The blues have been around nearly as long as America has had music to call its own, but it was when the music went electric in the wake of World War II that it began to attract a real audience outside of the Black community, albeit through a circuitous route. By the ’50s, every major American city had clubs where blues artists played for eager audiences, and small record companies made their music available to take home. It was the twin phenomena of rock & roll (initially a new name for blues and R&B tunes good for dancing that were sold to teenagers by radio hosts like Alan Freed and Dewey Phillips) and the obsessive British blues fans who collected the records and formed bands to replicate their sounds that gradually took the blues to a younger pop audience.

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