Original subtitles

When I make my 50 cent lord

I carry it home to Rosie.

Come on here old mule.

Whoo hoo hoo hoo hoo lordy lord

This is music with humble beginnings.

Roots in slavery and segregation.

A society that rarely treated

black Americans

with the dignity and respect

that they deserve.

The Blues bore witness

to these hard times,

and like so many of the

men and women who sang them,

the Blues refused

to be limited by the circumstances

of their birth.

I can be sick,

and I'll hit the bandstand

and I don't feel no pain.

I don't feel no pain until

after I get through playin.

And then when I get through playing,

I'll start back to hurting.

Sometimes I be sittin around

feelin sad.

I start hummin on an old Blues song

and it looked like life just popped

up back in me.

That's what the Blues do for me.

what they do for anybody else.

Well I'm You're Hoochie

Coochie Man.

Now Everybody knows I'm here.

The Blues comes from the way that the

black people were

treated in the South.

You had no other choice but to sing

the Blues. You didn't know. You didn't

nothing else to sing that the white

didn't understand.

Old Alabama join us...

I'd be sitting on the porch playing

the acoustic guitar, and he

tell my daddy say,

'You better stop that boy from playin

that guitar and, and put him in the

field cuz grass gonna

take your cotton and your corn'. I

wouldn't care if it did cuz we wasn't

getting nothing out of it no way.

And he'd come by, and I'd

be setting there

Baby Please Don't Go. Baby

Please Don't Go

He'd look at me. He'd go and tell me

dad "Crumb you get that

boy in the field.

Sitting there playing that old

guitar on the porch.

He need to be at work.

And when I worked, I had worked

for Fifty Cents a day.

Fifty little old cents.

The Blues has been disrespected in the

pantheon of American Cultural products

and that is a great travesty but it is

understandable because you cannot

understand

the Blues unless you

understand race in America.

And we don't like to talk

about Race in America.

That's the last taboo. If we are going

to understand the Blues we

have to understand

what created the Blues and we still do

want to confront that.

The urban legend now is

that we are in a post racial post

black society,

and that's signified by the

election of Barrack Obama.

There's a lot of trouble with this

notion of post raciality,

color blindness.

The kind of soothing stories that I

think people, black and white,

tell themselves,

in order to avoid the blunt, brute,

finally inescapable confrontation

with the horrors of this country that

have proceeded under the auspices of

radicalization, racism,

ruthless brutality against millions of

people from as far back as we

can trace things.

I really think I have a clearer

view of what it was like to witness

segregation

now than when I actually witnessed it.

one of the things I realized is that I

witness segregation. Segregation was

in fact a Fact and consequently I

didn't have any contact

with people were in fact not playing

guitars. And now, I have a full

appreciation

of how bad it was then.

This railroad track right

here separated Black Clarksdale from

Clarksdale. We're right on the track

here with Ground Zero Blues Club. And,

When I was a child, this city was

totally segregated.

It was rare that anybody really

ventured across

to live or even to shop. Some did to

but that was sort of the extent of it.

When the Black people were

working here on the fields in the 30's

and the 40's

Then of course it got mechanized .

And When it got mechanized, you got

tractors and

cotton picking machines and stuff. You

see them now.

And that means the jobs

were suddenly gone.

What do you see when you

drive in the Delta? Cotton.

How many people does it take to make

cotton man? Just a handful.

They've got the big

machines to do it now.

All the people that were brought there

to deal with the cotton, are just

sitting up there with

nothing to do man.

It didn't happen right away.

Some people think that when the

mechanical

cotton was introduced to the Hopson

Plantation

near Clarksdale and then everybody

moved away

because they didn't have jobs, but it

a decade or more for that process to

really happen but

gradually the need for workers

became less and there were no jobs for

people who had been working the

fields. And

at the same time there were jobs in

Chicago,

particularly during World War II.

We were sharecropping, and when

I got about 11 years old, we get a

settlement

and we come out owing some money. What

mom did, she went and talked to the

about borrowing some money to get us

some Christmas clothes.

See at Christmas time, that's

around harvest time.

But, instead of we get clothes,

we headed to Saint Louis. Left the

mule and the wagon

on the side of the street and we

got on the bus. And we caught the bus

to Saint Louis

They migrated to, Where are

the jobs? So many many people from the

moved to Chicago and Detroit. John Lee

is an example who went to Detroit from

Chicago was the Promised land

where you could escape some of the

southern racism

and have a better life.

Drew a lot of people away from the

South, to Chicago and Saint

Louis and Detroit.

I left Mississippi for

better opportunity.

I used to play the Blues where the

Black people had to get over

behind the wall.

White people sit out there in the

audience and we played and had the

speakers out where they could hear us

but we wasn't allowed to come over in

the audience where the

white people was

Once you left Mississippi, Uh,

the segregation wasn't as bad up here.

But it was still that way.

Growing up in Mississippi,

you know, you got white folks and

black folks.

They integrate on certain levels, but

music thing was not appreciated, man.

When I was growing up in the 70's,

nobody knew

about the Blues

even though the Rolling Stones had

been named after the Blues.

Even though John Lee Hooker had

infected so many people with

his Boogie Blues

and created Rock and Roll music

people in Mississippi did

not appreciate it.

Slowly, that railroad track

has become, uh, nothing but a railroad track.

It's not a marker now for black and white.

We're a fully integrated city.

And I have to credit Blues Music with

a lot of that

unification of this town.

In Europe, most of the African

American Blues Musicians, who would come there

during the American Folk Fest, you know they

were kind of ambassadors of that music of America

And, to be honest, we love that stuff up there.

A lot of the musicians had

to go to Europe where they were judged

as equals or put on a pedestal

where in America a lot of times they

were judged, you know, by their color,

and kinda used.

Cats like Junior Wells and

Buddy Guy they was the only ones

keeping Blues alive

until it went overseas, until the

Rolling Stones and all that started doing the Blues.

The Stones wouldn't wouldn't come to Chicago

without going to Howlin' Wolf's house.

Well When we first started

playing together we wanted to play the Blues and

Howlin wolf was one of

our greatest idols

and it's a great pleasure to finally

get him booked on this show

tonight it really is.

Thanks for having us

Now I think It's about

time we shut up and we had Howlin' Wolf on stage

Yeah I agree Ok, Lets bring

him our. Howlin Wolf'. Bring him out

Everybody would go to Peppers and go

to Teresa's that's where Junior

Wells would hang out.

And that's where everybody

would be. But these white guys, they would come

and go to them same joints. They

couldn't wait

to get to Chicago, and hang out with

the Blues Cats

We are incapable, it seems like,

a lot of the times, of valuing Black Art,

As it is. It always has to under

undergo this mainstreaming process.

Blues is not taught in the

schools. You know, come February Black

History Month

we're gonna talk about the Great Migration,

we might play a little bit of Ma

Rainey and then

move on to the next, but

it's not woven into the fabric and

into the in which we teach American

History American History.

I don't want a Black

History month. Black History is

American History.

The Blues is ingrained

in the history of America.

And it's important to tell the story

the way that it actually has occurred.

When we teach history, when we teach

about culture, we have to

teach the whole story.

And that's not just about slavery

and Jim Crow and the injustice but

it's also about

respecting and legitimizing this great

musical tradition.

Blues in the school might

be something and a nice idea,

but it doesn't really transform itself

in a way, that you

can be optimistic that Blues Music

is going to expand as these

school kids get older.

