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Artist
Paul Millns
12+ albums
rockpalastabgehakt
about
Born in Norfolk, Paul started his musical career in the late 60’s and early 70’s playing piano and keyboards for blues and soul bands, music which was always to influence his own singing and composing. Paul well remembers the first experience of hearing Ray Charles sing ‘Georgia on my mind’ on the radio. ‘’I was about 15 years old, and when I heard the power and emotion of that voice, it blew me apart. It certainly put the current music like Cliff Richard and Billy Fury in the shade. I remember hitch-hiking to London at the beginning of the 60’s to see one of the first performances of Ray Charles in the UK, he was really the ‘genius’ in those days, and I spent the night after on Liverpool Street Station in a daze, trying to take it all in.’’ After that he was hooked on black American music. "Much of the time, you had to hitch-hike over a hundred miles to London just to buy a record of this music - remember it was just before soul and blues became very popular in the UK with Motown and Atlantic Records’’. In the mid 60’s Paul came to London and went to college while he checked up on the thriving blues scene there. Eventually he joined several bands as a piano player, beginning with his own band ‘Sweet Thunder’, and subsequently touring the world in the bands of Alexis Korner, Eric Burdon, various visiting blues singers like Louisiana Red, Dr Hook’s Denis LeCourier, Peter Thorup of CCS, Bert Jansch and Jo Ann Kelly. Later as a solo artist, he worked opening for John Mayall, D
