Recording Today

Blues today incorporates the legacy of country blues and the innovations of urban blues. There is no longer a clear demarcation between styles, and there are few artists who are considered strictly urban or strictly country blues performers. Many artists returned to visit family in the south even after they had migrated north, and many southern artists are familiar with the northern sounds. During the folk music revival of the early sixties, there was also a revival of acoustic blues. In 1963, Muddy Waters, who was still living in a suburb of Chicago, recorded "My Home Is in the Delta" playing an acoustic guitar. This is just one example of the influences of southern artisits on the north and northern artist of the south.

The blues today have taken on influences as disparate as soul music, punk rock, and more recently hip hop.

I subscribe to the fact that the role that blues played for young people thirty years ago is now supplanted by the hip hop artists. What I mean by that is that blues used to be the music where young people searching for a way to establish an identity and wanting to feel good about themselves had an outlet. You know, Willie Dixon wrote a lot of wonderful songs of people boasting and bragging, and Jimi Hendrix when he would introduce Voodoo Chile on stage, which was basically just an updating of Muddy Waters, he would say, Îitâs nothing to get upset about itâs just a cat building himself up.â But now, blues isnât like that so much anymore. I mean there are a lot of blues songs about partying because people see that as a cross-racial kind of thing, itâs not limited in its lyrical content, everybody can get drunk and start a fight or whatever. The songs are really more about adult conflicts and ambivalencies and itâs really not a racial thing itâs like ÎI broke up my neighborâs marriage and Iâm not sure whether to feel good or bad about itâ kind of stuff, and the young people bragging on the street corner kind of stuff, thatâs rappers now.

--Richard Shurman

Mississippi John Hurt Stack o' Lee Blues

Def Squad Rappers' Delight

R.L. Burnside Let My Baby Ride

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