Hal Reed and Ellis Kell Teach the Blues

It was a perfect partnership when bluesmen Hal Reed and Ellis Kell joined musical forces to educate youth about the roots of American music through Blues in the Schools and Winter Blues programs. Together they are taking today's kids and making them into the next generation of bluesmen.

Reed and Kell immediately struck the right note together and clicked onstage and in the classroom. It is a perfect alliance between the Mississippi Valley Blues Society (MVBS) and River Music Experience (RME), Davenport, Iowa.

The Blues is America's native music. Whether you are talking rock, pop, or rap, the roots of all American music started on the slave ships leaving Africa headed for the American south. "If kids only know and listen to what was made in the last 10 to 15 years they lose a big part of what makes American music," Kell said.

Reed adds, "Every American form of music has one thing in common, the rhythm or beat."

Reed says the best part of working with the kids is taking natural talent and by teaching the roots of the music turning the kids into bluesmen by the end of a session.

Blues run in Reed's family. His grandfather, Lucious Smith, was a legendary bluesman in the early 1900s. Smith was recorded by Alan Lomax in a 1936 field recording for the Library of Congress. Reed's uncle was also a great bluesman, Lester Kinsey of the Kinsey Report. Reed has performed and presented Blues in the School with his cousins from the Kinsey Report.

Kell is the director of the non-profit RME. When he started the Winter Blues program, a series of workshops for kids 8 to 18, he immediately thought of Reed.

This is the pair's 4^th year teaching blues together at the Winter Blues program. The all-stars of the program appear at the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival's BluesKool. This year the group got to show their stuff as part of the lineup on the tent stage.

Reed returned the favor by involving Kell in the Blue's Society's Blues in the Schools program. The pair has presented the week long program at a series of local schools from pre-school to the Blackhawk outreach center. Reed has been involved in the program across the region but adds he and Kell seem to have a special connection teaching together.

"We want to teach the kids how the music started all the way up to today," Kell said. "Early blues and gospel and all the early forms of music that led up to what they listen to today."

These two bluesmen are passionate about the history of their art form and striving to keep the blues alive by sharing their vast knowledge of America's musical roots.