I love white boy blues, whether it's 60s british blue horizon beat boom or Butterfield Blues Band, the Winters, etc etc etc. I love the more retro stylings of Maria Muldaur. I love Bonnie Raitt and Susan Tedeschi. I really really love Robert Cray and I can enjoy Albert and BB King. (And Clarence Gatemouth Brown, worth looking out for, but he's country, cajun and western swing to!). But I just can't hack John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, etc etc, let alone all the way back to Robert Johnson. I think there is only so much, and I struggle to use the word, primitivism, I can take, so when, say, Keb' Mo' recreates such moods, and, if I'm honest too, the likes of Chris Smither, I just get bored.
I know this is contrary to the rules of the musics nob rules I rigidly apply to myself, but, try as I might, I just can'yt get past it. Seasick Steve, too. I just wish he would tune up and sing.
Sorry.
By recompense and apology, here's a reprise of a young british blues artist I think you should all listen too. Her debut LP is just out. I can hear a lot of Rory Gallagher in her, says I, knowing what a following he has in these parts.
ttp://

I meant music snob. I think.

can't hack Rory Gallagher which passes for heresy in these parts.

Robert Cray too. In fact it was Seasick Steve got me thinking of this I've seen and enjoyed him on TV and have been tempted to buy the album..... but my track record isn't good.

I find most 'blues' crashingly boring, and the slicker it sounds, the harder it is to take.
That said, I LOVE Howlin' Wolf, and am really enjoying C W Stoneking (to mention a contemporary performer - although he doesn't stick to a rigid blues template by any means).

by Otis Spann. It was recorded in 1969 with various members of Fleetwood Mac. It's a recent discovery of mine & I think it is the best blues album I have ever heard. Peter Green's playing is spine-tingling & the whole thing is so beautiful and so moving, it reminds you why the blues has meant so much to so many people.

Longhair.

http://open.spotify.com/album/0M0SQPajdBPlZ4y4vy2Xyk

Howlin' Wolf - How Many More Years

Slim Harpo - Shake Your Hips

Snooks Eaglin - St. James Infirmary

I remember going to see Eric Clapton a few years ago. I think he'd just put out an album of old blues covers, and he was playing a lot of it. It's safe to say though, that most of the audience was not there to hear his latest album. Every time he announced something like "And here's two by Elmore James" there was an audible groan in the hall.

So it's not just you, gramsci.

to draw you in fully.

You'd do well to listen to Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan initially.

Authentic and coruscatingly exciting blues.

...and lord knows I've tried. I've been given many a telling off from various muso friends about it. I appreciate the blues and it's significance in the history of modern music and whatnot but, on the whole, it's failed to truly move me in the way it probably should. I suspect it may be a similar disappointment to when you see the Mona Lisa. After all the postcards and pastiche it's very hard to put it into context as genius. More something you expect to see on a t-shirt.

....the blues is probably my favourite genre. As the late great Townes Van Zandt said "there's only two types of music, the blues and zippy dee dooh dah".

I couldn't honestly tell you the last time I played one of my old blues albums all the way through but the tracks pop up on the shuffle regularly enough I'm glad to say.

The repetitive lyrics and the fact that the old guys usually only play 3 chords in the I IV V style can make it all sound quite samey and therefore hard work to listen to or simply boring, but I love the stompin' and hollerin' and the way they batter their old acoustics.

I like listening to the original artists styles, then listening to the newer guys copying them and with the advent of new technology we end up with James Brown, Ike Turner and Chuck Berry.

Listen to T-Bone Walker and hear where Chuck Berry got loads of his licks. Buggered if I can remember exactly the solo but Clapton copies one of Ike Turners note for note in a completely different song.

Gramsci says he gets bored listning to BB King.....that's never happened to me. Try "Love Me Tender" Gramsci. It's an album that gets slated by blues purists because it's *too country*....maybe it is but the blend of the two styles works perfectly for me.

Listen to the track "Memphis In The Meantime" by John Hiatt featuring Sonny Landreths blistering slide guitar and tell me it's not blues. Same goes for Skynyrds "Things Goin' On" and "Down South Junkin" from their 'First And Last' album. Tom Waits has too many to mention but "29 Dollars" and "Heart Attack And Vine" are simple copies of blues styles.

Many other artists have been mentioned in the threads above and I'd give the thumbs up to almost all of them, but my absolute favourites are -

Stevie Ray Vaughan - "Pride And Joy". Where did they get that shuffle beat from...was it the clickety clack of the train on the tracks or the clippity clop of the horses hoofs?

The Allman Brothers - "Statesboro Blues". Absoltely nothing like Blind Willie McTell's version but Duane Allmans slide guitar on the "Live At Filmore East" album still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, even after 30 years.

The Allman Brothers again - "Southbound". Does the use of 9th chords move this away from blues and towards jazz? Discuss.

For anyone that's got this far....apologies if I've bored you...it's getting late Friday night and the wine bottle is empty....

I know it's all subjuct to taste and all that rot, but how you can even BEGIN to compare people like Muddy Waters and Chris Smither with that bird in the clip above is beyond me. All I hear is yet another in the long line of SRV wannabes (No Gallagher at all to these ears,) and someone should hip her to the fact that if you want to really play the blues you should perhaps get a rhythm section that can swing.(A hard task in the UK, I admit)

Les Blank filmed Lightnin Hopkins in 1966 and 1967. The result was the quite stunning "The Blues According to Lightnin Hopkins". In relation to this particular clip, Blank said...

"I had asked him to tell me what the blues meant to him. He picked up his guitar and started to sing about a woman named Mary who had left him. Earlier that evening his wife had left him after a nasty argument that caused her cousin to attempt to shoot Lightnin’. While the song was being sung, the cousin was lurking outside the apartment door with a loaded pistol. Lightnin’ also had a large loaded gun stuck down the front of his pants."

If this doesn't slap you round the chops, nothing will...