I have had so many wonderful experiences with all kinds of Memphis music, especially the blues. I have had a life long love of music. I grew up in Chicago, and my dad loved to secretly listen to "race music" as a rebellious teen. He turned me on to jazz and blues at a very young age. I have always had a special connection to the Blues, Boogie Woogie and Jazz. Much of that music came from the south, with roots back to Memphis, Clarksdale, West Memphis... this whole region.
So many things, you can say, are a coincidence in life or you can just be like me and trust that you are led to where you should be.
I decided to ask the question "What is the Blues, and Who gets to play it?" after watching a 13-year-old boy from Canada come to Memphis and compete in the blues competitions, and a middle aged white women from Australia who was obsessed with i. Everyone and anyone were playing the blues, everywhere. Do you have to have the blues to play it? Must you earn the pain, for the privilege of being a blues man/person? Must you have lived the black experience, in the south, to be authentic? I asked BB King, Charlie Musselwhite and Blind Mississippi Morris, all of whom came from Mississippi and Memphis, what they thought. My multimedia, "What is the Blues" includes their response.
