The Keeping the Blues Alive Awards Recepients Announced

Memphis, TN Twenty-two individuals and organizations will be honored with The Blues Foundation's 2009 Keeping the Blues Alive (KBA) Award during a recognition brunch at the Downtown Doubletree Hotel Saturday, February 7, 2009 in Memphis Tennessee. The KBA ceremony begins at 10:00 a.m. and will be held in conjunction with the 25th International Blues Challenge (IBC) weekend of events that will feature the semifinals and finals of the worlds largest gathering of Blues bands, as well as seminars, presentations, and receptions for Blues societies, fans and professionals.

The Keeping the Blues Alive Awards recognize the significant contributions to Blues music made by the people behind the scenes. Each is selected on the basis of merit by a select panel of Blues professionals. KBA Chairman Art Tipaldi notes with respect to this years recipients, As is often the case, this year the committee recognized some individuals that have long-deserved to be honored as well as identifying others who have made a very impressive mark on Blues music in a relatively short period. Once again, the honorees cover the United States map. In addition, two Italian organizations were selected for their commitment to the Blues genre in their country.

The 2009 Keeping the Blues Alive recipients are:
1. Agent: Steve Hecht, Piedmont Talent, Charlotte, NC
2. Art and Photography: Dusty & Val Scott, Dusty Blues, Pittsburgh, PA
3. Blues Club: B.L.U.E.S, Chicago, IL
4. Education: Monroe County Black History Month, Monroe County, MI
5. Festival: Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, Telluride, CO
6. Film, Television and Video: Willy Bearden, Memphis TN
7. Historical Preservation: Shack Up In, Clarksdale, MS
8. International: Associazione Roots n Blues, Parma, Italy
9. Internet: Pandora.com, Oakland, CA
10. Journalism: Hal Horowitz, Marietta, GA
11. Literature: Craig Hopkins, Cedar Hill, TX
12. Manager: John Hahn, New York, NY
13. Organization: Washington Blues Society, Seattle, WA
14. Print Media: Il Blues, Milan, Italy
15. Producer: David Z, Nashville, TN
16. Promoter: Omega Events, Lake Forest, CA
17. Publicist: Betsie Brown, Blind Raccoon, Memphis, TN
18. Radio Commercial: Kai Turner, Denver, CO
19. Radio Public: John Kessler, Seattle, WA
20. Record Label: Delta Groove, Van Nuys, CA
21. Retailer: Manifest Discs, Charlotte, NC
22. Sponsor: Barbara Hammerman, Gig Harbor, WA

Tickets to the KBA ceremony are available online at www.Blues.org. The IBC weekend, commencing Wednesday, February 4, 2009, is sponsored in significant part by ArtsMemphis, bandVillage, Budweiser and its local distributor D. Canale Beverages, FedEx, Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, Smokin Bluz, Sonicbids, Tennessee Arts Commission, Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission and XM Satellite Radio. Additional sponsors include: Beale Street Merchants Association, Tommy Clifton Art, Doubletree Hotel, Gibson Guitars, Holiday Inn Select, Memphis Grizzlies and the Residence Inn by Marriott. Media Sponsors include Beale Street Caravan, Big City Rhythm and Blues, Blues Blast, Blues Festival Guide, Blues Revue, BluesWax, Downtowner, House of Blues Radio Hour, Living Blues, Memphis Flyer, WREG-TV and XM Satellite Radio.

The Blues Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Blues history, celebrating Blues excellence, supporting Blues education, and ensuring the future of this uniquely American art form. It is the umbrella organization for a worldwide network of 165 affiliated Blues societies and has individual memberships around the globe. In addition to the Keeping the Blues Alive Awards, The Blues Foundation produces the Blues Music Awards, the Blues Hall of Fame Induction, and the International Blues Challenge. For more information on how to support The Blues Foundation check us out on the web at www.Blues.org.

