One of the biggest mysteries about the American music industry is why it took British musicians to popularize American music in North America. Led Zepplin, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, and The Animals all had success on the American pop charts not only by singing the blues, but by playing old blues music. The even larger irony is the large number of American blues musicians, predominantly African American, who have had to go to Europe in order for their music to be fully appreciated. In some cases that has meant successful tours, while for others it has meant signing with European record companies.
At one point in time the issue of race was a factor as mainstream American radio stations refused to play the blues as performed by African American musicians. Elvis's version of "Hound Dog" might have been popular, but there wasn't much chance of ever hearing Big Momma Thornton singing it on the radio. There is definitely something wrong with a system that would rather broadcast Pat Boone covering Little Richard than playing the genuine article. 
Sad as that situation was in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it must have been even more disheartening for musicians to hear young guys from England coming over and having hits with songs they had written — and never got credit for writing, let alone ever receiving a cent in royalties.
Thankfully for American blues musicians, black and white, European audiences had a taste for the real thing. Not only did many of them, and many still do today, have successful careers over there, but quite a number of the European blues labels began distributing recordings in North America, and putting energy into developing audiences for the blues back in the land where it originated. One of the most successful of those has been the German label Ruf Records, formed by Thomas Ruf in 1994. He had left school in the 1980s when he became Luther Allison's promoter, and the label grew out of that relationship, with Allison's 1994 recording Bad Love (released in the US by Alligator as Soul Fixin' Man) being their first title.
Sadly, Allison died only three years later from lung cancer just as he was re-establishing himself in North America. In fact he was diagnosed while on tour and gave the last performance of his career on July 10, 1997 in Madison Wisconsin, the day he had was given the bad news, and died that August. According to anyone who saw him perform, it was his live shows that made Allison special, and now thanks to Ruf Records and Canadian television, we have one more opportunity to see and hear him performing in front of an audience. On that last tour of North America, his performance on July 4th at the Montreal Jazz Festival was recorded by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). While the original concert was 90 minutes long, the video was edited down to 50 to fit into an hour time slot. However the complete audio track survives, allowing fans at least the opportunity to hear the entire performance on the new two-disc CD/DVD set, Luther Alison: Songs From The Road.
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