Blues Bash Ruf Records: Keeping The Blues Alive

Back in the early 1960s something peculiar happened in the world of popular music. The seemingly impregnable wall that had divided two worlds, separated by the barrier of race, began to develop cracks and fissures. Punching those holes was the music of poor Black sharecroppers from the Mississippi Delta and the electric sound of urban poverty from Chicago.

A small group of country musicians from the southern United States had begun to incorporate black music into their compositions in the 1950's gaining popularity and notoriety. Sun Records of Memphis Tennessee was the nexus for this hybrid, and with its stable of artists including Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis began to integrate Blues music into the mainstream.

But it took a collection of young musicians from Great Britain to really bring the Blues to the forefront of popular music. The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Who, and the bands that followed in their wake like Led Zeppelin and Ten Years After made no secret of their debt to the Blues musicians of the Americas.

Early albums of the Rolling Stones, like The Rolling Stones Now would probably sound unrecognizable to current fans as they are almost strictly Blues albums. Whether covers or originals they made no bones of who their influences were. They delivered their Blues straight with no country filter and provided much of mainstream America with its first exposure to the music of her own people.

For the first time people began to be familiar with names of Muddy Watters, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, and other men and women who had toiled in virtual obscurity because of the segregation of black and white in all aspects of American life. For some the recognition came too late for them to reap any of the fruits of their labour.

Others, like B.B. King, were able to catch the wave and ride it sufficiently to create comfortable livings and careers for themselves. Even today many men and women who were responsible for building the framework on which so much of our popular music rests, have never received proper recognition financially or other wise, for their contributions. (In an effort to try and right that balance organizations like The Music Maker Foundation have begun to spring up around the United States with the sole purpose of providing funds for these people to live in dignity and to record and tour their music.)

Although there have been individuals who have had success with Blues based recording careers, mainstream radio, and by extension the recording industry, has yet to welcome the genre enthusiastically. While the occasional syndicated radio show exists, the likelihood of ever hearing a blues song show up on popular radio is minimal.

With options for Blues performers still limited in North America looking further a field remains one of the best avenues for the security of a recording contract. A road that is become more frequently traveled these days is the path that beats to the door of one Thomas Ruf of Germany.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the forthcoming book What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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