We call it “the blues”. It looks like the blues, and sometimes even sounds like the blues. But can the confluence of styles in New Orleans, the good time capital of the world, produce true blues? And if not, what mark has the blues left on area musicians?

New Orleans: "Birthplace of the Blues." Hmm. Maybe it's only semantics—some may even call it nitpicking—but I believe that the Crescent City is home to a lot of unique musical phenomena, and blues is not one of them. The cradl...