Alexis Korner (19 April 1928 - 1 January 1984), born Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner, was a pioneering blues musician and broadcaster who has sometimes been referred to as "the Founding Father of British Blues". A major influence on the sound of the British music scene in the 1960s[1], Korner was instrumental in bringing together various English blues musicians. Alexis Korner was born in Paris to an Austrian father and Greek mother[2], and spent his childhood in France, Switzerland, and North Africa. He arrived in London in 1940 at the start of the Second World War. One memory of his youth was listening to a record by Jimmy Yancey during a German air raid. He said, "From then on all I wanted to do was play the blues."[3]