The Blues Foundation announces
The Keeping the Blues Alive Award Recipients
Each year, The Blues Foundation presents the Keeping the Blues Alive (KBA) Awards to individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the Blues world. The Blues Foundation will present the 2023 KBA Awards at a recognition brunch as part of the International Blues Challenge (IBC) weekend of events.
Unlike the Blues Music Awards, the award recognizing the past year’s best in recordings and performances voted on by thousands of The Blues Foundation’s members, the KBAs are awarded to non-performers strictly on the basis of merit by a select panel of Blues professionals. The committee generally refrains from awarding the KBA to an individual or organization more than once. Instead, a new winner is selected each year, except in rare cases when a significant period of time has elapsed since the first award.
This year’s recipients include:
• John Guregian – host of radio show Blues Deluxe on WUML-FM in Lowell, Massachusetts
• Ron Wynn – Veteran Grammy-honored blues journalist
• Marilyn Stringer – Prolific blues Photographer
• Blue Front Cafe – Longest running Juke Joint, run by Jimmy “Duck” Holmes on Highway 49 in Bentonia, Mississippi
• Little Village Foundation – Non-Profit run by keyboardist Jim Pugh helps promote new emerging Blues Acts
• Franky Bruneel – Belgian Blues Radio host & festival promoter and European Booking Agent
• Teddy’s Juke Joint – Lloyd “Teddy” Johnston runs the last remaining Juke Joint on the Chitlin Circuit – at the end of a dirt road _off Hwy 61 in Louisiana
• The Sierre Blues Festival – Switzerland’s premiere Blues Festival founded by Silvio Caldelari and the Swiss Blues Society
