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The Blues Society 2023
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00:00:28Transcription by CastingWords
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00:01:27You felt the need to get this music out there and you felt the need to create a space for
00:01:35younger generations to both see this music and have access to this music and imagine a new world.
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00:06:28belong to a culture, to black people.
00:06:40While we tend to think of the blues as being born out of slavery,
00:06:43it's important to remember that the blues is born out of post-Reconstruction
00:06:46and strict segregation and sharecropping.
00:06:55I think the blues comes from impossible situations.
00:07:16By 65, Memphis was essentially pretty barren.
00:07:21There were no art galleries, just a small group of artists, poets.
00:07:27Some musicians.
00:07:29Those people would be attracted to whatever it was here in Memphis.
00:07:38John McIntyre, the sculptor, put together a coffee house called The Bitter Lemon.
00:07:46It originally started with a dream up in Michigan.
00:07:51I came to Memphis.
00:07:52I was teaching at the Art Academy.
00:07:57I found a building for 150 bucks out on Poplar.
00:08:01I had a little bit of money saved up.
00:08:04We had a little stage in a corner.
00:08:06It was about four or five inches off the floor.
00:08:10That's all the stage was.
00:08:12So that's how it got started.
00:08:14And we had one singer.
00:08:21Okay, this is reel number two in the Memphis State Oral History Project,
00:08:25documenting jazz and blues in Memphis with Furry Lewis.
00:08:29Reel number two.
00:08:35I woke up this morning with a sound of rain.
00:08:38Around the curve of the bag and the train.
00:08:41Our little father was a hobo John.
00:08:43He's a good old hobo, but he dead gone, dead gone.
00:08:49Good old hobo, but he dead gone.
00:08:56I'm on the road again.
00:09:01I'm not born east on the road again.
00:09:05I'm going to leave Memphis to spread the news.
00:09:08The Memphis women don't wear no shoes.
00:09:11I got it written in the back of my shirt.
00:09:13I'm a Nashville East and I don't have to wait.
00:09:15I don't have to wait.
00:09:21I'm Nashville East and I don't have to wait.
00:09:25When I first heard Furry Lewis, that was just a complete transformative situation.
00:09:31And I got it and showed me his tuning right there in the Bitter Lemon.
00:09:34Once I heard it, I ran home and put my guitar in the tuning.
00:09:38I started making that sound and I said, oh, there is a guy.
00:09:53We were going around the country on our way to San Francisco in our Volkswagen bus.
00:09:58So cliched now.
00:10:00And stopping in different cities on the way and finding out where the clubs were,
00:10:04if there was a coffee house or something.
00:10:07Memphis was one of the stops.
00:10:16And we really liked it there.
00:10:18We stayed there for a little while.
00:10:20We were very interested in the blues.
00:10:23And we were friends with a bunch of people who were blues fanatics.
00:10:27And they would go to the south and collect 78 RPM records from the old neighborhoods
00:10:32trying to preserve this music that hadn't really got a fair shot at being preserved.
00:10:38I don't think many Memphians actually called themselves hippies.
00:10:45Memphis was more of a bohemian culture.
00:10:52It had more of a beat philosophy to it than it did a hippie philosophy.
00:10:57Until we got LSD, of course.
00:10:59And then, you know, that changed the whole game.
00:11:07I had just got out of high school.
00:11:09Oh, it was a colorful time.
00:11:12Well, maybe the LSD brought the colors out and everything.
00:11:16But we were definitely tripping daily.
00:11:18We weren't just tripping once in a while.
00:11:20We were tripping all the time.
00:11:25So it was a giant mass experiment.
00:11:28And in the beginning of it, people really did do it to seek some knowledge, some connection.
00:11:34It was the opposite of dulling your senses.
00:11:37It was the opposite of that.
00:11:39He was waking up.
00:11:43We came to feel that the people who had developed this style from which rock and roll music really came,
00:11:49we felt that they were being forgotten.
