American Folk Blues Festival

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The American Folk Blues Festival (also American Folk-Blues Festival, and AFBF) was a music festival that toured the Europe beginning in 1962.

German jazz publicist Joachim-Ernst Berendt first had the idea of bringing original African-American blues performers to Europe. Jazz had become very popular, and rock and roll was just gaining a foothold, and both genres drew influences directly back to the blues. Berendt thought that European audiences would flock to concert halls to see them in person.

Promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau would bring this idea to reality. By contacting Willie Dixon, an influential blues composer and bassist from Chicago, they were given access to the blues culture of the deep South. The first festival was held in 1962, and they continued almost annually until 1972, after an eight year hiatus reviving the festival in 1980 until its final performance in 1985.

Blues musicians who performed include Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Lonnie Johnson, Big Joe Williams, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon. Many of the concerts were released on a long-running annual series of records, which was collated again for release in the 1990s.

Attendees of the first London festivals are believed to include such influential musicians as Mick Jagger, Eric Burdon, Eric Clapton, and Steve Winwood, who were the primary movers in the blues explosion that would lead to the British Invasion.

Sites where the festival was held included London, Hamburg, Paris, and others.