All language subtitles for Americas Blues

(Field Hollar)

>> Field Hollar: 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

>> President Barack Obama: 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.

>> Big George Brock: 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.

>> Leo Bud Welch: 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. I don't know what they do for anybody
else.

>> Big George Brock: Well I'm You're Hoochie
Coochie Man. Now Everybody knows I'm here.

>> Big George Brock: 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 know

nothing else to sing that the white folks
didn't understand.

>> Field Hollar: Old Alabama join us...

(Field Hollar)

>> Leo Bud Welch: 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.

>> Janice Monti: The Blues has been disrespected in the pantheon of American Cultural products

and that is a great travesty but it is also
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 not
want to confront that.

>> Houston Baker: 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 bllindness.

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 auspicies of racialization, racism,

ruthless brutality against millions of people from as far back as we can trace things.

>> Harry Weber: I really think I have a clearer
view of what it was like to witness segregation

now than when I actually witnessed it. And
one of the things I realized is that I didn't

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.

>> Bill Lucke This railroad track right
here separated Black Clarksdale from White

Clarksdale. We're right on the track right
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 work
but that was sort of the extent of it.

>> Theo Dasbach: 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 still
see them now.

And that means the jobs were suddenly gone.

>> Jimbo Mathus: 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.

>> Jim O'Neal: 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 took
a decade or more for that process to really happen but

gradually the need for workers
became less and there were no jobs for the

people who had been working the fields. And
at the same time there were jobs in Chicago,

particularly during World War II.

>> David Dee: We were sharecropping, and when
I got about 11 years old, we get a settlement

and we come out owing some money. What my
mom did, she went and talked to the boss

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

>> Theo Dasbach: They migrated to, Where are
the jobs? So many many people from the Delta

moved to Chicago and Detroit. John Lee Hooker
is an example who went to Detroit from here.

>> Jim O'Neal: 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.

>> Big George Brock: 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

>> David Dee: Once you left Mississippi, Uh,
the segregation wasn't as bad up here.

But it was still that way.

>> Jimbo Mathus: Growing up in Mississippi,
you know, you got white folks and black folks.

They integrate on certain levels, but the
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.

>> Bill Lucke 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.

>> Theo Dasbach: In Europe, most of the African
American Blues Musicians, who would come there

durign 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.

>> Stan Street: Alot 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.

>> Jimmi Mayes: 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.

>> Keith Richards: 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.

>> Mick Jagger: Thanks for having us

>> Keith Richards: Now I think It's about
time we shut up and we had Howlin' Wolf on stage

>> Jimmy O'Neal: Yeah I agree Ok, Lets bring
him our. Howlin Wolf'. Bring him out

>> Jimmy Mayes: 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

>> Gil Cook: 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.

>> Janice Monti: 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.

>> Morgan Freeman: I don't want a Black
History month. Black History is American History.

>> Lance Williams: The Blues is ingrained
in the history of America.

And its important to tell the story the way that it actually has occurred.

>> Janice Monti: 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.

>> Dick Waterman: 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.

>> Janice Monti: 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.

>> Harry Weber: 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.

>> Lance Williams: 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.

>> Debra Devi: 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.

>> Janice Monti: 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.

>> Theo Dasbach: Young people should know
that America's Music came from this form of Art

and when they start listenign they will
find out, oh this is part of my culture

>> Stan Street: 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.

>> Theo Dasbach: Without Blues, I mean literally it would be a total different landscape in Musical America.

>> Kim Massie: 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.

>> Kim Massie: At Last, my love has come along.
My lonely days'

>> Big George Brock: 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.

>> Vencie Vernado: 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.

>> Bill Lucke 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.

>> Lance Williams: 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

>> Greg Johnson: 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

>> Leo Bud Welch: 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.

>> Big George Brock: 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.

>> Terence Blanchard: 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.

>> Houston Baker: 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.

>> Terence Blanchard: 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 turnaraound. Ok there it is. Alright cool.

>> Lance Williams: 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.

>> Gil Cook: 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.'

>> Field Hollar: No More, My Laud...

>> Lance Williams: 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.

>> Lance Williams: 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.

>> Dean Alger: 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'

>> Theo Dasbach: 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 then 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.

>> Terence Blanchard: 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.

>> Deal Alger: 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.

>> Greg Johnson: 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.

