Original subtitles

(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!