"Bo Carter influenced me through my playing with his brother Sam Chatmon," says Del Rey, referring to her early mentor. "Armenter Chatmon had to use the pseudonym Bo Carter to record his blue material, as his family, all musicians as well, didn´t want their name dragged through the mud. He recorded with the family band The Mississippi Sheiks as well, as did Sam."

Del´s introduction to the blues came around 1974 when she and a friend of hers stumbled into a hole-in-the-wall record store in San Diego called Folk Arts. "We wandered into a concert by a very young Tom Waits, who was a janitor at a pizza parlor in Chula Vista, and just getting his start (he hadn´t yet recorded Closing Time). He was playing to about 20 people crammed in under the record bins."

As much as they enjoyed the young Waits, who had yet to gain stardom in his Skid Row poet persona, a later encounter at the record store made an even more profound impression on Del Rey and her friend.

"We came back to Folk Arts for ´hoot night´ where I played something like ´Blackbird,´ and the owner, a funny round record collector named Lou Curtiss, who drank coffee with a splash of red wine and who scuttled backward like a chubby crab if you got too close, took an interest in me.

FINDING MEMPHIS MINNIE

"He handed me a cassette of Memphis Minnie songs and said ´I think you might be interested in this.´ There I was: doomed to obscurity!"

Minnie, one of the rare female guitar heroes of the 1930s and 40s, a woman who could match chops with such other blues greats of the era as Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red, soon became an obsession for Del Rey, who abandoned any notion of playing the music of her peers as the new wave era dawned.

"I learned a ton of Minnie songs and about six months later, Lou told me to bring my guitar with me to Sam Chatmon´s show," she recalls, referring to the elderly bluesman who had by that time enjoyed a revival among young white blues enthusiasts. "Lou stuck me up there between Sam and pianist Bob Jefferey. I was petrified - not only were they the oldest guys I´d ever seen, they had impenetrable southern accents and they were singing those filthy songs and making crazy wisecracks like old vaudevillians. I just sat up there and tried to do whatever Sam was doing until my fingers were bleeding all over the fret board (which I only noticed when I got off, I was so petrified)."

Later, Del Rey met another guitarist, Andy Gallaher, whose passion for the old blues surpassed even her own. "He understood the importance of following Sam around and asking questions and generally bugging the old people. Bonnie Jefferson the guitarist, Dora Lee the gospel singer, crazy songwriter Gala Whitten - Andy pursued them all and I tagged along."

HAVING TO CHOOSE BETWEEN TWO LOVES

In addition to her youthful infatuation with the blues stars of old, Del Rey developed a concurrent interest in Spanish literature, and at some point had to choose between the two. "I was the kid prodigy on the folk scene from 1974 until I moved to Santa Cruz to go to college, where I studied Spanish literary translation with the wonderful Gabriel Berns, Rafael Alberti´s translator. I stayed at that for two and a half years until I dropped out, realizing I wasn´t likely to do anything other than play guitar for a living."

GETTING INTO MEXICAN CULTURE

Her interest in Spanish and Spanish/Mexican culture remains strong, though, a circumstance of her upbringing. "Living in San Diego, the proximity of Tijuana made you always aware of Mexican culture, at least that peculiar mixture you get on the border, which is very different than the interior," she says. "I spent a lot of time in Tijuana with my ne´er-do-well dad, hanging around the racetrack and the jai alai palace, getting dents beat out of the many jalopies he bought and sold, going to eat lobsters on the beach at Rosarita. Plus all the really cool girls who wanted to beat me up in junior high were stylin´ chicanas."

A veteran on the international touring circuit, Del Rey customarily makes time for a few Mexico gigs each year in between her appearances at blues festivals in places like New Orleans, Arkansas and England. Though hardly a Mecca for blues fans, Mexico remains an appealing place to perform for her.

"Playing in Mexico is my way of having a reason to be there," she says. "Just running around buying and spending is useless. I want to bring something good to where I go. Communicating who you are and what the music is, is a skill and a challenge with any audience; doing so in another language, without the props of context and familiarity is hard, and it makes me a little nutty worrying about it, but I like it."

With touring partner Steve James, a bluesman of equal erudition and historical depth, Del Rey has certainly had enough experience overcoming cultural barriers. Last year, after backing up Maria Muldaur on the Grammy-nominated CD "Sweet Lovin´ Old Soul," the duo took their compelling brand of acoustic blues to Paris, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Ireland and England. "We try and remind people of a good reason to put up with Americans," she says. "It´s the music."

Daniel C. Schechter is a freelance writer/translator and co-author of Lonely Planet Mexico.