>> Louis Armstrong: Now Ladies and Gentleman,
here's one you all can sing with us,

When the Saints go Marching In.

>> Dean Alger: Louis Armstrong was the one
who really brought it out to almost everybody.

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.

>> Greg Johnson: 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.

>> Lance Williams: Blues is the foundation
of Jazz. And, I don't know of a successful

Jazz legend that doesn't have half his reperotoire
as being Blues or Blues based music.

Just name me somebody. You know, whether it's Louie
Armstrong or Wynton Marsalis.

>> Dean Alger: 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

>> Greg Johnson: 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.

>> Jim O'Neal: The Founder of Country Music
as he's called was

very Blues oriented in a lot of his songs. He did Blue Yodels.

>> Jimmy Rodgers: Teeeeeee For Texas, T For
Tennessee eeeeee...

>> Jimbo Mathus: 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.

>> Danielle Schnebelen: 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.

>> Greg Johnson: 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 mitochonrial DNA.

>> Jim O'Neal: 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.

>> Jim O'Neal: 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.

>> Jimmi Mayes: 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.

>> Anthony Gomes: 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.

>> Tom Graves: 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, alot 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 it
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.

>> Little Richard: Wom Bom A Loo Mou Ma Lom
Bom Bom Tuutti Fruiti oh Rudy. Tutti Fruiti, oh Rudy

>> Jim O'Neal: Piano had always been the dominant
instrument in the Blues. I mean, we think

of it as guitar music but in most places if
there was a piano there, the piano players

were the stars of the Blues. But when the
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.

>> Dean ALger: Lonnie Johnson was born in
1894 in New Orleans, and he soaked up that

remarkably rich musical heritage, and he started
out playing violin, which is really interesting

because that's the lead instrument in classical
music and it's a very expressive instrument.

You can slide up and down. You can make it
cry and moan and so on. The great classical

guitarist Paganini was famous for doing that.
Lonnie took all that, and transfered 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 that

instrument for such powerful expressive effect,
and the rest is music history.

>> Jimmi Mayes: Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley,
they were playing Blues all the time.

One of Elvis records was 'You Aint Nothin' But
A Hound Dog'. That was Big Mama Thornton.

That was straight up Blues. And Chuck was
with the greatest Blues Label, Chess Records.

Everything Chuck would do, the other guys
would come in the studio, and do it behind him.

>> Dean Alger: The two founding fathers of
Rock guitar, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry,

both profoundly influenced by Lonnie Johnson;
and it went all the way through Eric Clapton,

through Jimi Hendrix, to heavy metal. Heavy
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.

>> Greg Johnson: There's been so many Blues
songs covered and reinterpreted by Rock musicians.

Look at 'When the Levy Breaks' by Memphis
Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy about the 1927

Mississippi River Flood. You know, and this
was reinterpretted by Led Zeppelin. We have

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.

>> Theo Dasbach: Rock and Roll was here the
whole music scene changed, because people

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 even,
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.

>> Harry Weber: Blues Music became universal
through Rock and Roll.

And then when Rock and Roll became available, people went back and looked at Blues Music

>> Dick Waterman: 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.

>> Theo Dasbach: 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 first
LP of the Rolling Stones? Yeah I used to have that.

That was great music. I said well that's
Blues. Jimmy Hendrix. It doesn't sound like Blues

immediately for some people, but if
you listen, and you listen, it's there.

Sometimes a little bit more than others but it is there.

>> Anthony Gomes: One day, uh, I went downtown
in Toronto and I took 3 busses, and I got

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 always
tell people it's sort of like, Blues Rock

was like Apple Pie and I loved Apple Pie.
But the reason I loved it was for the Apple.

And I was eatin' all this extra butter and
sugar and crust just to get to the apple.

And then I found the truth and the essence
and the core, when I heard BB. And everything

made sense to me before and after. He was
sort of the bridge.

Jimi Hendrix made sens eafter I heard BB King.

>> Jimmi Mayes: I got with Joey D and the
Starlighters and one particular time the

guitar player left and Joey say, Hey Man I
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 ran

into this guy named Johnny Star. He say I
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 Jimmi Hendrix

from the Isley Brothers. But his name was
Maurice then. He called himself Maurice James.

So, we put him in the Starlighters. but we
didn't know he was gonna be the world's greatest

Rock and Roll guitar player

>> Harry Weber: Jimmy Hendrix, he basically
ate up and swallowed guitars. I mean he was

somebody that took it to a sustention, wilder
than anybody could.

