Comfort to the Soul

by Alex HendersonThese days, purists are becoming increasingly difficult to find in the blues world -- at least if you define a blues purist as someone who believes that anything he/she performs must adhere to a 12-bar structure. So many of the bluesmen who were hailed as promising newcomers in the '80s or '90s -- Robert Cray, Michael Hill, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others -- were heavily influenced by soul, rock, or both. Ask a lot of younger blues artists who their influences are, and they just might mention Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Led Zeppelin, or Aretha Franklin along with Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, and » Read more