Today's post was going to focus on the 2008 Blues Award winners, but while looking up some blues festivals, I was checking the Pittsburgh Blues Festival site to see if their lineup was available.

It's not -- it's comin soon, they say -- but I did remember that I've been hearing that the great Taj Mahal would be one of the headliners. Crafty investigative journalist that BlueNotes is, he checked the Taj Mahal Web site, and sure enough, Taj is planning on being here Saturday night, July 26.

By the way, for those of you who might want to enjoy the Poconos Blues Festival this year, you should know that it's the same weekend as Pittsburgh's. And they have a pretty good-looking lineup. It might be worth the trip just to see Jimmy McCracklin and Sugar Pie DeSanto. (Why couldn't BlueNotes have a nickname like "Sugar Pie"?)

The Blues Hall of Fame winners were named last week (I know, it's this week already, but I was waiting for the list with all the nominees to come up on the Blues Foundation site.

This year, instead of Memphis, the awards ceremony (think of these as the Oscars of the blues) was held in Tunica, Miss. They had a lot of great nominees and a lot of great winners. The envelope, please: (winners in bold)