Why the Blues Really Hit The Spot

Blues evolved. Never defined, only refined. At which point can we say it's not authentic? Before piano, upright bass, electricity? It's still evolving and statements that it's dead is diminishing to current artists like Marcia Ball and Susan Tedeschi.

I'm sorry, but your examples of Marcia Ball and Susan Tedeschi only prove my point. They are gifted craftspeople, they have mastered a form. They are not producing innovation on the level of those who forged the genre. Respectfully, I cannot listen to their stuff without thinking 'why listen to this when I can have Freddie King, T-Bone Walker, Otis Rush, or even Ike Turner'. In those guys the innovation crackles out of every nuance. With the artists you mentioned all I can think is 'heard that before'.

Chashmal, your point is somewhat true, but it's of limited value and you overstate it's importance. Furthermore, you offer no explanation for why the blues has stopped evolving. The way I see it Blues morphed into R&B which later became Rock 'n Roll. While some branches of the Rock tree are decidedly non-blues, the dominate, at least commercially, form of rock for the past 20 years, namely rap, is fundamentally a mutation of blues.

I believe what you take as innovation in the past is more accurately described as artists trying to crossover to a larger, mainly white, audience. Freddie King did surf guitar music and played the theme to "Bonanza". T-Bone Walker worked supper clubs as a dancer/singer. Muddy Waters pretended he was a Folk Singer. Ike Turner was trying to sell records. For the most part current blues artist are not stretching the blues form because their audience doesn't want them to. It's a niche market and the audience wants to hear what they consider "authentic" blues. There are exceptions and I would argue that recent recordings by James Ulmer, Otis Taylor or even V.M. Bhatt are quite innovative.

Onhwy61, the blues stopped evolving as a form in itself because the needs it served became depleted. The rural black country culture that was a product of the Jim Crow south used blues almost like an emotional newscast. When those same people and their children (the generation of WW2) migrated to northern cities the needs changed yet again, but the emotional barometer remained the same. The form of both phases innovated highly emotionally charged ways to express a very specific sociocultural set of feelings and ideas. Those periods (1924 through the depression, and the migratory period after 1945 to 1965) became the basis for all blues of any kind that followed.

You cannot call the morphing into other forms an extension. Yes, the needs changed. R&B, jump, rock n' roll, and blues rock all grew from the 2 models I cited. If you want to say that blues extended itself to become those other forms it is you who is being simplistic. I think categorical distinctions are made for a reason, and those later forms did leave the pure blues behind. The only exception might be the British blues explosion, but in my opinion we can write it away as a wholly derivative venture from the outset.

Even more of the great bluesmen and women would have died in poverty and obscurity if the folk music and British blues revivals of the sixties hadn't happened. Even Stevie Ray Vaughan helped put a lot of money into the pockets of aging bluesmen by creating interest in their music.

There is something about the blues that strikes a chord in many people and I think there will be blues booms in the future.

It's OK if blues purists only like prewar (WW II) or first generation electric bluesmen. I have my own cutoff points for the blues that I like. But everyone should listen to the music that moves them and hopefully their curiosity will lead them back to some of the original masters and some will be inspired to make new good blues.

I've read, but I can't say for sure it's true, that Muddy Waters last words in 1983 were, "Don't let the blues die." I'm with Muddy.