00:11:52So for us, it was kind of like, well, here is this guy who has zero money and lives in
00:11:58a shotgun shack.
00:11:59But I see him as someone who has created a movement.
00:12:04I see him as someone who has given us a precious gift.
00:12:19Blues music developed in rural areas of the South in the 19th century.
00:12:23Memphis, at the top of the Delta, became the headquarters for early bluesmen.
00:12:30Musicians found plentiful work on Beale Street.
00:12:32While labels like Brunswick and Vocalin recorded Furry Lewis and other blues artists.
00:12:38By the 1960s, the public found blues recordings difficult to obtain.
00:12:44And most of the players were presumed lost.
00:12:48I ain't been lost.
00:12:50I been right here.
00:12:52Ask anybody.
00:12:56People like Furry Lewis, Booker White, and Gus Cannon were living among us,
00:13:02but in many ways they had been neglected and forgotten.
00:13:07And there was this whole resurgence then in country blues.
00:13:19So from 1920 to, let's say, 1934, you have vaudeville blues, which is popular music.
00:13:25Around 1925, you start to see that blues start to evolve and change and become more of a single, solo,
00:13:31male, guitar-oriented blues.
00:13:33And that's considered country blues.
00:13:35Innumerable people were coming south looking for the people that they'd rediscovered on 78 records.
00:13:43And they were mostly white. They were all white, as a matter of fact.
00:13:47They'd come down, go into the delta, but mostly they stopped here.
00:14:02Even the birds were blue.
00:14:05On the scene at about this time was a New Yorker named Bill Barr, one of the strange breed of
00:14:11northern musicologists like Sam Charters and the Lomaxes,
00:14:15who spend their lives looking for the blues without ever quite finding it.
00:14:23You know, Bill Barr was part of a group of people who were known for collecting 78 RPM records.
00:14:29And they would make field trips to the south.
00:14:34We spent a lot of time playing music and hanging out.
00:14:38You know, like going to the people's houses, we'd go see Reverend Robert Wilkins or Furry Lewis or people who
00:14:43lived in the Memphis area,
00:14:44spend time with them, Nathan Beauregard, play music with them.
00:14:49I mean, in hindsight, it was probably really silly and kind of shocking to them to have these hippie characters
00:14:54coming and hanging out.
00:14:58For us, it was kind of like, well, we love this music and we went there to find this music,
00:15:03to promote this music.
00:15:06We decided to have a blues festival and we wanted to get all the old blues guys and get them
00:15:13a chance to make some money.
00:15:14And we wanted to call it the Memphis Country Blues Society.
00:15:20The idea for the festival was to pay homage to the originators of this musical style that was, you know,
00:15:28influencing such a large movement in rock music at the time.
00:15:33Bill Barr rented the shell.
00:15:35The only money involved was my session check from Cadillac Man, $65.
00:15:42And Barth had a lump of hash the size of a softball.
00:15:47And between that hash and my $65, we put on the first Memphis Country Blues Festival.
00:15:56So, you know, the principals of the Blues Festival, the ones who signed the papers, were myself, Bill Barr, Randall
00:16:03Lyon, and Bob Palmer.
00:16:06That was a funny group of people. I mean, Bob Palmer was, you know, already a writer and a musician.
00:16:12And he came from Little Rock to be there.
00:16:18The entire show was put together within a group of musicians, photographers, artists, writers, and friends working together as a
00:16:27Memphis Country Blues Society.
00:16:29And Randall Lyon was a crazy artist.
00:16:52Lots of people helped. It was a community thing.
00:16:57I always figured that was the best thing that could happen to you.
00:17:00To be caught up with a group of people who have this heroic enthusiasm, you know, for what they're doing.
00:17:06I mean, it was like, that's beautiful.
00:17:09We had what you would call eroici furori.
00:17:13We were in poetic furor.
00:17:19We were amateurs. We were definitely amateurs at work.
00:17:23You know, just skimming by, really, in terms of the legalities and everything else.
