This is a loaded and pretty highly charged topic, but what the heck...

In my opinion, blues is the greatest musical gift that The US has given to the world. There are blues bands in virtually every country in the world, and many of them are excellent. Blues is a universal feeling, not limited to a country or race. I am personally very grateful that some remarkably oppressed people were able to express their feelings in a musical form, which is what music is all about. Other people heard this music, and understood it's universal message and power.

Blues is the root of jazz and rock and roll, another couple of gifts from the US to the world, and much enjoyed around the world. No form of music can stand alone...the I IV V progression existed long before the blues, as did guitars and pianos, etc., but the blues used these elements to bring forth a new type of music.

The shame today is that so few young black Americans have an appreciation of the blues, or a knowledge of the hard times and sacrifices that the early blues folks had to endure for their music in order for it to prosper and spread.

The days [if they ever existed] when you had to pick cotten around Clarksville, Mississippi to play the blues are long gone. Blues is an attitude and a feeling, unrelated to race, religion or nationality, which is felt universally, and played universally.

I say "God bless those pioneers!" I will always have complete respect for those folks who made the sacrifice to play the blues, most of whom will go unknown and un-named, forgotten now. Their music, however, lives on and thrives.

Fire, the wheel, and the I IV V -- foundations of civilization.