Some of the top sellers of the genre seem far too young to even know what they're singing about.

Correspondent Kerry Dexter reports:

When B.B. King, John Lee Hooker or R.L. Burnside sing the blues, there's no denying the music's reflection of the singers' lives and hard times. So where does 14-year-old Shannon Curfman get off singing to us about her love life, as she does on "Hard to Make a Stand," a Sheryl Crow-penned tune on her debut album, Loud Guitars, Big Suspicions?

"It wasn't something somebody suggested to me to do. ... I had to do that music. It was like being run over by a freight train." — Rory Block
 

Atop the charts is where, apparently. The album's been among Billboard magazine's weekly list of top-selling blues albums for more than six months now, since it was released just after Curfman's 14th birthday.
 

But Curfman's not the only small-fry singing the blues to an older audience. Elder statesman Kenny Wayne Shepherd — he's 23 now — is one of the hottest names in the business these days; he recorded a chart-topping album when he was just 17. Fresh-faced Jonny Lang's been opening shows for the likes of Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, King and Blues Traveler since releasing his 1997 debut album, Lie To Me. And he's still not old enough to drink.
 

And there are others. Singer Shemekia Copeland, 21, this year was the youngest artist ever considered for the prestigious W.C. Handy award for blues artist of the year. Derek Trucks, the nephew of Allman Brothers Band drummer Butch Trucks, recorded his first album at 18, having by then long since spent time jamming with the likes of Buddy Guy and even Bob Dylan before joining the Allmans in 1998. And Bostonian Mike Welch is another who made his mark as a blues artist deserving of notice before reaching his 20th birthday.
 

But is it really so strange for young players to make a mark in the blues? Robert Johnson, a seminal figure in blues history, left a stunning legacy of songs and playing despite his death at age 26. Multiple Handy award-winner Rory Block appeared on New York's Town Hall stage when she was 14, and by the age of 16 had recorded a blues-guitar instruction record. At just 21, Bonnie Raitt recorded an impressive debut with fully formed renditions of blues classics including Johnson's "Big Road Blues" and Sippie Wallace's "Mighty Tight Woman" (RealAudio excerpt), dressing them up with that soulful bottleneck slide guitar she's been known for ever since.
 

Angst Is Not Enough
 

But is adolescent anguish sufficient to fuel a blues career?
 

Curfman, whose voice has been compared to those of both Raitt and Crow, grew up in Fargo, N.D., where she picked up a guitar at age 8 when a friend of her grandmother was offering guitar lessons. She soon gave up the lessons in favor of playing by ear, and listening to a varied crop of musicians.
 

"My musical heroes are people like Stevie Wonder, Santana, Rory Block, Prince, Dwight Yoakam, Chaka Khan, John Prine ... I could go on," she said. "My goal is to be like Sheryl Crow — she writes, plays a lot of her instruments, sings, produces. I'm definitely a hands-on person, I like doing things myself." That extended to writing seven of the songs on her debut release. Loud Guitars, Big Suspicions (RCA) includes the rockin' "True Friends" (RealAudio excerpt) and the bluesy "No Riders" (RealAudio excerpt).
 

Running counter to another stereotype — of the blues being rooted in the South — Lang, like Curfman, hails from Fargo. He's four years Curfman's senior, and teamed up with her to write "Like That" and play guitar on several of the album's tracks.
 

Lang has his own impressive résumé, starting with his A&M debut, Lie To Me, which was released in January 1997 and entered the Billboard new artist chart at #1. He also was named by the editors of Newsweek as one of 100 Americans expected to be influential in this millennium.
 

Passion Of Youth
 

It is true that most young blues stars today are recognized more for their musical skills than the lyrical content of their songs, as are other prodigies in the musical world, whether it be classical, country — as in Lee Ann Rimes — or even in pop music (Michael Jackson).
 

Maybe it's just that some of them at least have the time to practice. "From 11 to 14, I was totally immersed in blues," recalled Welch, who got his introduction to the blues — at least in the musical sense — through his father's record collection. "He had the Beatles, [Jimi] Hendrix, every record Eric Clapton played on, plus one Muddy Waters, one Albert King, one Howlin' Wolf. ... From Cream's version of "Crossroads" (RealAudio excerpt), I sought out Robert Johnson."
 

By the time Welch turned 15 and prepared to make his first album, These Blues Are Mine, the magazine Rolling Stone called him "a young teen who can rip off the top of your head and cram your brains into your neck with his blues guitar work."
 

The years will tell whether Shepherd, Curfman, Copeland and other young phenoms have the maturity to grow in music. For now, it's clear they have the passion. "It wasn't something somebody suggested to me to do," Block recalled of her introduction to the blues in the 1950s. "I had to do that music. It was like being run over by a freight train." Nearly four decades later, Copeland echoed Block's revelation: "It was like a light went on in my head," she said. "I just had to sing this music."