BMA Winners Announced

Here are last nights winners of the BMA's straight from the Blues Foundation website. Check out their outstanding website HERE.

2008 Blues Music Award Winners Announced

The 2008 Blues Music Awards were announced in the Mississippi Delta on Thursday, May 8. The winners selected by the vote of the Blues Foundation's members are.

1. DVD - Kenny Wayne Shepherd – 10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads

2. Traditional Blues Male Artist - Hubert Sumlin

3. Traditional Blues Female Artist - Koko Taylor

4. Acoustic Artist - Bobby Rush

5. Acoustic Album Bobby Rush - Raw

6. Pinetop Perkins Piano Player - Honey Piazza

7. Instrumentalist-Guitar - Bob Margolin

8. Soul Blues Male Artist - Bobby Rush

9. Soul Blues Female Artist - Irma Thomas

10. Soul Blues Album - The Holmes Brothers – State of Grace

11. Historical Album - Epic/Legacy – Breakin’ It UP, Breakin’ it DOWN

12. Contemporary Blues Album - Tommy Castro - Painkiller

13. Contemporary Blues Female Artist - Bettye LaVette

14. Contemporary Blues Male Artist - Tab Benoit

15. Instrumentalist-Harmonica - Kim Wilson

16. Instrumentalist-Bass - Bob Stroger

17. Instrumentalist-Drums - Sam Lay

18. Instrumentalist-Horn - Deanna Bogart

19. Instrumentalist-Pedal Steel- Robert Randolph

20. Best New Artist Debut - Diunna Greenleaf & Blue Mercy – Cotton Field to Coffee House

21. Song - “Gonna Buy Me a Mule” – Koko Taylor

22. Traditional Blues Album - Koko Taylor – Old School

23. Album - Watermelon Slim & the Workers – The Wheel Man

24. Band - Watermelon Slim & the Workers

25. B.B. King Entertainer - Tommy Castro

Corey Harris Wins McArthur Fellowship

Anyone who watches PBS has probably seen a show that has received funding from the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur fund. Now you can add bluesman to the list of winners. Corey Harris has won a 500,000 dollar fellowship from the McArthur fund to study the African American music, and how it is intertwined from Africa, to the Caribbean, to the United States. Corey is the first blues artist to have won the award. To read more about it, check out this story from the Hook News Blog.