00:17:42We sold ads in the program to local firms and used the money to print tickets and posters as well.
00:17:48And the newspapers and even a congressman spoke out in favor of the show.
00:17:58This was kind of a new idea.
00:18:02You know, blues music in a shell.
00:18:05It had only been for symphonic music before then.
00:18:10Before 66, there was no integration out here.
00:18:15There was not a sense of safety here for black people.
00:18:21I mean, that place is not mine.
00:18:26So there's a generation who never felt invited to the park.
00:18:33So they announced this first festival in 1966.
00:18:37And just before the festival, an imperial grand wizard from the Ku Klux Klan held a rally at Overton Park.
00:18:48That was the world, this world of inequality and blind, rabid hatred of blacks by whites.
00:18:58And in the same place, they drew about a thousand people to this blues festival.
00:19:15There were middle-aged and elderly couples, true-cut executive types, college students, teenagers, and all the freaks in town.
00:19:24We were all young. We were all confused. Vietnam was this big sack of shit hanging over all our heads.
00:19:31And nobody knew from one day to another if they or their friends were going to be around.
00:19:38You just didn't know. So everything was okay to experiment with.
00:19:42You know, everybody was welcome. There was nobody excluded from anything.
00:19:46You'd see guys in uniform there. And they were fine. You know, they were fine with it. We were fine
00:19:52with them.
00:19:56Almost everybody was there.
00:19:59Furry Lewis, Reverend Robert Wilkins, Booker White, Piano Red was there.
00:20:05Fred McDowell was there.
00:20:06Furry Gold, tell them Grand Central Station, that's the only place you know.
00:20:11Anybody ever ask you, which way of Furry Gold?
00:20:19Tell them Grand Central Station, that's the only place you know.
00:20:27Say my Mondays woman live on Beely Main. And my Tuesdays woman bring me pocket chains. And my Wednesdays woman
00:20:37bring me daily news. And my Thursdays woman buy my socks and shoes. And fair my Fridays woman put it
00:20:45on the shelf.
00:20:46And my Thursdays woman give me the devil she'll ever catch me. Yeah. My Thursdays woman give me the devil
00:20:53she'll ever catch me. Yeah.
00:20:57Say I got a sunny woman cook my something to eat. I got a woman with a good daughter in
00:21:02my house every day in the week.
00:21:12And as a black musician, we was going places that our peoples couldn't go because they wanted to hear us
00:21:19play. It was all white facilities. Couldn't nobody come see us by them, you know.
00:21:25But back on the shelves there, since it was a wide open thing. You know, it wasn't an enclosed thing.
00:21:31It was open so everybody got a chance to really come and enjoy the music.
00:21:35So we went too, couldn't get across. Look where my yeah, it was lost, lost, lost. Yeah.
00:21:41Told you movie, give me cool, coolie. środ of ice cream, dig soap and water.
00:21:48Water keep it clean. It won't get again let's stay, what it be, cause we leave.
00:21:56But you'll see, okay, go away. Give me some coolie.
00:22:00Yeah. Chocolate ice cream, dig soap and water.
00:22:04If you were on stage, and you look out in the audience, and you saw the unity, and everyone caring
00:22:12for each other, even watching over the kids, whether it was your child or someone else's child, you made sure
00:22:19that kid was okay. It was a wonderful and a beautiful thing.
00:22:25A lot of people, when they look at the 60s now, they see everybody stoned out of their minds at
00:22:29Woodstock, you know, playing in the mud and dancing to the music. So, yeah, that was part of what went
00:22:35on, definitely. But people did it with a motivation. I think most people, maybe when it gets to be 500
00:22:44,000 people in a meadow, the motivation slips.
00:22:48Listen, whenever you want to act good.
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00:25:15I didn't do any playing music around Memphis until just regularly, about 1928 I was recording records.
00:25:25What did you record for?
00:25:26I don't know, I was in Brunswick.
