Neil Slaven

WRITER, DISCOGRAPHER and record producer Neil Slaven was bitten by the blues bug in the late 1950s. In 1964 with Mike Vernon he founded R&B Monthly and in 1965 with Mike he co-founded the iconic British blues label Blue Horizon.

In 1968 with Blues Unlimited editor Mike Leadbitter he published Blues Records 1943-1966, a ground breaking discography, later expanded to two volumes covering 1943-1970. He contributed to UK music newspapers and magazines including Blues Unlimited, Vox and books such as The Penguin Guide To Blues Recordings.

At Decca and Deram in the late 1960s and early 1970s he produced albums on visiting US blues artists and UK bands including the Keef Hartley Band and Chicken Shack.

In the 1980s and 1990s he produced and annotated reissue albums at Charley Records and researched the vaults of US labels including Syd Nathan's King/Federal Records and the Joe Banashak's New Orleans outlet Instant Records.

His album and box set compilations, sleeve and booklet notes have appeared on RCA, London, Westside, Sequel, Metro, Castle Communications, Boulevard Vintage, Indigo, Snapper, Proper and JSP.

He has been a regular contributor to Blues & Rhythm magazine from the 1980s to the present day.

He also wrote Electric Don Quixote, a biography of Frank Zappa in 2003.

In more recent times he complied blues and R&B reissues for Jasmine Records and compiled and annotated a 35 CD John Mayall reissue box set The First Generation 1965-1974 in 2021.