Color the weekend blue at the annual Long Beach festival

They’ll be singin’ the blues this weekend at Cal State Long Beach.

But no one within earshot is gonna be unhappy because the blues is just what they’ll be there to hear.

This is the blues that emerged from the rural South, the blues that talks about love, sex, working and all the hardships that go with them. The blues that spawned Elvis and rock ‘n’ roll, and the blues that influenced the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

“This is everything about the blues on one weekend,” said Ken Poston, producer and artistic director of the 12th Annual Long Beach Blues Festival that will take over the university’s athletic field on Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“The concept is to represent all the different styles of blues with the major artists in each style,” Poston added.

And it’s harder to get more major than B. B. King, the legendary “King of the Blues” whose 1971 single, “The Thrill Is Gone,” was a million seller and won a Grammy award. King is Sunday’s headliner.

Bobby (Blue) Bland, best known for originating “the blues ballad,” also performs Sunday, and John Lee Hooker--a Mississippi Delta blues man whose career started in the 1940s--is on tap Saturday.

A newer strain of blues will be heard on the festival’s 70-foot-wide tented stage when Robert Cray and the Memphis Horns fill the Saturday headline spot with their fusion of rock, rhythm and blues, gospel, jazz and blues.

The festival will see the reunion of Jay McShann, an exponent of rough and tumble Kansas City blues, and the exuberant Jimmy Witherspoon, who worked with McShann’s band in the mid-1940s. “This will be fun,” Poston said. “You don’t get to see them together very much.”

Also on hand will be Big Jay McNeely, whom Poston calls “a founder of the rock ‘n’ roll style with the honking rhythm ‘n’ blues saxophone.” The Blues Brothers Band, from the movie of the same name, will be there, too. “They created the whole Memphis sound,” Poston said.

Other weekend attractions include Koko Taylor, Chicago’s howlin’ “Queen of the Blues,” and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, legendary gospel singers who got together when they were schoolboys in the early 1940s.

There’ll be some emerging blues people, too, as Dave Specter and Barkin’ Bill Smith open the festival Saturday. They won this year’s national blues talent search conducted by KLON-FM, the listener-supported jazz station that sponsors the festival.

The Long Beach festival started as a one-day event with local blues people performing on the back of a flatbed truck parked on the athletic field.

And from those small beginnings, the event has become one of the largest gated blues festivals in the country, drawing between 12,000 and 15,000 people a day.

But, says Poston, big has not become Gargantuan. “It still maintains the flavor it’s always had, kind of like a picnic setting,” he said. “People bring their kids and spread beach chairs and blankets out on the lawn.”

A lot of the blues fans tote their own picnics, but 30 vendors also have plenty of food to sell, including barbecue, Mexican and Chinese dishes, pizza, hamburgers and hot dogs. Cold drinks, as well as beer and wine coolers, are available.

Poston said that unlike jazz buffs who often like only one kind of jazz, blues fans take to all of the music’s different styles. “There’s a good crossover between blues and rock enthusiasts, mainly because when a lot of rock artists started in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, they were influenced by King or someone like that,” he said.

And festival-goers are enthusiastic enough to start lining up at 6 a.m. so they can rush to grab the best spots when gates open at 10 a.m.

Festival emcee Bubba Jackson calls the blues a part of Americana. “It’s us, authentic, real music,” he said. “What you hear and feel is what you get. It’s like a church, a call and response, participatory music. The artist and the audience go back and forth.”

What: 12th Annual Long Beach Blues Festival.

When: Saturday, Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: Cal State Long Beach north athletic field, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach.

Admission: $22.50 daily in advance; $25 at the gate.

Information: 985-5566 days; 597-9911, evenings, weekend.

Following is the complete performance schedule:

Saturday:

11 to 11:45 a.m., Dave Specter and Barkin’ Bill Smith.

12:05 to 1:25 p.m., Jay McShann and Jimmy Witherspoon.

1:45 to 2:45 p.m., Koko Taylor and her Blues Machine.

3:05 to 4:05 p.m., John Lee Hooker and Coast to Coast Blues Band.

4:25 to 5:25 p.m., Robert Cray and the Memphis Horns.

Sunday:

11 a.m. to noon, Five Blind Boys of Alabama.

12:20 to 1:20 p.m., Big Jay McNeely with the Rocket 88’s.

1:40 to 2:40 p.m., Bobby (Blue) Bland.

3 to 4 p.m., the Blues Brothers Band.

4:20 to 5:20 p.m., B. B. King.