Long Beach Blues Festival

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Long Beach Blues Festival Site
Long Beach Blues Festival Site

The Long Beach Blues Festival, in Long Beach, California, is one of the largest and 2nd oldest Blues festivals on the West Coast (1st being the San Francisco Blues Festival). It is held on Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend on the athletic field on the California State University, Long Beach campus. The 2007 festival will be the 28th annual.

The festival is organized and used as a fund raiser by KKJZ, a publicly-supported radio station on the CSULB campus broadcasting blues and jazz in Southern California.

Contents

[edit] History

The Festival was started in 1980 by jazz radio station KLON (later renamed to KKJZ) in Long Beach, California under the direction of Bernie Pearl, who was the host of a blues program "Nothing But The Blues" on KLON at the time. The first Festival was a one day event titled the "KLON Blues & Gospel Festival" held at Veterans Park, Long Beach, drawing only a small crowd of 700, resulting in loss of $7,000 for the radio station. The Festival grew larger each year, becoming a major fund raising event for KLON. During 1996 and 2000, KLON expanded the event to 3 days utilizing the Labor Day weekend. It went back to the 2-day event in 2001. The Festival venue for the second Fest and thereafter has been the North Athletic Field at Cal State University, Long Beach (CSULB) with the exception of 1992 which was held at Shoreline Aquatic Park in downtown Long Beach.

[edit] Past festival lineups

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • Souvenir programs and flyers of the past festivals
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