>> Rip Kastaris: What an inspired Artist.
Went in to state when he played and reverberation

off of the speakers which is something that
everybody hated at that time,

became a signature part of his act.

>> Jimmi Mayes: 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 player,

just as big as the Beatles, Rolling Stones
and Elvis Presley. And I went to the studio

man and we played from about eleven at night
to daylight. I'm a part of Rock and Roll history

because that was the first session that he
produced himself. So I played on Jimi's first production.

>> Gil Cook: 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 because
they were always a natural part of my life,

because the things that they were expressing,
and the things that they were dealing with

and the circumstances that made the Blues
the Blues...

Were the same things that made Hip Hop Hip Hop.

>> Drumma Boy: ...Everything that I know,
Everything that I profit,

everything that I show. How else would I have made it without...

>> Drumma Boy: The Blues and the Hip Hop,
was like, You know, from what Memphis was

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 if you
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 night.'
And then they hit you with the explanation.

It's real interesting how Blues would reach
kids. And it was kind of in a funny way and

we would always joke about it and be like,
man let's, let's make some a ...... And it,

it would be a little bit more up tempo but
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

a artist by the name of Tela James. His first
project was Double Dose. And all of these

tracks that you could look up on youtube and
hear these songs and hear the Blues influence.

>> Terence Blanchard: When I think about how
Hip Hop was created, it sounds exactly like

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 know.
That, that sense of, you're not hearing me.

I need to say this some other way cause, the
way that the community is trying to tell you

and get you to understand, you're not hearing
it, you know. So I'm gonna go this other avenue.

I'm gonna take this other route, speak a little
louder, and maybe you'll get it this way.

>> Drumma Boy: When I came up, you know, we
would look back at the Blues and, and wanna

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 was
to express yourself and be heard.

>> Gil Cook: 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.

>> Janice Monti: 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.

>> Rip Kastaris: 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.

>> Harry Weber: Art is, in fact, involvement
with the human condition. And Blues music,

is probably the purest and rawest expression
of how people feel. I would compare it to

when I get out my sketchbook and I'm at a
bar, and I try to capture what's going on there.

It's exactly the same with Blues Music,
which has a sophistication all its own and

an art all its own that captures the moment,
captures the feeling and does it persuasively

and acurately and emotionally.

>> Rip Kastaris: Because I'm an Artist I have
to express it in my own way. And when I hear

Blues Music and when I get into the whole
vibe of the band playing and people dancing and,

what a great feeling that is to share
all that.

>> Stan Street: People will say that they
can hear the music when they're looking at

the piece of artwork. I've had peole 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.

>> Harry Weber: Music actually helps put me
in the mood to create stuff. It really does

help clear my mind and it helps me focus on
what I'm creating, listening to something

that somebody else has created. I remember
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.

>> Lightening Hopkins: The Blues

>> Rip Kastaris: It seems like all the great
musicians seem to almost channel the music

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.

>> Debra Devi: Blues Music has had a huge
impact on American English. And as you dig

into the Blues you'll hear words like Doney.
If a woman's carrying, you know, heavy baskets

on her head she's doing manual labor. And
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 cool.

So I did some digging and I found that there
was a Yoruba word called Itutu that means Coolness.

But it's specifically used to describe
a piece of art that is considered to be

connected to divinity. Or a person who represents that
state of being connected.

>> Lance Williams: Blues has impacted literature
particularly on the African American side tremendously.

The great writers beginning
in the Harlem Rennaissance 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 Man

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.

>> Gil Cook: The Blues is all up and throughout
literature. Not just Black literature even.

>> Patricia Shroeder: My book, Robert Johnson
Mythmaking and Contemporary American Culture,

arose out of the research I started doing
after I saw Robert Johnson popping up everywhere.

He was a character in three novels in the
early 1990's. And then I started seeing

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 more
gaps than there are facts.

>> 'Old Brother Where Art Thou': What'd the
Devil give you for your soul Tommy.

Well he taught me to play this here guitar real good.

