📍Cheadle Hulme, Stockport SK8, UK
1933 – 1963“I was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, in November 1933, and grew up in Cheadle Hulme, a leafy suburb south of Manchester. My father, Murray, was a guitarist who played in local pubs and a jazz enthusiast with a big collection of 78 records, and my earliest memories are of listening to them: Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang on guitar, and the boogie-woogie pianists Pinetop Smith and Albert Ammons. Home life wasn't always easy, with my parents often arguing, but the music was a refuge. I fell in love with the blues and taught myself to play the piano, guitar, ukulele and harmonica, all by the age of fifteen, listening to Lead Belly and the boogie-woogie records. I was a bit of a quirky boy, and as a teenager I built a tree house in the garden behind our house in Cheadle Hulme, kitted out with everything I needed, and I slept in it as my bedroom. I loved art as much as music, and I drew and painted all the time. After national service in Korea, where I bought my first electric guitar on leave in Japan, I studied at Manchester College of Art and played with a semi-professional band, the Powerhouse Four, while working as a graphic designer. In 1963 Alexis Korner encouraged me to move to London, and I formed John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, a school for young musicians including Eric Clapton, Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Taylor. They called me the Godfather of British Blues, and in 2024 I was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today