00:25:31Were they recorded here in Memphis?
00:25:33I recorded here in Memphis.
00:25:34I recorded in the auditorium twice.
00:25:36Peabody Hotel once.
00:25:40Is it your son that sometimes plays with you?
00:25:42Yes, my son.
00:25:45When I was small, we'd go to church and I'd stand up and play with him, yeah.
00:25:49My little old guitar and stuff.
00:25:52Before my dad was playing the blues, I was too young to travel anything with him during
00:25:59that time, back in the 20s.
00:26:00Back in the 30s and 20s, I wasn't even born, so he was traveling then.
00:26:27When we went to the Shell, sat down and started hearing all these people I'd never heard before,
00:26:33didn't even know who they were.
00:26:35I looked at my friend and I said, all these guys are doing this, just playing all this
00:26:39old New Orleans music.
00:26:41And this guy looked at me like I was absolutely crazy, and he says, New Orleans?
00:26:47Where do you think this music came from?
00:26:50He said, those are all handy tunes.
00:26:52Those are all blues.
00:26:53That music came from Memphis.
00:26:55I realized that what was happening here was really important.
00:27:00These men were geniuses.
00:27:02They were American heroes.
00:27:05They should be, as Jim would put it, in other more advanced societies,
00:27:09they would have been worshipped as shamans.
00:27:15These two fringes of society came together, and mainstream society took notice,
00:27:22basically because they had to.
00:27:24It was kind of like a big announcement, we're here.
00:27:42They got no special.
00:27:48We spent half the year in Memphis doing the blues festivals and half the year in New York.
00:27:58That's how I remember it.
00:28:05Bob, Bill and myself started the Insect Trust then, the worst named band in history.
00:28:14Gradually other people came in.
00:28:26I always think of it as like an early on art rock band.
00:28:29You know, it's like jazz, blues, everything mixed in.
00:28:35We needed to work as a band, and New York was the place to do that.
00:28:39We did that for six months of the year.
00:28:41And then we'd go down to Memphis and put the festival on for six months.
00:28:44Bob Homer worked for the magazines and for the New York Times eventually and all that as a writer.
00:28:50We were motivated to then use some connections that we got in New York to promote the festival.
00:29:00The Memphis Blues Festival continued for five years.
00:29:06In 1969, we changed the name to the Memphis Country Blues Festival.
00:29:13Well, the first two festivals were really homemade.
00:29:16Silly things were going on and people were being very creative.
00:29:19And to me, that was the sweetest time.
00:29:23John McIntyre did the poster.
00:29:26Bill Barth kept coming and adding people to it.
00:29:28He had to have to squeeze another name in somewhere.
00:29:31That's why it's so cluttered.
00:29:34Bill Barth grabbed it and I chased him down the street trying to get it back.
00:29:37But he said, you've got to get to the printers.
00:29:41I was married to Bob Palmer and I wasn't a musician and I wasn't really an organizer.
00:29:49I did the drawings for the program.
00:29:52They said, take tickets.
00:29:55I took tickets.
00:30:02We had all these props.
00:30:04This huge cardboard cutout of this sitting Buddha.
00:30:07It was about 20 feet tall.
00:30:09So all these people like Furry and Nathan Beauregard were playing in front of this huge golden Buddha.
00:30:14And they were like Stingepop trees and motorcycles.
00:30:19All and all alone.
00:30:24Oh boy, we're a long ways from home.
00:30:30What good is your food if you say it won't run.
00:30:37What good is your food if you say it won't run.
00:30:43What you need with a woman, all I see won't come.
00:30:49What you need with a woman, all I see won't come.
00:31:12Mike Vernon could produce anything.
00:31:15He could produce a classical orchestra.
00:31:18He did David Bowie's first album, but what he loved was the blues.
00:31:25When he met these blues musicians, I remember his eyes were welled up.
00:31:31Mike was in heaven.