Not just Blues in the schools

and teaching the kids to play 'Stormy Monday'

on five dollar harmonicas but it's

about bringing

this into the history curriculum,

the social studies curriculum, the

arts, the humanities

curriculum as well.

I think its important for

future generations to understand the

history of anything

And if in fact Blues is an accurate

representation of the emotional

realities of being human,

that's sure a worthy history topic.

It's important that the

music be seen in its importance, and

the fact that

it is part of the Heritage and the legacy

of the African American experience and

the kinds of challenges that African Americans

have gone through, continue to go through,

and it's also a celebration of the

great things

that have happened.

Encoded in the Blues are not

only the ethics and aesthetics

that I talk about in my book but a

large chunk of the

history of this country.

People who's history was not being

written in the history books

is told in the songs

that they sing and that they wrote

and that they left us.

Here we are in the Chicago

area in the Home of the Blues and we don't

recognize it, we don't give it the

legitimacy

that it deserves.

There is no journal of Blues studies

as there is for Jazz for instance.

Young people should know

that America's Music came from this

form of Art

and when they start listening they will

find out, oh this is part of my culture

It's a part of history that

is important and it's real, you know,

and it's what has made America

America. It's American Music.

Without Blues, I mean literally it

would be a total different

landscape in Musical America.

It has paved the way for where

we are now and we can always

reach back and grab that Blues and, we

can make that thing go anywhere

and do anything with it

and make it real.

At Last, my love has come along.

My lonely days'

You can change the song,

you can change the sound, but when you get

through changing it it all boils down

it still comes from the Blues.

It is the foundation for

all music that comes out of America;

Be it Country and Western, Be it Rock

and Roll,

Be it R&B, Be it Pop, Be it whatever it is,

It will find it's roots in the Blues.

Blues Music is the granddaddy

of them all. I'm sure you've heard the expression

'Blues had a baby they named it Rock and Roll'

but Blues music is the Root Music

for virtually every modern music form,

even Hip Hop, Rhythm and Blues of

course, Soul, Rock and Roll,

all those names of Musical Genres evolved

from Blues Music.

The Blues is the Mother

Music to so much of the music that we

listen to

on a regular basis on the radio, and so

as a result of that, the impact is

pervasive

A lot of time, you know,

the record industry likes to separate different

musical forms into different styles,

but the connections, you know the dividing lines

between what's Blues what's Jazz

what's Country what's Rock,

there's a lot of grey area

The Blues is talking about

life. And the gospel is

telling us how Jesus Christ was when

he was on the Earth.

A lot of em' talk about, "Oh you

better read your Bible. Them old

Blues. That's that Devil's music.

And, if you making the money you

spending the Devil's money.'" They'd

do it too if they could they

just can't do it.

If they can't do what I do, I feel

sorry for em'. And I

tell em, don't get mad, at my boys,

if you boogie don't ride like mine.

That was the holy music.

In church. The people didn't have no guitars

back in the day, they just clapped their hands

and sang, pat their foot, and they call it.

But when we added the guitar and the drums

and the horns and all that to it,

then it was the Blues.

What separated the music

was, musically they were singing the

same thing,

but, some people were singing to their

lord, and other people,

were signing about their woman. You

know what I mean? But, stylistically

the music was the same.

Blues was salvation.

Blues was motivation. In Louisville in the 1950's

which is when I grew up in Louisville.

The organist we had played at the Top Hat

on Saturday night

and played in church on Sunday.

Sometimes

when the preacher was saying the most

reverential

of prayers, she would forget where she was.

And, the music would do a crossover.

I was at a church in

LA one time with my cousin, and I actually

started counting. I went, 'wait a

minute'. He was singing the 12

bar Blues while he was

really preaching, you know? Just like

a Blues singer. I said, OK,

here comes the turnaround. Ok there

it is. Alright cool.

The linkage of specifically

Gospel music occurs first, during the

slave era.

The slaves utilized the opportunity to

be in a religious setting, to create songs

that, many of which, had double

meanings.

Many of these songs for example,

were songs that on the face of it were

about going to

heaven, but many of them had codes for

where the underground railroad was

coming. Or that,

tonight we're going to cross the

river, and

this will take us on the

train to freedom.

It's an inclination towards,

wanting to know that what I'm seeing

and feeling,

personally, like others out there relate to

that and connect to that. So that's

what I'm seeking.

So that's what the music does. That's

what the field hollers did. Right.

We were talking to each other.

Sometimes we were just

bull shittin'. Sometimes we were just, you know,

but sometimes were were on some like,

'Hey, these are the coordinates.'

No More, My Laud...

This activity is formalized

into what we know as Gospel music from

the commercial sense, the recording sense,

with a man by the name of Thomas A Dorsey.

Thomas A Dorsey was part of a Blues

duo, Georgia Tom

and Tampa Red.

And at some point, both of them had

their come to Jesus moment,

and for Georgia Tom,

it caused him to utilize what he had

learned as a Blues Musician,

into the rudimentary formation of what

we know as Gospel Music.

If you listen to someone

like Aretha Franklin. If you

substitute

'My Lord' for 'Oh Baby' or 'Oh Jesus'

for 'That

Man' often you can really get a sense

of the kind of

interrelationship that we would say

Gospel and secular music have.

There's a guy names "Big Eye"

Nelson Delisle who was a clarinet player

way back in the 1890's and early

1900's. He said

'Blues is what caused the fellas to

start Jazzin'

Jazz and Blues, was also,

in the beginning, in the 20's, more or less

the same. It was connected. You see, if you're

talking about Jazz hen you see that there's

a lot of Blues in Jazz. I mean, even in the

titles of it, whether it's John Coltrane or

Miles Davis or what. Blues went this way,

and Jazz went that way. They still

were connected,

but Jazz, we also say, that's

more instrumental.

I've never really thought

of them as being separate things. I know

that we have this tradition of Blues

and this tradition of Jazz now and they kinda

like exist in these different worlds. But I look

at Jazz as being an extension of the Blues.

You Know. It all, was created out of

suffering;

out of a need to express oneself. You know

and, uh, the Blues form itself, there were many

different forms, but when it widdled down

to the twelve bar form, it became of those

standard forms that musicians can all

build careers on.

Jazz came in part from Ragtime.

It came in part from the March Music

which was so prominent in New Orleans.

But also, the Blues grew up in New Orleans.

Now a lot of Blues Writers think the

Blues came from

the Delta area of Mississippi.

The more I investigated this, I'm

inclined to think that

the Blues actually was born in New Orleans

not in Mississippi. The Blues came from Levy workers,

and think about the ultimate music city

in the 1890's and think of all the kinds

of things that were coming through New Orleans,

which was the number one port at that time.

And you have Jelly Roll Morton saying,

when he was like five or six, he heard the Blues.

And you had Bunk Johnson, who played the Blues.

You had Joe King Oliver. When he made

his original

Creole Jazz Band recordings from

Chicago 1923,

half of them were, the Blues. The

Blues was alive in the early 1890's in New Orleans.

So that, really, was what gave the

soulfulness,

the grit, the depth, to Jazz.

Musicians in New Orleans,

would have heard the music from the

Mississippi

and Arkansas Deltas, and vice versa,

because of the Mississippi River connecting

these two geographic areas. So

musicians down in

New Orleans, developing Jazz

Musicians,

would have heard these Blues sounds,

and musicians in the Delta would have heard these

developing Jazz sounds. So the typical narrative

says that Blues developed first, and it

influenced Jazz.

