What do you see as the future of blues music, and what role do you envision Ruf records playing in helping that become a reality?

I used to use a crystal ball and got pretty good at it, until the market totally changed a few years ago. With the rise of the digital sales (downloads), the industry goes back to the early '60s, when the record labels produced single songs, not albums. Why spend the money to produce a full album – 12-14 songs – when the consumer later on only picks one or two to download? The guy who used to spend 15 bucks for the entire CD might now only spend 99 cents with us through iTunes and download one song he likes. The existence of record labels per se in their traditional form as talent-developing and career-building service companies is changing.

So no, I haven't used my crystal ball too much lately. It's hard to predict. It's clear that the traditional stand-alone retail store with a true music mission - we carry any new CD of any genre and also deep catalogue - is history with the decline of Tower Records, the most prominent chain of this old school record store concept. There are as few as maybe 200-300 record stores with a good full assortment of music around the globe. The rest is chains with selected limited stock (they carry hits, not blues), mom and pop stores for a specialist clientele – many of them carrying second-hand - and the Internet.

The future of the blues is in crossover and evolution rather then preservation. The labels whose specialty was preservation of a traditional style are in trouble. I am not friends with those who constantly try to put blues music into a museum as an art form of the past. In general, the blues lacks performers that qualify as heroes. We have many solid players, but few real star personalities with charisma.

One final question, twelve years ago when you started Ruf Records you must have had an ideal of how you wanted things work out.

No, sorry this is wrong. I didn’t. I just did it because somebody needed to do it. And I worried about it later. Which was good. If I had predicted what I was in for, I might have changed my mind early on (smile).

Now twelve years later you have some the best known names in blues music signed with you from across three or four generations of musicians, playing all sorts of different styles and have just been recognized with the Keeping The Blues Alive Award for 2007 from the Blues Foundation. You must feel some sense of, if not accomplishment (which you should, in my opinion you've done wonders) at least vindication. Did you see any of this coming?