00:31:34I actually arrived the day before the festival and was almost immediately whisked off to Nesbitt,
00:31:40where I met Joe Calicut, his wife, and their milk cow.
00:31:44It was a wonderful experience.
00:31:49The festival was a bit of a rush.
00:31:52We really didn't know what was going to happen next.
00:31:57We were never completely professional.
00:32:00They became busier and a little more stressful.
00:32:03It was fun.
00:32:04It was fun to say, oh, Steve Allen's on the phone or whatever.
00:32:07You know, it was just fun and we were in our little hippie apartment in Hoboken with a phone on
00:32:12the wall, you know,
00:32:14pretending like we were wheeler dealers or whatever, which we were not.
00:32:17But that's how people start.
00:32:18That's what starts it.
00:32:20You just go as if.
00:32:22A lot of the money stuff was literally counting dollar bills and paper bags and giving them out,
00:32:26but I can tell you that it was done honestly and done from that perspective, and that's what happened.
00:32:39It was also sort of like a school, because in the process of enjoying each other,
00:32:46we learned about each other's cultures and how to take the music and blend it together to where you had
00:32:56an amazing sound.
00:33:05I was the emcee and I played music with Booker White.
00:33:12There was a camaraderie and a humanity that got shared that is above and beyond the ordinary.
00:33:22It was transcendental in a sense.
00:33:26Next, you're going to hear from Mr. Booker White and my own self.
00:33:35So our first selection would be, Hello Central, give me 49.
00:33:49Hello Central, hello Central.
00:33:53Will you please now give me 49.
00:34:08I got a little woman, she that left me.
00:34:12Oh, you know the cloud that little woman she can't even found.
00:34:17My baby, she left me.
00:34:21She left five to the summertime.
00:34:24I didn't mind.
00:34:25I didn't mind that woman going, but I just hate to see you.
00:34:28Leave me before I come and find out, Sam.
00:34:32If you find that woman, I don't.
00:34:35Will you please now come on 309.
00:34:41Yeah, I had the boy in a guy a little and I didn't get to ride the season on it.
00:34:46So, they gave me a little time down there.
00:34:50A lot of times, what you do is the way you do it and the way the justice you get.
00:34:56You don't get justice all the time on things.
00:34:58And so, don't care how good you're, sometimes you get killed for doing right.
00:35:03And sometimes, people will let you go for doing wrong.
00:35:12I was taking Booker White from Memphis to Little Rock for a concert.
00:35:16And it was just me and him because what did I care?
00:35:19I knew what I was doing, you know, but we were pulled over by the cops
00:35:23because it wasn't seemingly that I would be driving this elderly gentleman of color to this concert.
00:35:30So, I kind of, you know, I was pretty, I was pretty bold in those days.
00:35:36I just told the guy, look, this is what I'm doing.
00:35:39Everybody was prejudiced.
00:35:40My parents were prejudiced.
00:35:41It wasn't just a southern thing.
00:35:45There were all kinds of marijuana and stuff like that.
00:35:47They could have busted us and sent us all to jail for six years.
00:35:51And they would come in and bust us because we were black and white.
00:35:54At a party, playing music and just handing a guitar.
00:35:57And it was lots of fun.
00:36:05I think what happens is that we were like, let's be friends despite power dynamics.
00:36:13Because there's not slavery anymore and so we can, but no, that's, it's a, it's a really difficult thing.
00:36:21There is always a disconnect that complicates cross-racial friendships, collaborations,
00:36:30because that power dynamic is always sitting there in that room in the deep context of the music,
00:36:37which is violence and pain and hurt.
00:36:58Ferry Lewis, he lived in Memphis most of his life.
00:37:02He lost his leg working on the Illinois Central Railroad, so he got a job sweeping the streets.
00:37:13Well, one thing when you, when you write the blues and what you be thinking about,
00:37:17you be blue and you ain't got nothing harder to think about.
00:37:19You're just already blue and just gonna write it.
00:37:25He did that for, you know, 20 years.
