The mysterious blues travels

Before the great depression, the blues was the predominant music style in the south and numerous recordings were made. These were the days before vinyls and were recorded on either wax cylinders or flattened copper wire, both extremely delicate mediums. When the depression hit, somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of the depression era blues were lost or destroyed due to their fragile nature.

Now, the strange part of this story is that close to 80% of the surviving tenth of depression era Texas/delta blues appeared in England, of all places. And an even more amazing and mysterious feat, is that they ended up in the hands of Rock visionaries, legends, and gods such as Kieth Richards, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page. These blossoming musicians were still in their early teens when they somehow acquired/were exposed to these rare recordings. It seems almost an act of God that such fragile and delicate recordings would manage to cross the Atlantic and land in the laps of such talented and gifted musicians, 35 to 40 years after being cut.

Today, the blues rock genre is still alive and well and being continued through bands such as The White Stripes, Wolfmother, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Not to mention the pure electric blues teased out of raw sounding fenders by the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Seasick Steve and The North Mississippi All-stars. Maybe their are actual supernatural Rock Gods, not just Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, and Angus Young.