But where Blues music was playing, Santa Barbara was listening. One hundred seventy-five people packed into the club that Monday night, and more people waited anxiously outside. Needless to say, it was pretty clear that "Blue Monday" would be sticking around.

Five years later, the first executive director of The Blues Foundation, Joe Savarin, approached Kiraly and Drust about establishing a new award, the Keeping the Blues Alive award, to honor non-performing "individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the Blues world." For its contributions to the Blues world, and for its co-founders' roles in initiating the awards, the Santa Barbara Blues Society was chosen to receive the very first Keeping the Blues Alive award for Blues Organization of the Year in 1982.

"Blue Monday" continued about once a month at various clubs in the Santa Barbara area, and regional artists among them a then-unknown Robert Cray and national artists were booked single-handedly by Kiraly. Drust continued to advertise events on his radio station, and the Society began a free mailing of their newsletter, Blues News, to the station's Blues fans. The Santa Barbara Blues Society had showcased an impressive list of artists: Big Joe Turner and PeeWee Crayton (who were booked for one of the Society's first major shows), Albert Collins, James Cotton, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Albert King, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, and Etta James, to name just a few.

Today, the Society is run entirely by a dedicated volunteer board and depends on a team of up to 30 volunteers to staff their events. A 501(c)3 organization, it boasts over 350 members, 150 of whom have donated $50 for a lifetime membership, which the Society terms as "your life or ours, and, you know, we have been around for 25 years."

They have also finally found an appropriate "home" for the five or six major shows they organize each year in Victoria Hall, a former church now owned by another nonprofit organization. With plenty of seating, a huge dance floor, and killer acoustics, it has become the exclusive venue for SBBS' events over the past two years.

"It's like the church of Blues Saturday night gathering," Kiraly jokes. "The whole congregation gets together and enjoys some great music."

The society recently celebrated its 25-year anniversary at Victoria Hall with one of its biggest shows ever, Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm. After six months of planning, the March date was set for the concert, and that night the venue was 90 percent full the Society's biggest turnout yet. Kiraly spoke of the benefits of becoming a legitimate, credible organization in the community, citing various commercial radio stations' free advertising of the event, free accommodations provided to guests by local hotels, and free beer, wine, and Cajun fare contributed by SBBS sponsors at the concert.

"[Our sponsors] play a critical role in keeping the Society financially capable to continue its activities," he says.

As always, there were no opening acts, just two hour-long sets of the music everybody came to hear. And as always, the show started promptly on time; SBBS shows always begin at 8 p.m. on weeknights and 8:30 p.m. on weekends, giving patrons the chance to spend the night out and still make it home at a reasonable hour. These policies, Kiraly says, guarantee a satisfying Blues experience.

Another recent show featured Linda Hopkins and Mickey Champion, two Blues singers rarely seen anymore due to their increasing age and decreasing mobility. This show, and the Society's efforts to organize travel and accommodation arrangements for the musicians, was representative of the society's mission to preserving traditional Blues and "keeping the African-American Blues tradition alive."

"We have been criticized for emphasizing authentic, original African-American Blues, but we want [our members and patrons] to be exposed to people who represent history, not just commercial Blues," Kiraly says. "If we weren't here, artists like Mickey Champion, Linda Hopkins, or Big Jack Johnson would never have been heard in this area. That's why we're here."

While the Santa Barbara area now boasts a few major Blues festivals a year, among them the B.B. King Blues Festival, these commercially organized events usually feature highly recognizable headliners and popular Blues. The SBBS, however, sticks to its original mission, both to broaden the area's blues horizons by recognizing older, more traditional and artistically significant musicians and to give exposure to lesser-known musicians of the younger generation who "respect the African-American blues tradition while carrying the genre forward."

"Our endorsement has become like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval," Kiraly said. "When folks see our name attached to a show or a musician, even if they've never heard of them, they know they're getting truly original, authentic Blues. They're promised a good, fun-packed show."

At present, the Society is preparing to bring Chicago's Billy Boy Arnold and Jody Williams to Santa Barbara in October, and they have booked Duke Robillard for a November show, all Bluesmen who are, in Kiraly's words, "high quality practitioners of the art."

He would know; when it comes to the art of authentic blues preservation, the Santa Barbara Blues Society is a true pioneer, no doubt among the highest-quality practitioners there are.

This article appeared in the Winter edition of the Blues Foundation's magazine Southern Cross' The Dog