It's not a joke; these are real blues musicians, some of them (Joe Louis Walker, Donald Kinsey, David Honeyboy Edwards, Otis Clay, Pinetop Perkins) quite well known. And yes, the blues has often had to struggle and compromise to reach a wider audience.
At its peak, the program offered up to 99 weeks of coverage. It's been scaled down gradually ever since. Two states with high unemployment, Illinois and Nevada, had offered 73 weeks of benefits. California had offered 63 weeks, and most others offered 43 to 63 weeks.
The exact benefit payment depends on past earnings but, as a rule of thumb, benefit payments work out to be about half of average weekly earnings during the base period. As of 2015, unemployment benefits last a maximum of six months. To qualify for unemployment, you must have been laid off rather than fired for cause. You may be able to collect if you quit, but only if it was because of a serious issue like discrimination, harassment or unsafe conditions.