That may not necessarily be the case.

I think both of these forms are developing

at the same time, and they're kind of both

mutually influencing one another.

Now Ladies and Gentleman,

here's one you all can sing with us,

When the Saints go Marching In.

Louis Armstrong was the one

who really brought it out to almost

The sheer magnitude of Louis

Armstrong's humanity,

and the absolute genius of this guy,

appealed to people, and he grinned a

lot. But the fact

is people could embrace him and they increasingly

loved this guy, and Louis

played the Blues.

One of the best introductions

to the Blues Aesthetic, what Blues

really means

was written by Albert Murray. It's a

book called stomping the Blues.

And he talks about Blues but from a

Jazz framework. I mean, he'll talk

more about Ellington than he will

all of the musicians from the delta combined.

But he sees Jazz as part of a Blues continuum.

Blues is the foundation

of Jazz. And, I don't know of a

successful

Jazz legend that doesn't have half his

repertoire

as being Blues or Blues based music.

Just name me somebody. You know,

whether it's Louie

Armstrong or Wynton Marsalis.

Blues affected Country Music

from early on. Go way back to the

original guys.

Jimmie Rodgers, Father of Country Music,

he was playing the Blues. He learned a lot of that

from an old Black man in Meridian

Mississippi and along the railroad

lines that he worked

Many of his songs, are Blues

in structure. They have an A A B rhyme scheme

that you find in a lot of Blues. They have

a twelve bar Blues Harmonic

Progression.

They even have the word

Blues in the title.

The Founder of Country Music

as he's called was

very Blues oriented in a lot of his

songs. He did Blue Yodels.

Teeeeeee For Texas, T For

Tennessee eeeeee...

There's Jimmie Rodgers doin

the Blues man. Introducing all this Blues.

Here goes Hank Williams in Alabama,

learning Blues from Teetot. He wanted to sound

like Ernest Tubb and Teetot, you know. It's

like, There you go.

Otis Taylor tells

this story about how the Banjo

actually originated

in Africa. So that kind of speaks volumes

for Bluegrass and all of the, what is, you know

kind of Country today. It just, you

can see how it all stems from the Blues.

A lot of people they look

at Bluegrass and they're seeing the Banjo

and they just. They think America

immediately.

But the Banjo comes right out of

Africa as do

many string instruments. The guitar developed,

in some level, out of the lute. That kind of

developed out of the oud. O U D it's a

middle eastern string instrument. That developed

from several other string instruments that

came out of northern Africa. I mean if we

go back far enough we're gonna find

that everything

comes out of Africa. I mean, look at

mitochondrial DNA.

Bill Monroe learned from a

Black artist in Kentucky names Arnold Schultz.

Those stories are common among Country Musicians

about, you know, how they were inspired

in their early years by

Blues Musicians.

We think of Rhythm and Blues

as one thing but I think, originally,

it was supposed to

encompass two different things.

It was the Rhythm music of the Jump

and Jive bands

and it was the Blues. Just like there

was County Music and their was Western Music;

Cowboy Songs. Originally they were two separate

genres combined into one term.

It was called Rhythm and Blues. That

Simple. Then they dropped the Blues

and called it R & B.

Then it went from R & B to

Soul. Now it's all back. It's all back.

In that era, Blues was called

Rhythm and Blues. Out of that, in the sixties,

evolved what we know as Rhythm and

Blues today

which is Motown. And when that change happened,

Rhythm and Blues as BB King or Little Milton

or people of that sort just became

known as Blues.

BB Jokes that they lost the Rhythm

somewhere along the way.

What we had happen was a melding

of those Delta styles with the jumping

Swing Band stuff.

How do you merge those two things

together. Well, they decided to come

up with a term called

Rhythm and Blues. It was a little

jumpier, a little faster, a little

more you could dance to

And for a long time R&B or

Rhythm and Blues on the Jukebox is how

you would see

Race Music or Black Music defined.

Well, a lot of white people started

switching over

and listening to some of those songs.

One of those people was Alan Freed the

Disk Jockey.

He thought Rhythm and Blues was

something that might turn off as many people as

it turned on.

So he started looking around for a term

that he thought could hook the teenage audience.

And he came up with a term that was widely

used in Blues called Rock and Roll

which was sort of a sly euphemism for

having sex. Some of the whites like

Bill Haley and the Comets

began to take this jumping Rhythm and Blues

and kind of whitening it a little bit.

And when he stuck the term Rock and

Roll on that

and some of Bill Haley's early songs like

Rock Around the Clock had that term in it

It just caught fire. Alan Freed was no fool

and he knew a good thing when he heard Nit

so Rock and Roll is what became the New Thing

although, really, it's just kind of

the old thing with new wind addressing.

And it worked.

Wom Bom A Loo Mou Ma Lom

Bom Bom Tuutti Fruiti oh Rudy. Tutti

Fruiti, oh Rudy

Piano had always been the dominant

instrument in the Blues. I mean, we

of it as guitar music but in most places if

there was a piano there, the piano

were the stars of the Blues. But when

electric guitar came along, the music

became amplified.

Then the guitar could be heard

and eventually became the dominant instrument.

People looked for the guitar solos.

Lonnie Johnson was born in

1894 in New Orleans, and he soaked up

remarkably rich musical heritage, and he started

out playing violin, which is really interesting

because that's the lead instrument in

music and it's a very expressive instrument.

You can slide up and down. You can

cry and moan and so on. The great classical

guitarist Paganini was famous for

doing that.

Lonnie took all that, and transferred

it to the guitar.

At the time Lonnie came up around

the early 1900's, the guitar was a

rhythm instrument.

It was Lonnie Johnson who really

created the guitar solo and of using

instrument for such powerful

expressive effect,

and the rest is music history.

Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley,

they were playing Blues all the time.

One of Elvis records was 'You Ain't Nothin' But

A Hound Dog'. That was Big Mama Thornton.

That was straight up Blues. And Chuck

with the greatest Blues Label, Chess Records.

Everything Chuck would do, the other

would come in the studio, and do it behind him.

The two founding fathers of

Rock guitar, Buddy Holly and Chuck

both profoundly influenced by Lonnie

and it went all the way through Eric

through Jimi Hendrix, to heavy metal.

metal really is just Blues on steroids.

They're just wailing away, and they're

really taking

that essential expressionism of the

Blues guitar

to a post modernist feel. That's really

what it is.

There's been so many Blues

songs covered and reinterpreted by

Rock musicians.

Look at 'When the Levy Breaks' by

Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy about the

Mississippi River Flood. You know, and

was reinterpreted by Led Zeppelin. We

Willie Dixon. The most famous Blues

song writer

ever probably who doesn't get enough

credit, I think.

His music has even been covered by

Megadeth. I mean, it's just like,

Blues has had a huge influence,

all around the world.

Rock and Roll was here the

whole music scene changed, because

had to play Rock and Roll. Well, if you listen

to Rock and Roll and you listen to Chuck Berry,

Little Richard, and the early Elvis

then that's Blues covers. Half of it

is Blues Covers,

you know. But they changed it a little

bit, the rhythm, the beat was a little bit different,

the texts were a little different.

Blues Music became universal

through Rock and Roll.

And then when Rock and Roll became

available, people went back and

looked at Blues Music

We who knew Muddy and Wolf

and Little Milton and people like that,

we knew that the Stones and the

Yardbirds and

the Beatles or whatever, took them as

opening acts.

