searching for roots: discovering electric blues in white america

8/8/2019 Searching for Roots: Discovering Electric Blues in White America

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Searching for Roots: The Blues

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We hooked up with the blues festivalorganizers pretty much by default: wewere the only band in the area thatknew anything about modern city blues.We had been to Chicago years before

and seen all the blues greats live, not tomention: you couldnt keep us out of thatfestival for the world. This festival waslike a dream come true for me, a chanceto see my idols, these great bluesplayers up close and right here in myown home town. Who could ask formore?

My brother Dan and I volunteered (weprobably forced ourselves on theorganizers) and ended up being put in

charge of feeding all the performers andmaking sure they had drinks. Trust me,providing drinks proved to be key ingaining access to these players. Theopportunity to meet our heroes was waybeyond anything we could haveimagined on our own.

And to put the icing on the cake, I endedup officially interviewing (on reel-to-reeltape) almost every blues artist and

sideman at the festival - dozens of them.Later in my life, the experience ofputting all that interview informationtogether led to my becoming somethingof an archivist of music data in generaland I eventually founded and built theAll-Music Guide (allmusic.com), whichtoday is the largest database of musicreviews, bios, tracks, and information onthe planet. So you can see what I meanwhen I say that these festivals were life-changing for me. They gave medirection. Now you know how I fit into allof this, so lets move on.

In this writing, I have two stories to tell.One of course is the importance ofthose first two Ann Arbor blues festivals,how they came about, who was involved,and the artists that played there the

music itself. The second story I want toshare with you has more to do with myexperience of how white America firstbecame aware of electric-city bluesmusic and, as you will see, the two are

to some degree interdependent.A Short History of Blues Festivals

To appreciate the uniqueness of thosefirst Ann Arbor Blues Festivals, somehistorical context may be helpful. Bluesas a genre did not always have festivals.Although some blues was included inmany of the early folk festivals, it wasalmost exclusively of the acoustic folk-blues variety, more of an add-on than a

featured style at folk festivals like thoseheld in Newport Rhode Island. It was thefolk in folk-blues that was what mostpeople came to hear, not the blues. Theblues was just a feeling that the folk-blues held for many of us and was notrecognized as the genre it is today, atleast by folkies like me. Until the late60s, modern, electric, citified blues wasalmost exclusively the province of blackAmericans, made available on black

record labels or served up in hundredsof small clubs and bars across the land.White Americans didnt go there. All thatbegan to change with that first AnnArbor Blues Festival in 1969, but letsback up just a bit.

The Chitlin Circuit

Chitterlings or Chitlins as they arecalled are the large intestines of pigsthat have been specially cleaned,stewed, and then fried. The ChitlinCircuit as it was called consisted ofhundreds of small venues (mostly in thesouth) where chitlins were served alongwith plenty of beer and music. Thesewere the places where black musicianstravelled to play the blues and whereblack audiences could congregate in aracially divided country and age. The


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chitlin circuit also included (on the high-end) some major black theaters like theApollo Theater in Harlem, the HowardTheater in D.C., the Cotton Club in NYC,the Royal Theater in Baltimore, the Fox

Theater in Detroit, the Uptown Theaterin Philadelphia, and so on. But for themost part, this kind of blues was playedin the hundreds of small bars, clubs, andway-stops along the circuit. Many of thegreat blues musicians featured at thosefirst Ann Arbor blues festivals knew thechitlin circuit only too well. For years,these performers had traveled the circuitplaying the blues - one-night stands atroadside bars and clubs. To white

America, the chitlin circuit waspractically invisible. City blues at thattime was black music played in blackvenues - music for blacks.

The Folk Festivals

By the 1950s, more and more youngAmericans became interested in theirown indigenous music American folkmusic. In the later 50s and early 60s,festivals and folklore societies became

increasingly popular, in particular oncollege campuses and among moreaffluent white Americans. Along with theinterest in folk music came the folkloresocieties. My first experience with thesegroups was the University of MichiganFolklore Society in Ann Arbor in theearly 1960s. And of course there werethe folk festivals, of which the one inNewport, Rhode Island is perhaps themost famous, if not the first.

The Newport Folk Festival wasestablished in 1959 by George Wein,the same man who in 1954 establishedthe Newport Jazz Festival. The firstNewport Folk Festival was held on July11-12, 1959 and featured, among otheracts, the Kingston Trio, a group that hadexploded to national prominence only

the year before. Flanking the KingstonTrio were classic folk singers like Odetta,Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, andof course, the ubiquitous Pete Seeger.During a set by the singer/songwriter

Bob Gibson at that first 1959 festival, ayoung Joan Baez made her nationaldebut to a wildly enthusiastic audienceof over 13,000 people. The Newportfestival is still considered to be thegranddaddy of all folk festivals, eventhough it has been reduced in size inrecent years.

The folk scene in the early 60s wasvery active and organized enough tohave a well-established set of venues

(coffee houses, church sponsorships,etc.) and routes that stretched acrossthe country and over which performingfolk artists traveled, mostly byhitchhiking. By the early 1960s folkenthusiasts everywhere were learningthe rudiments of music research, atleast to the point of tracing particularsongs back through time to their roots orat least trying to. It was axiomatic at thattime that the original version of a song

was preferable to later versions, almostalways enriching the listenersexperience and enjoyment of the tune.Sing Out! Magazine was one of themain repositories of this research, ourmusical collective heritage.

It should be remembered that the folk-music revival emerged toward the endof the 1950s and the early 1960s, a timewhen more and more young peoplewere rejecting the culture of the 1950s(the flattop haircuts and what they feltwas a cookie-cutter mentality) andthirsting for something a little more real.It is a simple fact that most of us lookedto the folk music tradition as a way ofgrounding ourselves, a way to somehowget underneath or break through the


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social veneer in which we were raised.Future events cast their shadows andthe counterculture revolution that was tocome later in the mid-1960s was alreadyemerging.

The Folk Scene

Unlike folk music, whose roots wereoften in England or Ireland, with blues,to the surprise of most white folk-blueslovers, a trip into the history book wasoften as easy as venturing into adifferent part of town, only we didntknow it then. The folk music scene wasflourishing on college campuses andwhat started at Newport in 1959 was

echoed in the next few years by startupfolk festivals all across America,including the Berkeley and Chicago Folkfestivals, both of which debuted in 1961.And, although these folk festivals alsofeatured some blues (country blues), theblues at those festivals was mostlytreated as part of the folk genre, and asa sidelight at that.

For example, one could hear JessieLone Cat Fuller at Hertz Hall (Berkeley,

CA) in 1959 and at Newport in 1960. In1960 Robert Pete Williams performed atNewport. Other festivals in the early1960s had Lightnin Hopkins, ManceLipscomb, and Mississippi John Hurt,Rev. Gary Davis, Sleepy John Estes,Jesse Fuller, and occasionally John LeeHooker. It is hard for me to imagineJohn Lee Hooker or Lightnin Hopkinsnot getting mainstream attentionwherever they played. In 1965, an

electrified Bob Dylan, backed by thePaul Butterfield Blues Band, shockedthe Newport folk crowd and helped tobring awareness of modern city blues toa mostly white folk crowd. Dylan wasbooed.

