People often find it interesting to try and define what the blues is all about. There have been many famous quotes to help us understand. Willie Dixon famously said, “The blues is the roots and the rest is just the fruits.” I sure in hell wouldn’t want to be the one that tells Johnny Cash his music is just the fruits. I also wouldn’t want to mince words or anything else for that matter with Willie Dixon. Writer and American music historian Robert Palmer said, “Blues is the aquifer that feeds virtually every tributary of American music.” I kind of like that one. This brings us full circle to Willie Dixon’s musical colleague at 2120 Michigan Avenue, Muddy Waters. He said, “The blues had a baby and they named it rock and roll.” I say, “The kid grew up and isn’t taking very good care of his parents.”

Here’s the deal. The rock & roll child, the youngest by the way, is all grown up now and, like a lot of youngest born children, always feels he needs to fight hard for attention. Rock&Roll is a grandstanding, loud mouthed kid who never got an education, parties a little too much and always gets the girl. It’s easy to resent this snot nosed brat. I’m not saying he isn’t fun to hang with now and again. He’s always great at a party but just try and get this kid to shut up. It ain’t easy.

One of the many things I love about blues music is that at its very best it is very subtle, nuanced music. One of the things I love about rock music is that at its very best, it is not. When you combine the two you get bad blues and perhaps even worse rock. What happens in the process is you get a hybrid form of music that more often than not represents the worst features of both genres. It becomes an entity of its own known as blues- rock. This form has been around so long it has in some people’s minds come to represent the blues. It’s a shame. There are many outside the blues world who don’t even know there is a difference between blues and blues-rock. Inside the blues community sadly there are plenty of misinformed people who don’t know there is a difference either.

There is a popular feeling amongst many of my colleagues out there in the music world that blues–rock will be the savior of the blues. It will turn new fans onto blues music. I would ask these people how that’s worked out so far. Blues–rock has been around some forty five years or so. It isn’t new. It isn’t hip. It has not attracted young or new fans, of any age for that matter, to the music in any great numbers. If a young person ventures onto the grounds of a blues festival and hears a ten minute ‘dweedly dweedly, look at me, dweedly dweedly, look at me’ guitar solo and is surrounded by a bunch of howling, fist pumping middle aged men with grey ponytails, not for a moment will that person be attracted to anything he (or she) hears or sees. From that unfortunate vantage point Louis and Clark couldn’t find hipsville with a GPS navigational device.

A very well known blues musician once told me, “80% of the blues fans out there are really just classic rock fans who think it sounds better or more mature to say they are blues fans. What they do is twist blues music to suit their particular tastes which has very little to do with blues in the first place.”

Rock can be heard endlessly on the radio, when you are on hold, in waiting rooms and in hotel lobbies. If there is one sanctuary where you could go out in public and listen to blues it WAS a blues festival. That just isn’t good enough for the blues–rocker mentality. These people are like the modern right wing zealots who actually pride themselves on their narrow mindedness. They force themselves onto this music and act like they are doing everybody a favor.

An example of this is the lineup at the very prestigious and successful Doheny Blues Festival in Dana Point, California. Obviously the demographics of the classic–rock crowd and that of your typical blues fan are very similar if not identical. This event has drawn big crowds every year without sacrificing the integrity of the music to the degree they did this year. The festival this year has gone away from an eclectic mix of blues and is heavily laden with blues-rockers who do no represent a full spectrum of the many flavors that make up the blues.

The blues had other children as well. Jazz, country, folk and soul music, r&b as well as rockabilly and western swing are all woven together through the fabric of the blues. But it is always the Rock child that seems to force itself onto the blues in a ubiquitous manner. I wish they would give me back my blues festival. Is that asking too much? Yea probably…

- David Mac