Rather than use a direct conversational format, please allow me the liberty to paraphrase my interview with Laszlo Kiraly to present the information to you.

A Physiatrist (a Doctor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation) who began his internship in Santa Barbara in 1967, Laszlo Kiraly got his first taste of music with the genesis of folk-rock in 1967. He listened to KCSB, the College Radio Station of UCSB, and on the quiet Sunday evenings in the Emergency Room discovered C.A. Williams, who introduced him to the Blues.

Finishing his medical training in Michigan from 1968-1971, he was in the heart of Blues country with the Ann Arbor Blues Festivals. He returned to California in 1974 and settled in Santa Barbara. Much to his chagrin, there was very little blues there. Blues was at its nadir at that time and there were very few opportunities for Bluesmen to find gigs. Filling this void, Laszlo and his blind friend Greg Drust, a musicologist from KCSB, started the Santa Barbara Blues Society in March of 1977.

Another man had tried to establish a Santa Barbara Blues Society in 1973 but it fizzled out within the same year. It took a physician like Laszlo to bring the patient back to health. He did that by booking "Blues With a Feeling", a little known band from L.A., into a funky lower State Street section in Santa Barbara on a Monday Night.

Spending a hundred bucks on advertising and having Greg plug the concert on the radio station, they didn't know what to expect. The owner of the club scoffed at their attempt to foster a "Blue Monday" series on this off night. When Monday March 21, 1977 finally came, there were over 175 people at the club and people were outside waiting to get in. The rest, they say, is history.

Laszlo was a one-man dynamo. He did the booking and the advertising with Greg doing his part as the emcee and pitching the shows on KCSB. Those were the days when he could book Big Joe Turner and Pee Wee Crayton for three or four hundred bucks.

Here's some of their previous bookings from the seventies through the eighties: Big Mama Thornton, James Cotton, Buddy Guy & Junior Wells, John Lee Hooker, Pinetop Perkins, Son Seals, Lowell Fulson, Johnny Shines, Willie Dixon, Otis Rush, Albert Collins, Koko Taylor, Albert King, Bo Diddley - well, you get the idea.

The Santa Barbara Blues Society was, in a word, stellar. It was a veritable "who's who" of the blues. They did their "Blue Mondays" about once a month and utilized several different clubs, as finding a home was difficult. The Santa Barbara Blues Society now had a mailing list of about 500 blues fans and with just simply postcard mailings; people just kept flocking to their shows. Shows would start at 8:00 p.m. so that people could go to work the next day without being tired.

As the Society began to grow, Laszlo booked an occasional weekend. Now they only book on Saturday nights. The Santa Barbara Blues Society is now a 501(c)(3) organization with a 10-12-member board and about 20 volunteers. Greg and Laszlo were biased in favor of black performers because that's where they thought the roots of blues belonged. Performers like Rod Piazza and Charlie Musselwhite and other authentic and traditional white blues musicians have also been booked but the self-proclaimed mission of the Santa Barbara Blues Society had been to bring the best available black blues act to the area. This role of the Society is working well as even if the members aren't familiar with a particular group or performer, they know they can count on the musician(s) being a high quality act and that an enjoyable evening is in store for them. They have members from as far away as San Francisco who attend their concerts.

With all this success, they finally found a home two years ago at Victoria Hall on 33 West Victoria Street in Santa Barbara. This is a former church and the acoustics are wonderful. As Laszlo says enthusiastically, "It's like a big Saturday Night Church of the Blues!" With this large balconied venue, it's an enormous effort to book and promote a show so they offer 5 or 6 shows a year now.

Over 20 readers from Southland Blues attended their "Blue Flames" show (Hollywood Fat's old band) and hopefully more will have been in attendance with the Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm performing at a special 25th anniversary show on March 16th. All concerts are just the featured artist without the diversion of any opening acts-it gives the blues fan an uninterrupted appreciation of the performer.

Laszlo also voiced the same lament that Buddy Guy did in his interview with me: the Blues just isn't getting the airplay that other popular music receives. This being the case, it's all the more reason for a Blues Society to remain vital and to bring Blues acts to its members.

You can learn more about the Santa Barbara Blues Society at SBBlues.org. Membership is only $15/year with a Life Membership available for only $50. Members receive a $5 discount per show so one only has to attend 3 of their fabulous concerts to get their membership fee back. One can also sign up to be on their free mailing list.

There are over 300 members and as they attend the concerts, faces become familiar and the crowd is very friendly to one another. The Society was the winner of the W.C. Handy Award in 1982 for Blues Organization of the Year, the first year such a category was established by the Blues Foundation. Give SBBlues.org a look-one shouldn't need an excuse to visit the beautiful Santa Barbara!