♪♪ (music playing) ♪♪
The President:
Like so many of the men
and women who sang them,
the blues refused to be
limited by the circumstances
of their birth.
The music migrated north from
Mississippi Delta to Memphis
to my hometown of Chicago.
It helped lay the foundation for
Rock & Roll, R&B and Hip-Hop.
It inspired artists and
audiences around the world.
And as tonight's performers
will demonstrate,
the blues continued to draw
a crowd, because this music
speaks to something universal.
No one goes through life
without both joy and pain.
♪♪ (music playing) ♪♪
Keb Mo:
Right now, what I see is a great
moment in history happening.
B.B. King is here.
Jeff Beck, Mick Jagger, Gary
Clark, Jr., Shemekia Copeland,
you know, and Warren Haynes.
Derek Trucks.
Derek Trucks:
Buddy Guy and Booker T. and
Fred Leslie and the President
and First Lady will be here.
Pretty exciting stuff, so
stories for the grand kids.
(laughter)
♪♪ (music playing) ♪♪
Buddy Guy:
I never dreamed of even driving
down Pennsylvania Avenue.
You know, not just being
invited into the White House.
I am going to be performing what
I know best, is blues music,
and we got a -- I got a lot
of great friends around me.
I am not doing it alone.
♪♪ (music playing) ♪♪
Shemekia Copeland:
There is so many
different styles of blues.
Like my father, Johnny Copeland,
he was Texas blues along with
Gatemouth Brown and Albert
Collins and even people,
Stevie Ray Vaughn, who
people know very well.
And then you have Chicago style
blues which is Buddy Guy and
people like that.
So everybody has their own
different flavor that they
put into the music.
♪♪ (music playing) ♪♪
Derek Trucks:
I mean, there is a lot of
different regional sounds,
but, you know, it started as
field hollers and it started
as you know just getting it
off of your chest and it is
story telling.
Susan Tedeschi:
Exactly.
Derek Trucks:
It is honesty, it is truth.
And the beauty of that music is
you can hear recordings from the
1920's, 30's, 40's, 50's, and it
is just as immediate and just as
relevant now as
it has ever been.
Keb Mo:
Blues I look at
as a world music.
Even though it is American,
the blues we know here,
is the American blues.
But every culture
has it's blues.
So the American blues
translates all around the world.
People can just feel it because
it is the people's music.
It is really like it
is the people's house.
Susan Tedeschi:
It is one thing if
we can't speak the
language of other musicians.
We can actually get up
and play blues pretty
much with anybody anywhere.
Derek Trucks:
Yeah.
Susan Tedeschi:
Which is a beautiful thing too.
Warren Haynes:
Still to this day, I think it
is one of the most expressive
art forms, because it is
such a communicative thing.
It is really tapping into
your inner most emotions.
And there is no expression
deeper I think than someone
who is presenting the
blues in an honest way.
Taraji P. Henson:
It is about baring your
soul at that moment,
whatever it is.
If it is a happy moment --
♪ if my man done left me ♪
-- or, you know, you just
want to talk about eating
grandma's corn bread.
Like you can sing about anything
and it is a mood and it is just
your state of mind
in that moment.
And that is the blues.
That is the truth.
It is your truth, whatever
that is at the moment.
♪♪ (music playing) ♪♪
Buddy Guy:
You know, I was born
on a farm in Louisiana,
my daddy was a sale croppers.
And I picked cotton by
hand and not by machine.
And you couldn't
even dream of this,
because my mother had a
stroke when I was about 16.
And that was the end of my
education, and I am like saying,
this is it.
You know, and all of us said,
you go to sleep and wake up,
and you are invited to play
music in the White House.
Self taught, never learned
anything from a book,
so it is a dream
come true for me.
♪♪ (music playing) ♪♪
(applause)
