Ever since I was first exposed to blues music in 10th grade when my friend played B.B. King's "Sweet Black Angel," the blues has become part of me. Whenever I get stressed out about exams or feel lonely at night, I would take out some of my favorite blues CDs and play the songs that correspond to my situational pain and suffering. I'd always play T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday Blues" when I'd get up on Monday mornings feeling exhausted, knowing I am not ready to go to class.

Paul Geremia

Saturday night, I went to Happy Endings in Armory Square to listen to Paul Geremia, a middle-aged, white, finger-picking blues guitarist and singer who has been playing the blues for 30 years. I learned of his name through a promotional event in Hong Kong's Tower Records two years ago. Geremia's performance was articulate and fearless. His age and his unique experience were greatly revealed in each note he played. This guy has definitely undergone a lot of difficult moments in his life - he's one of the few white blues artists who has really got the blues.

Studying its origins helps us better understand the blues. Blues music was born as a by-product of the slavery period. The blues scale was invented by African slaves in the steel mills and railroads where they engaged in hard physical labor. They would sing something like "In the evening/In the evening/Mama when the sun goes down" while chopping steel or paving the rails. Therefore, the blues has distinct roots in African music.

Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain Blues" in the mid-30s gave birth to the first blues recording. In the 40s, B.B. King's "Three O'Clock Blues" moved the blues out of mainstream black music into the mainstream of popular music. This transition created an irreplaceable genre in American music that influenced many rock-stars of our time like Eric Clapton, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Van Morrison.

The history of the blues, however, suggests that you only play good blues if you feel it. Eric Clapton admitted that he felt the blues for the first time after his 4-year-old son Connor fell to his death from Clapton's New York City apartment.

Monster Mike Welch

Jonny Lang

Unfortunately the blues industry is undergoing a significant crisis today. After the recent death of Albert King and Albert Collins, only B.B. King, John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy remain as the pillars of today's blues music. These names started the blues music and have continued to carry the torch for the past 40 years, despite their old age. My prediction is that the day B.B. King dies is the day blues dies. Of course, the big-name record companies don't want us to believe this sad reality. They have been trying hard to find successors. Voila, all we get is a bunch of white, 18 year-old pretty boys who try to impress high school students by singing Sonny Boy Williamson's "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl." Jonny Lang, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Monster Mike Welch - these are the new blues kids on the block born with silver spoons in their mouths. What do they know about slavery and human suffering? And where are the black people who used to sing the good old blues? Apparently they have switched to rap and hip-hop.

B.B. King & S.R. Vaughan

What is in the mainstream blues industry today are people who are Stevie Ray Vaughan wannabe's.Vaughan - undoubtedly - was the ultimate hero of the white blues world. Though we have had white blues performers in the past that had delivered decent blues like Johnny Winter and Peter Green, Vaughan gave "the white man blues" a distinctive voice. He served the link between the white and black blues worlds. His guitar playing was as fiery as his style was uncompromising. Vaughan succeeded triumphantly spreading the blues gospel to the white audience before he died in a tragic helicopter crash in 1989, leaving white blues an orphan. B.B. King once said, "the saddest day of the blues is the day Stevie died."

The future of modern day blues music is a pessimistic one. Blacks don't play and listen to the blues as much as they used to. Whites lack the experiences to comprehend the meaning of the blues - slavery, racial discrimination and suffering fuel the passion and soul. The big-name record companies have squeezed the dedicated small companies to suffocation, prohibiting independents like Geremia to reach a larger audience. As long as America continues to succeed as a prosperous capitalist and corporate society, the blues may be forced to find its market in starving third-world countries.

E-mail me at henry@henrychung.net