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.
From 1989 until 1994 he had worked with Luther Allison as his European agent. Desiring to do more for the man Thomas described as "his rising blues hero" he started his own record label that "offered another avenue to promote the music and career of this extraordinary artist." From such small beginnings great things grow.
For twelve years now Thomas Ruf and Ruf Records have been recording Blues musicians who share his vision and hopes for the music. The company's motto, "Where The Blues Crosses Over" has a multiplicity of meanings. In music parlance when a genre "crosses over" it travels into territory other than its traditionally associated boundaries. Most often for the Blues that crossing over has been associated with guitar driven power rock and roll a la Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix.
But in the case of Ruf Records there is more then one way of viewing that saying. First there is the fact that so many of the artists have crossed over the Atlantic Ocean and the English Channel to sign with a German label in order to prosper. From established performers and groups like Omar and the Howlers, Canned Heat, Walter Trout, Sue Foley, and the recently signed Jeff Healy to up and comers like Bernard Allison (Luther's son) Aynsley Lister and Ian Parker from Great Britain, and Roxanne Potvin from Canada.
But crossing over also works in reverse and Ruf records is beginning to share the treasures of the European Blues scene with North America. Starting with Ana Popovic from the former Yugoslavia, who was the first European nominated for a W.C. Handy award for Blues, followed this year by the release of Aynsley Lister's Everything I Need in North America and Finnish slide virtuoso Erija Lyytinen's newest recording Dreamland which she recorded in four days while in Mississippi during a recent visit.
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1 - Connie Phillips
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