CONTACT:
Jay Sieleman
Executive Director
The Blues Foundation
901.527.2583 xt. 12
[email protected]

2009 Keeping the Blues Alive Award Recipients Synopsis Agent: Steve Hecht Piedmont Talent - Charlotte, NC For 19 years, Steve Hecht and his Piedmont Talent agency have dedicated themselves to booking only Blues and roots artists. In a time when clubs are closing and musicians are struggling to get gigs on a tour, Hecht and his staff have diligently kept many of their artists working the countrys finest Blues clubs and Blues festivals. Through the years, Piedmont has selectively represented many of the major Blues talents. Todays roster is a veritable whos who of the Blues, including Janiva Magness, James Cotton, Eddy Clearwater, Johnny Winter and Rod Piazza, as well as exciting newcomers like Robin Rogers, Homemade Jamz Blues Band, and Samuel James.

Art and Photography: Dusty & Val Scott, Dusty Blues -Pittsburgh, PA If you're standin' in the photo pit of many a Blues festival, chances are Dusty Scott is shootin' next to you. Accompanying him and taking the wide angle shots is wife,Val. When the shootin' is done, Dusty is quick to develop and Val systematically publishes the images in a festival slideshow on their website, www.dustyBlues.com. Blues fans from around the world visit the site to check on their favorite artist or festival. What distinguishes the Scotts are their contributions to aspiring Blues artists and their behind-the-scenes activities in support of festival promoters. After a Blues event, they are often the go-to photographers to send a photo to a sponsor the next day or a magazine as it prepares to promote the event the following year. Their photographs can be found on the covers of magazines like Blues Revue or Two'j Blues, as well as on CD and DVD covers. They actively contribute to various society newsletters and band promotion banners.

Blues Club: B.L.U.E.S., Chicago, IL Opened in 1979, seven nights a week B.L.U.E.S. features some of Chicagos finest Blues acts. Located on the citys north side, B.L.U.E.S. prides itself as one of the citys most intimate clubs to still offer authentic Blues. For years, Sunnyland Slim was the regular Sunday night entertainment. In its twenty-nine years, nearly every Chicago Blues musician has graced its stage. Here, you can be assured of listening to Blues veterans like Eddy Clearwater, Magic Slim, Eddie Shaw or Jimmy Dawkins, along with Chicagos current crop of rising Blues stars. For anyone making a Blues pilgrimage to the Windy City, a stop at B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted should be at the top of the list.

Education: Monroe County Library System, Monroe County, MI The Monroe County Library Systems Black History Month Series educational program stands out as an example for every town to emulate. What began in 1988 in the corner of a library branch as a series designed to celebrate the cultural contributions of African-Americans in music has grown into one of Monroe Countys most anticipated events and Michigans longest running Blues festival. The series now consists of a month long series of free concerts and workshops starring national, regional and local Blues artists. Headliners have included legends like Robert Lockwood, Jr., Willie Dixon, Lonnie Brooks, and Pinetop Perkins mixed with current Blues names like Henry Butler, Samuel James, Michael Powers, and Saffire, The Uppity Blues Women. The months events include free workshops which focus on lessons in both history and music. Its Bluesapalooza, which features multiple performances reaching about 1,500 kids in a day, has been a huge part of the series for the past seven or eight years.

Festival: Telluride Blues Festival, Telluride, CO B.B. King was quoted saying, Out of the 90 different countries Ive been to, Ive never seen anything more beautiful than what you have here. With the Rocky Mountains as the stage backdrop, the King of the Blues is absolutely right. Celebrating 15 years this past September, Telluride Blues & Brews has become one of the festivals in America you must attend. The festival is a three-day celebration of music and microbrews, held in Telluride Town Park, an outdoor music venue surrounded by breathtaking 13,000 foot mountain peaks. Though the primary focus is Blues, soul, gospel, rock and a touch of jam bands make this festival noteworthy enough to be listed in the best selling book, 1,000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before You Die.