The Folk Revival Looking for Roots

This folk music revival in the later 1950sand early 1960s was just that, a revival,an attempt to revive a music that mostfelt was already deeply embedded in the

past. The revival started out lookingback and, for the most part, stayed thatway for many years. We sought torevive and find our future in past songsrather than writing our own songs for thefuture.

Initially, younger folk artists were just tooshy. Emerging players like Bob Dylan,Ramblin Jack Elliot (and scores of now-unknown players schooled in traditional

folk music) were (at first) not focused onwriting songs themselves. Their favoritecontemporary songwriter was probablyWoody Guthrie, but most of the songsthey played came from even earliertimes, sometimes all the way back toEngland and Europe. The great majorityof folk artists did covers of earlier songs,Dylan included. The goal then was to dothem well, to make them live again.

Pivotal artists of the time like Joan Baez

and the New Lost City Ramblers werenot writing their own songs, but insteadre-enacting and re-presenting the finestin traditional folk music. Their techniquewas flawless, but it was not their ownsongwriting creativity that was beingfeatured. Groups like the Kingston Trioand the Weavers are perfect examples.The folk music magazine Sing Out! isa written testimony to this approach.White America was exploring its roots,

but we were looking backward to findwhat we felt was missing in the present

our living roots. Folk artists as a grouphad not yet empowered themselves towrite for the present, much less for thefuture. They were too busy trying tomake the past live again, reviving theirheritage. Thats why it is called a revival.


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I was fortunate enough to be part of theearly folk scene in the late 1950s andearly 1960s. There was a route we alltraveled that went from Cambridge,Massachusetts to New York City, to Ann

Arbor, to the University of Chicago, toMadison, Wisconsin, to Berkeley,California, and then round back again.For the most part we all hitchhiked orpiled into cars that could barely run allthe way across this wide country. If Iremember right, I believe I hitchhikedthe distance from Ann Arbor to NewYork City some ten times, andhitchhiked to and lived in Venice Beachand North Beach, San Francisco as

early as 1960. I even travelled with BobDylan for a while, hitchhiking togetherwith my friend Perry Lederman, whoeven them was a legendary guitarinstrumentalist.

The folk route also included side trips toplaces like Oberlin and Antioch collegesin Ohio, and so on, wherever collegesand universities were. In Ann Arbor, folkartists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baezwere frequent visitors, while groups like

the New Lost City Ramblers and theCountry Gentlemen were pretty muchregulars, and Ramblin Jack Elliot spenta lot of time there. We met mostly inhouses or apartments and it seems wespent an inordinate amount of timedrinking coffee and smoking cigarettesin the cafeteria of the University ofMichigan Student Union. I can recallsitting around the Union with a nervousBob Dylan who was awaiting the

Michigan Daily review of one of hisearliest performances in Ann Arbor. Hecouldnt bear to leave town until thereview came out. When he saw that thereview was good, Dylan was on his way,hitchhiking out of town.

Singers, Not Songwriters

For the most part, the folk movement atthis time was oriented around coveringtraditional folk tunes. The folk artistsoriginality was in how well they sang the

song and not yet in the writing ofcontemporary songs. This is not to saythat no songs were written; some were.My point is that back then it was allabout the singer in singer/songwriterand not yet so much about thesongwriter. For most of us, that came abit later.

I can remember well traveling in 1961with Bob Dylan and stopping at Gerdes

Folk City on West 4

th

Street in New YorkCity. Gerdes was the happening placeback then and the folk star of themoment in that club was a guitarvirtuoso named Danny Kalb, who laterbecame part of the group known as theBlues Project. Dylan was obviously

jealous of the attention Kalb was getting(you could hear it in his voice), but itwas not just petty jealousy. He honestlycould not understand what Kalb hadgoing for him that he didnt. It boggledhis mind. I didnt know then that mytraveling companion was The BobDylan, but I am certain he must have.After all, he had something to say.

Remember, all of this was in the early1960s, well before Haight Ashbury andthe hippie scene. Most folkies (likemyself) were wanna-be Beatniks, butthat train had already left the station. Westood outside conventional society, but

we were not so much politicallyalienated from that society as we wererepulsed by it, and fascinated by theworld of music, literature, art, and ourown little social scene. Things werehappening man! I was 19 years old.


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The Folk Blues

Real folk-blues artists like ElizabethCotton and Jessie Lone Cat Fullerbegan to be featured at festivals like theBerkeley Folk Festivals in the late 1950s.

Many of them came to Ann Arbor whereI lived and we heard them live, songslike Freight Train (Cotton) and SanFrancisco Bay Blues (Fuller). To folkenthusiasts like myself, this was still justfolk music, but you did get a differentfeeling when you heard the blues. Tome at the time, this just sounded likereally good folk musicreally good.Back then we didnt know much aboutthe blues, but we sure could feel that

music.

While folk enthusiasts heard some bluesearly on (as mentioned), it was at firstmostly only the folk blues, and folk blueswere seen as just another form (albeit,with a lot of feeling) of folk music. Later,and only very gradually, more and morecountry blues began to appear, butusually only southern acoustic blues, notmusic from the North and nothing at all

from the inner cities. There was noawareness of inner-city blues orelectrified blues and no interest either.At that time electric-folk music was anoxymoron.

Being Part of the Scene

As a folkie myself, I can rememberlistening to acoustic folk-blues and reallyloving it, but I treated it the same way Itreated traditional folk music, assomething that also needed to bepreserved and revived learned, played,shared - kept alive. It was a naturalassumption on our part that we werelistening to the vestiges of what hadonce been a living tradition and wewanted to connect to that past, to reviveand relive it. We had no idea thatmodern electric blues music was not

only not-dead, but was playing livemost nights of the week probably onlyblocks away, separated from us by aracial curtain. We just had no idea. Thefolk music scene had few blacks in it

(other than a handful of performers) andthose that were present were usually theolder folk-blues artists like Sonny Terry,Odetta, and so on. Their music wasperceived by folkies as coming out ofthe past, not part of the present.

Please dont get the idea that ourexposure to folk music was only atconcerts or folk societies. Like mostmusicians, we played or practiced musicall the time, if only to learn the songs

and how to play our instruments. Wewere also exposed to a lot of jazz. InAnn Arbor in the early 1960s, beforebars could serve liquor by the glass,everyone met in apartments and housesaround town to drink, smoke pot, andplay music. This was primarily a jazzscene and young folkies (underagehigh-school kids like me) were toleratedas long as we kept to the shadows andsat along the far edges of the rooms.