The Beatles had such a heavy influence

from Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley,

people like that. And of course the cultural

mark of the Stones, is very strong.

I got people in the Museum

saying 'I don't like Blues' I said you don't. No.

I said, 'What do you think about the

LP of the Rolling Stones? Yeah I used

to have that.

That was great music. I said well

Blues. Jimmy Hendrix. It doesn't sound like Blues

immediately for some people, but if

you listen, and you listen, it's

Sometimes a little bit more than

others but it is there.

One day, uh, I went downtown

in Toronto and I took 3 busses, and I

a BB King CD for $5.99 on sale called 'Live

at the Regal'. And I put it on the CD player

and I immediately found home. And I

tell people it's sort of like, Blues

was like Apple Pie and I loved Apple

But the reason I loved it was for the

And I was eatin' all this extra butter

sugar and crust just to get to the

And then I found the truth and the

and the core, when I heard BB. And everything

made sense to me before and after. He

sort of the bridge.

Jimi Hendrix made sens after

I heard BB King.

I got with Joey D and the

Starlighters and one particular time

guitar player left and Joey say, Hey

want you to find us a guitar player.

So I walked up and down Broadway, went everywhere.

Couldn't find no guitar player, then I

into this guy named Johnny Star. He

know a guitar player, man, he play

with the Isley Brothers

but he's not happy. So I went

to this Alvin hotel and I stole Jimi Hendrix

from the Isley Brothers. But his name

Maurice then. He called himself

Maurice James.

So, we put him in the Starlighters.

didn't know he was gonna be the

world's greatest

Rock and Roll guitar player

Jimmy Hendrix, he basically

ate up and swallowed guitars. I mean

somebody that took it to a sustention,

than anybody could.

What an inspired Artist.

Went in to state when he played and

reverberation

off of the speakers which is something

everybody hated at that time,

became a signature part of his act.

I got a call. This lady say

'Jimi wants you to come to the studio.'

I said 'Jimi who?' She say 'Jimi Hendrix'.

And here's the world's greatest guitar

just as big as the Beatles, Rolling

and Elvis Presley. And I went to the

man and we played from about eleven at

to daylight. I'm a part of Rock and

Roll history

because that was the first session

produced himself. So I played on

Jimi's first production.

I always saw Hip Hop, As A

part of that continuum, that network

of Black

Music Legacy. So for me it was always

a connection

between Hip Hop and Blues and Hip Hop

and Jazz.

I was always a fan of those things

they were always a natural part of my

because the things that they were expressing,

and the things that they were dealing

and the circumstances that made the

the Blues...

Were the same things that

made Hip Hop Hip Hop.

..Everything that I know,

Everything that I profit,

everything that I show. How else would

I have made it without...

The Blues and the Hip Hop,

was like, You know, from what Memphis

Known for, we wanted to kind of bring

a different

feel to the table. We wanted to bring

more energy

because when you heard the Blues, you

know, as a kid it was just so

depressing and

so sad but it would be funny because

really started listening to the stories,

they were love stories or they were, you know,

telling you what they would do in a funny way

when they got mad at their spouse or,

you know, some funny little story about what

they would do, 'And I'll go drink all

And then they hit you with the

explanation.

It's real interesting how Blues would

kids. And it was kind of in a funny

we would always joke about it and be

man let's, let's make some a ......

And it, it would be a little bit more up tempo

it was still the Blues. I started making beats

just off of like hearing stuff on

Beale street.

So I remember like many of times

coming right

off of Beale street with ideas in my

head from what I heard, and then I'll

flip it in to something else.

It's just so many memories

that I can remember about the Blues

and, you know,

um, having inspiration and motivation

to touch a new generation.

Came up with a cat named Yo Gotti, and

um, our first album was Life. You

know, I did another song for

an artist by the name of Tela James.

His first project was Double Dose. And all of

tracks that you could look up on

youtube and

hear these songs and hear the Blues influence.

When I think about how

Hip Hop was created, it sounds exactly

what happened, spiritually based

music, the

Blues, Jazz. There was a frustration.

That's where it started. A frustration

of not being

able to get a point across. And I

think that's

what those musics have in common. You

That, that sense of, you're not

hearing me.

I need to say this some other way

way that the community is trying to

and get you to understand, you're not

it, you know. So I'm gonna go this other avenue.

I'm gonna take this other route, speak

louder, and maybe you'll get it this

When I came up, you know, we

would look back at the Blues and, and

use it as inspiration to reinspire our

generation

in a different way and we did that through

Hip Hop, you know. Hip Hop was a cool

to express yourself and be heard.

Blues, in its oral tradition,

and it's a form of getting

experiential lived

racially specific circumstances

expressed,

in musical form. Like,

tell me that's not Hip Hop.

The Blues has left footprints

across world popular culture.

Whether we're talking about Soul, R&B,

Hip Hop.

But also in Fashion, Mannerisms,

Literature and the Arts.

It seems like Music and Art

really humanize us. It's a feeling.

It's not something that you think out

with your head

but it's something that, it's visceral.

It's in your gut. And everybody shares

it. It's shared without being divided.

Art is, in fact, involvement

with the human condition. And Blues

is probably the purest and rawest expression

of how people feel. I would compare it

when I get out my sketchbook and I'm

bar, and I try to capture what's going on there.

It's exactly the same with Blues

which has a sophistication all its own

an art all its own that captures the

captures the feeling and does it persuasively

and accurately and emotionally.

Because I'm an Artist I have

to express it in my own way. And when

Blues Music and when I get into the

vibe of the band playing and people

dancing and,

what a great feeling that is to share all that.

People will say that they

can hear the music when they're

looking at

the piece of artwork. I've had people

say 'You know I can feel the music or I can,

I can hear the music when I look at the artwork

and to me that's, that's a really big compliment.

Music actually helps put me

in the mood to create stuff. It really

help clear my mind and it helps me focus on

what I'm creating, listening to something

that somebody else has created. I

When I first learned of Lightening

Hopkins for instance.

You know, I would play it while

I'm sculpting. It's great stuff to get

your juices flowing.

The Blues

It seems like all the great

musicians seem to almost channel the

through them and that can't help but inspire

me. And so I try to paint, not only

the musician,

but the music around them. So the

movements

and the shapes and the colors.

The dynamic of things moving in and

out of the picture

plane suggests the energies

as well as the musicians themselves.

Blues Music has had a huge

impact on American English. And as you

into the Blues you'll hear words like

If a woman's carrying, you know, heavy

on her head she's doing manual labor.

then you add the phrase No Good Doney

means a woman who doesn't want

anything to do with

manual labor and that's what Robert

Johnson's saying

when he says she's a No Good Doney.

She's trying to meet every downtown man she can.

She's looking for a sugar daddy, basically.

These are things that enrich American

English tremendously,

and they come from the Blues. You can

trace some of them back to Africa.

And I think the one that was most

resonant for me was the word Cool.

Because I was asking myself,

well why do we say that that guitar

solo was cool or why do we say that

that musician

has soul and that one doesn't. You know, why

is this person cool and this is not

So I did some digging and I found that

was a Yoruba word called Itutu that

means Coolness.

But it's specifically used to describe

a piece of art that is considered to

connected to divinity. Or a person who

represents that

state of being connected.

Blues has impacted literature

particularly on the African American

side tremendously.

The great writers beginning

in the Harlem Renaissance of the

1920's and early 30's

were people who were constantly

listening to the Blues and they wrote

about it in their work.

