Jimi Hendrix called Victor Brox his 'favourite white voice'. He was a huge influence on a young Jimmy Page.
And in a long and remarkable life and career Victor, who died on Monday aged 81, worked and played with the likes of Eric Clapton, Charles Mingus, Muddy Waters, Dr John, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, BB King, Keith Moon and Screaming Lord Sutch.
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Born in Tameside hospital on May 5, 1941 and raised in Droylsden, music was a part of his life from an early age. His mother played the piano and mandolin and sang, while his grandfather, a butcher from Ardwick, used to sing and play the bones.
Victor fell in love with the blues as a young boy, having first heard it on a late night radio show. Banned from playing the piano by his father, his first instrument was the violin and he formed his first band aged around 12 in Droylsden where they played dances at St Mary's Church Hall.
Soon he was immersed in the North West jazz scene, travelling by train to meetings of the Northern Jazz Federation where he would listen to rare imported records from the US.
After school he went to university in Wales to study philosophy and from there moved to Ibiza, then home to a bohemian jazz scene inspired by Charles Mingus.
A strikingly handsome man with, in the words of his daughter Kyla, the 'brightest blue eyes', there he met and fell in love with Nico of Velvet Underground fame, after she asked him for singing lessons. The acquaintance was renewed much later when Victor received a phone call from the singer, who spent much of the eighties living in Manchester, asking if he could score her some heroin.
Upon returning from an extended stay in the Balearics, the singer, keyboard player and trumpet player formed the Blues Train, and backed visiting US artists like Little Walter and Screaming Jay Hawkins, attracting a following of their own with their anarchic, freewheeling performances. He met and fell in love with his wife, Annette Reis, the pair recording I've Got the World in a Jug with in 1965. Legend and rumour surround the recording to this day.
Was it the first British blues 45, and was Jimmy Page on guitar? The use of Annette’s maiden name was mysterious because she and Victor were already married.
Earlier he had acted as guide to the 1963 Blues and Gospel Caravan when the troupe arrived in Manchester. The Granada TV Chorltonville broadcast was their only scheduled appearance, and so Victor found Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Williams, Willie Dixon and Lonnie Johnson an informal gig at Chick' s Bossa Nova, a dive bar opposite Victoria Station (since demolished).
A move to London in 1966 at the invitation of Alexis Korner resulted in a residency as a duo at Les Cousins. Victor made more determined efforts to hit the big time with the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, whose four album legacy, represents the best of Brox on record.
He sang the role of the high priest Caiaphas on the original recording of Jesus Christ Superstar; Annette was 'the maid by the fire'.
Victor went on to play on albums by Graham Bond (Holy Magick), Dr John (Sun, Moon, Roots and Herbs) and Peter Bardens (eponymous) and released Rollin' Back, credited to Annette and Victor Brox, in 1974. The latter contained selections from Victor's jinxed rock opera, Hieronymus Bosch.
In the 80s he co-led the band Mainsqueeze with Dick Heckstall-Smith and composed the children's musicals The Book of Dreams and Dr Seuss: The Musical, with the latter receiving a production at The Old Vic Theatre.
His time in Dordogne galvanised the blues scene in the south of France, and he became a proud member of Art 314, France's longest serving blues band. Victor opened the Australian outback to live blues with a succession of gruelling annual tours in the 90s, a baptism of fire for singer daughter Kyla.
The father-of-five returned to Droylsden in 2005 to look after his ill mother. She died a few months later, aged 95.
Victor continued to gig throughout his later life. Equally happy playing to a crowd of thousands or a dozen blues fans in a pub in Oldham, he was a regular at Manchester venues Band on the Wall and Matt and Phreds.
He marked his significant birthdays with a gig – his 50th was celebrated with an all-day festival at Band on the Wall and his 80th birthday party was a public concert at the Carlton Club.
During lockdown he could even be found busking on Ashton market with his acoustic guitar, where he would play a few songs before buying an apple pie from his favourite bakery and getting the bus back home.
He played his final gig at the Great British Rock and Blues Festival in Skegness on January 14, alongside Kyla and her band.
A self-mythologiser and a colourful raconteur, Victor's flair for the surreal was matched by a self-deprecating wit, giving the impression of noble, heroic failure. He might never have hit the big time, but he was one of the great unsung heroes of the British blues scene, and a constant champion of young talent.
Paying tribute to her dad, Kyla said: "He lived and incredible life and told an incredible story, but they were all true!
"I am so grateful that he left such a mark on so many people. We have had so many messages from people telling me how he changed their lives.
"He was appreciated by the people who know. He was playing a tribute gig to Alexis Korner in Buxton once and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were there. Robert Plant came up to me and my brother Sam and told us how dad was his hero when he was younger.
"Our jaws were on the floor, but dad just shrugged it off. He never courted fame.
"I think he needed an audience and he loved being on a stage, but he was just as happy playing in a pub as a festival. He lived for the music."
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