>> Tom Graves: The film director Martic Scorsese
I think said it best that Robert Johnson was

pure myth. But we don't know much about
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 myths

about Robert Johnson. The myth was actually
meant for another Blues man who came about

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 walked
down the road and you know the story. At midnight

on the dot, a tall Black man appeared. You
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 same
time that John Hammond of Columbia Records

decided that with this folk music boom that
was going on it was time to reissue

after twenty five or so years, Robert Johnson. They
found that Robert Johnson had recently died

but he always had Robert Johnson in mind.
He thought that Robert Johsnon was a higher

level of artist than most of the other bluesmen
from the delta. These two records just absolutely

amazed people like Bob Dylan. It went over
to England and all of the people who were

leaving traditional Jazz behind and finding
American Blues, they thought this was the

best stuff they had ever heard. It's not really
hard to understand why, that with the word

of Tommy Johnson and selling your soul to
the Devil at the Crossroads, that all the

sudden when you have this record album by
a guy named Robert Johnson. He has a song

called Crossroads. Well the associations you
can just see them connecting. And once they

connected it wouldn't let go. And so Robert
Johnson today to most people is considered

that guy who sold his soul to the Devil at
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.

>> Robert Johnson: Early this morning, ooooo,
when you knocked upon my door.

And I said hello Satan. I believe it's time to go.

>> Patricia Shroeder: 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 that; and
the legend came up. And then you start hearing

people that knew him saying, 'Oh yeah Robert
told us that. His family claimed to believe it.'

Then, when some African American Scholars
get in the mix like Julio Finn, they say 'Well, You know,

there's African Spiritual retentions
all through the Mississippi Delta and the

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, believe
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.

>> Jim O'Neal: Living Blues is the first American
Blues Magazine, which was inspired by the

fact that there were Blues Magazines in Sweden,
France, England. Why were we so far behind?

It seemed crazy to be reading about Chicago
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 becasue there was a lot of talk,
there always has been for decades now, that

Blues is dead, Blues is Dying. So Bruce Iglauer
who later started Alligator Records, was one

of the cofounders and he actually came up
with the name Living Blues. The idea was to

show that Blues was still a living tradition
among African American Musicians.

>> Patricia Shroeder: I've been a long time
teacher of Drama as well as African American

Literature and one thing I noticed as I was
running across all this literature written

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 what

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 believe

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 that,
Of Course he sold his soul to the Devil.

That's the only way any Black Person gets ahead in
America.

>> Robert Earl Price: 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 order

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.

>> Patricia Shroeder: In his play, which takes
place in the Juke Joint in Mississippi where

Robert Johnson is killed; a plane crashes
in this Juke Joint with Condoleezza Rice,

Colin Powell and Clarence Thomas in it. And
they all try to make some deal with the Devil

to get out of having to stay there; having
to be crashed. It's the price of success for

African Americans he's talking about, and
it's very, very cunning satire I think.

Robert Johnson in that appears only as a video projection. He's not even real.

>> Robert Earl Price: Some of the people that
you see in power, especially African Americans

that I see in power, I keep wondering, Okay.
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?

>> 'The Wolf of Wall Street': Yep. On a daily
basis I consume Manhattan, Long Island, and Queens,

for a month. >> Lance Williams: 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 good

director will often bring an audience to the
trough and it is up to the audience to drink

whatever water is there placed in front of
them in the sense of how they want to feel

about the particular set of circumstances
that they see the characters faced with.

>> Terence Blanchard: I've used Blues and
Jazz in, in just about everything I've done man.

You know, it started with 'Malcolm X', moving
on through just about all of Spike's stuff;

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 the
Blues.

>> Ira Newborn: 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 was
styereotyped in comedy. And in comedy,

the main thing is the jokes. If you have no jokes,
you don't really have a comedy. You have a

mildly amusing movie. So, you have to play
the jokes. You either have to support them

and then stop just before the punchline, or,
you can play through it. I'll give you an

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 this

slurpy, sexy, saxaphone. 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 someone

fell down a flight of stairs but the contrast
of her coming down like the Queen and then

Boom. And then falling. That's what's funny.
The contrast.

>> Lance Williams: 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, alot of sex scenes have
overtones that are Bluesy, overtones of music that

speaks to what people think of the Blues
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.

>> 'The Blues Brothers': Well me and the Lord,
we got an understanding. We're on a mission from God.

>> Stan Street: 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 Coast
and Curtis Salgado on the West Coast.

