Long John Baldry’s influence extends far beyond his pivotal role in founding the British blues scene in the early 1960s. Seeing Long John perform in the early 1960s sealed Eric Clapton’s intention to become a professional musician. Then it was Baldry who discovered Rod ‘The Mod’ Stewart and gave him his first gig in 1964. And a few years later, Elton John chose his stage surname in Long John’s honour; and when Elton topped the single charts in 1975 with Someone Saved My Life Tonight the ‘someone’ that the song was written about was none other than Long John. Stewart and John remained good friends of Long John’s until his untimely passing in July 2005, aged 64.
He had a middle-class upbringing in 1950s north London and he first heard American blues, aged 12, on a neighbour’s gramophone. “A couple of doors down,” he told this writer in 2003, “was a painter called Oliver Graham Bradbury. Later Oliver’s fame made him enough money to buy a string of racehorses… it’s not often you hear of painters buying racehorses! Anyway, he turned me on to Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy around about 1953.”
