Page 75 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2015

from Europe at the IBC. This year, we’ve got acts from 19 Are there any things you failed to achieve which
countries and probably 14 of them are from Europe. We might make you reconsider retirement from The
helped midwife the European Blues Union, and in March Blues Foundation?
they are having their fifth European Blues Challenge. We’ve If I had a list of things that weren’t done yet that I thought
treated them with a lot of respect and over the years a lot I was capable of doing, I might stick around – even though
of Europeans have received Keeping the Blues Alive (KBA) age-wise and financially it is time to move on. But I don’t
awards. It’s a two-way street. When you show them respect, really have a list of things, so I’ll let someone else come in
they want to be part of the organization. and do that.

The Blues Music Awards historically were called
the W.C. Handy Awards. Why did that change?
The quote, unquote “histories” will differ a little bit. I can
look at early programs and posters and see that they were
called the Blues Awards, and then sometime in the ’90s,
posters and programs said W.C. Handy. The first award was
a statue of Handy and [later] it was a flying 16th note. I
wasn’t here and maybe my history isn’t good, but it appears
to me that it has been called a number of things over the
years. And many people don’t know who W.C. Handy is.
He’s considered the father of the blues, although a lot of
people say he didn’t really play blues music. The biggest
reason is that it was going to be a bronze model of our logo
and we wanted a name that reflected what we were. It’s the
Blues Music Awards just like it’s the Country Music Awards.
No one has to guess what the BMAs are. Blues Foundation President and CEO Jay Sieleman hands out the hardware for the final
time at the 2015 Keeping the Blues Alive luncheon Photo by Tim Parsons

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