Internet radio and blues music today.
Posted By Dooley on February 6, 2009 
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It’s amazing really when you look at the journey that blues music has taken throughout its history. Pure blues music is an art form that has either directly spawned or had a major influence on much of what is popular music today. From its humble beginnings in the Mississippi delta region of the 1920′s through it’s eventual migration to the rough and tumble Chicago nightclubs of the 40′s and 50′s and its subsequent influence on the explosive launch of the British InvasionW of the 1960′s, American blues music has influenced a lot of people along the way, and it has influenced a lot of the music we hear today.
In the beginning, about the only way anyone ever heard blues music was if they happened to come into contact with one of the hard scrabble traveling musicians who rode the rails, walked the dirt roads, or traveled by horseback throughout the Mississippi river delta region. These musicians earned their keep by entertaining the hard working and hard playing black share croppers and occasionally the white land owners of the region.
During the late 1930′s and the early 1940′s the deep south became dotted with small, low power, rural radio stations. These stations provided a very real and necessary service to these small communities by providing them with essential news, weather and important announcements. It wasn’t long before some enterprising radio promoter decided that having some of the local entertainers on the air just after the noon news would entice people to listen to the show during their lunch break and the radio station could sell more advertising. Sure enough, local grocery stores and flour mills jumped at the chance to promote their products on these radio shows. Live blues radio was born. Being heard live on the radio daily was a huge help to the performers. They could plug their own appearances during the show and this in turn brought larger crowds to their weekend performances and helped put much needed money in their pockets.
It wasn’t long before small record companies like Sun StudioW in Memphis, TN were taking chances on these artists and then promoting their recordings to radio stations everywhere. The blues was on the move. By the late 1940′s and early 1950′s blues music was being heard on radio stations throughout America. There was, however, an ominous cloud on the horizon. Its name was ‘rock-and-roll’. Sure, it was born of the blues, but it was a different critter all together.
Just when it seemed the great blues artists of the 40′s where about to pass into oblivion, some hip young cats in England with names like Mick JaggerW, Mick FleetwoodW, Peter GreenW, and Eric BurdonW began to get their hands on some of the worn original recordings of guys with names like Howlin' WolfW, Muddy WatersW, John Lee HookerW and Jimmy ReedW. The inspiration provided by these records kicked off the much vaunted British Invasion and the rest, as they say, is history. The blues lived to fight again.
So let’s flash back for a second and imagine what might have happened if somewhere about 1938, some high tech, caffeine crazed geek walks into a fish fry or barn dance where Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters was laying down some really wicked blues licks to the hoots and shouts and stompin’ feet of a few dozen stoked up party goers. The crowd watches as our intrepid geek plugs in his laptop, patches directly into the soundboard and begins broadcasting this small rural party live via the internet to people all over the world. Different story, no?
Well, today we do have the ability to walk into a venue, plug in a board patch and begin a live broadcast from anywhere in the world to everywhere else in the world, all at the speed of light. What’s more, we still have some incredibly talented blues artists banging out some smoking blues licks at fish fries, house parties and small blues clubs every night of the week. With the advent of streaming Internet radio and live Internet broadcast, the future of blues music is unlimited.
Now, artists can reach audiences with an interest in blues music 24 hours a day anywhere in the world and blues fans everywhere can access their favorite music anytime they want. It’s all just a click away on the internet. I wonder what LeadbellyW or Lightnin' HopkinsW would think of all this?
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