Raphael Callaghan - a super fine blues singer/guitarist from Liverpool - was pretty friendly with Alexis ( Alexis produced an album of Raphael and Jim James some 30+ years ago). Raphael has got lots of interestng stories concerning Alexis ( some are reproduced in the Shapiro biog ) I was once present at a BBC Radio recording session that Jim and Raphael did for Alexis way back when.