00:37:27And then he retired.
00:37:31The city said you don't qualify for retirement because you have a wooden leg.
00:37:36And actually, with a wooden leg, you're not supposed to have the job you have.
00:37:41So we don't know whether or not you can really get retirement.
00:37:45I got the walking blues, I'm going to get my walking shoes.
00:37:52In February 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, some 1,300 sanitation workers began a strike.
00:38:02This wasn't an ordinary strike.
00:38:09We felt like we would have to let this city know that because we were sanitation workers, we were human
00:38:17beings.
00:38:19The signs that we were cared, said that I am a man, that we was going to demand to have
00:38:26the same dignity and the same courtesy any other citizen of Memphis has.
00:38:35But let me say to you tonight that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for
00:38:45the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.
00:39:01Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis,
00:39:08Tennessee.
00:39:09Police have issued an all points bulletin.
00:39:12A curfew which requires all citizens to be off the streets of the city of Memphis by 7 p.m.
00:39:18tonight and remain off the streets until 5 a.m.
00:39:27The bar caves, we were in the studio the night that the assassination occurred.
00:39:34We had to spend the night at the studio because posted right outside of that studio, you know, the National
00:39:40Guard.
00:39:46That moment is still so fraught and we're like living it over and over and over again.
00:39:51It is a hinge and at any moment it could fall back onto something else that is painful and hurtful
00:39:59just like that moment.
00:40:01It was the sore that totally separated, even more so, the community.
00:40:10Glory, glory, hallelujah, when I leave my burden down, glory, glory, hallelujah.
00:40:22First you had the civil rights movement, but afterwards the black power movement came in and there was a big
00:40:27generational shift.
00:40:29While ultimately the blues has been respected within the black community, it came off a little bit old hat
00:40:35and it was a little bit different in terms of the way that the protest was being articulated and disseminated
00:40:42within the music community.
00:40:43So I think that that led to a lot of younger African-American people drifting away from the blues.
00:40:52The blues was all around me. It was always, always in the background.
00:41:04Me hating the blues is kind of like a fish hating water.
00:41:14I felt a little embarrassed, a little twinge of something there that I didn't even understand.
00:41:22So, you know, I told myself that I hated it because I thought the blues was sad.
00:41:29It was poor.
00:41:31So these things in the blues, they were not abstract to me, right?
00:41:38I was not separate from them, right?
00:41:43But I felt like I needed to be.
00:41:48I think seeing other people consume the blues also made me turn away.
00:41:55There were people like Ferri Lewis on the ground that totally peeled the scales off a lot of my children's
00:42:00eyes.
00:42:03Now, hell, I want everybody out there, I want to pick yourself because I just really want to call you
00:42:10that.
00:42:11Let me call you, sweetheart.
00:42:19He's one of the finest gentlemen I've ever met in my life.
00:42:24I would say Ferri Lewis is the most important male figure in my life, other than my father and my
00:42:29grandfather.
00:42:48Let me call you, sweetheart.
00:42:48Won't you let me call you, sweetheart?
00:42:52I'm in love with you.
00:42:56Let me hear you whisper that you love me too.
00:43:05Keep your love light gleaming in your eyes so blue.
00:43:12Let me be able to carry you man.
00:43:16Let me call you sweetheart, I'm in love with you.
