[Harp-L] The Blues In Any Color ....

["Bill Kumpe" <bkumpe@xxxxxxx>]

While we owe our black brothers and sisters a great debt for their
contributions to the blues, the blues is not an exclusively black genre.
Blues history is full of what I affectionately call ?Redneck Bluesmen.?
Right now, cuts from Gene Autry?s ?The Blues Singer? and Jimmie Rodgers
early recordings (the white, tubercular singing brakeman, not Muddy?s second
guitar) occupy space on my MP3 player right alongside Mississippi John Hurt
and Blind Willie Johnson.  I think the missing element in many blues
player?s music is not ethnicity but emotional authenticity.  Call me
sentimental or even naïve, but I believe that in some ways you have to earn
your right, literally pay your dues, to play the blues and a lot of
musicians product shows whether they have or not.

 

Bill Kumpe

Tulsa, OK