This past May 9, the Blues Foundation, a Memphis-based nonprofit organization that preserves and celebrates blues heritage, inducted their thirty-ninth class of Blues Hall of Fame members at the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts & Education in Memphis, Tennessee. This year’s thirteen honorees collectively represented all five of the organization’s qualifying categories: Performers, Non-Performing Individuals, Classic of Blues Literature, Classic of Blues Recording (Song), and Classic of Blues Recording (Album). The organization’s 2018 inductees included both the legendary blues drummer Sam Lay and one of Lay’s main influences, the late sticks-man Fred Below of the blues group the Aces. Both players became the first Chicago-based blues drummers elected into the Hall of Fame. Lay earned crossover fame in both the blues and rock worlds, beginning with his work with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. But his résumé includes blues credentials both before and after he played on Butterfield’s historic 1965 […]