Poets like Langston Hughes

for example, Alain Leroy Locke, James

Weldon Johnson.

Later, we have a great writer such

as Ralph Ellison who's book Invisible

was considered to be one of the most important

novels of the twentieth century.

His second major book was a criticism

called Shadow and Act and that was the

result of his love of music.

So Shadow and Act is essentially a look at

African American Music from a critical

perspective.

The book Native Son. It is set in an

African American community and the characters

to a certain extent have a certain

tragic element

to it. But again, this is the kind of overall

thematic impression that you get. That

there is a kind of overtone of the Blues

both as a music as well as the

expression of cultural motifs.

The Blues is all up and throughout

literature. Not just Black literature even.

My book, Robert Johnson

Myth making and Contemporary American Culture,

arose out of the research I started

after I saw Robert Johnson popping up

everywhere.

He was a character in three novels in

early 1990's. And then I started

Robert Johnson collectibles. There was

a Japanese artist making Robert Johnson figurines.

Suddenly he was everywhere, and I

didn't know why.

So as I did more research about him I

discovered that

we don't know huge amounts. There's

gaps than there are facts.

What'd the Devil give you for your soul Tommy.

Well he taught me to play this

here guitar real good.

The film director Martin Scorsese

I think said it best that Robert

Johnson was

pure myth. But we don't know much

the real Robert Johnson. And in my

particular

book, what I set out to do was to try

to separate

the truth from the myth. What really happened

particularly with the myth of the crossroads

which is the most widely known of the

about Robert Johnson. The myth was actually

meant for another Blues man who came

a decade before Robert Johnson and was actually

in his time a much bigger star

in the Blues world than Robert Johnson

ever was and his name was

Tommy Johnson.

Dr David Evans, a Blues historian in

Memphis, tracked down Tommy

Johnson's brother,

and he related the story about how

Tommy Johnson got to be so good on the

guitar, and how he sold his soul to

the Devil right before midnight he

down the road and you know the story.

At midnight on the dot, a tall Black man appeared.

hand your guitar off to the Black man,

he tunes it for you, and when he hands it back

and you accept it that means your soul is sold.

The book came out and this was the

time that John Hammond of Columbia Records

decided that with this folk music boom

was going on it was time to reissue

after twenty five or so years, Robert

Johnson. They

found that Robert Johnson had recently

but he always had Robert Johnson in

He thought that Robert Johnson was a

level of artist than most of the other

bluesmen

from the delta. These two records just

absolutely

amazed people like Bob Dylan. It went

to England and all of the people who

leaving traditional Jazz behind and

American Blues, they thought this was

best stuff they had ever heard. It's not really

hard to understand why, that with the

of Tommy Johnson and selling your soul

the Devil at the Crossroads, that all

sudden when you have this record album

a guy named Robert Johnson. He has a

called Crossroads. Well the

associations you

can just see them connecting. And once

connected it wouldn't let go. And so

Johnson today to most people is considered

that guy who sold his soul to the

the crossroads, and then the second part of that

is he paid for it by flirting with the

wrong woman in the wrong place.

And the husband decided to

poison him because of it.

Early this morning, ooooo,

when you knocked upon my door.

And I said hello Satan. I

believe it's time to go.

The first time I think

it was in print was in the sixties.

Son House gave an interview to Pete

Welding, where he

said, 'Robert was so good, he must have sold

his soul to the Devil to play like

the legend came up. And then you start

people that knew him saying, 'Oh yeah

told us that. His family claimed to

believe it.'

Then, when some African American

get in the mix like Julio Finn, they

say 'Well, You know,

there's African Spiritual retentions

all through the Mississippi Delta and

Yoruba religion worshiped a lot of

varied gods including one called

Legba, the God of the Crossroads.

And one of the Yoruba rituals

was you could make some small offering

asking for inspiration; opening the

gates between

yourselves and the divine spirit.

Kind of like an ancient Greek would

write an invocation

to the Muse. Maybe he was doing that.

So, you can either believe it's true,

it's hype, believe it's not true,

and all of those three things have to

do with the

world view you bring to the story.

Living Blues is the first American

Blues Magazine, which was inspired by

fact that there were Blues Magazines in Sweden,

France, England. Why were we so far behind?

It seemed crazy to be reading about

Blues in an English Magazine when we're right

in the heart of where it was all happening.

One of the reasons that it was called Living Blues

was because there was a lot of talk,

there always has been for decades now,

Blues is dead, Blues is Dying. So

Bruce Iglauer

who later started Alligator Records,

was one of the cofounders and he actually came

with the name Living Blues. The idea

show that Blues was still a living tradition

among African American Musicians.

I've been a long time

teacher of Drama as well as African

Literature and one thing I noticed as

running across all this literature

about Robert Johnson, with the

exception of Walter Mosley, none of

the writers were African American.

So they were telling the story from an outside

point of view. And I wanted to see

African American writers were doing

with Robert Johnson, and I stumbled

upon three playwrights.

One is Bill Harris' 'Trick the Devil'

from the 1990's, one is Robert Earl Price's

'Come On in My Kitchen' which has

never been published but was produced

in Atlanta's very prestigious

7 Stages Theater in the early 2000's

and the third is an unpublished screenplay

from 1980 by Adrienne Kennedy, a really

important African

American Feminist Playwright. So I looked at

all three of them and they did very different

things. For two of them, it was hogwash and

it's just a way to discredit his talent and

his artistry. That white people had to

this is the only way an unschooled Black man

could be such a genius. But Robert Earl Price's

show was different. He kind of posits

Of Course he sold his soul to the

That's the only way any Black Person

gets ahead in America.

It takes the incidents of his death in

Greenwood or the

anniversary of his death

as a time when there was a convergence

of forces among people who've made

similar deals.

To give an audience an idea that What

kind of deal do you have to make in

to succeed in a place where you are

the double

sold individual.

If you let the white part of yourself

live, then the Black part has

to be diminished.

In his play, which takes

place in the Juke Joint in Mississippi

Robert Johnson is killed; a plane crashes

in this Juke Joint with Condoleezza

Colin Powell and Clarence Thomas in

they all try to make some deal with the Devil

to get out of having to stay there;

to be crashed. It's the price of success for

African Americans he's talking about,

it's very, very cunning satire I think.

Robert Johnson in that appears only as

a video projection. He's

not even real.

Some of the people that

you see in power, especially African Americans

that I see in power, I keep wondering,

How much of this? What happened?

What kind of deal did this person have

to make in order

to become who we see them as?

I mean, what could Clarence

Thomas be thinking?

Yep. On a daily

basis I consume Manhattan, Long

Island, and Queens,

for a month.

The Blues is a very important device

in film because a lot of film

is inference and a lot of film is

allowing the audience

to draw their own conclusions, and a

director will often bring an audience

trough and it is up to the audience to

whatever water is there placed in front of

them in the sense of how they want to

about the particular set of

circumstances

that they see the characters faced

I've used Blues and

Jazz in, in just about everything I've done man.

You know, it started with 'Malcolm X',

on through just about all of Spike's

And then I did 'Their Eyes Were

Watching God',

you know, which definitely had a lot

of those different

elements in it; And then I did the

movie about the Chess Brothers,

'Cadillac Records',

you know, and that movie was all about

I've probably used Jazz and

Blues in every movie I ever did

practically.

'Innocent Blood' was Jazzy. I did

Bluesy kind

of stuff in 'Planes, Trains and

Automobiles'.

