The 32nd Annual Blues Music Awards Announces Nominees

Blues Music Award Nominations

Nominations for the 32nd
Blues Music Awards, which will be held at the Cook Convention Center on
May 5th, were announced yesterday.

Leading the nominations are a
couple of the genre’s living legends: Chicago blues standard-bearer
Buddy Guy (pictured above)and Memphis bred harmonica master Charlie Musselwhite, who
scored five nominations each, including for Album of the Year (Guy’s
Living Proof and Musselwhite’s The Well) and Song of the Year. Guy is
also competing for the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year award. Reigning
Entertainer of the Year winner Janiva Magness is close behind with four
nominations.

In addition to Musselwhite, who is also competing
for Instrumentalist — Harmonica, Traditional Blues Album, and
Traditional Blues Male Artist, Memphis-connected nominations are
plentiful.

Greenville-based Eden Brent, who records for the local
Yellow Dog Records and plays in Memphis regularly, is up for Album of
the Year for her terrific Ain’t Got No Troubles and is also competing
for the Pinetop Perkins Piano Player award and Traditional Blues Female.
In the later category, she’ll be competing with Memphis mainstay Reba
Russell.

The South Memphis String Band — a group made up of Alvin
Youngblood Hart, Jimbo Mathus, and the North Mississippi Allstars’
Luther Dickinson — are up for Acoustic Album for their debut Home Sweet
Home. The Juke Joint Duo’s Cedric Burnside is up for Instrumentalist —
Drummer. And the late Solomon Burke is up for Soul Blues Album for his
swan song, Nothing’s Impossible, the final production from late Memphis
legend Willie Mitchell.

Tickets for the May 5th awards show go on
sale today, with a DVD memorializing the 2010 Blues Music Awards also
available for purchase. Online voting by Blues Foundation members also
kicks off today. See here for the full slate of nominees.

Blues
Foundation on the Move: When the Memphis-based Blues Foundation hosts
the BMAs next May, they will likely do so from a new home. The
organization has approved a move from its current offices on Union and
Front to a new headquarters in the South Main Arts District, with a
prospective March 2011 move date.

“In order to expose blues
music to even more people, we need a place that’s open to the public and
encourages visitors, ” Executive Director Jay Sieleman said in a press
release announcing the move.

The North Mississippi Allstars: Plotting their return.
The
new location, at 421 South Main Street, will feature 4000 square feet
of public space, which, in addition to staff space will include exhibits
and audio-visual presentations and a retail store. The Blues Foundation
will add to an increasingly bustling arts and cultural district that
includes the International Folk Alliance, the Memphis Music Foundation,
the Memphis chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and
Sciences, and the National Civil Rights Museum.

Allstars Return:
It’s been nearly three years since the North Mississippi Allstars have
released an album. In the interim, guitarist Luther Dickinson joined the
Black Crowes and started the now Blues Music Award-nominated South
Memphis String Band while drummer brother Cody launched a new band, the
heavier Hill Country Revue.

Now, the brothers Dickinson and
bassist buddy Chris Chew are returning with Keys to the Kingdom, which
will be released on February 1st, 2011. The album was recorded at the
Dickinson family’s Zebra Ranch Studio, in Coldwater, Mississippi, and
features guests such as Mavis Staples, Ry Cooder, Spooner Oldham, Alvin
Youngblood Hart, Gordie Johnson, and Jack Ashford.