SAN FRANCISCO (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Organizers for the San Francisco Blues Festival have announced that they are pulling the plug on this year's event,citing funding issues and leading to questions about the festival's future.
"I'm taking the year off to rethink and re-evaluate everything," the event's producer Tom Mazzolini told the San Francisco Chronicle "I'm trying to figure out where this is going to go."
The festival has faced falling attendance since 2001 when the event had the misfortune to be scheduled 11 days after the 9-11 tragedy. Since then, it has yet to turn a profit, the Chronicle reported.
Mazzolini first started the event in 1973 and over the years, the festival grew and attracted just about every top name in the world of blues, including ends at the Great Meadow in Fort Mason to crowds of more than 10,000 during the festival's halcyon days. All the great names in the field played the event – B.B. King, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Lee Hooker, Etta James and dozens of others. These performers proved to be a major draw for the event and led to some of its best years.
"San Francisco is a really, really difficult market for blues festivals unless you put pop names on the bill," Mazzolini said. – CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
