When I look for the birth of Rock 'n' Roll, I don't find just one artist, but more like a long braid of influences tied together, overlapping, with one strand tied into another. Of course there is Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Chuck Berry. And I am not forgetting Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis, but to me the roots of rock are found in Black music. One of my very favorites is Chuck Berry, whom I actually met once at a late-night party in Berkeley, California in 1964. We were both in the back hall of a house, he going one way, I another.

In the late 1960s, in particular with the Ann Arbor Blues Festivals in 1969 and 1970, the blues were coming to town. Since Chicago is only a few hours drive from Ann Arbor, some of the Chicago blues greats were finding their way here.

I am feeling a little nostalgic. I just read the book on a friend of mine, the great blues guitarist-- “Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero” by Ed Ward. Excellent book. I don’t blog much on my musical background, but I have one. Here is a little taste of that both in Ann Arbor and elsewhere.