I mean probably every movie because I

stereotyped in comedy. And in comedy,

the main thing is the jokes. If you

have no jokes,

you don't really have a comedy. You

mildly amusing movie. So, you have to

the jokes. You either have to support

and then stop just before the

punchline, or,

you can play through it. I'll give you

example if you're talking about Jazz.

If you have like in The Naked Gun, this sexy woman,

Priscilla Presley, coming down the stairs,

you know and sashaying down, you play

slurpy, sexy, saxophone. So in that case,

it's the style that makes the joke

funnier.

She's sashaying down the stairs and then she

falls, right? No it's not funny that

fell down a flight of stairs but the contrast

of her coming down like the Queen and

Boom. And then falling. That's what's

The contrast.

A Piece of music becomes

a character in a movie or a television program.

It can be the kind of device that

builds some

kind of emotion or helps the audience to really

understand what is taking place. I

mean, for example, a sad piece of music describes

a woman crying. Or, a lot of sex

scenes have

overtones that are Bluesy, overtones

of music that

speaks to what people think of the

as being kind of gut bucket and down

dirty and nasty.

Then on the other side, you have so

many movies that have a theme that

is musically driven.

Well me and the Lord,

we got an understanding. We're on a

mission from God.

You know the Blues Brothers,

even though it was commercial, it was inspired by

real events. I know the people that inspired

them. It came from the east and the west coast

with Down Child Blues Band on the East

and Curtis Salgado on the West Coast.

This guy comes up to me

and goes Belushi wants to meet you.

said What? I'm in the middle of a song.

I told him to get lost. And finally, at

end of the show I jump off the stage

goes Belushi you gotta meet him and he

me around and I meet this guy, and I

his hand and I kinda went...And...

He goes oh I like what you do. I have a friend of

mine he kinda looks like you. And he

yeah his name is Dan Aykroyd. And I was, just

looked at him blank. And then the next step was

he says well I'm doing this movie in

and then I go do this show in New York

Saturday Night Live and I was

completely blank.

And then he hit paydirt and he goes,

I'm really

excited because we're gonna do this show with

Ray Charles. And I said What? You're

gonna what?

I just perked up and said You've got

ask Ray Charles about Guitar Slim. He

who's Guitar Slim and I said, You

who Guitar Slim is? And then I just

out his history. And Belushi, much to

credit, was interested. So I gave him

of ideas and gave him, uh, records.

made friends. I was bringing him my

record collection.

I said Hey Bartender. Hey Man, Looka

Here. A draw one, draw two,

draw three ...

Hey Bartender I turned

him onto because he wanted to Jam. He

to Jam Jailhouse Rock and I said

That's corny,

I'm not gonna do it. I'll bring you a

and I brought him Hey Bartender, by

Dixon, who lived in Oakland. So we

were playing

with Floyd Dixon and I brought Belushi Bartender.

John Belushi was a lovable,

out of control, at least when I knew him,

Big Baby. It's perfect what Danny Aykroyd

said about him at his funeral. He was

a bad boy

but a good man. He ran around like a

and did all kinds of stuff but he

wouldn't hurt anybody and he was generous.

And he loved

doing what he was doing, Acting and singing.

He loved music, and Danny too, they

the Blues. That's not like a joke.

These guys are really in

love with the Blues.

I like the whole attitude

of two fat, comic white guys playing

Blues Brothers. It was a great thing.

Beyond entertaining.

What's Up Doc, what's cookin?

What's up Doc, are you lookin, for

Bugs Bunny

A lot of people don't even realize that Bugs Bunny was

talking like a Jive Jazz Musician. Hey What's Up

Doc? You know,

all that stuff. His vernacular and his dialect

was really kind of like a hip black guy from

the time. And, really he was almost like the

trickster character, um, in African Folklore

where the Rabbit was always the trickster

who got out of trouble; like Brae

So, you know, no matter how much trouble that

he got in with Yosemite Sam or Elmer

he still played the trick on them and

ended up living at the end of the day.

I know that

tune. Dipper Mouth Blues. (playing)

Play it Brother

It starts with the children.

When I was a kid, all of the Hanna

cartoons. Come on man. You know, all of those

things were steeped in the tradition of Jazz.

Peanuts. Come on. Vince, was one of

the greatest

Jazz pianists on the planet and that

entire series.

Every Christmas, weren't you waiting

for that Charlie Brown Christmas?

Right, and the music that really gives you that sense

of warmth and welcome, is Jazz.

Sounds like George has the Auto

Insurance Blues. Mmmhhmm.

Here, get a quote from the General.

There down payment and monthly

payments are low.

If you keep the TV on for

fifteen minutes, you'll hear

harmonica, you'll hear,

especially now, lately. It's all over

the place. You hear slide guitar, you

and steel guitar and you hear Blues in

a commercial. You hear some Blues in

the Background.

Isn't it time you

talked to your doctor about Viagra?

I find it interesting that

Smokestack Lightening is the

soundtrack of

the Viagra commercial. That's a very

very interesting

commentary on the times that we live

Here's a old man singing about sex,

and this pill

is marketed to old guys.

The Blues became a way for

the rest of Americans to

become a little bit less uptight

about talking about sex.

We had this Victorian social

order, and everything was proper, and

music was sort of right on the beat,

and restrained

and so on, and then the Blues came

and Jazz came along. And it's not an accident

that it came along in New Orleans.

Because New Orleans was wide open,

experimental and

all these different people and all

these different trends.

Jazz was the soundtrack

of the Red Light District.

In 1897 we had a city

alderman which is like a city

councilman.

His name was Sidney Story. And he proposed

to regulate prostitution in the city

by establishing

a specific neighborhood in which

prostitution

was legalized. So that was known as

The District.

Um, and then, as a joke, people named it after

him. So it became known as Storyville

was basically a parody of this uptight reformer

who was trying to regulate

prostitution but

then became associated with the trade itself.

Now, Storyville had a mixture of very

end brothels like Hilma Bert's house

Lu White's mohogany Hall where really

guys would go. And then it also had some more

low scale brothels known as Cribs

where working

class guys would go. And then it also

a bunch of taverns where a lot of Jazz musicians

would hang out and so in the high end brothels

they would hire professors that were

players like Jelly Roll Morton or Tony Jackson

or Manuel Manetta to play parlor piano

the women as the men were coming in.

So early Jazz and Blues was the soundtrack for

high end brothels. And then the

taverns, they

would have cutting contests all the

Musicians like Sidney Bechet, King Oliver,

Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong all started

early careers in these taverns

learning the

Blues and learning the early parts of

The twenties F Scott Fitzgerald

dubbed The Jazz Age, and rather

appropriately.

It was back then when the sexual revolution

really started. The flappers with

their short skirts and

wild parties and all that sort

of stuff. And then we had another

period of that

in the 1960's. And of course, you had

the Blues and Folk revival at that

same time

as well as Rock getting deeper and

deeper.

The Blues and Jazz really led to this

opening up and this second stage of

rejection of the

old victorian order.

It was the first genre to

really push the envelope as far as sex

and people continued to do it from that point

on. It being kind of the building

block for music.

It's probably the building block for

sexualization in music.

In the Blues there's a lot

of sexual signifying. I mean, we have

one metaphor after another for

genetalia and

for sex. All the Bessie Smith songs.

I need a little sugar in my bowl. I

need a hot dog

in my roll. I gotta get my hambone

These are all forms of, of

good signifying.

