Date: May 10th 2010

HENDERSON, Ky.) May 10, 2010 – Kentucky Educational Television will film the 20th Annual W.C. Handy Blues & Barbecue Festival in June 2010. The performances will be distributed nationwide as part of the network’s “Jubilee Series” in 2011.

KET’s Jubilee series is a celebration of American music, featuring performances of nationally known artists and popular local musicians at summer music festivals in Kentucky. Since its premiere in 1996, Jubilee has presented an eclectic mix of traditional and contemporary bluegrass, blues, folk, gospel, and other forms of distinctly American music. The series is a KET production, distributed to public television stations nationwide.

The 2010 W.C. Handy Blues & Barbecue Festival kicks off June 12 with live music, community events, and food by local barbecue teams. KET will join the festival June 16-19 as the festival kicks into high gear with performances by national blues recording artists in Audubon Mill Park. Artists slated to appear include Joe Louis Walker, Tab Benoit, Shemekia Copeland, Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers, Magic Slim and the Teardrops, Kenny Neal, Shirley Johnson and many more.

Performances from the W.C. Handy Blues & Barbecue Festival have appeared in the Jubilee Series several times over the years, most recently in 2004; air dates for these performances, as well as other Jubilee productions, may be found on the KET website at www.ket.org.

For more information and a complete schedule of the Handy festival, visit www.handyblues.org.

About the W.C. Handy Blues & Barbecue Festival: Now in its 20th year, the W.C. Handy Blues & Barbecue Festival began in 1991 and has become one of the largest free music festivals in the nation, drawing over 30,000 attendants from almost every state and many countries. The festival was recently recognized by the Kentucky Main Street Program as the number one outdoor festival in Kentucky and was voted "One of the Top Ten Festivals" in the Commonwealth by the Kentucky Tourist Commission, as well as being recognized as a “Top 20 Event” by the Southeast Tourism Society in 2009. The event is a celebration of the life and legacy of Henderson resident and "Father of the Blues," William Christopher Handy. For complete festival information, go to www.handyblues.org.

For public relations inquiries, please contact: Christi G. Dixon, Promotions Chairman
W.C. Handy Blues & Barbecue Festival cdixon@handyblues.org

Mollie Durbin, Publicist
Blue Heaven Design, LLC
mollie@blueheavendesign.com

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