300 copies were pressed on translucent red vinyl. Nunn wouldn’t give any to the band, although he did sell them at cost. Glover bought three copies, one of which he sent to Jac Holzman at Elektra Records. Holzman flew to Minneapolis and signed them over dinner, purchased the master tape from Nunn and released the album. The band played the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 and although they did carry on in various guises they have largely been lost to the mists of time. Theirs is arguably the best ‘white boys playing the blues’ to come out of America.