>> Curtis Salgado: This guy comes up to me
and goes Belushi wants to meet you. And I

said What? I'm in the middle of a song. I
told him to get lost. And finally, at the

end of the show I jump off the stage and he
goes Belushi you gotta meet him and he turns

me around and I meet this guy, and I shook
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 says,

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 town
and then I go do this show in New York called

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 to
ask Ray Charles about Guitar Slim. He goes

who's Guitar Slim and I said, You don't knot
who Guitar Slim is? And then I just whipped

out his history. And Belushi, much to his
credit, was interested. So I gave him a bunch

of ideas and gave him, uh, records. And we
made friends. I was bringing him my record collection.

>> The Blues Brothers: I said Hey Bartender. Hey Man, Looka Here. A draw one, draw two, draw three ...

>> Curtis Salgado: Hey Bartender I turned
him onto because he wanted to Jam. He wanted

to Jam Jailhouse Rock and I said That's corny,
I'm not gonna do it. I'll bring you a song,

and I brought him Hey Bartneder, by Floyd
Dixon, who lived in Oakland. So we were playing

with Floyd Dixon and I brought Belushi Hey
Bartender.

>> Ira Newborn: John Belushi was a loveable,
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 lunatic
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 Loved
the Blues. That's not like a joke.

These guys are really in love with the Blues.

>> Harry Weber: I like the whole attitude
of two fat, comic white guys playing the

Blues Brothers. It was a great thing. Beyond entertaining.

>> Bugs Bunny: What's Up Doc, what's cookin?
What's up Doc, are you lookin, for Bugs Bunny

>> Charles Chamberlain: 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 Folk Lore
where the Rabbit was always the trickster

who got out of trouble; like Brae Rabbit.
So, you know, no matter how much trouble that

he got in with Yosemite Sam or Elmer Fudd,
he still played the trick on them and

ended up living at the end of the day.

>> 'The Princess and the Frog': I know that
tune. Dipper Mouth Blues. (playing) Play it Brother

>> Terence Blanchard: It starts with the children.
When I was a kid, all of the Hanna Barbara

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.

>> 'The General Insurance Commercial': Sounds
like George has the Auto Insurance Blues. Mmmhhmm.

Here, get a quote from the General.
There down payment and monthly payments are low.

>> Stan Street: 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 know,

and steel guitar and you hear Blues in
a commercial. You hear some Blues in the Background.

>> 'Viagra Commercial': Isn't it time you
talked to your doctor about Viagra?

>> Lance Williams: 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 in.

Here's a old man singing about sex, and this pill
is marketed to old guys.

>> Debra Devi: The Blues became a way for
the rest of Americans to

become a little bit less uptight about talking about sex.

>> Dean Alger: We had this Victorian social
order, and everything was proper, and the

music was sort of right on the beat, and restrained
and so on, and then the Blues came along,

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.

>> Lance Williams: Jazz was the soundtrack
of the Red Light District.

>> Charles Chamberlain: 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 which

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 high

end brothels like Hilma Bert's house and Lu
Lu White's mohogany Hall where really rich

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 had
a bunch of taverns where alot of Jazz musicians

would hang out and so in the high end brothels
they would hire professors that were piano

players like Jelly Roll Morton or Tony Jackson
or Manuel Manetta to play parlor piano for

the women as the men were coming in. So early
Jazz and Blues was the soundtrack for the

high end brothels. And then the taverns, they
would have cutting contests all the time.

Musicians like Sidney Bechet, King Oliver,
Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong all started their

early careers in these taverns learning the
Blues and learning the early parts of Jazz.

>> Dean Alger: 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.

>> Samantha Fish: It was the first genre to
really push the envelope as far as sex goes

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.

>> Debra Devi: In the Blues there's a lot
of sexual signifying. I mean, we have just

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 boiled.

These are all forms of, of good signifying.

>> Anthony Gomes: They talked about sex and
all sorts of things which basically society

was ready to hear. But it was from an adult
perspective. When the Beatles talk about

I really wanna turn you on. Man, that was a
big line. So the Blues was really,

really gritty and in your face but it was for, for
an adult audience.

>> Lance Williams: 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, and
I think that it is one of the things that

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 of

other kind of outre way, if you will, of
expressing what they're feeling.

>> Dean Alger: 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 could

flower and blossom in the arts, in what your
feelings are and so on.

>> Hal Lansky: When Elvis appeared on Ed Sullivan
he was gyrating his hips, people thought that

was outlandish but, man you can do that in
church now.

