Promoting blues radio across the UK and worldwide

Encouraging promoters and record labels to use the IBBA as a point of contact

Ensuring all member presenters are represented as a unified group

Sharing of information and ideas

Paul Smith
The Blues Show - website
Sundays 10am-Noon
Smart Radio - website

I am Paul Smith, affectionally known as “The Blues-Smith” and I present a Blues Show on a Sunday 10am to noon on a community radio station, Smart Radio, which is in Great Yarmouth. The show I present, is an eclectic mix of old, new, acoustic, electric Blues. We do our best in getting local Blues Musicians into the studio for interviews etc and we hope to start live sessions.

I started collecting music from the age of 13, the first albums I bought were, Cream Live Vol 2 & The Doors L.A.Woman. From then onwards most of my wages from Saturday jobs, went on expanding my record collection, creating a very eclectic mix of music from Led Zeppelin, to The Moody Blues, James Taylor and all points in between. At the core of his collection has always been "Blues Music”, from the early British Bluesmen John Mayall and The Rolling Stones, who took the music of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, etc, right through to the modern day heroes such as Joe Bonamassa. For long periods of time Blues Music seemed to disappear, which is mainly down to the record companies dropping artists if they weren’t selling records by the millions. Now many Blues artists can be found on independent labels, which actively promote smaller and new artists.

From the age of 18 I spent much of my free time following the vibrant “live" music scene. In the 70’s you could see bands 7 nights a week. Many of the the larger touring bands, of the time, came to Great Yarmouth and Gorleston, including The Beatles, Cream, The Jam and AC/DC, 3 times! This is something that we have sadly lost.

I play guitar and started The Odd Acoustic, a once a months live Blues & Jazz session, with Mick Potter (landlord of the Oddfellows in Gorleston) and Matthew George (P.A. from Wendy House Studios). The object of the event is to bring together both seasoned and novice musicians, either in a band, duet, trio or solo, in an acoustic environment. The aim to get more live music being played and people listening