[jazzy music intro] [BB King singing "The Thrill is Gone"] ♪ The thrill is gone ♪ ♪ The thrill is gone away ♪ - My name is Jared "Jay B" Boyd.

I'm program manager at WYXR 91.7 FM in Memphis.

Blues for me is, I think blues for the world is roots music.

It's the root of American music, really in the American South.

Blues is sort of the modern evolution of the music that came from slaves, essentially.

It is, to a lot of ears, it may be thought of as primitive, but it's extremely intricate, and it comes from a rich tradition.

Well, Beale Street, historically, was a place where black Americans, after slavery, free black Americans, could have a business, to take shelter, to create, to work together.

All of these meeting places, and these places where people share ideas, all that happened on Beale Street.

And so, there is spirit and soul in that music, and in the exchange of energies of people.

[BB King's "Until I'm Dead and Cold"] WC Handy helped to establish Memphis as the place that people go to for blues business, you know.

People could sing at a juke joint but can you publish a song, can you get a song played on the radio, can you get a spot in a professional nightclub where people are really dressin' it up and doin' it on a major grand level, grand stage?

Influential women in blues, you gotta talk about Memphis Minnie, Ma Rainey, Big Mama Thorton, Denise LaSalle, Ruby Wilson, Coco Taylor.

Women set the blues off.

Women have so much power in their expression, and you know, James Brown said, "It's a man's world," but he knew that a woman played a real important role even if you look at the world through the gaze of a man.

[Johnnie Taylor's "Last Two Dollars"] Listen, I got cousins in Vicksburg, Mississippi on Fourth of July every year, somebody drink too much and they bring up who better, Johnnie Taylor or Tyrone Davis, and that'll clear out a whole cookout, when them folk get to arguing about who better, JT or TD, man listen.

But the best thing about the argument, is they gonna play the music.

They gonna play, you know, all the hits, all the songs to try to prove it.

So, when they talk about Verzuz, I want to see that Verzuz because that right there, that'll get folk to arguing every year.

That's my entertainment every year, is who better, Tyrone Davis or Johnnie Taylor?

[Albert King singing "Born Under a Bad Sign"] ♪ Born under a bad sign ♪ ♪ Been down since I begin to crawl ♪