At 83, blues legend B.B. King says he’s grateful that more and more young people are listening to blues. But then again, it is a natural soundtrack to the nation’s current economic state.

“I believe that blues, the way things are today, are more important now than ever before,” KIng said backstage after picking up a Grammy Sunday for Best Traditional Blues Album for “One Kind Favor.”

He said that when people are having hard times, they can see that blues is “kind of an international thing, not just from Mississippi.”

King said the election of  Barack Obama as the nation’s first black president showed that America is “growing up,” and urged the country to give the new Commander-in-chief  time to clean up the economic crisis.
“I think he’s doing very well,” said King.  ”I don’t think we’ve been supportive enough or given this guy enough time,” he said, but added, “I’m happy that they did get him elected…it makes me believe America is really growing up.”

(Writing and reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

Jamie Masada, the owner of L.A. comedy club The Laugh Factory, says he wants a little bit of federal bailout money to take jokes and good cheer on the road to U.S. communities struck by the recession. After all, he argues, if bankers can get a bailout, why not comedians?
    
But he tells Reuters that he promises not to pocket any of the cash, in the unlikely event he gets it. He just wants to pack comedians in a bus and take them to perform on the road, and buy hard-up Americans some coffee and donuts.
    
As for that bus, don’t expect any whoopee cushions or rubber chickens onboard.
    
“We’re not going to do something sleezy with a whoopee cushion or anything like that,” Masada said. “We’re going to really try to bring a smile to someone’s face.”
    
How much would that cost? Masada pegs his project at $700,000, which he says is a bargain compared to the roughly $800+ billion price tag on President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan.
    
You couldn’t blame Obama if he’s a little busy these days to consider the proposal, but Masada said he wants to take comedians to Washington, D.C. to plead his case.
    
Obama himself is no slouch as a jester. Weeks before the Nov. 4 election, he appeared at a formal dinner and simultaneously joked that he was no messiah, while playing up his love of Superman comics.
    
“Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger,” Obama said. “I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the planet Earth.”
    
If Obama keeps jokes like that coming from the White House, maybe he could headline his own recession comedy tour.

Pete Townshend is so impressed with President-elect Barack Obama that he has had to rethink the sentiment of his archly anti-political song “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Who guitarist performed a solo acoustic version of the 37-year-old anthem in front of a few hundred fans at the Troubadour in West Hollywood on Friday.

Before playing it, Townshend said Obama’s decisive election victory on Tuesday was “the most wonderful result,” a comment that earned the loudest cheers of the evening.

And afterwards, he mused over the song’s cynical parting shot, “meet the old boss, it’s the same as the old boss,” and suggested, “Maybe not.”

Townshend was the main attraction at an all-star jam session organized by his girlfriend, Rachel Fuller, and being taped for a DVD and CD that will be released next March through Best Buy. It was the latest installment of her “In the Attic” series, which she has webcast for the last few years.

“There’s going to be cockups and messups, but it’s all gong to be fabulous,” Fuller said at the outset.

Indeed, her “adorable” boyfriend was a frequent transgressor, not that anyone cared about forgotten lyrics or misplaced spectacles.

Guests such as Jakob Dylan, Ben Gibbard from Death Cab For Cutie, She & Him (Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward) and E from Eels, each played brief acoustic sets. And then Townshend would join them. He and Dylan performed the Who song “The Kids Are Alright,” and he teamed with E and Gibbard for his solo hit “Let My Love Open the Door.” He dueted with Deschanel on the Who obscurity “Blue, Red and Grey.”

He wrapped the evening out in the spotlight on his own, armed only with his acoustic guitar, singing “The Acid Queen,” “Drowned” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Everyone took the stage for a rather limp version of another Who rarity, “I’m One.”

Townshend and Who singer Roger Daltrey are in town for a pair of shows on Saturday and Sunday, the final gigs on their latest North American tour. They begin a five-stop Japanese tour on Thursday.

Reporting by Dean Goodman

Photos by Reuters

Likening Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama to a political “trailblazer,” singer Barbra Streisand has become the latest Hollywood celebrity to join the Obama campaign bandwagon, switching from her past support of Sen. Hillary Clinton.

“Barack has awakened in many of us the notion that we can again be hopeful, enabling us to believe that we are capable of lifting our brothers and sisters out of poverty, of providing quality education for all our children, of ending this unjust war in Iraq and bringing our troops home safely,” Streisand wrote on Tuesday in a posting on her Web site, http://www.barbrastreisand.com/.

“He’s reminded us ‘yes we can’…we can make the transition from fossil fuels to green energy; we can take care of our elderly and make sure that good healthcare is not just a perk for a few, but a right for every man, woman and child,” she said. ”We are experiencing not just a presidential campaign, but a movement; a movement of inspired young people who have been cynical about politics for too long.”

Since narrowly defeating Clinton at the end of the U.S. primary elections in June, Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, has picked up numerous endorsements. Clinton, a U.S. Senator from New York, has appeared with him in a show of Democratic party unity. Last week, Obama held a fundraiser in Los Angeles that raised some $4 million to $5 million, and several Hollywood stars such as Dennis Quaid and Samuel L. Jackson were there.

Streisand, of course, is a major Hollywood celebrity and fundraiser for Democrats. Yet, celebrity endorsements have a mixed track record in helping candidates, the experts say. Republican candidate Sen. John McCain also has celebrity endorsements including from actors Sylvester Stallone and Robert Duvall.