00:43:27Party honk, Jeff, baby
00:43:29On the side of the tree, hoody
00:43:38Honk, Jeff, baby
00:43:39On the side of the tree
00:43:41As we go marching on
00:43:45Take your time, guitar
00:43:47Sing that long for me
00:43:48Glory, glory, hallelujah
00:44:05I think the reason that Furry tolerated me playing with him
00:44:09Is that I didn't get in the way
00:44:11My job was to make him sound good
00:44:14And which he already sounded good
00:44:16He didn't need me
00:44:17My thing was to boost his thing up
00:44:21Because there wasn't any doubt
00:44:23Who the master was
00:44:26Because I was learning from him
00:44:28I'm fighting
00:44:37Barth and I went down at one point
00:44:40Trying to find Joe Calicott
00:44:41Because Barth was such a big fan of his records
00:44:44And we heard he was living down there in North Mississippi
00:44:47We got put in jail overnight the first time we went looking
00:44:50But the next weekend, we found it
00:44:53When you see me laughing, I'm keeping from crying
00:44:55Say you gonna know, gonna know my mind
00:45:02When you see me laughing, laughing, keep on
00:45:09While I'm going to the racetrack
00:45:12See my pony run
00:45:14When someone is gonna save you
00:45:17Some, baby, you don't know
00:45:21I was in my house, you know, looking for this guy Joe Calicott
00:45:23And we never heard of Joe Calicott
00:45:25And I thought, that sounds like a made-up name
00:45:27You know, my mom was at the door
00:45:31And I saw him, I thought, that looks kind of funky
00:45:33You know, kind of suspicious, you know
00:45:35You know, we'd never seen anybody with long hair really
00:45:37So I was standing back there with a shotgun
00:45:40You know, you're not in no way
00:45:41Well, I'm here
00:45:44I don't hardly know what to do
00:45:47I'm up here amongst all these folks
00:45:53For the whole congregation
00:46:11That changed my life, you know
00:46:12I heard him playing music over there
00:46:14And started paying attention, you know
00:46:16He was like my best friend, you know
00:46:19And mentor, you know, and teacher
00:46:24And he was cool
00:46:25You know, just the coolest cat you ever wanted to be, you know
00:46:29His last words, he was telling me about
00:46:31You know, drive for yourself and the other fella too
00:46:35Because I was getting my driver's license, you know
00:46:38And that was the thing he told me, you know
00:46:40It meant watch out for the other people
00:46:42But when he died, he rolled over in the bed
00:46:46And said, can you be a good boy
00:46:47And drive for yourself and the other fella too
00:46:50And that was the last words his wife told me he said
00:46:53I'll win some money
00:46:54I'm gonna save you some
00:46:59You told me that you'll love me free
00:47:05And you told me that you'll love me
00:47:16Bill Barth was staying at McIntyre's Beatnik Manor Flophouse
00:47:20He started canvassing for records with the money he'd earned
00:47:24Modeling nude for classes at the Memphis College of Art
00:47:30One time, he thought he heard an old record playing inside a house
00:47:33So he knocked on the front door
00:47:36Inside, he saw a wisened little gnome of a man playing guitar and singing
00:47:43Nathan Beauregard
00:47:44Some said he was over a hundred
00:47:46Turns out they found his draft card recently
00:47:49And he was only in his seventies back then
00:47:52Go to jail about Spoonful
00:47:55Go to jail about Spoonful
00:48:01Spoonful
00:48:01You go to jail, bar
00:48:05Ah, find my papa bar
00:48:07Oh, find my papa bar
00:48:11Spoonful
00:48:12Find my papa, my Spoonful
00:48:19Time but a little bit stutter
00:48:22Time but a little bit stutter
00:48:25Time but a little bit stutter
00:48:27Right, a little bit stutter
00:48:30dah
00:48:33No, be에요, Feng wam
00:48:43How did you have to pick up the guitar did you drop out
00:48:45Did you hear somebody?
00:48:46When I first started laying on a little old banjo,
00:48:48you seen the little round thing?
00:48:50Banjo, yeah.
00:48:51Fire strings on it.
00:48:52I see, uh-huh.
00:48:53But you don't recall when they first started
00:48:55going crazy about them blues, do you?
00:48:57Yeah, that's what most people was after now,
00:48:59the blues.
00:49:00Oh, you don't know that, yeah.
00:49:02Everyone you meet now,
00:49:04mostly he's wanting the blues.
00:49:05Well, you just can't tell now
00:49:07Was on a sweet woman, my
00:49:10Well, you can't tell
00:49:16What's on a woman's mind
00:49:22When you think she's loving you
00:49:24Yeah, she's putting you down
00:49:27A man had been born a slave.