Film, Television and Video: Willy Bearden, Memphis TN The William Bearden Company is a Memphis-based video and event company that has been creating national and international productions since 1988. Since 1998, Willy Bearden and his team have produced the W.C. Handy and Blues Music Awards shows, as well as Blues Hall of Fame events in Washington D.C., and Lifetime Achievement Awards shows at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. In addition, he has overseen the filming and editing of these shows, whether the end result was presented via public televisions stations, cable outlets or distributed on DVD. He wrote and produced “Visualizing the Blues", the 2001 documentary that accompanies the photographic exhibition of the same name. He is also the author of “Memphis Blues, Birthplace of a Music Tradition" and “Cotton, From Southern Fields to the Memphis Market".

Historic Preservation: Shack Up Inn, Clarksdale, MS The Shack Up Inn is nestled three miles south of the Hwy 61 and Hwy 49 crossroads outside Clarksdale on one of the oldest cotton farms in Mississippi, the former Hopson Plantation. These down-home accommodations are nine sharecropper shacks slightly renovated and appropriately furnished with a potent dose of memorabilia. The Shack Up Inn is also known as Mississippi's oldest B&B - “bed and beer." The houses were relocated from nearby farms, insulated, and retrofitted with electricity and plumbing. A live satellite Blues feed is piped into the television sets. Otherwise, the houses look pretty much the same as back in the day with their rusted tin roofs, leaning outhouse, washhouse and bottle tree. In addition to the shacks, the bins in the old cotton gin are unconventional upscale hotel rooms. The hotel lobby is located in the gin as is the Juke Joint Chapel, where you can hear great Blues.

International: Associazione Roots n Blues, Parma, Italy What began in 2004 with five friends who loved the Blues has grown today into one of Europes major Blues promoters. In 2007, it organized the first Italian Blues Conference which brought together dozens of Italian Blues entities. The success of that conference led to organizing, in June 2008, the first European Blues conference where representatives from ten European countries met to form bonds and create a database of European Blues entities whereby promoters, magazines, radio and record labels can better communicate. Roots nBlues centerpiece is its five-week festival in Parma province. Each weekend, a different Italian village showcases its local cuisine while hosting a roster of American Blues artists, primarily rural in origin. The result is a mix of Parma hospitality with American Blues music. Its website www.rootsandblues.org has become one of the most important sources for Blues music in Italy.

Internet: Pandora.com, Oakland, CA Founded in 2000 by Tim Westergren, Pandora has over 18 million registered users and has played 4.7 billion songs. Users type in the name of a favorite song or artist and the Genome Project quickly scans over 600,000 analyzed songs to find songs with interesting musical similarities to the choice of the listener. The Music Genome Project is the most sophisticated taxonomy of musical information ever collected. Pandora does not use machine-listening or other forms of automated data extraction. Instead, each song is analyzed using up to 400 distinct musical characteristics by a trained music analyst. These attributes capture not only the musical identity of a song, but also the many significant qualities like melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, and lyrics that are relevant to understanding the musical preferences of listeners that generates personalized streaming radio for computer. Pandora currently has over 60,000 artists, 70% of whom are independent artists.

Journalism: Hal Horowitz, Marietta, GA Hal Horowitz is a Contributing Editor to Blues Revue. Since joining the staff in 1997, he has written numerous profiles, interviews and over 500 CD reviews for the magazine. In addition to his work for Blues Revue, Hal is a regular contributor to Amazon.com, All Music Guide, Georgia Music Magazine, American Songwriter and Creative Loafing in Atlanta. Hal not only celebrates the work of Blues veterans, but is eager to introduce upcoming and little known artists to the Blues world. Through his honest, colorful and occasionally humorous approach, Hal skillfully keeps the Blues public informed and, perhaps most importantly, enthusiastically welcomes newcomers to the genre.

