San Francisco Blues Festival shuffles on in its 36th year
By Bruce Bellingham

The San Francisco Blues Festival, which has weathered a lot of storms since its beginnings in Golden Gate Park back in the 1970s, will continue to entertain thousands at Fort Mason’s Great Meadow this Sept. 26-28.

This year’s festival features Hot Tuna … Johnny Winter … Buckweat Zydeco … Elvin Bishop … blues veteran Denise LaSalle … and 93-year-old Mississippi Delta legend, Honeyboy Edwards.

Still at the helm of the blues festival is founder Tom Mazzolini.  

“In the 1970s there was a blues industry,” recalls Mazzolini. “I was always excited about something in those days. The greats were still around; the war in Vietnam added to the charged atmosphere. There’s a lot of history wrapped up in the blues festival.”
Over the years, many famed blues artists played the festival, such as B.B. King … Stevie Ray Vaughn … John Lee Hooker … Albert King … Bobby Bland … Taj Mahal … Ry Cooder … Luther Allison … Etta James … Ruth Brown … Little Richard … Los Lobos … Tower of Power … Steve Miller … Bonnie Raitt … Robert Cray … James Cotton … Solomon Burke … Hank Ballard … Jr. Wells … The Staples …Clifton Chenier … Mike Bloomfield … Big Mama Thornton … Willie Dixon … Gatemouth Brown … Buddy Guy … and Ike Turner. 

Mazzolini was on fire in those days, going out to blues clubs to recruit talent, finding what he calls “the authentic players,” and discovering a style of music called West Coast Blues.
“By the time we moved to Fort Mason in 1982, things were changing again,” Mazzolini says. “The 1980s and ’90s were stunning, with all of the new players on the scene. But there were other changes – the agents got involved, the cost of hiring players became prohibitive, the record companies were making stars out of the blues players, like Buddy Guy.”

The year 2001 with 9/11 was a disturbing time for the blues festival, and for a lot of other people. 

“People stopped changing around that time. There was uncertainty in the air. The regular players were canceling, the crowds were diminishing.”

Mazzolini, in the face of adversity, has kept the lantern lit, as he says. He has taken a lot of heat from some Marina residents who have long asserted that the blues crowd simply does not fit in when it comes to the neighborhood.

“The blues festival is something I am compelled to do, though the road has been paved with many disappointments,” says Mazzolini. Yes, when he speaks, it sounds like the lyrics to an old blues song.

“People still have contempt for us and fewer seem to want to help us these days.”
All the same, the blues festival has provided a lot of joys for thousands, perhaps millions, over the years.
 
San Francisco Blues Festival: Great Meadow, Fort Mason; Fri-Sun, Sept. 26-28; tickets $35-$80 at www.ticketmaster.com,415-421-8497, or Streetlight Records (San Francisco and San Jose), Down Home Music (El Cerrito), Mill Valley Music, The Music Store (West Portal), and 101 Music (North Beach); children under 10 admitted free