Simon Alexander Napier (31 October 1939 –1 December 1990) was a British

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

magazine publisher and

record label A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the produ ...

owner. He was born in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. In 1962, he set up the Blues Appreciation Society in Britain, and the following year, with researcher and discographer

Mike Leadbitter Michael Andrew Leadbitter (12 March 1942 - 16 November 1974) was a British writer, researcher, magazine editor, and a leading authority on blues music, who had an important role in the revival of interest in the blues, particularly in the UK in the ...

, launched the magazine '' Blues Unlimited''. With his interest in pre-war blues complementing Leadbitter's interests in post-war

electric blues Electric blues refers to any type of blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplifier, amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the ...

, Napier took responsibility for developing and expanding the magazine into an internationally recognised periodical. John Broven, "Simon Napier", in Edward Komara and Peter Lee (eds.), ''The Blues Encyclopedia'', Routledge, 2004, p.718
/ref> After Leadbitter's death in 1974, Napier continued to manage the magazine, and also established

Flyright Records Flyright Records is a British record label incorporated in 1970 by Mike Leadbitter, Simon Napier, and Bruce Bastin. It specializes in blues by British musicians, though it issued some American jazz discs, including Ralph Sutton and Hoagy Carmic ...

, a record label and distribution company. He died from a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may tr ...

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

, England, in 1990, aged 51.Steve Cushing, ''Pioneers of the Blues Revival''
University of Illinois Press, , 2014, pp.170-175

References

1939 births 1990 deaths British music journalists British magazine editors {{UK-music-bio-stub