And quite a scene it was. I rememberone house on E. Williams Street in AnnArbor. Protruding horizontally from itssecond story hung a huge flag with apicture of Thelonious Monk. At nights,especially on weekends, there wasimpromptu jazz in that house that wenton most of the night, with players likeBob James, Bob Detwiler, Ron Brooks,and many others. It was music, music,music plus wine and pot. High schoolkids like me sat on the floor, squeezedin along the back wall. We didnt rateany pot, but we used to snort the ashesfrom joints that others had smoked. Thatshould tell you how desperate we wereto be part of the scene!


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Searchin for Roots

We experienced jazz along with our folkmusic, but still not much blues. And the

jazz was anything but bluesy jazz; it wasmore frenetic, like bop. And if it wasnt

jazz we heard, then it was classicalmusic played in the background on thestereo. Again: not much blues. This isan important point, because when themostly-white folk musicians like myselfwere suddenly exposed to modern (andvirile) inner-city blues players like JuniorWells, Magic Sam, and Howlin Wolf, wewere astonished.

As folkies made the gradual transition

from studying and researchingtraditional folk music to also searchingout historic country folk blues and thenon to discovering modern city blues, allof a sudden things lit up. We got it.Blues was not simply R&B or pop musiclike you heard on the radio, but music byplain folks folk music! We could seethat blues was the same as folk music,only modern, fresh alive, well andincredibly potent.

What we had assumed must always belost in the past, like folk music thatdepended on our efforts to restore andrevive it was, when it came to blues,was very much alive and in the present

staring us in the face and more-or-lesshappy to see us at that. This bluesmusic we were hearing lived in thepresent and not just in the past. It didnot need us to revive it. Our idea of folkmusic as something to restore and

treasure suddenly moved from the pastinto the present in our minds. We madethe connection. Blues didnt needrestoration. It was still with us and it waspowerful. It was like the movie JurassicPark; we had found a living dinosaur,folk music that lived in the present! Andthis music revived us and not vice-versa!

The blues scene in the early 1960s asplayed out in the small clubs and bars ofChicago, Detroit, and other majorindustrial cities, while very much stillalive, was by then itself on the wane,

only we newcomers didnt know that yet.To us, it was way more alive than thestandard folk music we knew. Intercityelectric blues music was still authenticand strong, but (for the most part) thenext generation of younger blacks wasalready not picking up on it; they were

just not interested. Chicago-style cityblues was, to younger blacks at thattime, old-peoples music, something fromthe South, a past and history they

wanted to get away from rather thanembrace. Younger blacks had alreadyskipped ahead to R&B, Motown, andfunk. Forget about those old blues.

My band played in a black bar forsomething like a year or a year and ahalf, a bar filled with mostly older blackfolks and a sprinkling of hippie whiteswho had come to see us. This was in1967. Right next door was another blackbar, where all the younger blacks hung

out and where they played only thelatest R&B hits. The younger blacksseldom came into our bar and, ingeneral, were embarrassed that theirparents and elders were listening toblues played by a racially-mixed bandlistening to white boys play the blues.How embarrassing! Interest in theclassic Chicago blues was just not therefor the younger generation of blacks.They felt that blues was music from an

older generation, music for old people.

While within the black community thedoor was slowly closing on the Chicagoblues artists (even the artists knew this),another and much wider door for thismusic was opening onto white America,an open door that would extend the


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careers for many of these artists andsecure their music well into the future.

B.B. King said in Time Magazine in1971:

The blacks are more interested in thejumpy stuff. The whites want to hearme for what I am.

1965: A Sea Change

As pointed out, in the early 1960s thefolk music revival was one of the mainthings happening on all the majorcampuses across America: Cambridge,Ann Arbor, Chicago, Madison, Berkeley,etc. What happened to it?

For one, in the mid-1960s, pop musicgroups like the Rolling Stones werebusy recording covers of blues classicsand pointing out the source the artistswho originally wrote and recorded them.White players like me, eager forguidance, hunted down the originalblues 45s, which were a revelation to us.I can remember rummaging throughbins of old 45s in downtown Chicagoand finding just incredible music.

That first Rolling Stones album, of thesame name, was released in April of1964. It contained tunes like JimmyReeds Honest I Do, Willie Dixons IJust Want to Make Love to You, Im aKing Bee, plus songs by Chuck Berryand Rufus Thomas.

The Stones second album, alsoreleased in 1964, veered away from theblues and contained tunes recorded by

Chuck Berry, Wilson Pickett, DaleHawkins, songs like Under theBoardwalk. It also included the blues-R&B tune made famous by IrmaThomas, Time Is on My Side. In 1965,the album Rolling stones, Now! hadthe Dixon-Wolf classic Little RedRooster.

From that point onward, the bluescontent of Rolling Stones albumsdecreased. In 1965, the album Out ofOur Heads had no real blues tunes,and neither did their other 1965 album,

Decembers Children. It was thosefirst two albums in 1964, and inparticular the first album, that pointedthe blues out to many in the whiteaudience. The U.K. was all aboutauthentic blues well before whiteAmerica ever heard of them.

In the wake of the Beatles and RollingStones, late summer and early fall of1965 saw the emerging dancehall scenein San Francisco and the arrival of

bands like the Grateful Dead. This wasthe beginning of the hippie era, and itswhen my own band, the Prime Movers,formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Weknew nothing of the Grateful Dead, yetwe too arose at the same time andrepresented a new era in music andlifestyle.

In fact the summer of 1965 was thetrigger point for so very much. It marked

a change in the folk scene with theadvent of groups like the Paul ButterfieldBlues Band. If there was a single bandthat opened up blues to white players, itwas the Butterfield Band. That firstButterfield album appeared late in 1965,and it totally kicked ass. The Butterfieldband in person was way more powerfulthan anything they managed to record.

This racially mixed band playingauthentic Chicago blues sent a lightning

bolt-like signal to all of us who were justwaking up to the blues anyway. Theirmessage was that white players couldovercome their fear to play black music,including the blues. The Paul ButterfieldBlues Band set the standard and setwhite musicians on notice that anybody


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was free to try to play the blues. Wewere emboldened to try.

Unlike many areas of folk music,modern city blues at that time wasanything but a dead art. While the

lineage of most folk music requiredrevival, like trying to trace out the historyand line of the music, this was not trueof blues. The blues lineage was not onlyunbroken, but indeed very much alive,both on black record labels and inthousands of bars and clubs across thenation. Perhaps some forms of countryblues were endangered, but inner-cityblues (at least for the old generation ofBlacks) was in full swing. White

Americans just knew little or nothingabout it. During the later 1960s, all thatchanged. And last, but not least, manyof the modern city blues players werestill reasonably young and more thanwilling to be discovered. They neededthe money and appreciated therecognition.

