Welcome to part two of the two-part interview that I conducted via email with Thomas Ruf, the force behind Ruf Records (read part one). In the past twelve years Thomas and his label have become one of the most active blues labels in Europe, if not worldwide. Even more important is the fact that unlike other labels, they produce new recordings of working artists instead of merely reissuing older back catalogues.

Aside from taking on established blues musicians from North America whose careers have been victimized by an industry that's more fickle than the weather, they have also helped to develop the careers of young European and North American players. What's even more impressive is their commitment to all the forms that the blues can take. From the harder edge of Walter Trout who only knows one speed other than fast — faster — to the internationally flavoured acoustic sounds of Bob Brozman and the amazing sounds he pulls from a resonator guitar, Ruf records proves the blues can be sung in as many ways as there are people.

The blues are an individual's means of expressing emotions through music, so it makes sense that different people will have different ways of getting there message across. That's the real beauty of the blues, and Ruf records. If one performer doesn't speak to you, that's okay, because there is somebody else waiting in the wings that just might.

When did the blues start to become popular in Germany? I know that in countries like France they have a history of African-American musicians performing in Paris since the twenties and the thirties in the jazz clubs. Obviously that wouldn't have been the case in Germany during the thirties, so there is not the same history of having the music around and available for the population.

I am not too good with the historic stuff as I spend my time in the present and look into the future for new goals rather than trying to fight about the correct past re-calling with all the blues scholars… there are other people that know more about the past than I do. I know there was an underground swing club scene during the German Nazi years. After the war the GIs started bringing in their music.

There were American radio stations in the '40s and '50s broadcasting in Germany. American popular music became popular after the war coming into the country along with the Marshal Plan. The blues was made popular almost by one single man in the early '60s — Horst Lippman from Llippman & Rau. They started the American folk/blues festivals in, I think, 1962, bringing over American blues performers on a yearly basis.