any new Beatle fans because of the remasters?

" I think you will find the answer to this puzzle in the great repositories of record companies like chess, king, and sun, and many others."

Agreed.

I had the opportunity to visit the Sun Studio in Memphis this past summer and picked up their 50th anniversary box set.

Since then, I have have spent a good amount of listening time playing tunes from that set off my music server mixed in randomly with all my Beatles stuff (including new mono remasters, BBC, and Anthology collections) and others. It is a very eye and ear opening experience.

It is amazing how the R&B of that period sounds so much more alive than so much of its British counterparts.

Take blues artists such as Slim Harpo, Howlin Wolf, Otis Rush and Sonnyboy Williamson for example. Stack them against their British blues counterparts and I think there will be some black vinyl 12 inch frisbees flyin' out the window in a hurry!!! I listened to some John Mayall recently and had to turn it off and immediately cleanse my palate with a whole lot of chess material to get that whiney sound out of my head. As much as I give grief about the beatles, I can give triple that on the subject of Eric Clapton (most over rated guitar player in history). Remember "Clapton is god"?

"It is amazing how the R&B of that period sounds so much more alive"

Yes, I would agree that the R&R and R&B and "race" music has a certain air about it that is refreshingly raw and alive in a way that makes it stand uniquely on its own, especially with the quality repackagings and remasters available for these also these days played on a good system.

The Beatles in particular though did breathe a new, different and unique sense of life into their covers of many of the these tunes that they performed live in their early years though IMHO. I could take or leave most of the other early BRitish Invasion acts that covered these same grounds early in their careers in comparison however, including the Stones. I do still have a soft spot for most of the early Moody Blues recordings from their days with Denny Laine, I must admit, but that may be more because I have always been a Moodies mark to start with.

In the early 80's there was a 3 or 4 volume set of vinyl (sold separately) called "British blues" or something like that. It has more or less obscure British blues acts like Stone's Masonry, Savoy Brown Blues band, and of course early not-very-obscure Fleetwood Mac (and some rare stuff in this set).

The Brit stuff is fine, for an imitation. It is great when musicians breathe new life into something and make it uniquely their own, but it is always best to hear it in context with the original. I think the English guys didn't really do anything truly original until at least the mid-sixties, and then blues became something entirely different. LSD had something to do with that....

When I was a kid I heard the British stuff first, then discovered the originals. At that point I threw my early Rolling Stones albums out with yesterday's trash!

Savoy Brown is still a favorite of mine. Kim Simmonds still tours both with a group as Savoy Brown and solo. They are one of my last remaining must see classic rock acts out there that I have never had the opportunity to see live.

The british blues guys, especially those that were in their prime in the later 60's and early to mid 70's, were a definitely a different breed. And yes, The Beatles (and Stones too I suppose) were major artistic influences as well at that point as well as were the earlier American bluesmen.