Various Artists - Putumayo Presents Blues Café (2022)

A captivating collection of laidback blues by legends and new discoveries from the Mississippi Delta and beyond! 5% of Putumayo’s proceeds from this album will be donated to the Music Maker Foundation in support of elderly blues musicians.

The musical genre that has come to be known as the blues has made quite a journey. The blues has traveled back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean and meandered up the Mississippi River from the rural South to the urban North. It has crossed racial and class boundaries as well, migrating from rough and tumble juke joints to sophisticated concert halls.

​The blues was born on the cotton and tobacco plantations of the South, descending from field hollers and created to express the sorrow and tribulations that plagued enslaved African Americans and their sharecropper descendants. Although it was once consid- ered “devil’s music,” the blues is now recognized widely as a major American art form. It has influenced popular music for generations by providing the musical underpinnings for jazz, rhythm & blues, rock & roll and even hip-hop.

​These days, you can find blues aficionados, musicians, venues, festivals, and radio programs almost anywhere in the world. Yet despite its international appeal, the roots and soul of the blues remain in the silty waters of the Mississippi Delta, the dusty roads of east Texas, and the verdant fields of the Piedmont plateau.

​Despite its historical importance and the reverence it inspires among fans, musicians and scholars, the survival of the blues tra- dition in the regions where it was born is threatened. The original blues pioneers have passed on and many of the elders who remain are struggling to get by. The social and economic disorders that first inspired blues musicians generations ago are still a long way from being cured.

​For that reason, we are donating an additional 5% of our proceeds from Blues Café to the Music Maker Foundation, which provides financial support to elderly blues musicians. The tracks we licensed for this album by Algia Mae Hinton, Alabama Slim and John Dee Holeman were recorded by Music Maker to benefit those artists and their families