no we didn't have the equivalent of leadbelly, blind lemon, josh white, brownie mcghee, or lightning hopkins.

however we did have lonnie donnegan, gerry lockran....we still have Kevin Brown, Wizz Jones. we have artists of great ability who have made valid contributions to field of acoustic blues guitar.

also there some damn good musicians like Tubby Hayes and Stan Tracey who had no trouble playing alongside American jazzmen.

i wonder if any of you remember a tv series jazz 625 where Tacey backed Wes Montgomery and other greats. Also in the 60's pianist Lennie Felix had a radio series where he played a set with whoever was gigging Ronnie Scotts that week. Iwrote to the BBC and asked if they'd kept the tapes - no reply. no one knew what i was talking about. a common experience as you get old.