Literature: Craig Hopkins. Dallas, TX His body of work about Blues Hall of Famer Stevie Ray Vaughan began as a quarterly newsletter in 1993, a website in 1997 and led to three books: The Stevie Ray Vaughan Anthology (1996), The Essential Stevie Ray Vaughan (2000) and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Day By Day, Night After Night (2008). The latter volume chronicles the Blues master's entire life in 432 pages and almost 1000 illustrations. More than one hundred of the people closest to Stevie provided interviews and photographs. The intimate portrait of Vaughan details his rise from humble beginnings, inspirational recovery from substance abuse and sharing stages with the Blues legends he idolized Albert and B.B. King, Johnny Copeland, Albert Collins and others. The book, available only at StevieRay.com, is a must for everyone who loved the passion and energy of Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Manager, John Hahn, New York, NY John Hahn has known Shemekia Copeland since she was eight years of age and has carefully managed her outstanding career from the start. Johns professional career in the Blues dates back to the late 1980's as producer of Johnny Clyde Copelands Flyin High record. In addition to Johns intelligent guiding of her career, John was a co-producer of Shemekia's first two CDs, including her Grammy nominated Alligator CD Wicked in 2000. In addition to being a manager, John is a well-known songwriter and producer. He is currently co-producer of Bluzapalooza, bringing live Blues music to the troops in Kuwait and Iraq.

Organization: Washington Blues Society, Seattle, WA The Washington Blues Society will celebrate its 20th anniversary in February of 2009. Founded by an enthusiastic core of Blues fans in Seattle, the society now has 600 members statewide. The Society distributes 4,000 copies of its 32-40 page monthly Bluesletter that includes Blues features, CD and concert reviews, and society special events. The society also supports local venues like the Highway 99 Blues Club, Jazz Alley, offers free monthly concerts (called “Blues Bashes") for all-ages at the Red Crane restaurant, and promotes many Blues events throughout Washington State. Pacific Northwest Blues in the Schools, originally founded by the Society, has been a separate, self-sustaining BITS organization since 1994.

Print Media: Il Blues, Milan, Italy As with so many efforts in the Blues, Il Blues is a labor of love for its creative director Marino Grandi and his wife Luciana. For 25 years, Il Blues has published a fifty-page, black and white collection of all things Blues from around the international Blues world. Four times a year, readers can read concert reviews of shows throughout Europe; they can read over a dozen pages of Blues CD reviews and more pages of Blues book reviews. And there are profiles of old and new Blues performers. Though many Americans Italian may be limited to vino rosso, the care and professionalism of Marino and Luciana breaks through all language barriers. Animated photos, professional layout, and a director who strives for accuracy to keep his readers informed, Il Blues is another fine example of European scholarship in Blues magazines.

Producer: David Z, Nashville, TN Called the producers producer, David Z (Rivkin) has produced (and engineered and mixed and) critically acclaimed Blues albums by Buddy Guy, Etta James, Al Green, Jonny Lang, John Mayall (with Eric Clapton), Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Tab Benoit, Govt Mule, Ana Popovich, Mike Zito, and many others. Most known for his production work on Princes seminal Purple Rain, David always has an ear open for the next cutting edge sound. As a producer, he is savvy enough to foster each musicians unique vision or talents in a way that powerfully communicates the artists message.

Promoter: Omega Events, Lake Forest, CA Founded in 1995 by Rich Sherman, Omega Events currently produces five music festivals and various concerts on the West Coast throughout the year. Omegas signature event is the Doheny Blues Festival, celebrating its 12th Anniversary in 2009. Located at the Dana Point beach in Southern California, Doheny Blues has succeeded by creating a fan-friendly environment and presenting an eclectic mix of music...Blues, soul, rock and R&B. Past artists include B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, John Fogerty, John Lee Hooker, Robert Randolph and Etta James. Omega has also helped to introduce many of Europes finest artists to the states, including James Hunter (England), B.B. and The Blues Shacks (Germany), and Knockout Greg (Sweden).

