MONTREAL (CP) - Thirteen-year-old Charles Daghlian doesn't have to think twice when he's asked to name his favourite singers.

"It's Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Louis Armstrong, B.B. King," he says with conviction. "They're really good singers."

While many kids his age gravitate to rock and heavy metal, Daghlian sings the blues. Literally.

"I'm a big, big blues fan," says the mop-topped Montrealer, who got hooked after hearing his parents' records.

"I fell in love with it."

He's not alone. And plenty of kids, including Daghlian, want to make the blues a career.

Just ask Jacques-Andre Dupont, executive director of the Montreal International Jazz Festival's first Blues Camp.

Fifty-five teens were chosen from about 500 applicants across Quebec for the free day camp, which ran July 3-9. Dupont admits he was surprised by all the interest.

"There was that kid, 13 years old. He entered the room and we asked him 'Why are you here?' and he said 'Because I want to be the male Nina Simone.'

"At 13 years old I had no idea who Nina Simone was. And this young man had already thought about what he wanted to do in music and he was a serious musician already.

"We had a kid that came from a small village around Trois-Rivieres and he said 'Nobody knows about the blues in my town. I'm so happy you're doing that because this is the grail for me, because I'll be able to meet kids that have the same passion that I have.' "

The camp featured workshops and jam sessions with professional blues musicians. The campers appeared in their own public show the day the festival ended.

Daghlian's low voice conjures up the image of cool, smoky clubs when he picks up a microphone to sing.

"I don't yell because yelling is the worst thing you can do to your voice," he said in explaining his regimen. "I drink a lot of water. When I sing, I don't try to damage it, I try to keep it more low so I can use it longer and better."

Austin Teck Bleuer, 15, is into blues guitar.

"I guess there's a lot of freedom on the guitar compared to some instruments," he said. "There's really very few restrictions.

"Also, you usually get to be leader of the band on lead guitar so that's always fun."

The St-Constant, Que., musician has played electric guitar for about two years. His interest in the blues came more recently and he and his band, Velvet Goldmine, are working on their jazz-blues-rock repertoire.

"I enjoy practising," Teck Bleuer says, his fingers sliding across the strings of his white electric guitar.

"My band, now that it's summer, practises about four hours every day and then I practise about an hour at home. But I don't really consider it practising. We just play."

Teck Bleuer, who counts Jimi Hendrix and Pat Matheny among his influences, isn't sure he'll become a professional musician when he graduates from high school.

"I'll find out later, I guess," he said. "I haven't really made up my mind as to whether I'm going to do music or go into medicine."

Keyboardist Sean Cryer, 16, was torn between guitar and piano, but the piano won.

"They're both popular instruments but I find piano pretty interesting and I've been playing it my whole life," the Montreal native said.

He's not kidding. Cryer said his mother sat him down in front of a Suzuki piano when he was two years old and also had him sit in on piano lessons where he would listen to people play.

"When I was around three, I actually started playing, but I played classical and I played classical all the way up until Grade 7 . . . Then when I got into high school, in my music class we learned a blues scale and I was playing around with it on the piano and it was a lot of fun."

He said he has dropped in on a number of Montreal-area clubs and jammed with the musicians.

"It's good to get a jazzier background, but definitely blues is what I'd like to play," Cryer said.

"It's so hard for me to find people to jam with, to get better," he added of his peers. "All my friends are into heavy metal and stuff."

Dupont said the 2007 edition of the camp will be expanded to include acoustic and other types of blues.

He said the demand is certainly there, and that the young musicians practically had to be kicked out at the end of the day and told to take their lunch break.

"If we didn't kick them out of the classes, they wouldn't eat," he said with a laugh. "Of course, to play music you need a full stomach because it's quite tiring."

Tiring or not, music is a life Teck Bleuer recommends.

"If it's something you enjoy, then do it," he said. "The best way to get good is to enjoy it."