>> Hal Lansky: The Blues guys have created
a style. They mighta, they mighta not known

what they were doing, but they have created
styles, they created music.

It's just a whole lifestyle.

>> Samantha Fish: It seems like Blues players
they just have swagger. You know, they've

got that cool effortlessness about them and
I think that Rock and Roll started taking

from that. You know that kind of cool, effortless.
Like the bad boy look.

>> Harry Weber: Heroes in anything whether
it's sports or movies or music, they'll always

have the followers that'll look at it and
say god I wanna be like that.

>> Anthony Gomes: 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, real
gritty, Mississippi. In that sort of fashion sense,

you know maybe somebody like Jack White
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 lets

say as an example. He dressed real clean because
in those times, if you were an artist and

you were and African American you had certain
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 that
real clean Blues thing. You know the brimmed hat,

the starched collar. Yes, that very much
became the Blues. It all borrowed from that

clean, Sunday Best, and you know, you still
see people, Bruno Mars today.

I mean, it's like a Soul review BB King review kind of
thing that he has going on.

>> Harry Weber: One time we got a pool of
money together and we got John Lee Hooker

to come play for us, all night, and all
he wanted was a couple hundred bucks and a

bottle of Jack Daniels. And he showed up in
the grubbiest clothes you've ever seen with a

pork pie hat, smoking camels, and playing
terrific music. I don't think anybody would

follow that fashion, you know, even though
we tried. The same token about the same time

Chuck Berry was going through the roof in
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 dressed
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.

>> Hal Lansky: 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 man said,

Mr Lansky, I don't have any money, but one
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 wanted
to come there. On Saturday mornings we were

so busy because everybody had to have a new
outfit, a new pair of shoes, a new cap

to go out on Saturday night. They wanted to look sharp.

>> Jim O'Neal: 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.

>> Theo Dasbach: When I came to America, for
the very very first time, I landed in Memphis.

And when I came to Memphis in 1978, at Beale
Street, all these buildings were blocked off, empty.

There were two clubs open in the New
Daisy Theater at night. There were two guys

sitting with a guitar, you know, and that
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.

>> Jimbo Mathus: 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 markers

to the Blues musicians in their cities. Developing
a Blues tourism.

Mississippi needs any help it can get to get any economy going.

>> Theo Dasbach: When we got here this whole
street was empty buildings. Now there's a

store down there, there's an Art Music Gallery
next door. Someone from Franklin invested

in the building across the street and there's
gonna be apartments in there so. You see that

impact of the Blues tourism. We came here
because we thought we wanted to be part of

the revitalization. I personally came here
for the Blues Music.

>> Watermelon Slim: You Know that Sixty One
highway... That's the longest road I know.

>> Bill Lucke When Morgan Freeman and I
got to be good friends in the mid nineties,

He started noticing some of the things I hadn't
really been paying particular attention to.

That is, all these tourists walking around
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.

>> Theo Dasbach: We have a lot of history
here in Clarksdale. People were born here

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 names
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, because

if they have a wonderful time, and they will
becasue 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.

>> Bill Lucket: I think we could sell the
dirt here frankly, and in fact, I've got our

manager looking in to doing just that.

>> Jim O'Neal: The Mississippi Blues Trail
was started by an organization called the

Mississippi Blues Commission, started by the
state of Mississippi, in recognition of that

fact that there were so many people already
coming to Mississippi, just on their own, to go

to CLarksdale and Greenville and the Blues
Festivals; to visit grave sites; to take pictures

of the highway signs. You know, you used to
always see tourists taking pictures of the

sign that says Yazoo City or Highway 61. It
was an economic move, of course, to promote tourism.

But it was also, I think an important
statement by the state of Mississippi that,

this Black Music which was Neglected for so
long and which was actually generated by some

of the oppressive conditions in Mississippi,
is something that should be celebrated and honored.

>> Sharon Lewis: 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

>> Sharon Lewis: 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.

>> Patricia Shroeder: 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. There

can be love stories. There can even be good
love stories. But there's never any sentiment.

It's this is the way it is and I gotta get
through it somehow.

And I think that's a very powerful message.

>> Debra Devi: 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 you

can't explain it but it's about soul. And
it's about this experience that as human beings

we're all striving for, you know. So that's
why I think it's so powerful and so important

and why we're so incredibly lucky to have
it.

