{"id":5496,"date":"2010-07-19T13:28:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T13:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/where-did-the-long-beach-blues-festival-go\/"},"modified":"2010-07-19T13:28:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-19T13:28:00","slug":"where-did-the-long-beach-blues-festival-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/where-did-the-long-beach-blues-festival-go","title":{"rendered":"Where Did The Long Beach Blues (Festival) Go?"},"content":{"rendered":"

10:15am |<\/strong> The lbpost.com editor asked me to reflect on past blues festivals, something for which I\u2019m gathering the requisite brain cells while I may.  
 
However, before that series commences, I must make a comment or three.  First, based on the success of a recent gospel event, the promoter commented how it\u2019s become a major event in town.  Once upon a time, it was the Long Beach Blues Festival that could honestly make that claim, believe it or not.  Not now.  <\/p>\n

What happened?<\/p>\n

Historically, when it came to fundraising at KLON\/KKJZ, the blues show was the tail that wagged (pun intended) the jazz dog in that it brought in the bucks because there was a great hunger for the blues.  I have no doubt that the current host, who is very verbal and a skilled salesman, was able to add significantly to that station\u2019s bottom line.  <\/p>\n

That\u2019s when the show was blues based.  Last week, I checked out the show\u2019s playlist to find the amount of play devoted to several blues giants:  Robert Johnson (of the 1930s), T-Bone Walker or Muddy Waters (of the 1940s and 1950s) or B.B. King (of the 1950s to date).  <\/p>\n

Nothing by any of them was played on the date checked (July 10, 1910), though plenty of material is available.  <\/p>\n

Who got the most significant play?  Eric Clapton.  I realize the playlist was from a fund drive and I also grant Clapton is a notable interpreter of the blues, but he\u2019s not a blues originator.  To concentrate play on this mega rock star instead of the incredibly wide world of blues recordings means a lot of worth records don\u2019t get played and it also means the KKJZ show has become something else instead.  <\/p>\n

To be fair, Clapton was part of a fund drive offering.  Also, Buddy Guy, Arthur Adams and Alberta Hunter got played, but again we\u2019re talking about high profile musicians, nothing unusual or surprising, no \u201coh wow\u201d moment.<\/p>\n

Recently, I spoke with the area\u2019s most active blues promoter Cadillac Zack about the state of the blues in the area and he came up with an interesting comment.  Paraphrasing him, \u201cI don\u2019t listen to the blues on the radio, because they play the currently available CDs and I\u2019ve heard them all.  Once you\u2019ve heard what\u2019s out there, you don\u2019t need to hear it again and again.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would be as if the local oldies station played nothing but the Beatles, the Beach Boys, some Motown, the Righteous Brothers, some Otis Redding and \u201dTequila\u201d over and over again and called it a complete history of rock and roll.  Wait a second – that sounds like KRTH and what they do.  And KRTH is a sometimes #1 in the market, so by eliminating about 99 percent of the once-active and viable rock and roll\/R&B scene, they have developed a finely focused audience who\u2019ll never know what they\u2019re missing, and likely don\u2019t care.  If KRTH happened to play an \u201coh wow\u201d record from time-to-time, likely KRTH\u2019s ratings would plummet.   Anyone with a sense of rock\/R&B history should be offended by the strangled KRTH jukebox. <\/p>\n

You can make a case that KKJZ gives exposure to local blues talent \u2013 though Clapton is hardly in that category.  What of the listener who wants the real thing from the historical giants and the neglected blues artists who did one or two great or important records, then faded away? Is the KKJZ show\u2019s mission to promote the newest and hippest sounds or to keep the history of the blues alive for both the devoted or casual listener of the blues?  <\/p>\n

It\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n

There are many world-class blues collections in our area.  Maybe somebody in a position of knowledge could come up with a blues show and make some money.  <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going away on this, Glenn Beck references (see the comment section of my last column) or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is a show\u2019s mission to promote the newest and hippest sounds or to keep the history of the blues alive for both the devoted or casual listener of the blues?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5496"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5496"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}