Gutbucketeer: ...All of the splitting hairs and talking gets a bit tedious. I would much rather just listen and play. It's gotta be deep down inside you though. Ya gotta feel it. It's gotta move you and the folks that hear it. AND they gotta listen and get that feeling deep inside them too.

Too many folks now make it an academic exercise. They've stopped listening.

I've been doing a lot of listening to blues over the course of this thread so far. I'm still puzzled by the fact that some people categorise as "copyists" any person playing or singing blues who wasn't brought up in poverty in rural Mississippi.

I'm maybe guilty of "talking and splitting hairs" but I really do want to understand the difference, if there relly is one. Some of the stuff I've been listening to has sounded completely heartfelt and authentic to me, even though the singer/ player may not have "ticked any of the boxes" of what a "real" blues performer "should be".

So I really want to know whether there's something that I'm not hearing (yet) deep in the music that makes "authentic blues" performers different to "good copyists". Not talking about "commercial bluesy" music here...I can tell the difference there. I'm talking about performers where I really feel the "deep bluesiness" but who people like Hoot say are "not authentic" because they come from a different social or cultural background to those who they class as "real" blues performers.