Talking blues with Chris Thomas King

This week on the Green Room, Dominic talks the blues, the blacks and the whites with Grammy-winning blues artist Chris Thomas King. Earlier this week, King wrote for Spectator USA a scathing criticism of the policies of the Grammys’ Blues category. King is an African American from Louisiana. He is the son of a blues musician, and grew up in his father’s juke joint. He was one of the last blues musicians to be ‘discovered’ by anthropologists from the North. He has won two Grammy awards, in 2001 for the soundtrack of the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, in which he starred as a blues singer who has sold his soul to the devil, and in 2002 in the category of Best Historical Album, for his tribute to Charley Patton, Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues. Yet he now finds his latest album, Hotel Voodoo, ineligible for Grammy nomination as a blues artist. So why won't the Blues Grammy recognise African American artists?

Presented by Dominic Green.