CM: What do the blues mean in 2015? Is it still being passed down like it was in your day? 

BA: Well, you’ve got two sides in that corner — you’ve got the old-school, authentic, old blues — parts of that can’t be carried on. They sang about the times. You can’t sing about cotton if you’ve never picked cotton and even something like the pronunciation of the words — the cultural aspect of the blues — that part’s been dying off real fast. You can’t carry that on, but you can carry on the style. The new blues is different, you know? Playing-wise and the format, it’s just different. When the electric guitar came out in the 1940s, the guys who stayed here in the Delta instead of going to Memphis or Chicago or anywhere else weren’t playing the same style. The Delta guys learned how to play the electric guitar for a better sound to get people dancing in the juke houses, and they played it like acoustic with their fingers. But when Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf took it to Chicago, that’s when they started to spread the sound out across multiple bandmates. It really evolved the music. But here in the Delta, it stayed raw. The guys who played electric down here play loud, fast and full of information. Kind of like what Paul Jones played.

 

CM: You’ve performed alongside some real legends — Henry Townsend, Hubert Sumlin, Big George Brock, Sam Carr and Kenny Kimbrough, to name a few. Who was a big inspiration for you that you never got a chance to play with?

BA: That’s one to think about. Probably all the guys who are long dead and gone, the guys from the 1920s. I’ve been inspired by a lot of their music. Robert Johnson, Skip James, Charlie Patton. I really like Skip’s stuff. 

 

CM: You’ve performed around the world, from Clarksdale and Chicago to Italy and the UK. What are some acts you really remember?

BA: In June, I played at a festival in Switzerland called “Blues Rules.” That was really nice. I also played in Norway last year. No big festivals or anything, just a few clubs. A few years before that, I was in Sweden at the Åmål’s Blues Festival. I don’t have a booking agent and I don’t get to play all the time. Being a local guy, when somebody hears you play and they want to hear more, it’s special. I’m not that famous, you know, so it means a lot when I get to travel to play. 

 

CM: What do you think gives this particular brand of Delta music such a universal appeal? 

BA: People ask that all the time and the answer I’ve come up with is that a lot of people were listening to those old pre-war recordings — some done down here, some in Wisconsin, New York, and Texas — and those guys were singing how they felt, which was pretty doggone bad sometimes. And that stuff — that emotion and pain — that went on record. People can feel that worldwide. So many people come around these days, Europeans who are into the old blues — that really interests me.