All the smoke is gone now at the city's only full-time blues haven, thanks to the benevolent morality police with the City of Edmonton. The carpet has been cleaned, the bathrooms renovated. But I guess it fits the stereotype-shredding nature of the blues that it continues to appeal to its intended low-rent audience - even as the rest of its fan base grows less urban soul and more suburban sprawl by the second.

And the hard-living crowd is still showing up. They've just gotta jockey room with moms and pops.

It's been said before (by me, last year) that the Labatt blues fest crowd could do all fans a favour by turning up at some of the local club shows put on by Edmonton's many-and-varied blues bands. Because rain or shine, the Hawrelak Park festival draws them out like bees to honey, as Muddy might've noted.

This is what the crowd at Blues on Whyte becomes when they give up heavy drinking, buy an SUV and start leaving their TVs tuned to the Family Channel.

"We sold out, for the first time ever, 15 minutes ago!" producer Cam Hayden announced to the crowd at 5:30 p.m., about four hours after they started dancing. "I mean, in a good way."

There wasn't much chance of disappointment this year or, on the first two days, anyway. Every artist who hit the stage yesterday was darn near note perfect. The weather was spectacular, the blues stars accommodating, the food lineups always reasonable.

Last night's headliner, The Mannish Boys, is actually a "supergroup" of the cream of the road warrior bluesmen, including a rotating guitar slot that has featured the likes of Junior Watson, Kirk Fletcher and, on this occasion, Kid Ramos. Johnny Dyer came along to blow a mean harp and show 'em how it's done down in the Delta.

That's about as good a blues crew as you'll find showing up north of Illinois, although in this case, they're all working out of L.A. for Randy Chortkoff's new Delta Groove label. Chortkoff isn't just an impresario: He plays a mean cross-harp, and sings real nice, too.

They rolled through a medley of tunes off their album That Represent Man, including a swampy cover of Muddy's I'm Ready, on which Kid Ramos proved he's darn near peerless these days on six strings - maybe the best blues guitarist in the world right now. He furthered it with some smoking Albert Collins from the Imperial Records days that was likely the tightest piece of 12-bar anyone in this town's heard in a while.

The Downchild Blues Band led in with a blistering set full of harp, horns and Hammond. Founder Donnie Walsh showed with a cookin' piece of slide on Elmore James's TV Mama. Then they ripped into an equally potent rendition of James's Madison Blues, a harp and sax managing to sound like a full seven-piece horn section, and maybe then some.

A host of classics followed, including killer takes on Shotgun Blues, Bad, Bad Whiskey and their classic closer, the old nugget Flip, Flop, Fly, which had the crowd in a frenzy. It was the first time this weekend that a standing 'o' has reverberated up the auditorium hill crowd like a football stadium wave.

Anyone expecting to hear David Gogo's recent successful singles, including the catchy Springsteen-derived Hey Juanita, will have to call their local rock radio stations. Gogo said he was told by the show's producers to stick to strictly blues.

"Thank you very much. That was our traditional interpretation of the Muddy Waters song Hoochie Coochie Man," Gogo joked dryly, after closing the classic song with a three-minute guitar solo that hit every fret on the neck , along with a few shameless minutes playing slide with a beer bottle, a la every bad bar band since Janis Joplin was in diapers.

It was interesting to see how the crowd took to Mem Shannon's odd mix of lightweight lyrics and driving soul, backed by his usual rich arrangements.

Not surprisingly, they found his sweet guitar work every reason to get down, even as he filled the amphitheatre with cheesy material about Tiger Woods, followed up with one about - Lord , say it ain't so - SUVs, in which he asked people to yell if they owned a "Chevy Blazer!" "Ford Explorer!"

The arms shot up. And lo, the writer's first point was reconfirmed.