Historians would agree that from themiddle to the late 60s, music in general

was, to a real extent, fusing. The wholepsychedelic era blurred the boundariesof different music genres andemboldened white players to play musicof all kinds black, Indian, Asian, etc.The first extended psychedelic-likeguitar solo/jam was Michael Bloomfieldand the tune East-West on theButterfield album of the same name in1966. It was over 13 minutes in lengthand inspired legions of heavy metalplayers that followed

The American Folk Blues Festival inEurope

The first large-scale blues festivals, TheAmerican Folk Blues Festivals were notreally festivals and were never held inAmerica. Established in 1962 andlasting through 1972, these so-called

festivals were in fact tours of Europe bygroups of black blues artists thankful toget the work. This is what informed theBritish blues-oriented groups like theRolling Stones in the first place. Starting

in 1962, at a tour run of three weeks, theAmerican Folk Blues Festival excursionseventually would run up to six weeks.Individual concerts often lasted three tofour hours. The tours started up again in1980 and lasted until 1985.

Europe has always been in love withAmerican black music, especially bluesand jazz. Whereas in this countryplayers like Muddy Waters and HowlinWolf found it hard to get a job outside of

their home-town bars and the ChitlinCircuit, in Europe these players weretreated like VIPs and played to raptaudiences. Race was never a real issueon the continent. This is why so manyblack blues and jazz artists haverelocated to Europe. They found jobsthat paid well and they were notconsidered second-class citizens.

Thanks to these touring festivals,

Europe heard such blues greats as T-Bone Walker, Memphis Slim, WillieDixon, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee,and John Lee Hooker. In 1963, the listwas joined by Muddy Waters, OtisSpann, Victoria Spivey, Big Joe Williams,Lonnie Johnson, and Sonny Boy (II)Wiliamson. 1964 brought Hubert Sumlin,Lightnin Hopkins, Sunnyland Slim,sleepy John Estes, and Howlin Wolf.And in 1965, there was Mississippi FredMcDowell, J.B. Lenoir, Big WalterHorton, Roosevelt Sykes, Buddy Guy,Big Mama Thornton, Doctor Ross, andothers.

In a very real sense, Europe wasprivileged to hear the more modern,electric, city blues well before thegeneral (white) public in America knew


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anything about it. White America for themost part did not even know this musicexisted until the later Sixties.

Memphis Country Blues Festival 1967

Perhaps the earliest festival in thiscountry dedicated exclusively to blues,albeit the more acoustic folk or countryblues, was the Memphis Country BluesFestival. Although it was organized in1966 with the help of the great blues

journalist Robert Palmer, the first festivalwas actually held in 1967. For example,the 1968 festival featured artists likeBukka White, Nathan Beauregard, JoeCallicott, Furry Lewis, and Rev. Robert

Wilkins. Again, as the festival titlesuggests, this was country blues andacoustic artists, not the inner-cityelectric blues that had not yet beencelebrated. That was to happen in AnnArbor, Michigan.

The Ann Arbor Blues Festival: TheFirst of Its Kind

There is no doubt that the first NorthAmerican all-out blues festival formodern, electric city blues (in fact alltypes of blues) was the Ann Arbor BluesFestival held in the fall of 1969. Itfeatured artists like Muddy Waters,Junior Wells, B.B. King, Otis Rush, J.B.Hutto and the Hawks, Howlin Wolf, T-Bone Walker, Magic Sam, Freddy King,and dozens of modern-electric bluesplayers as well as traditional bluesartists like Son House, Lightnin Hopkins,and those in between like CliftonChenier, Roosevelt Sykes, and manyothers.

In the Ann Arbor festivals, the accentwas off the folk and country blues andright on modern, big-city, electric bluesartists. After all, Ann Arbor is only abouta three-hour drive from Chicago. Whilethe Newport Folk Festival sometimes

featured more than folk music, and to asmall degree helped blues to seguefrom folk and country blues to a moremodern blues, this was not somethingthey actively featured. For many years,

electric anything was frowned upon atthe Newport festival. It was in Ann Arborthat we find the first all-out presentationof modern electric city blues.

It has been said that those first AnnArbor blues festivals mark the end of thecity-blues era and the beginning of itsexploitation. Of course there is sometruth to that if we mean that by reachinga wider audience, the music will bemore easily embraced and imitated. But

in fact the electric city blues by that timewas already dying out of its own accord.The younger blacks had turned away.Reaching the larger White audienceactually prolonged the musics declineand extended its life. Today (2008), withmost of the original blues giants gone,we may be facing what amounts toreenactment and revival once againblues as folklore.

There is no record of a blues festival ofany similar scope and extent thatpredates that first Ann Arbor BluesFestival, which was organized in 1968and held in 1969, much less one thatendures to the present day. Actually, thepopular Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival,which saw its roots in those first two AnnArbor Blues Festivals, was suspendedin 2007 due to lack of funds. The lastfestival was in 2006.

The Ann Arbor Blues Festival:What it Was

The Ann Arbor Blues Festival was justthat, a festival of blues featuring modernelectric city blues -- the first of its kind inNorth America. Those two festivalshelped to mark the discovery of modernblues music and the musicians that


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made that music. It was something morethan just black music for white people. Itwas somewhat of a celebration for theblack musicians themselves and the listof great blues artists present, on or off

the stage, reads like a Whos Who ofblues musicians (of all types) alive at thetime. They came from all over to play, ofcourse, but also they came just to betogether, to hang out a realcelebration.

Can you imagine? There was my dad,the controller of a small Michigancollege sitting on folding chairs withblues great Roosevelt Sykes, the two fothem leaning back up against a chain-

link fence, swapping stories, and havingbeers all afternoon. They just liked eachother and were having a ball. Thats theway it was all around one big getting-to-know-one-another party. It wasspecial.

That first Ann Arbor Blues Festival hadits inception in the fall of 1968 at theUniversity of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Anon-campus entertainment group had

called a meeting with the idea of puttingtogether some kind of musical eventloosely based on the blues-rock musicthat was emerging from Great Britain,groups like the Rolling Stones, JohnMayall, and its reflection in this country.The self-appointed chairman of thisgroup was Cary Gordon, a student fromthe suburbs of Detroit.

However, also present was John Fishel,another student who had just transferred

to Michigan from Tulane University.Fishel (who knew no one in town) cameacross a handbill asking for peopleinterested in being involved in a bluesfestival to attend an initial meeting at theMichigan Student Union. Being new intown, Fishel decided to check it out. At

that time he was already into well intolistening to blues.

Fishel:

I had a growing interest in the black

music from my high school days inCleveland. At the time I had seen asmany of the Motown and other actswho came to town as well as anumber of acts on the "folk club"circuit including the Paul ButterfieldBlues Band and James Cotton, etc. Iwas listening to many of the countryartists who were being rediscovered. Ihad also spent a summer in GreatBritain and seen some of the British

bands influenced by the blues likeJohn Mayall, the Stones, Peter Green,etc. I had been attracted to the musicand began to collect albums by theirinfluences: BB King, Albert King,Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, OtisRush, John Lee Hooker, and laterJunior Wells and Magic Sam.

Fishe, whol was not so much interestedin the blues-rock concept, but rather inthe authentic blues masters themselves,

volunteered to be the entertainment co-chair along with another U. of M.Student, Janet Kelenson. Other originalmembers of that core group includedBert Stratton and Fred Braseth (PRchairs), Ron Marabate (technical), andKen Whipple (business affairs), plusChris Seltsam, Howard Husok, RenaSelden, Dick Tittsely, Charlie Yoryd,Carol Maxwell, and local DJ Jim Dulzo.

The University of Michigan with someinitial reluctance had agreed to be asponsor without really understandingeither the concept or the financialcommitment. Later the CanterburyHouse (sponsored by the EpiscopalianChurch), an organization that had run acoffee-house/folk club in Ann Arbor forsome time, also came on board as a


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sponsor. Something should someday bewritten about the generosity andforesight of the Canterbury House,which sponsored so much good musicin those early years in the Ann Arbor

area.For many young white blues loversliving in the Midwest, like myself, a tripto Chicago, where the electric city blueswas born was just a part of our generaleducation. I should know. Our band, thePrime Movers Blues Band, made thattrek in 1966 and at other times too, withour drummer (a young Iggy Pop) in tow.I was the lead singer and harmonicaplayer, my brother Dan Erlewine played

lead guitar, Robert Sheff (aka BlueGene Tyranny) was on keyboards,Jack Dawson (later with Siegel-SchwallBlues Band) played bass, and JimmyOsterberg (aka Iggy Pop), a youngdrummer we had found in a frat band.

And like so many students of the blues,the first place we landed was in BobKoesters Jazz Record Mart. Koester,who founded Delmark Records (in my

opinion the most important electric blueslabel ever) has probably introducedmore blues fans to the real Chicagoblues than anyone else on earth. He hasmy undying gratitude.

It was through Koesters kindness andgenerosity that we were able to visitmany of the seminal blues clubs onChicagos West and South side, placeslike Theresas Lounge, Peppers Lounge,and others, watching artists like Little

Walter, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, BigWalter Horton, and all the blues greatsplaying live in these small clubs. JohnFishel took the same route in 1968, ashe notes here:

By Thanksgiving I was on a roll anddecided that I should go to Chicago todeepen my understanding of the

scene and begin to identify artists tosign for the festival. My roommateswere going home to Highland Park inthe suburbs for the holiday, so Itagged along. Once there, I

announced I was going into the Loopto visit the Jazz Record Mart, home ofDelmark Records. I took publictransportation to Jazz Record Mart,then located at 7 West Grand Streetand walked into this very smallcrowded space.

There were bins of hundreds ofalbums (blues, traditional jazz, bebop,etc. all the way to the new musicbeing played by the AACM

(Association for the Advancement ofCreative Musicians) and recorded byDelmark), the covers all wrapped inplastic. The actual records werestored on shelves behind the counterto prevent rip offs. Hundreds of 78'swere stacked on the floor forcollectors. There were also postersand handbills advertising musicplaying throughout the city. It wascrowded with lots of customers, a

number of very hip staff, and BobKoester.

Koesterwas the founder of DelmarkRecords in St Louis; he later movedto Chicago. The label was in thecellar entered through a trap door inthe back. Bob was and is an originaland he is the guy whom I credit forhelping me to explore the blues andenter a world which I only knew fromalbums and 45's, but had no ideaabout as lifestyle.

On that first visit I began to discusswith him the idea of a festival focusedon the real blues (if at the time I had asense of what that meant), his ideason who might be invited to perform,and perhaps most important for me, I


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younger guys I saw play was a thenvery young Luther Allison. Heseemed old to me, but I was onlytwenty and Luther was probably tenyears older. Luther was, as you know,

an amazing performer and by early1969 (as we began to solidify thesupport from our sponsors to makethe Ann Arbor Blues Festival happen)I decided we should bring LutherAllison with Big Mojo on bass andBob Richey on drums to the MichiganStudent Union. We secured theballroom, the student volunteers putup the handbills, and about 8:30 P.M.they took the stage. The room was

maybe a third full. Luther played hisfirst gig in Ann Arbor and an hourlater the word of mouth had resultedin a packed house. I think thisperformance was the beginning ofAnn Arbor's love affair with Allisonand really launched his successfulcareer. Here was a guy with a fewsingles, but no album yet, anunknown, but a wonderfully emotionalsinger and guitarist.

By March, we had gotten into highgear. The contours of the first festivalwere underway. Through BobKoester I met more and more artistsand experienced amazing music byartists totally unknown in the whitecommunity. I was introduced byKoester to Dick Waterman, who atthe time was managing Buddy Guy,Junior Wells, and a number ofextraordinary bluesmen from the

south, such as: Fred MacDowell,Robert Pete Williams, and ArthurCrudup. I began to make theconnections between the enormousdiversity in styles of blues and theirinfluence on the blues rock bandsplaying at the Fillmore Auditorium inSan Francisco and other halls around

the country. Waterman was a majorinfluence on my growing interest incountry blues and my awareness ofhow so many blues artists had beenripped off during their careers. He

was a very honorable guy in a lessthen honorable field.

Between May and July, the showtook shape and various artists werecontracted. Looking at the copies ofthe contracts today it is hard toimagine how inexpensive the greatblues artists were to book. Onecontract for the Muddy Waters bandshows it cost the festival $3000 forthe evening. Many of the country

blues artists were costing between$250-300.

In May we began to do the little bit ofpublicity we could afford. The festivalbudget was tiny! A press releasestates the Ann Arbor Blues FestivalCommittee "has no desire to becomea part of the mammoth bluesexploitation and is discriminatelychoosing its performers. We are

interested in presenting a festival inwhich the artists and the audience willgenerate a blues mood, avoiding atall costs a teeny-bopper cultisthappening." I think we succeeded.The festival tickets were priced at $14for the three days or $5 per concert.How times have changed.

The 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

The 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festivalcaptured a moment in time of the bluesscene as it was back then. By the 1970festival, many great players had alreadypassed away, starting with the untimelydeath of Magic Sam in December of1969. Magic Sam (along with LutherAllison) had taken that first festival bystorm. It was hard to believe we would


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never hear Sam play again. We hadonly just found him.

Otis Spann was also gone in the springof 1970. Others who died in the intervalbetween festivals include Lonnie

Johnson, Earl Hooker, Slim Harpo, SkipJames, and Kokomo Arnold. Alreadythat first festival in 1969 (less than ayear before) began to look more andmore precious. The 1970 Ann ArborBlues Festival was dedicated to OtisSpanns memory.

John Fishel writes:

Shortly after the 1969 festival,Delmark Records recorded and

released Southside Blues Jamfeaturing Buddy Guy and Louis Myers.I remember talking with Otis Spann inthe Jazz Record Mart aboutperforming at the 1970 show. I alsohad the privilege of being at theSouthside Jam recording sessionwhere Junior Wells sang about an illMuddy Waters and Howling Wolf InChicago for Spann's funeral, Iremember a large crowd at the

service and sitting in the back of aCadillac drinking a toast to OtisSpann with his former colleaguesBirmingham Jones and drummer S.P.Leary

Visiting Toronto in early 1970, I sawLonnie Johnson (no longer able toplay guitar due to a stroke) sing in hisbeautiful soulful voice, accompaniedlovingly by Buddy Guy. All theselosses created an urgency inproducing the second festival for1970. The sponsors remained theUniversity of Michigan andCanterbury House. The cast ofvolunteers changed. Ken Whipplebecame (along with me) the co chairand my friend Mark Platt took on thetask of coordinating the entertainment.

Other blues enthusiasts includedMarian Krzyzowki, Dick Pohrt, AustinIglehart, Glenn Baron, and WorthGretter. A new stage was designed.The show was moved to the newly

named Otis Spann Memorial Field.I traveled with my friends back andforth to Chicago, broadening myknowledge of the blues. We decidedthat we wanted to move beyondChicago blues as our primary focusand try to give the audience an evenbetter sense of the entire black bluesgenre. As I listened to more blues onalbums, I tried to find out if the artistswere still around and could come to

the 2nd Ann Arbor Blues Festival.

From the West Coast we signed PeeWee Crayton, Eddie "CleanheadVincent, and Big Joe Turner. Alsofrom the West Coast came LowellFulson. From Houston we brought inJuke Boy Bonner, from rural Texaswe signed Mance Lipscomb, andfrom Louisiana, Robert Pete Williams.Both Lipscomb and Willians were

represented by Dick waterman'sAvalon Productions. From Virginiacame John Jackson.

We branched out into a still moremodern blues sound with BobbieBland and Little Junior Parker. Havingheard a cut on an album of harpistPapa George Lightfoot, I was happyto learn that he was still gigging. Thefestival's success in 1969 resulted ininterest in blues artists currently

playing and began to spark what,over time, was almost a bluesrenaissance and growth of the bluesfestival concept, which today is stillgoing strong.

The first festival created the impetus forthe American blues publication LivingBlues joining Blues Unlimited, a


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British publication, with Jim O'Neal, AmyVan Singel, and Bruce Iglauer (later ofAlligator Records) among others takingthe lead, all of them working at DelmarkRecords and the Jazz Record Mart.

Delmark Records, Chris Strachwitz'sArhoolie label in Berkley and otherspecialty labels began to reach a wideraudience.

By late 1969 and early 1970, wewere identifying acts from Chicago tobe included including Hound DogTaylor (an original if there ever wasone) and the House Rockers (afantastic "bar" band), Johnny Young,Sunnyland Slim, Carey Bell, and

Buddy Guy. It was a blast travelingback and forth to Chicago and wemade many trips on treacherouswinter weekends just to see an act.Fortunately the blues scene was stillvery exciting with dozens of bars,taverns, and clubs.

I remember some very unusualvenues. One night we saw JuniorParker playing in what was a

renovated bowling alley. You neverknew what could happen. Oneweekend we traveled to the WestSide to see Hound Dog. It was a veryfunky club on West Roosevelt, with awild crowd. One of the guys broughthis girl friend for a first-time visit tosee the real blues. When we gotready to leave, a mean looking guycomes over and says that thegirlfriend is not leaving except withhim. Fortunately, with a little helpfrom Ted Harvey, Hound Dog'sdrummer, we safely exited an hourlater. Another night, Luther Allisonwas playing up the street and a groupof European blues fans were visitingthe club. Suddenly guns were pulledand all hell broke loose. The French

guy sitting next to me seemed to beunaware that something was goingon.

I was fortunate (after graduating inthe spring of 1970) to spend the

summer preparing for the festivalworking at the Jazz Record Mart andliving in an extra bedroom at Bob andSue Koester's apartment. It wasperfect. Every day I sold bluesalbums and every night, if I wanted, Icould go hear music. Blind ArvellaGray the street musician played outfront. The Jazz Record Mart was ameeting place for all kinds ofmusicians including both Jazz and

blues.

People came from all over the worldto see and hear the blues. One nightthere was an official from the stillcommunist Czechoslovakia in townwho went out with Bob Koester andhis entourage to hear the music.Every Monday there were jamsessions at various venues. It is hardto remember who performed, but

literally every working musician in theSouth or West Side would show up,beginning in the early afternoon and

jam until the places closed late atnight.

It remains some of the finest mostsoulful experiences of my life. I got toknow well most of the musicians.Carey Bell who played the 1970'sfestival was just starting to break out,and I remember his cousin Royal

Johnson (an unknown guitarist whogigged with him) blowing my mind. Ibrought them to Ann Arbor to play atCanterbury House before the festivaland I have some great snapshots oftheir visit to my crib.

Finally the big weekend of thefestival came, August 7-9, 1970. We


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opened as in the previous year withRoosevelt Sykes and closed againwith Son House. In between, we hada few returning groups and some newones. John Lee Hooker came in from

Detroit, the extraordinary andarticulate Johnny Shines, and AlbertKing. We were better organized andthe crowd was larger. Sadly peopledecided that paying $15 for the serieswas too much and we had lots of gatecrashers. Still it was a mellow scene.There were magic moments:

The second year, our emcee wasPaul Oiliver, the British blues scholarand academic expert in African

architecture. He brought a moreserious tone to the proceeding thenBig Bill Hill in the first year, but did awonderful job reflecting his love of themusic.

Memories of sitting with FredMcDowell, later my house guest, afterthe festival, Sunnyland Slim, andothers listening to stories about JimCrow and days on the cotton

plantations of the South were asobering experience which made mebetter understand the blues and itsroots

The festival was again a superbcross section of the music I continueto love. Sadly, the gate crasherscreated a financial crisis whichresulted in the second Ann ArborBlues Festival being the last until itwas resurrected by another group a

few years later as the Ann ArborBlues and Jazz festival. I have amemory of sending out our volunteerswith empty card board barrels (with aKentucky Fried Chicken logo on them)to raise a few bucks to cover thedeficit seems incongruous, but maybenot.

The 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festivalwould be the last. A benefit featuringartists Otis Rush, Johnny Winter, BuddyGuy, Luther Allison, and Junior Wells atthe University of Michigan Events

building was a wonderful show, butcould not save the festival. Neither coulda benefit show at the University ofWisconsin Blues Society that generated$1800, but again not enough to save theday.

The 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival waswell received by the critics including afeature in the New York Times writtenby music critic John S. Wilson each ofthe three days. He commended the

audience for its patience, receptivity,and the less familiar artists for giving thefestival its unique distinct flavor.

A review in Rolling Stone magazine, stilla relatively young publication, inSeptember 1970 called the 1970 AnnArbor Blues Festival almost a perfectsuccess. "Rarely has an audience heardso much great music in a weekend."

John Fishel went on to do a series of

small festivals at the University of Miamiin Coral Gables, Florida with his brotherJim, who also helped on the two AnnArbor Blues festivals. Jim Fishel wasinstrumental in turning John Fishel on tovarious blues artists when he wasyounger, artists such as Luther Allison,Rober Jr. Lockwood, HoustonStackhouse, and Eddie Bacchus (agreat organist from Cleveland). JohnFishel later worked with Dick Waterman

for a short while when Luther Allisonwas trying to break out into a largeraudience and when Bonnie Raitt wasbeginning her career. John went on todo social work and today directs a largenot-for-profit corporation in Los Angeles.


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The End of the Blues Festivals

The 1970 festival ran into stiffcompetition from a large (and historic)rock concert being held at the sametime in nearby Goose Lake. The Goose

Lake Bonanza drew a lot of attendeesaway from the blues festival, with theresult that, when all was said and done,the festival came out in the red, a loss ofsome $25,000, which was a lot in thosedays.

It has been said by way of criticism ofthe first two Ann Arbor Blues Festivalsthat they were too esoteric, that theartists were not known by the general

public, and so forth. That is of coursetrue, by definition.

At the time of those first two bluesfestivals, most of these performers weregenerally unknown to White America.City blues was esoteric, by definition. Ithadnt been found by the mainstreamyet and that is a major reason why theoriginal Ann Arbor Blues Festival wasundertaken in the first place: to bringthese artists to general attention, which

it did. If not for the insight of festivalchairman John Fishel into these (mostly)Chicago artists, we would probably havehad a good blues-rock concert thatwould be quite forgettable by now.

It is true that there was no attempt toinclude jazz, R&B, or popular headlinersin these first festivals and it is true thatmainstream artists might have resultedin a larger attendance. It is fair to saythat John Fishel and crew were purists.A cross-section of music genres was notenvisioned by the festival coordinators(or any of us involved), who werestruggling to bring modern-electric cityblues to national recognition. It is notthat we were scholars or historians, atleast not most of us. More than anythingelse, everyone involved just really

wanted to hear this music live and meetthe performers. We just loved the musicand felt it deserved a wider audience.

Discovering that these great bluesartists were alive and living all around us,

but never previously accessed or known,was a revelation at that time. Here wasnot a dying or antiquated music needingour revival, as was the case with certainstyles of folk music. Modern electricblues was very much alive and well incities across the United States, onlyseparated from white America racially. It

just needed some ears.

Removing that racial curtain exposed a

vast wealth of music to be experiencedand absorbed. What happened in thatfirst blues festival in 1969 was a musicaland personal revelation to many ofthose in attendance, at least to the whitemembers of the audience. It helped tolaunch a new era of blues discovery andacceptance.

The Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals

There was no Ann Arbor Blues Festivalin 1971, but a year later the Ann ArborBlues & Jazz Festival was founded bypromoter Peter Andrews and bluesexpert John Sinclair. Although quitesimilar and wonderful in its own right,the succeeding Ann Arbor Blues & JazzFestivals were different in that theywidened the scope of the festival toinclude jazz and R&B, for example MilesDavis and Ray Charles. The emphasison purely blues was gone. This, coupledwith the attrition rate of great bluesmasters in the subsequent years, madeit increasingly difficult to repeat theformat of those initial Ann Arbor BluesFestivals in 1969 and 1970 even if wewanted to. The attrition rate alone meantthat those first festivals could never berepeated. Here are some details.


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After losing money at the 1970 AnnArbor Blues Festival, the University ofMichigan was cautious about continuingthe festival and asked their eventsdirector Peter Andrews to look into it. In

an interview I did with Andrews, hestates: The University of Michiganadministration asked me to look intoreviving the Ann Arbor Blues Festival,because everybody saw that it was agreat artistic success, which it was.

Andrews wrote in the program for the1973 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival:

In 1971, I was appointed to theposition of Events Director for the

University of Michigan and asked bythe Vice President in charge ofstudent affairs to try to recreate thefestival for the coming year. I toldthem that it would be impossible tohave a festival that summer and thatthey should aim toward 1972. No1971 festival was held.

John Sinclair and Peter Andrews wrotein the printed program for the 1972 AnnArbor Blues & Jazz Festival:

The Blues and Jazz festival wasconceived last winter by RainbowMulti-Media president PeterAndrews as a revival of the originalAnn Arbor Blues Festival, whichafter two incredible years (1969 and1970) of artistic (but not financial)success was laid to rest by theUniversity of Michigan before a1971 festival could struggle into life.

And from the same text: careful booking, detailedplanning, and superior organization,coupled with the expansion of thefestival into contemporary jazzmusic and a slightly less esotericline-up of blues artist, would not onlyinsure the success of the 1972

festival, but would also expand uponthe musical base laid down by theproducers and participants in theearlier blues festivals, which hadessentially limited their potential

appeal to music lovers by featuringlittle-known (though musicallyexcellent) blues performers frommany different disciplines with theblues idiom.

Finances and the Blues Festivals

Something that has come up again andagain over the years for some reason isthe statement that those first two AnnArbor Blues Festivals didnt make

money, while their successor, the AnnArbor Blues & Jazz Festival did. Theactual records dont support thatstatement. Here is what a little researchturned up.

1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

The 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival hada total proposed budget for $57,200 inrevenue and $52,950 in expenses,giving a profit of $4,250. In actuality,they received $63,533 in revenue, had$63,137.17 in expenses, giving a profitof $406.04, still a profit and not a loss.This data was taken from the FinancialReport for the Ann Arbor Summer BluesFestival, Summer of 1969, BentleyHistorical Collection, UAC VP collection.

1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival

The major problem with the 1970Blues festival was its tremendousfinancial failure, leaving a debt of

some $25,000, most of which wasattributable to last-minuteemergency police and securitycosts and to over booking (too manyartists at too high prices) and under-pricing of festival tickets (four showsfor $10).


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This was taken from the 1972 Ann ArborBlues & Jazz Festival program. In fact,most authorities blame the loss on thehuge pop festival at Goose Lake,Michigan on the same days. John Fishel

confirms the loss as about $25,000.1972 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz FestivalFinancial Report

Released by the RainbowMultimedia, after the festival. Thesefigures were preliminary, andmiscellaneous bills were still comingin.

Total Revenue $242,034.62

Expenses $246,603.94

Loss of $3,569.32

We averaged 11,000 persons pershow last year for each of fiveshows. Due to losses in the area offood concessions, our grossrevenues fell some $4,000-$5,000short of our final budget

This from co-founder Peter Andrews inthe program for the 1973 Ann Arbor

Blues & Jazz Festival. Source: BentleyHistorical Collection, John SinclairPapers. They ultimately lost perhapsfive grand.

1973 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz FestivalFinancial Report

According to Peter Andrews the co-producer of the 1973 festival, heremembers that the 1973 festival justabout broke even.

1974 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivalin Exile

In 1974, with a change in citygovernment (more republicans on thecity council), Sinclair and Andrews raninto problems getting a festival permit.The festival promoters were deniedpermission to hold the event in Ann

Arbor and the fate of the festivalbecame a bitterly debated issue in thepress and about town. There wasnothing to be done about it, so, it wasdecided to hold a 1974 festival, but in

exile, at another location. A smallcollege in Windsor, Ontario volunteereda spot and it was decided to hold the1974 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festivalin another country - Canada.

All the standard festival preparationstook place, including an extensive car-pool system for busing blues enthusiastfrom Michigan to the site in Canada.There was only one problem and it wasa big one. They failed to anticipate that

the FBI and other law enforcementofficials would prevent the thousands ofwould-be attendees from crossing theborder. They just refused to let concertgoers from the states of Michigan crossthe border, ordering their cards to turnback.

Worse, they refused to allow JohnSinclair, who was co-producing thefestival, to cross into Canada, forcing

him to retreat to a temporaryheadquarters in the Shelby Hotel inDetroit. No reasons were given at theborder for turning the cars back. Carswere searched and any with drugs wereconfiscated and their occupantsarrested. That same was true at thegates in Windsor: anyone foundsmoking Marijuana or carrying it wasimmediately arrested and taken to jail.The net effect was to ruin the festival,causing over $100,000 in losses -- afinancial disaster.

So, in the last analysis no real moneywas made at any of these festivals, butthat first Ann Arbor Blues Festival madea profit of $406.04, enough perhaps tobuy pizza for the staff and volunteers!


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As for me, I continued to interview bluesartists as part of the Ann Arbor Blues &Jazz Festivals and to take care of theperformers, only now I was using videoequipment. After the 1974 fiasco, the

Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival foldedand was not resumed until 1992. Inrecent years, I served on the board ofdirectors for that organization for anumber of years and ended up as theofficial archivist. The festival closed in2006 for lack of funds. By then therewere blues festivals each year in almostevery large Midwestern town. It is theend of an era.

The Blues Today

Today blues continues to be popularacross America. What I did not realizeso well at the time of those first festivalsis that the majority of the performerswere not young men and women. Theaverage age of all the main performersfor the two festivals (some 47 of them,including the youngest players) wasabout fifty years of age and a number ofthem were in their sixties (Mance

Liscomb was 74). We are talking aboutthe end of a movement, not thebeginning. In 2008, of the mainheadliner blues artists in those first AnnArbor Blues Festivals, over 90% of themhave passed away. Only some of theyoungest artists (then) still remain aliveand then only a few of them. They arethe grandfathers now.

Of course there are some wonderfulyounger blues players. But lets not kid

ourselves: we still have the form of theblues, but today we probably have moreform than substance. Where is the nextHowlin Wolf or Muddy Waters? Playersof that caliber have not appeared amongthe younger players and for a verysimple reason: modern city blues, like allthings in life, has a beginning, a middle,

and now an end. This is not to say thatblues are dead.

The Blues

Everyone gets the blues sometimes. We

can all agree on that. But everyone doesnot get the particular blues that AfricanAmericans have had. We can all learn tosing the blues if we have that talent, butthe historical blues sung by the blackAmericans that migrated from the Southto Chicago is not open to us justbecause we all happen to get the bluesfrom time to time.

African-American Chicago blues, likethose played at the first two Ann Arbor

Blues Festivals is now a piece of history,a period in time, that (as racial exclusionceases and racial tensions ease) hasbecome a closed book for all of us(black and white together) going forward.We can all sing the blues, just not thoseblues. Even the racial divide thatseparated the races is weakening. Theelection of Barack Obama is certainly asignal that America is becomingmulticultural and multiracial, and this

country is no longer the exclusiveprovince of white men. The discovery ofmodern blues on the part of whiteAmerica did not happen in a vacuum. Itcame exactly at a time when the wholeAmerican culture was in upheaval. Weare talking about the heart of the 1960s,from 1965 onward.

As some folk music enthusiasts movedfrom studying folk music into the blues,there was something in the blues thatwe really did not know in ourselves.Blues was (at least to me) a call fromsomewhere deeper than the whiteaudiences knew about, a call thatresonated and lured us to dig beneaththe social veneer of white America andto see if what we heard out there fromthe black blues artists was also in here,


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somewhere deep within ourselves. Wasthere really such a thing as one humanvoice and condition?

Some have written that white artistswere simply feeling guilty, trying to save

their own souls. The white musicians Iknew were not trying to save their soulsas much as trying to reach a levelplaying field where they believed allhumans stand. Sure, we were afraid wemight be missing something in the souldepartment and we just wanted to getdown to it. Most of us were not religiousin the sense that we were trying tosave anything.

We were perhaps guilty of ascribing tothe blues something outside of our ownexperience and longing to know whatthat experience meant. It was not thesuffering itself of black history we wereseeking, but a taste of the life wisdomthat came out of that suffering. Welooked up to black artists as mentorsand perhaps we werequestioning ourown lack of suffering, the inequality of itall. I dont recall ever meeting a folk or

blues artist who was a right-wing JohnBircher.

Did white players lack soul? That is aloaded question. I dont believe anyonelacks soul, black or white, but we sureheard something in the blues thatresonated with us, something we did notfully understand or know much about inourselves. Otherwise the blues wouldnot have fascinated us as it did.Perhaps some of us did feel guilty for

our lack of suffering and our easyupbringing. In the mid-1960s, the wholeculture was being shed like a snakesheds its skin. There was somethingreal and permanent (beyond time) in theblues that spoke out to us, somethingwe wanted to get to know, to understand,and also to find within ourselves. The

blues helped us find that feeling for ourself and for others.

What is music anyway? Why do welisten to it? Why do we listen to certainsongs over and over? What do we

absorb or get out of our favorite tunes?These are all questions that I havepondered.

Obviously blues music contains somekind of information that we somehowcant get enough of and that some of usfeel we need, at least important enoughto listen again and again to these tunes.

Thats what happened to me. As a folkie,I was used to listening carefully to music.

When I came across authentic modernblues, I heard something that resonateddeep within me and I yearned for moreof it. There was something in that musicthat I needed to understand and toabsorb.

In 2006 I heard a young white musiciansinging a classic blues song. He wassinging in full Ebonic dialect and he wassincere about it. I was amazed andalmost offended, but he was so innocentabout it.

What was he thinking? It took me awhile to understand that my over-reaction to this young player was not somuch his arrogance, because he wasnot arrogant; it was something else. Thisyoung twenty-something kid was re-enacting the blues, word for word,including the black dialect and thisamounted (in my hearing it) to pushing

the blues from the present into the past.Chicago city blues is becoming folklorerather than reality a part of history.And I hated to see it go there.

And time since then has shown this tobe true. The Chicago city blues was anera like all other great periods of musicand those first two Ann Arbor blues


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festivals brought this great music topublic attention. Today, almost all of thegreat players are gone. Time marcheson. Those of us who still hear Chicago-style blues alive in clubs or festivals well

know that more and more we aresubject to re-enactments - it soundedlike this. The very fact that todaymusicians try to recreate, to sound-like,and to try to get back to what is alreadygone is telling in itself, as the poemMemory, by William Butler Yeats soclearly states:

The mountain grass cannot butkeep the form,

Where the mountain hare has lain.Michael Erlewine

[email protected]

searching for roots: discovering electric blues in white america

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