Why the Blues Really Hit The Spot

Buddy Guy and Robert Cray, like some others you mentioned, are masters of the form. I would never dispute that. However there is a difference between mastering a form and creating and innovating new developments. Those guys are rehashing the glory of the past. Even though they produce new variations, which involve creativity for sure, it is not real authentic adaptation. In the 20's the idiom was continually changing out of a need to express new things. Same with the electric ensemble stuff of the 50's. The need came first and artists filled that need with work that either did the job or failed to do so. I think Buddy Guy's Chess work is remarkable, but now he coasts off of his mastery to accolades that are often uncritical.

As for the white bluesmen you mentioned, I think their innovation was to take those delta roots and bring them into contexts that were amazingly diverse. They were musically aware of Stockhausen, Schoenberg, Cage the Beatles, LSD, and world literature. Page, for example, was highly educated and literate. You can't compare him with a dirt farmer who could not read or write. It is a totally different music for a totally different context, and it was fantastic. Blues-rock is great for what it is, as is country blues and chicago blues, etc. Everything has its place.

Some things never change. You can always count on the Blues Police to show up at a discussion like this. To say that no good blues have been played since 1965 is just plain wrong.

I never said "no good blues have been played since 1965".

I said artistic growth in the idiom had turned from radically creative and innovative to the perpetuation of a rather static form. Get your facts.

I love the blues, but by its very nature its a pretty limited art form. There's only so much you can do with a couple of verses and choruses. The folks playing today just don't have anything new to add to the conversation. Its not to suggest they aren't good musicians, its just that they're playing someone elses breaks from forty-five years ago. Plus those old recordings have a certain essense of their time and place that you're never going to recapture with newer recordings.

For pre-war the best way is to do a run of the south by region, starting with the delta. The fine work of Samuel Charters can inform this process quite a bit. Here is a partial bibilography:

1959 - The Country Blues. New York: Rinehart. Reprinted by Da Capo Press, with a new introduction by the author, in 1975.
1963 - The Poetry of the Blues. With photos by Ann Charters. New York: Oak Publications.
1963 - Jazz New Orleans (1885-1963): An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans. New York: Oak Publications
1967 - The Bluesmen. New York: Oak Publications
1975 - The Legacy of the Blues: A Glimpse Into the Art and the Lives of Twelve Great Bluesmen: An Informal Study. London: Calder & Boyars.
1977 - Sweet As the Showers of Rain. New York: Oak Publications
1981 - The Roots of the Blues: An African Search. Boston: M. Boyars.
1984 - Jelly Roll Morton's Last Night at the Jungle Inn: An Imaginary Memoir. New York: M. Boyars.
1986 - Louisiana Black: A Novel. New York: M. Boyars.
1991 - The Blues Makers. (Incorporates The Bluesmen and Sweet As the Showers of Rain) Da Capo.
1999 - The Day is So Long and the Wages So Small: Music on a Summer Island. New York: Marion Boyars.
2004 - Walking a Blues Road: A Selection of Blues Writing, 1956-2004. New York: Marion Boyars.
2006 - New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus. Marion Boyars.