Musicians, like exotic places, are rarely what you expect them to be - and far less likely to be what you want them to be. When it comes to performing musicians, theory and practice are definitely two different things. It may, for example, come as a surprise when James Brown screams the praises of Bing Crosby, or when Irma Thomas finishes her set with Simply the Best - not really what you expect, or want to hear.
You are then left to adjust, and accept that the notions you've developed over the years are just that: half-baked, second-hand theories worked out in isolation. They are often patronising, sometimes presumptuous and always moulded to satisfy the sheer musical inadequacy of being European.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the battered genre of blues music. There are certain things expected of a bluesman, and some definitely deliver it, but the reality is harder to touch. Certainly, there are those who are trying to lead us away from that grim pit full of mulletted guitarmen with T-shirts from some blues fest in Belgium, but they are rare enough. Presumably, because they can't get the work. European audiences, after all, tend to go for the loud 12-bars, the sunglasses and the hats.
Singer and guitarist Eric Bibb will be the first to admit he wears a hat, but that's where the stereotype ends. His take on the blues is an infectious mix of country/folk blues, flavoured by the many musical influences of his own era, from soul to gospel, with a definite gloss of pop. It may not be to the liking of those who go for the raw power of Hubert Sumlin and R.L. Burnside, and it definitely won't be to the liking of those who go for the endless jams popular with the T-shirt people, but it's a blues expression even so.
"Everything is related. Let's be real. The marketing strategies of various record companies through the decades have maybe given us a kind of fractured picture of the culture in general. But the point is that even these old blues heroes of ours had eclectic repertoires. They were singing Tin Pan Alley songs, country songs, gospel tunes - the racial thing really dictated a lot of the marketing strategy, but I think we're seeing people free enough now to tell the truth about American music."
Born in New York in 1951, Bibb is very much the city boy, but again he confounds the stereotype. Rather than opt for the brash urban sounds of Chicago blues (what is most often demanded by the European fan) Bibb found himself drawn more to the rural sound. Luckily for him, he was growing up at a time when the countryside was, musically speaking, making its way into Manhattan in the shape of the folk revival, much of which seemed to be happening in his own home. His father, Leon Bibb, was a leading light on the Greenwich Village folk scene, and the house was a gathering place for a remarkable bunch of people.
"Yeah, the movie of my childhood was studded with cameo walk-ons by all kinds of wonderful people who were just legends: The Reverend Gary Davis, Brownie McGhee, Bob Dylan, Richie Havens. I met Dylan in my pyjamas and had a little discussion with him about guitar playing. I remember having a discussion about smoking with Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary !"
Bibb knows he doesn't have the history of the older blues legends. He is far too young and urban to regale eager blues fans convincingly with tales of jookjoints, barrelhouses and chitlins. In fact, he's more likely to talk about his connections on the other, extremely sophisticated end of black musical culture. The Uncle John he mentions, for instance, just happens to be John Lewis of The Modern Jazz Quartet.
"I've known John Lewis all my life, and the fact that he was my uncle was a big thrill. To be musical myself and to have somebody who had achieved so much as a musician and as a performer as an uncle was a very heady benchmark. I like to think I wasn't the only one who was having an eclectic musical upbringing, but I do know that amongst my basketball-playing buddies I was aware of things they just had no idea of. It was a pretty special and unique upbringing." In fact, it was very special. Jazz was no longer the music of the black dance hall, and in many ways the playing of jazz was becoming remote for a large section of the black population. Uncle John, for example, was playing in major concert halls around the world and more likely to be in Europe than in a New York jazz club. The same went for blues, with venues filling up mainly with white people looking for some meaningful music and finding it in a form largely rejected by young blacks. Most had, by then, moved on to different sounds.
"I think it's a complicated issue. Blues is a music that's associated for obvious reasons with a certain era and a certain point, when people started migrating en masse to large northern cities and a better livelihood. Back then they wanted to shuck off that sharecropping identity and make a way in the world. And even though people were homesick for it when they moved to cities, the sophisticated music that started coming out of the jazz and the Big Band era just seemed more in tune with people's aspirations. But it's funny, things go in cycles, and right now I feel that there's a whole segment of American music that people are reaching to again."
And Bibb will stress his style, though blues for marketing purposes, is not even entirely American. Unlike the older bluesmen, such as John Lee Hooker or B.B. King, Bibb spent his early years writing for string quartets and was heavily influenced by Debussy and Ravel. Again, the European blues aficionado with the notebook doesn't want to hear this kind of thing, but despite Bibb's many influences - from Joni Mitchell to some of the music he heard on his travels, African and Irish - his music is never far from the rural blues tradition.
"Yeah, I'm a city guy, but my sensibilities, when it comes to music, are really rooted in rural folk music. I find a genial quality to that kind of expression that suits me, even though I've been exposed to all the city sounds and sophisticated modes of expression. It's a music which reflects a time when people were less jaded and much more optimistic about their nation and the world. But I'd like to see a real acceptance of blues as not simply a genial expression of certain people in a certain era in time, but rather as something which has transcended way back. It is a universal language that is available to anyone who loves it."