AT LONG last, The Ealing Club is back in business and finally receiving its due. The club is famous as the place where the Rolling Stones got their start, but the narrow basement opposite Ealing Broadway Tube station played a far greater role in the history of rock.

It was also the cradle of British rhythm 'n' blues, which changed the landscape of rock in ways that the members of Blues Incorporated, who inaugurated the Ealing Club in 1962, could not possibly have imagined.

Blues Incorporated began when Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies decided to form a group dedicated to performing rhythm 'n' blues - the first in Britain.

Original members included vocalists Art Wood and Long John Baldry, saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith, and a neophyte drummer named Charlie Watts.

They soon discovered that The Roundhouse and most of the folk clubs in London where they had played acoustic blues would not allow amplified guitars, so Korner and Davies founded a new club in the basement of a small pub in Ealing.

They placed an advertisement in Jazz News on March 14, 1962: "Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated: The Most Exciting Event of this Year. Rhythm and Blues Clubs No 1: The Ealing Club, Ealing Broadway, W.S. (immediately opposite Tube station). Debut of Britain's First Rhythm & Blues Band. This Saturday & Every Saturday: 7.30pm."

When the club opened three days later, blues devotees came flooding in from all parts of the country.

Korner recalled: "The club held only 200 when you packed them in, and there were only about 100 people in all of London who were into the blues, and all of them showed up at the club that first night."

To Britons who had fallen for the music of Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed, The Ealing Club was a beacon in the wilderness. For many this was the first time that they realised that their passion for the blues was shared by others.

Mick Jagger recalled: "Just when we were getting together we read this little thing about a rhythm and blues club starting in Ealing.

"Everybody must have been trying to get one together. Let's go up to this place and find out what's happening."

Eric Burdon hitchhiked all the way from Newcastle, eager to get some idea of how British musicians could approach the blues; others came from as far away as Scotland and Wales.

One opening night attendee, who travelled from Cheltenham, was a guitarist calling himself Elmo Lewis, who gave Korner a tape of his attempts at playing slide guitar like Elmore James; a week later, Lewis (Brian Jones) was invited to sit in with the group.

As word spread, an ever greater number of young musicians clamoured to perform with Blues Incorporated.

Hundreds of aspirants sent tapes and letters, and Korner allowed any who displayed musical ability and some understanding of the blues to sit in.

One was Mick Jagger. He recalls standing in line, waiting for his chance to mount the bandstand: "We'd all sing the same bloody songs; we'd all have a

turn singing 'Got My Mojo Working' or whatever it was.

"It was the Muddy Waters that went down best."

On April 7, the first night that Jagger and his band, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, went to The Ealing Club, they met Brian Jones and Charlie Watts. Just over three months later, their band, now named The Rolling Stones, took to the stage themselves.

Others whose careers started there were Paul Jones, later to be a founding member of Manfred Mann (who also played at the club); Eric Burdon of the Animals; Long John Baldry; The Detours, later renamed The Who; John McVie, the 'Mac' of Fleetwood Mac; Graham Bond; Eric Clapton; John Mayall, Rod Stewart; Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker.

It provided an inspiration for hundreds, if not thousands, of others to form their own R&B bands.

The club was by no means glamorous. The stage was small, the hall narrow, and condensation from the pavement light above dripped on to the bandstand so constantly that a sheet

had to be draped above it to protect the microphones and speakers, earning the club its nickname, the 'Moist Hoist.'

Nonetheless, it is still remembered with great affection. In 1962, it was the most exciting place in London, a meeting place for blues devotees and musicians alike.

Drummer Carlo Little, who performed with the Cyril Davies AllStars and Screaming Lord Such, recalled that it was the place to be seen.

It was, after all, the birthplace of British rhythm 'n' blues, and those who witnessed the phenomenon in its infancy still recall those heady days - as should we all.

If not for The Ealing Club, there would have been no Rolling Stones, Cream, Yardbirds, Pretty Things, or Led Zeppelin, nor any of the bands they subsequently inspired. * Roberta Freund Schwartz is an associate professor of musicology at the University of Kansas, and the author of How Britain Got the Blues: The Transmission and Reception of American Blues Styles in the British Isles. ..SUPL: