This time we will take a first look at the life of Alexis Korner.
Emil Körner was born in Austria but had moved to Russia and met and married Nina Popich there. The couple had two sons, Herman and George before they split up. After his divorce Emil moved to England and there he met Sappho Aperguis, who had immigrated from Greece. They met in 1926 and married a year later in March 1927. Another year later Sappho was pregnant with the couple's first child. Despite living in London, Sappho believed that she and the baby would be in better hands in a French hospital and so Alexis Andrew Nicholas Körner was born in Paris, on April 19, 1928.
The young family moves into their home at 11 Armitage Road, Golders Green, London but they are not the only people living there. George Körner, Emil’s son from his previous marriage, Emil’s former mother-in-law Grandma Popich and Emil’s current mother-in-law Grandma Aperguis also live in the same house. Emil’s other son, Herman, decides not to live with the family and moves to France, where he would later become a prominent violinist.
The house in Golders Green is too small for five adults, George is 17 by now, and a baby but little Alexis is loved by everybody and gets all the attention he needs. As soon as the young boy can talk they teach him various languages and soon he speaks English, French, German and Russian besides a little bit of Greek, Italian and Spanish.
The house on Armitage Road was so full of people Alexis wasn’t allowed to bring any friends over and spent most of his time hanging out with his mother or one of his grandmothers. His father Emil was away on business a lot and when at home he didn’t spend much time with his son and was very distant. When Alexis goes to school in 1931 he finally gets the chance to play with other kids and soon befriends Alex Nove. Alexis and Alex both go to the King Alfred School, the same school Chris Barber later attended and Barber’s mother was a teacher there at the time. Chris Barber and Alexis went to the same school but Alexis is two years older so they were never in any classes together.
At school Alexis starts to make up stories about his family and he will later do this in interviews therefore there is little information about his childhood, because it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. What we can tell is that Alexis must have had a good childhood, despite his distant father, he got lots of love from his mother and grandmothers. When Alexis was about nine years old his life changed when he got tuberculosis. At that time there was no cure for tuberculosis, but instead you were sent to Switzerland to be healed by the fresh mountain air. His parents never told Alexis that he had tuberculosis, they just told him that he was sick and needed to go to Switzerland to recover. In Switzerland Alexis was placed in something that looked like a nursing home and Alexis hated it from the start. He wrote many letters home but never telling about the fact that he was miserable there because he believed the staff censured his letters before sending them out to his parents.
Meanwhile back in London his father, Emil, became ill as well and because business was bad now that he couldn’t work, Alexis’ parents had to sell the house in Golders Green and move into an apartment in Ealing Village while Emil’s health continued to decline. Sappho now takes care of her husband 24 hours a day. Alexis is told nothing of his father’s health problems and is very happy when his mother is picking him up from the nursing home. Alexis’ happiness is soon gone when he hears that he will be going to a boarding school in Switzerland instead of going home to his parents. Not knowing that his father is very sick and his mother can’t take care of him, Alexis feels angry and doesn’t understand why he can’t be with his parents.
After the miserable stay in the nursing home Alexis went to a boarding school in Villars-sur-Ollon in another part of Switzerland. His time there wasn’t much better than the nursing home and Alexis gets punished for having bad grades. Back home in England Alexis’ father Emil is not getting better and is sent to a doctor in France, and Emil and Sappho make the trip to Marseilles to meet Dr Chaumont. Emil has to stay in the hospital in Marseilles to be treated by Dr Chaumont and Sappho takes care of her husband there. Finally the couple decides to tell Alexis that his father is sick and he can leave the boarding school and travel from Switzerland to France to be with his parents. All in all Alexis spent about a year in Switzerland and was over the moon to be with his parents again. After arriving in Marseilles Alexis finally saw his father and mother again but was sad when they told him he couldn’t stay with them and Alexis was sent to a children’s home a few miles from the hospital. He hoped he could live with his parents again but at least they were close by now and he could visit them.
When the Second World War broke out in France Alexis and his parents had to flee the country and go back to Britain. Emil and Sappho waited for as long as they could, so Emil could be treated by Dr Chaumont and left France a bit too late. It took Emil, Sappho and Alexis two weeks to go from Marseilles to London on various refugee boats. The trip was dangerous and long but all three made it back to London. The three move back into their small apartment in Ealing Village and Alexis goes back to school, first to the Colet Court Preparatory School and then to the St Paul’s School in Hammersmith. Shortly after Alexis’ arrival at St Paul’s the school moved from London to the countryside in Berkshire. London was being bombed by the Germans and was not a safe place for children. Many schools in London moved to the countryside where it was much safer. This meant that Alexis was again separated from his parents, who stayed in London. Father Emil by now was feeling better but wasn’t fit enough to serve in the army and tried everything to make ends meet.
Alexis had a hard time at St Paul’s mostly because everybody saw him as a weird foreign kid, and if you were a foreigner you were either a spy or a jewish refugee, but both were seen as bad in those days. Alexis tries his best to fit in and starts using his middle name Andrew instead of the foreign sounding Alexis and also removes the umlaut out of his last name. At St Paul Alexis (or Andrew) starts smoking and before long had set up a business selling cigarettes. Alexis has now turned into an angry twelve, thirteen year old because he can’t live with his parents and because he’s seen as an outsider at school and gets into a lot of trouble at St Paul’s. Emil and Sappho had to go to the school many times because of Alexis’ behaviour. Everytime Alexis was not kicked out of school because besides his bad behaviour Alexis was getting good grades and it was apparent that he was a very intellectual kid. Alexis was still getting into trouble at St Paul’s but also met a new friend there, Benny Goodman. Goodman was into jazz music and owned a couple of records and a record player and Alexis spent many hours listening to these records and talking about jazz with Goodman. After years of feeling alone in a foreign country and with no friends, Alexis finally found somebody he could talk to and shared the same interest in music.
In the summer of 1942 Alexis passed his exam for every class, except for maths. Alexis had to come back the next school year and redo the math classes and hopefully pass his exam to get his school certificate. The head of St Paul’s, a Mr Oakenshott, was sick and tired of Alexis by now and kicked him out without the chance to redo his math classes. Alexis went back home to his parents in London while his father Emil pleaded with Mr Oakenshott to take Alexis back and let him finish school. Mr Oakenshott advised Emil to send Alexis to a psychologist to see what was wrong with him and help him. So Alexis went to psychologist H. Crichton-Miller and visited the doctor eight times before the psychologist sent a letter to Mr Oakenshott to advise him to take him back. The head of the school took the advice of the psychologist and Alexis went back to Berkshire, back to St. Paul’s. Alexis went to St. Paul’s for another year without passing his math exam and was finally kicked out of school by Mr Oakenshott because of bad behaviour. During this time Alexis kept visiting psychologist Crinchton-Miller but couldn’t change his behaviour. So, Alexis again went back to his parents in London, still without a school certificate and a letter from Mr Oakenshott that he would not be allowed to enter St. Paul’s again.
Now back with his parents Alexis keeps getting into trouble and now joins a gang of kids who steal records at Shepherd’s Bush Market. To join the gang you had to have a bike and a bag big enough to fit a record in. Alexis joined the gang because he had no money but wanted to listen to jazz and blues records, the only way to get these records was stealing them. The first record Alexis stole was Jimmy Yancey’s ‘Slow and Easy Blues’ and Alexis spent many hours listening to this record. Alexis had piano lessons since he was a little kid but couldn’t believe what he heard Jimmy Yancey play boogie-woogie. Soon Alexis was playing boogie-woogie piano and bought/stole every record that had boogie-woogie in the title. His father Emil still wanted Alexis to get his school certificate so sent him to a school in Notting Hill to take math classes.