Magic Sam

I think with a lot of blues records, if you listen to the albums over and over, you miss half of what's going on. The blues is a musical form that can only be fully appreciated by being in front of the band (usually with an Old Style and a Marlboro, if memory holds...).

Back in the day, when ol' Frankie Machine was a little sprout committing acts of petty mischief, record companies started re-issuing their back-catalogs for the first time in my life, so you could walk into a good record store and get stuff like Charlie Patton's complete recordings on CD. My friends thought I was weird when I bought Robert Johnson's boxed set, or tried to emulate Elmore James' sound (and this is true) by dropping a microphone into the soundhole of an old Harmony guitar and running the signal through the speakers on a late-1970s stereo system. The resultant thundering "Dust My Broom" riff lowered property values in the neighborhood for months.

Note to the White Stripes: You stole my idea. You too, Black Keys.

In much the same way, YouTube allows a new bunch of shabby teenagers to see these greats without dropping lots of money. This is a great thing. I love it. Technology will always find a way to put music by guys like Magic Sam into the hands of white kids.