The blues aren’t dead yet. But, compared to, say, 1971, they’ve got one foot and two thirds of the other in the grave. Let’s admit that.

Blues fans haven’t heard as much groundbreaking stuff in recent years as we did in previous decades, when dinosaurs like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker roamed the earth and were still cranking out new material — or at least phenomenal reinterpretations of old stuff.

In fact, the whole tribute-duets era of the 1990s really turned this hardcore fan off to new blues recordings altogether for a time, with a few exceptions. B.B. King paired with hip-hop producers and rappers? Give me a break. Undignified for everyone involved. Made me quite sad. I fled to the box-set aisle and fortified my collection, diving deeper into the blues and R&B from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s.

Not making the blanket statement saying that all these collaborations were all junk. Just saying, it wasn’t, for example, the quality of Hooker and Canned Heat throwing down the awesome blues rock they did back in the 1960s, back when I was literally in my infancy.

The one exception in the groundbreaking department was Fat Possum Records, which, to be fair, also did its share of undignified remixing in an attempt to get the Jon Spencer Generation hipped to ancient treasures like R.L. Burnside and Asie Payton. The remix/duet stuff was a little interesting, but not really earth-shattering. (more…)