They talked about sex and

all sorts of things which basically society

was ready to hear. But it was from an

perspective. When the Beatles talk

I really wanna turn you on. Man, that

big line. So the Blues was really,

really gritty and in your face but it

was for, for

an adult audience.

Blues comes across

as course, gritty, it comes across as fairly

negative, and there are all these references

to big legged women with the meat shaking on

their bones. It is a continuous theme,

I think that it is one of the things

caused polite society or mainstream

society to feel comfortable. Because

anytime you repress something,

the thought and the feeling doesn't

go away. People have to find some kind

other kind of outre way, if you will,

expressing what they're feeling.

Part of it was Blues said,

Loosen your girdle folks. Get back in

touch with your

deep feelings and stop being so

damn repressed and all sorts of things

flower and blossom in the arts, in what your

feelings are and so on.

When Elvis appeared on Ed Sullivan

he was gyrating his hips, people thought that

was outlandish but, man you can do church now.

The Blues guys have created

a style. They mighta, they mighta not

what they were doing, but they have

styles, they created music.

It's just a whole lifestyle.

It seems like Blues players

they just have swagger. You know,

got that cool effortlessness about

I think that Rock and Roll started

from that. You know that kind of cool, effortless.

Like the bad boy look.

Heroes in anything whether

it's sports or movies or music,

they'll always

have the followers that'll look at it

say god I wanna be like that.

There's an important distinction

that needs to be made when we're

talking about Blues and fashion. In the sixties,

there was

two kinds of Blues. There was dirty Blues,

and there was clean Blues. Ok, now

dirty Blues

was the real nasty Blues. Overalls,

you know,

guitar string out of tune. Sort of

that perception

of real raw and gritty. An example might be

somebody like RL Burnside. You know,

gritty, Mississippi. In that sort of

fashion sense,

you know maybe somebody like Jack

or somebody who's really into the retro old

rootsy, rustic kind of Blues thing.

Then you have the clean Blues, which is BB King

say as an example. He dressed real

clean because

in those times, if you were an artist

you were and African American you had

challenges. You had to present yourself in

the best manner, and most respectful manner,

to be appreciated by society.

Especially as

you played more integrated places. So

real clean Blues thing. You know the

brimmed hat,

the starched collar. Yes, that very

became the Blues. It all borrowed from

clean, Sunday Best, and you know, you

see people, Bruno Mars today.

I mean, it's like a Soul review BB

King review kind of

thing that he has going on.

One time we got a pool of

money together and we got John Lee

to come play for us, all night, and

he wanted was a couple hundred bucks

bottle of Jack Daniels. And he showed

the grubbiest clothes you've ever seen

pork pie hat, smoking camels, and playing

terrific music. I don't think anybody

follow that fashion, you know, even

we tried. The same token about the same time

Chuck Berry was going through the roof

terms of popularity. He was starting

Rock and Roll.

And, as we did with the statue of

Chuck down on Delmar, the early Rock and Rollers

that came out of Blues, dressed formally.

They came out in tuxedos. This was

special time,

this was performance time and they

to the nines. So on one hand you got

John Lee Hooker showing up in eight

day old clothes

that smelled that way. On the other hand you get

Chuck Berry that's out there in a tuxedo.

They both had an audience.

There's a young kid looking

in the windows and my dad invited this

young man in.

He said, Come on in young man, let

me show you around. And this young man, you know,

my dad said he had greasy hair, he had

a little duck back and uh, the young

Mr Lansky, I don't have any money, but

of these days I'm gonna come in here

and buy you out.

And my dad said, Young man, don't

buy me out just buy from me and this young man

turned out to be the future King of Rock and Roll

Elvis Presley. And that's where the

African Americans shopped and they

to come there. On Saturday mornings we

so busy because everybody had to have

outfit, a new pair of shoes, a new cap

to go out on Saturday night. They

wanted to look sharp.

Blues has become a, a tourism

element in Chicago, and in Memphis on

Beale Street.

That's a long time claim to Memphis

being the home of the Blues.

When I came to America, for

the very very first time, I landed in

Memphis.

And when I came to Memphis in 1978, at

Street, all these buildings were

blocked off, empty.

There were two clubs open in the New

Daisy Theater at night. There were two

sitting with a guitar, you know, and

was it. I went to the Sun studio building.

That was exactly what I say. It was a

building.

Empty. I went to the Stax building.

Satellite Records. I wanted to see

that. That was a

building that fell apart completely.

Now, it's thriving. There's been a

revitalization

in Memphis already going on since the eighties.

So I see that improvement what music tourism

does for a community.

Mississippi has come a long

way in grasping its own heritage and culture.

The past twenty years have seen great improvements

in them putting up the historical

to the Blues musicians in their

cities. Developing

a Blues tourism.

Mississippi needs any help it can get

to get any economy going.

When we got here this whole

street was empty buildings. Now

there's a store down there, there's an Art Music

next door. Someone from Franklin

invested in the building across the street and

gonna be apartments in there so. You see that

impact of the Blues tourism. We came

because we thought we wanted to be

part of the revitalization. I personally came

for the Blues Music.

You Know that Sixty One

highway... That's the longest road I

know.

When Morgan Freeman and I

got to be good friends in the mid nineties,

He started noticing some of the things

really been paying particular

attention to.

That is, all these tourists walking

town just sort of looking. Asking questions

like where can we hear live Blues

Music? Where

was so and so buried? Where was Ike

Turner born?

And I felt over time, and so did Morgan,

a need to preserve this genre by

answering

at least one question, where can we

hear live Blues Music? So we opened this club in

May of 2001 to have a good venue with

consistently

played, performed, live Blues music.

We sort of fill that need. That

demand, for the tourists.

We have a lot of history

here in Clarksdale. People were born

like John Lee Hooker, Sam Cooke,

Little Junior

Parker, Lil Green. And of course,

Muddy Waters

grew up here. So we have a lot of big

in the music Blues world and Soul

world who came from here. So, it's logical that

we would go for the tourism. Tourism of course

means money.

We love this music but it's also very

important that tourists come here,

if they have a wonderful time, and they will

because we have a fantastic music

scene here;

they will stay a couple of days. They

will spend some money in the

restaurants and that means jobs.

I think we could sell the

dirt here frankly, and in fact, I've

manager looking in to doing just that.

The Mississippi Blues Trail

was started by an organization called

Mississippi Blues Commission, started

state of Mississippi, in recognition

fact that there were so many people

coming to Mississippi, just on their own, to go

to Clarksdale and Greenville and the

Festivals; to visit grave sites; to

take pictures

of the highway signs. You know, you

always see tourists taking pictures of

sign that says Yazoo City or Highway

was an economic move, of course, to

promote tourism.

But it was also, I think an important

statement by the state of Mississippi

this Black Music which was Neglected

long and which was actually generated

of the oppressive conditions in

Mississippi,

is something that should be celebrated

and honored.

If you want my lovin, if

you really do.

Don't be afraid, my baby, ask for it.

Cause you know I'm gonna

give it to you

I think Blues Music is Powerful

because it tells the journey of a

culture.

A culture that America has shaped,

whether they admit it or not.

I also think the power

of the Blues has to do with the

fundamental honesty.

What I love, maybe most about it,

is an absolute lack of sentimentality.

can be love stories. There can even be

love stories. But there's never any sentiment.

It's this is the way it is and I gotta

through it somehow.

And I think that's a very

powerful message.

When we see the great Blues

Artists, they're open channels.

They're just like wide open, and it's pouring

through them, and that's why we get

moved and we get incredibly excited.

