Editing Alexis Korner (section)

==Early career==
Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner was born on 19 April 1928 in Paris, France,<ref name="Larkin">{{cite book|title=[[Encyclopedia of Popular Music|The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music]]|editor=Colin Larkin|editor-link=Colin Larkin (writer)|publisher=[[Virgin Books]]|date=1997|edition=Concise|isbn=1-85227-745-9|page=723}}</ref> to an Austrian Jewish father<ref>Jack Hamilton, ''Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination'', 2016, p.111</ref>  and a mother of Greek, Turkish and Austrian descent.<ref>{{cite web |author=iTunes|title=Alexis Korner Biography|website=[[iTunes]] |url=https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/alexis-korner/3194103|access-date=3 October 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|publisher=[[Rolling Stone]]|title=Fricke's Picks: Free, Bluesman Alexis Korner, "Scandinavia Action Jazz"|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/blogs/alternate-take/frickes-picks-free-bluesman-alexis-korner-scandinavia-action-jazz-20061117|access-date=3 October 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140122212120/http://www.rollingstone.com/music/blogs/alternate-take/frickes-picks-free-bluesman-alexis-korner-scandinavia-action-jazz-20061117|quote=He was also the unlikely ground zero of British R&B; -- a Paris-born singer-guitarist of very non-Delta roots (Korner was part Greek, Turkish and Austrian) |archive-date=22 January 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref> He spent his childhood in France, Switzerland and North Africa, and arrived in London in 1940 after the start of the Second World War. One memory of his youth was listening to a record by black pianist [[Jimmy Yancey]] during a German [[Strategic bombing|air raid]]. Korner said, "From then on all I wanted to do was play the blues."<ref name="tsxbpf">{{cite web |last=Eder |first=Bruce |title=Alexis Korner &#124; Biography |url=http://www.allmusic.com/artist/alexis-korner-mn0000001020/biography |publisher=AllMusic |access-date=27 June 2014}}</ref>

After the war, Korner played piano and guitar (his first guitar was built by friend and author Sydney Hopkins, who wrote ''[[Mister God, This Is Anna]]'') and in 1949 joined [[Chris Barber]]'s Jazz Band<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rocksbackpagesblogs.com/2009/09/chris-barber-father-of-british-rb/|author =John Pigeon|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100128073947/http://www.rocksbackpagesblogs.com/2009/09/chris-barber-father-of-british-rb/|publisher=Rocks Back Pages|title=Chris Barber: Father of British R&B|date=28 September 2009|url-status=usurped|archive-date=28 January 2010}}</ref> where he met blues harmonica player [[Cyril Davies]]. They started playing together as a duo, started the influential [[London Blues and Barrelhouse Club]] in 1955 and made their first record together in 1957.<ref name="Larkin"/>

Korner made his first official record on [[Decca Records]] DFE 6286 in the company of [[Ken Colyer]]'s [[Skiffle]] Group. His talent extended to playing [[mandolin]] on one of the tracks of this British [[Extended play|EP]], recorded in London on 28 July 1955. Korner encouraged many American blues artists, previously virtually unknown in Britain, to perform at the London Blues and Barrelhouse Club, which he established with Davies at the Round House pub in [[Soho]].<ref>{{Google books|4y-oDmH2YzYC|The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by Allan F. Moore|page=9}}</ref>