A little over a hundred years since it was first reported in the wild - on a lonely train platform by a bemused white journalist - the blues seems to have finally vanished from the popular music scene.
Sure, there are the odd traces of blues DNA left in almost everything from Kanye West to the X-Factor, but real, honest blues music played by well known contemporary artists is a thing of the past.
It wasn't always this way; any major band of yesteryear you can name owed a lot to the sound of poor black American men, from the Rolling Stones (named after a Muddy Waters song) to Led Zepplin (named after something Ringo Starr said, but we'll ignore that) to Beatles tracks like "Revolution."
There was a time when any guitar hero worth his plectrum was steeped in the blues, from Jimmy Page to Jeff Beck to Joe Walsh. (It also helped, apparently, if your name began with "J".)
Even as late as the 1990s, Eric Clapton was a major global star, and went triple-platinum with the blues covers record "From the Cradle."
So what went wrong? Times change, granted, but something as important to the foundations of modern music as the blues should surely still be making its presence felt, right?!
Maybe it's that everyone is happier and living longer.
Look at the first people to record the blues: poor, disenfranchised, discriminated against, often with some sort of notable medical ailment. If you heard of an artist called Blind, Limbless McGee or Balding, Toothless, Arthritic, Impotent Jones, there wouldn't be much doubt about which section of Fopp you'd find their records in. The blues was a genre for people who had it almost cartoonishly hard in life. Poverty, borderline slave-labour in cotton fields, social injustice, an early grave - these were the expectations of the healthy, let alone people like Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie McTell, Cripple Clarence Lofton (who actually began life as a tap-dancer, because the only thing more lacking in 1930s Mississippi than good eye care was a stringent enforcement of trades descriptions legislature), Peg Leg Howell, the list goes on and on.
These days, nobody has it that hard. Even people with physical ailments (Jeff Healey is blind; Dr. John had his finger shot off in a bar fight) have modern medicine to rely on. Nobody is as utterly miserable as black people living a hardscrabble existence in the depression era South - nobody is even as miserable as the average person was in the 1950s, when bands like the Stones were coming together and artists like Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters were big news in the states.
Nowadays, things are easier and people are happier. Even Eric Clapton has settled down late in life and had children, meaning that he hasn't made a good record since... Well, since the 90s. His last three efforts were an overproduced covers album, a duets album with J.J. Cale on which he contributed only one impossibly twee song about his kids, and the album "Back Home," a record so bad that I only listened to it once because I couldn't afford to keep buying my speakers rape councelling.
Other blues players are still out there, but they're usually at least seventy and never likely to trouble the charts.
The overall happiness and progress of the human race is going to lead to a dearth of great blues performers. Eddie Boyd raged that he "worked five long years for one woman" who had the nerve to throw him out; the most John Mayer can complain about is that he spent five long months shagging Jennifer Aniston, something for which most men would willingly sell their souls.
That brings me to another point: Selling your soul to the devil just isn't done anymore.
For those who aren't aware, briefly, Robert Johnson, one of the earliest and most influential artists in the blues genre, was a talentless nobody who would occasionally hang around juke joints attempting to play harmonica. He disappeared for six months and when he returned, he was one of the greatest guitarists ever recorded. His music is still awe-inspiringly complex, often involving Johnson simultaneously playing two tunes on the same guitar. He died at the age of 27 (don't they all) under mysterious circumstances.
Son House, a contemporary of Johnson's, made a passing remark in 1966 that Johnson had "sold his soul" to learn to play, and from this throwaway metaphor, a legend was born that Johnson had met the Devil himself at a crossroads at midnight, and struck a Faustian bargain to obtain his supernatural playing ability.
Which probably isn't true, according to everything we know about reality, ever.
Still, Son House's initial comment - taken as intended - has weight. Johnson must have studied night and day to get that good, just as Jimi Hendrix would years later. (Hendrix would, according to friends, take his guitar everywhere, including to the movies.)
Nobody is doing that kind of thing in the modern world, for two reasons.
One, as already explained, we're all happier and better adjusted than we used to be. The shut-ins and loners of the world are fewer and farther between, and therefore there are fewer people who will at any one time be obsessively learning an instrument as their only means of recreation, and two: Even if there are still obsessive, lonely people, there's no longer such a thing as an "only means of recreation." In the 21st century, all anyone needs is a computer and a wifi connection and you can amuse yourself with all kinds of things for hours upon end. Dedication to one single hobby is basically a thing of the past, not to mention the fact that tormented, howling, unrequited love - the foundation of so many great blues songs - can usually be patched up by ten minutes on youporn.
This is why there has been a slow dying-out of the blues-influenced guitar god. Fewer unhappy people means fewer blues musicians. Fewer blind people means fewer blues musicians and more unwanted labradors. The ready availability of the internet and all its distractions means fewer dedicated music students and, ironically, more blind people.
With the improvement of living conditions for all people, increased tolerance and the march of technology, we're never going to get good quality misery again. Which is probably for the best, but in it's own weird way, it kinda gives me the blues.
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