That's why I think Gospel and Blues

just get people up off their feet. And

can't explain it but it's about soul.

it's about this experience that as

human beings

we're all striving for, you know. So

why I think it's so powerful and so important

and why we're so incredibly lucky to

It's sexuality, it's pain,

it's anger. There's so much in it. The delivery

is all about honesty. That's why I think it's

powerful because you can't phone it

If you phone it in no one's gonna buy

Nobody believes it. So, to be a good

at that kind of music, you have to

really put everything you have into it and,

that's what drew me to it. Just seeing people play

it and really living it and believing

it and putting it out there.

It's a very interesting

thing, the power of that music because

was born out of this very passionate

and powerful

need to express something to the

world.

And to try to find some solace or, try

to find

some, uh, answers, frankly.

It's about love. It's

about shortages. It's about pain. It's

death. It's about gains. It's about

losses.

It deals at the core of human emotion.

There was a time when Billboards

calibrating airplay and kind of sales

and everything.

Blues had five percent of the

market. Five percent of the market.

Blues now has an unchartable small

number. It isn't

anything. It's not one percent. It's less.

It's not massively popular

anymore. I'm afraid it's gonna go the

of like Dixieland. I love Dixieland

but it's

a novelty now.

The Blues is forgotten now,

you know, in some places. It's remembered

in others and it lives still in

pockets of

America and that's where the future of

it will arise.

Music now is like fast

foods. It's even faster. Now everybody

their dog can make a record. You can

a record in your apartment with just

the right tools and that's really good on one

On the other hand, it makes a lot of

out there and you have to, you have to

of go through the crap to find the

real good stuff.

Somebody with talent. Somebody that

actually is putting out something meaningful.

As far as what's going on now in 2014,

there's no hope man. It's

gone over the abyss.

The music is simply made of formulas,

creating money, to feed in

to the pipeline.

That's what's being bought and sold.

Who's after BB? Who follows

BB? Well, nobody really.

I hear, you know,

keep the Blues alive. It's not dead.

don't understand that it is alive and

and just because the older generation

getting older, you know, that's life.

what happens. And it's our responsibility

to keep it going because of what

people went through just to be able to

play it and write it and express it.

It's very alive in Europe.

You see that in my country where I'm originally

from, the Netherlands, has now a Dutch

foundation. I think it's their third

That's based on what the Blues Foundation

here does in America. A lot of people

the Blues is dying out and I'll say,

will never die out, it never did so,

that already is a proven fact.

Gone, Gone, Gone. You've

gone I know, baby so long. You've gone

I know

this time I gotta hold on. Thank God

you're

gone for good.

There's a lot of young people

coming up playing it. I know people

about the future of the Blues. You

fans aren't gonna be there. I just

it takes people to a certain age, to

it. I didn't grow up listening to it.

I had to find it on my own. I just

takes people time to find it. I don't

it's going anywhere. It hasn't gone anywhere.

Every once in a while, you know, it gets pushed

into the mainstream by some kind of

with another genre or something to

put it out in the forefront again. You

you hear bands like Jack White and the Black Keys.

They bring it to the forefront. They

listen to Blues Music and, it's kind

they started out. So I mean, I don't

it's going anywhere.

I think it's gonna stand the test of

time. It has so far.

The Blues has not gone

away. It's taken different forms. Some people

have shied away from the Blues because

feel like the Blues, in their mind,

represents

things that they'd rather forget about.

But the essence of the Blues is still in church.

The essence of the Blues is still in the music

that African Americans appreciate now.

All musics undergo

generational evolution.

I think that there's this

huge revival right now of Americana

and Folk music which is really exciting.

I think that Blues still gets a little

in the fray of that and isn't defined as such.

Even though we have Artists like the

Carolina Chocolate Drops, which, they

do Gaelic music

to Bluegrass to straight Blues to also

that are inspired by their experience.

know, people like the Lumineers and

the Civil Wars,

and, you know, there's a whole laundry

list of groups who are doing, um, the

type of stuff that Heritage Blues Orchestra

is doing which is focusing on, on our

and playing homage to the music that we came

from but also putting our take and our

and our spin on it. Um, which is what

Blues is all about. It's about telling your story.

It's getting better but it

has become a guitar oriented genre, you know,

when it's really a vocal tradition.

The telling

of a story. You have people who don't

sing who are considered Blues Men, you

And in the old days, when African Americans

had the quality control, you had to

If you didn't sing you were a sideman.

I think the future is simply

gonna be one of two things.

Preservation,

and then, let it evolve into various

of Jazz, and, by the way, evolve into

forms of Jazz that will then become tomorrows Classical Music.

And I think thats, that's

definitely in the cards.

Time moves on, and, these

days, it moves on at warp speed.

And so if you look at what's happening

the Blues, I can honestly tell you

are some very very talented musicians

if they're not saying I'm playing the

they're certainly using the essence of

Blues to voice their particular

passion about the music.

There are artists like Gary

Clark Jr and the North Mississippi

who are kind of reinvigorating the

Blues for a younger generation.

Blues is something that, that

never really goes away. You know, like

in the ocean. It rises and then it falls and

it rises and then it falls. There have

periods of time where the Blues wasn't popular,

or as popular as it was years ago.

But, when you look at commercials on television

you look at other things that you see in the media,

there's a real strong Blues influence

there. But, you may go to a Blues club

to see a Blues artist and the place

may be half

full. I think that the Blues will gradually

build itself back up again and it'll probably

wane again and build itself back up

Cause that's, uh, pretty much what

Selfishly I think Heritage

Blues Orchestra is the Future of the

Get right church and

let's go home. Get right church and

let's go home.

Get right church. Get right church.

Get right church and let's go home.

I'm goin home on the morning train.

I'm going home

on the morning train. I'm going home.

I'm going home.

I'm going home on the morning

train.

The evening train may be too late.

Well, the evening train may be too

late. The evening train.

The evening train.

The evening train may be too late.

Back Back hearse and get your load.

You better Back back hearse

and get your load.

Back back hearse. Back

Back Hearse. Back Back hearse and get

your load.

Get right church and let's go home.

Well, Get right church and let's go

home.

Get right church. Get right church.

Get right

church and let's go home.

I'm going home on the morning train.

Well I'm going home on

the morning train.

I'm going home. I'm going home. I'm

going home on the morning train.

Aw Glory Glory, Hallelujah,

when I lay my burden down. Ah Glory

Glory, Hallelujah,

when I lay my burden down. Ain't no

more sickness, no more sorrow, when

I lay my burden down.

Ain't no more sickness, no

more sorrow, when I lay my burden

down.

All my troubles, will be over, when I

lay my burden

down. All my troubles, will be over,

when I lay my burden down.

I'm going home to, live

with Jesus, when I lay my burden down.

I'm going home to, live with Jesus,

when I lay

my burden down. My burden down lord,

burden down lord. When I lay my burden

down. Aw Glory Glory, Hallelujah,

when I lay my burden down.

I'm gonna sit here with the angels,

when I

lay my burden down. I'm gonna sit here

with the angels

when I lay my burden down.

I'm going home to live with Jesus,

when I lay my burden down.

All my troubles, will be over, when I

lay my burden down.

All my troubles,

will be over,

when I lay

my burden down.

Oh Glory Glory Hallelujah, when I lay

my burden down.

Oh Glory Glory

Hallelujah, when I lay my burden down.

Lay My Burden Down. Thank you so much!