Publicity: Betsie Brown, Blind Raccoon, Memphis TN Betsie Browns passion for the music and its artists has always driven her work. Blind Raccoon is the firm that has grown out of that love. Blind Raccoon opened its doors in January 2008 providing publicity services, as well as radio promotion, marketing and consultation, in the Blues/roots/R&B/Americana/folk/world music genres. Prior to 2008 Brown was a co-founder and partner of Crows Feet Productions. Past and present clients include Charlie Musselwhite, John Hammond Jr., Bobby Rush, Hubert Sumlin, Pinetop Perkins, Bob Margolin, and Eddie Turner to name just a few. Brown's pride and joy has been to work with emerging artists such as Moreland & Arbuckle, John-Alex Mason, Zac Harmon, Jon Justice, Gina Sicilia and Nathan James and Ben Hernandez.

Radio (Commercial): Kai Turner, Denver, CO Kai has been broadcasting Blues music on Colorado's airwaves for more than seventeen years, the last twelve live every Sunday night on KRFX in Denver. Known as the Blues Vassal, Kai has acted as a happy and humble servant by actively developing an infrastructure for local and national artists to thrive by encouraging venues and promoters to include Blues music in their events. Access to tremendous reach with well-crafted playlists and effective cross-promotion of Blues music on one of the country's top classic rock stations has created in Kais “Strictly Blues" show, a powerful medium fostering the support of Blues throughout the region. In 2000 his show was chosen as the best Blues show in Denver, and in 2004 Kai was chosen the citys top radio personality.

Radio (Public): John Kessler, Seattle, WA John Kessler has been involved with public radio since 1983. In his early career, John was musical director of the seven-piece band on West Virginias Mountain Stage. Since he joined KPLU-FM in 1999, John has become the areas most knowledgeable Blues radio programmer. His playlists include national touring artists mixed with local, Northwest talents. One of his innovations is The Blues Time Machine, where he plays three versions of the same song from different eras. You might hear Pony Blues by Charlie Patton, Howlin Wolf, and Alvin Youngblood Hart. He has won the Washington Blues societys Best Blues DJ in 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Record Label: Delta Groove, Van Nuys, CA If you play it right, they will listen. Randy Chortkoffs deep love of traditional Blues gave birth to Delta Groove Music in 2004. Delta Grooves first project captured the time honored Blues approach of the Mannish Boys, an all-star collection of West Coast Blues stars. The next label project was to shine a spotlight on Kirk Fletcher, one of todays premier young Blues guitar slingers. Since those first records, Delta Groove has released thirty CDs which keep traditional Blues alive and well. The labels new imprint, Electro Groove Records is spotlighting an energetic crop of young artists who are poised to carry the Blues torch into this new millennium.

Retail: Manifest Discs, Charlotte, NC When Junior Watson talks about spending all his money in a record store every time he goes to Charlotte, the rest of us should take note. And Charlotte music fans agree as the store annually wins local Best of recognition. This Charlotte store opened in 1998 in an old Winn-Dixie grocery store in a strip mall. It features thousands of new and used CDs and records. The Blues section accounts for about 1/8 of the stores merchandise and its vinyl selection keeps customers coming back. Because they are in Charlotte, Blues acts booked at the Double Door often stop by for an in-store event to promote the evenings show.

Sponsor: Barbara Hammerman, Gig Harbor, WA Barbara is the prime example of how one individual can sponsor and support Blues music. She has personally raised more than $150,000 over the past 20 years to support a number of local Blues societies and also she has used her acumen to support Blues Foundation initiatives. In addition to writing her own checks, Barbara developed a 6-point strategy to engage others, which she knows sustains the musicians and Blues organizations. Most notably, Barbara has hosted benefit concerts in her home to benefit The Blues Foundation. In recent years artists such as Dr. John, Lee Oskar, Mitch Woods, Honeyboy Edwards, Louisiana Red, Ann Rabson, Shemekia Copeland, Tommy Castro, Candye Kane, Henry Butler, Nora Jean Bruso, Jon Cleary and Cephas and Wiggins have performed at her benefit house concerts. She is also an avid sponsor of the Delta Music Experience, the Port Townsend Country Blues Workshop and the founder of the Luther Allison Endowment Fund and the Purdy Women's Prison Blues Workshop. She is an example to emulate.