Overlapping, but running much later into the evening, festival-goers can hear live blues and jazz artists at a local jazz club, the Bird of Paradise.

So I heard gospel and blues and country and just about everything.

You can hear blues on one side of the street and bluegrass on the other.

Marshall Chess came to see the band expecting to hear blues and went away baffled as to the kind of music they played.

You can take a ride into Harlem right now and you'll hear blues, jazz, gospel, hip-hop - right there, all in one place.

When I first heard blues, it bowled me over.

"Very few high school students have heard blues music played the way Cotton plays it," Mr. Lustig said.

It is a music hall, a place to hear blues without the vaguest threat of gunfire.

When the middle-aged folks come in, they just want to hear regular-type blues.

The most annoyance he can summon is in "Jazz at the Bookstore," about hearing deep blues as coffee-shop background music.