Blues Today

Now, in the decade of the 2000s, the record companies now release CDs that are produced in advanced studios with its multi-tracking consoles that have as many as forty-eight individual tracks with built in echo chambers for the highest level of recording technology. Today's blues artists are quite familiar with the new recording studios. They can come in for a session and adjust themselves to the use of the sensitized microphones and the liquefied headphones. They can be completely enclosed in a glass chamber or a square cubicle and feel comfortable in these surroundings. Inside the booth or the control room sits the sound engineer, a technician and sometimes the record producer to operate the sophisticated recording equipment.

This scenario however, came a long way from the earlier recording days. It was quickly noticed that when the talent scouts brought the itinerant blues artists into a big city recording studio that was unfamiliar to them, they found it difficult to adjust to the strange environment that they were tensed and uncomfortable; therefore they were not able to produce an acceptable session. So it was the task of the talent scouts to load the back of their cars with a complete set or recording equipment and bring the "studio" so to speak to the surroundings that the artists could relate to and feel comfortable with. This allowed them to sing and play their blues in a relaxed atmosphere, which was the beginning of the field recordings.

When the results of the field recordings were sent back to the major studios, the record companies discovered that they have a product that they could produce for a special group or people. Since the artists were all black, the sales market would be targeted to the black community which gave birth to the term "race" records. Blues was basically black people's music. It was composed, sung, played and recorded by blacks for their black audiences, but as the blues was gaining in popularity, the audiences began to expand and many white people came to hear the music of the black artists.