>> Samantha Fish: 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 in.

If you phone it in no one's gonna buy it.
Nobody believes it. So, to be a good performer

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.

>> Terence Blanchard: It's a very interesting
thing, the power of that music because it

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.

>> Vencie Vernado: It's about love. It's
about shortages. It's about pain. It's about

death. It's about gains. It's about losses.
It deals at the core of human emotion.

>> Dick Waterman: 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.

>> Curtis Salgado: It's not massively popular
anymore. I'm afraid it's gonna go the way

of like Dixieland. I love Dixieland but it's
a novelty now.

>> Jimbo Mathus: 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.

>> Curtis Salgado: Music now is like fast
foods. It's even faster. Now everybody and

their dog can make a record. You can make
a record in your apartment with just the right

tools and that's really good on one hand.
On the other hand, it makes a lot of crap

out there and you have to, you have to kind
of go through the crap to find the real good stuff.

Somebody with talent. Somebody that
actually is putting out something meaningful.

>> Jimbo Mathus: 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.

>> Dick Waterman: Who's after BB? Who follows
BB? Well, nobody really.

>> Danielle Schnebelen: I hear, you know,
keep the Blues alive. It's not dead. People

don't understand that it is alive and well
and just because the older generation is

getting older, you know, that's life. That's
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.

>> Theo Dasbach: It's very alive in Europe.
You see that in my country where I'm originally

from, the Netherlands, has now a Dutch Blues
foundation. I think it's their third year.

That's based on what the Blues Foundation
here does in America. A lot of people say

the Blues is dying out and I'll say, no it
will never die out, it never did so,

that already is a proven fact.

>> Samantha Fish: 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.

>> Samantha Fish: There's a lot of young people
coming up playing it. I know people worry

about the future of the Blues. You know, the
fans aren't gonna be there. I just think

it takes people to a certain age, to find
it. I didn't grow up listening to it.

I had to find it on my own. I just think it
takes people time to find it. I don't think

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 mixing
with another genre or something to kind of

put it out in the forefront again. You know,
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 of where

they started out. So I mean, I don't think
it's going anywhere.

I think it's gonna stand the test of time. It has so far.

>> Lance Williams: The Blues has not gone
away. It's taken different forms. Some people

have shied away from the Blues because they
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.

>> Cheney Sims: I think that there's this
huge revival right now of Americana music

and Folk music which is really exciting. I
think that Blues still gets alittle bit lost

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 songs

that are inspired by their experience. You
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 same

type of stuff that Heritage Blues Orchestra
is doing which is focusing on, on our roots,

and playing homage to the music that we came
from but also putting our take and our story

and our spin on it. Um, which is what the
Blues is all about. It's about telling your story.

>> Bill Sims Jr: 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 even

sing who are considered Blues Men, you know.
And in the old days, when African Americans

had the quality control, you had to sing.
If you didn't sing you were a sideman.

>> Harry Weber: I think the future is simply
gonna be one of two things. Preservation,

and then, let it evolve into various forms
of Jazz, and, by the way, evolve into various

forms of Jazz that will then become tomorrows
Classical Music.

And I think thats, that's definitely in the cards.

>> Lance Williams: Time moves on, and, these
days, it moves on at warp speed.

And so if you look at what's happening with
the Blues, I can honestly tell you that there

are some very very talented musicians who,
if they're not saying I'm playing the Blues,

they're certainly using the essence of the
Blues to voice their particular passion about the music.

>> Debra Devi: There are artists like Gary
Clark Jr and the North Mississippi Allstars

who are kind of reinvigorating the Blues for
a younger generation.

>> Junior Mack: Blues is something that, that
never really goes away. You know, like a wave

in the ocean. It rises and then it falls and
it rises and then it falls. There have been

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 and
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 again.

Cause that's, uh, pretty much what it's been
doing.

>> Bill Sims Jr: Selfishly I think Heritage
Blues Orchestra is the Future of the Blues.

>> Heritage Blues Trio: Get right church and
lets go home. Get right church and lets go home.

Get right church. Get right church.
Get right church and lets 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.

>> Brian Curran: Aw Glory Glory, Hallelujia,
when I lay my burden down. Ah Glory Glory, Hallelujia,

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 Hallelujia, when I lay my burden down. Oh Glory Glory Hallelujia, when I lay my burden down.

Lay My Burden Down. Thank you so much!