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This is one of my earliest digital captures, taken during the once Annual Big Muddy Blues Festival at Laclede's Landing in downtown St. Louis. It used to be a great festival with two or three national headline blues acts every year, but now the sponsors have backed out in favor of a more popular summer riverfront concert series (Cyndi Lauper & such pop music). I saw, heard and met several awesome blues players during the four or five years I got to go, including Johnny Johnson, Oliver Sain, Taj Mahal, Eddie Cotton, Eric Sardinas, Snooky Pryor and Henry Townsend, just to name a few. I made sure I was sitting at the foot of the stage directly in the center at the beginning of the festival until the end and always had a camera with me. Sometimes I got great shots, other times I got pictures of musicians. I think this one was a great shot of a great musician.

John Mayall is the godfather of British Blues. I got to meet him and shake his hand, but I couldn't voice how much his music meant to me through my life - I remember jamming (and indulging in illegal behavior) to his song Room To Move when I was a teenager and have followed almost every musician he tutored for their entire careers - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Johnny Almond and so many more.

These festivals were great. Security never yelled at anyone for using their camera or recording the music - the blues were coming back to the US and these artists appreciated that fact and the audience and showed it with all their heart and soul.

So, here he is, John Mayall playing with the Blues Breakers in St. Louis, Missouri. And, yes, he was actually playing Room To Move!

Somehow I lost the original file, so there is no exif data to be able to tell what the technical details of this photograph were, but I believe I did shoot it with a flash on my little 3mp Olympus 490Z point 'n shoot. Post processing was done in PS CS2 to crop, add the frame and re-size - I used Neat Image (the demo version - gonna have to buy it soon!) to remove noise.

Thanks for looking and Have a Great Weekend!