Best In Blues: Here Is This Year's Blues Music Award Nominations

In the modern world, Money is highly important yet most musicians still work for passion and appreciation. Awards are a good motivational factor for newcomers and seasoned performers alike. On May 11 this year Blues Music Awards in its 38th iteration is all set to recognise and honour the best in blues!

As reported by The Commercial Appeal, the recently announced nominee list for this year's Blues Music Awards unsurprisingly boasts of heavyweights like Mavis Staples, Bobby Rush, William Bell and Betty Lavette.

The band Bluestones led by New England's Sugar Ray Norcia is nominated in seven categories including best song, best album, best band, and the B. B. King Entertainer Award. Group members of the band were also picked for individual awards category nominations, namely guitarist Monster Mike Welch, bassist Micheal "Mudcat" Ward along with Anthony Geraci for Pinetop Perkins Piano Player.

Midwest guitarist Toronzo Cannon gets four nominations for his album "The Chicago Way" and will be challenging Norcia in the best song and best album categories. Stax Records star William Bell has been nominated for his new album "This is where I Live" in three categories, the best album, Soul blues album and Soul blues artist.

The Soul blues artist category will also see veteran singers Mavis Staples and Betty Lavette competing against each other for the best Female artist award.

Soul blues artist Bobby Rush has also been nominated in the best album and Soul blues album categories for the album "Porcupine Meat" along with his career retrospective box set "Chicken Heads : A 50 Year History of Bobby Rush" up for the Historical Album Award. Rush is also hoping for the best Soul blues artist prize.

Other than him, the likes of Luther Dickinson for Best Acoustic Album, Victor Wainwright for Pinetop Perkins Piano Player, Cedric Burnside for drums, and John Nemeth for B.B. King Entertainer will all compete in the Blues Music Awards.

According to Gibson, Its signature artists Joe Bonamassa (B.B.King Entertainer and Guitar Instrumentalist Award), Derek Trucks with the Tedeshi Truck Band (Best Band and Blues Rock Album for "Let Me Get By") and Luther Dickinson (Acoustic Album shortlist for Blues and Ballads, A Folksinger's Songbook Vol I and Vol II) are all in the race for Blues Music Awards 2017.

Looking at the award categories and their nominees, it can be said that the judges are not going to have an easy time deciding on the winners.

TagsBlues Music, music awards, Bobby Rush, Mavis Staples, William Bell, Bettye Lavette