Blues Facts

Hugh Laurie played TV's Dr. House for eight years. Off camera, he was chasing something real: a life as a blues musician. He recruited New Orleans legends Dr. John and Irma Thomas for his debut album, Let Them Talk. It hit No. 1 on Billboard's Blues Albums chart. Two years later, his follow-up, Didn't It Rain, did it again. The TV doctor now has two No. 1 blues albums.

Morgan Freeman and his lawyer friend were in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a town nicknamed Ground Zero for the blues, when two backpackers asked where they could hear some. Freeman says neither of them could name a single club. So in 2001 they opened one themselves in an abandoned cotton warehouse and named it Ground Zero. Live blues still plays there four nights a week.