00:49:31He's over 100 years old,
00:49:32and he's still playing guitar and singing.
00:49:35He was 98.
00:49:36No, he's 100, I think it was figured out,
00:49:39he was 102 years old.
00:49:42We definitely know that he wasn't 100 years old
00:49:45at the time he was rediscovered.
00:49:47This was a real person,
00:49:49this wasn't a gnome.
00:49:51No, he was a real human being,
00:49:52had experiences in Mississippi,
00:49:55in Ashland,
00:49:57did a lot more than play music.
00:50:00He did go blind,
00:50:01but he wasn't blind at birth.
00:50:02We know that now.
00:50:04So the problem with Nathan Beauregard
00:50:06in saying that he's 100 years old
00:50:07is that it's not true,
00:50:09and it's a falsehood.
00:50:10And if you repeat this over and over,
00:50:13eventually those become stereotypes.
00:50:15He was there to entertain them,
00:50:17show them the blues,
00:50:19be a representative of
00:50:21this African-American culture and history,
00:50:24but only a representative
00:50:25of what they perceived it as
00:50:27and what they knew.
00:50:30It's difficult to create a real history
00:50:34when we've got these colorblind histories,
00:50:37ones that both erase
00:50:38the structures of racism
00:50:40and then also erase
00:50:42the histories that got us to this point.
00:50:46To them,
00:50:48you don't really get the depths of it.
00:50:51You don't feel the depths of it
00:50:53because it hurts.
00:50:54Mr. Beauregard and John Wilkins,
00:50:57I mean,
00:50:57they were sharing their souls.
00:51:01Everybody just loved these old guys.
00:51:04And it's kind of a Southern attitude
00:51:06to be these cute old black men,
00:51:08you know,
00:51:08these cute old black folks.
00:51:12Some of it,
00:51:13you know,
00:51:13quite frankly,
00:51:14some of it was paternalistic
00:51:15and we didn't even realize it at the time,
00:51:18but it was.
00:51:25There's a subtlety
00:51:26to what we might think of
00:51:30as appropriation.
00:51:31It's really an erasure.
00:51:32It is an obliteration
00:51:35so that those people
00:51:36don't even exist in the landscape.
00:51:43With the blues song,
00:51:45that's no way to get along.
00:51:46And after he started
00:51:47to come on the other side,
00:51:49the religious side,
00:51:50my daddy kept the same music,
00:51:53but he wrote the song
00:51:54Proud of the Sun.
00:51:57Proud of the Sun.
00:51:58Proud of the Sun
00:51:59Left home by himself
00:52:01Home by himself
00:52:05Proud of the Sun
00:52:06Left home by himself
00:52:08And Rolling Stones
00:52:09recorded that song
00:52:11on the blues style.
00:52:14The four boats
00:52:16from Scorsbury
00:52:17Started down the road
00:52:18Started down the road
00:52:21With all the heads
00:52:22Started down the road
00:52:25Went out in this world
00:52:27Where God only knows
00:52:29And the last word
00:52:31Our man I heard him say
00:52:35Last word
00:52:36Our man I heard him say
00:52:39We get a little royalties
00:52:40off his music
00:52:41There's seven of us
00:52:42But it ain't what it should be.
00:52:44I don't think none of them
00:52:47Got treated right
00:52:49Because they didn't get
00:52:50They didn't get the money
00:52:51They should have gotten
00:52:53You know, and their music
00:52:54is still
00:52:56My dear, their music
00:52:57is still going
00:52:57They taking advantage
00:53:00Because people didn't know
00:53:02You know, and people
00:53:03still taking advantage
00:53:04You know, if you don't know
00:53:05They're still doing it.
00:53:08And the poor boy
00:53:10Got all he had
00:53:11And he started on
00:53:12Down the road
00:53:13Started on
00:53:14Down the road
00:53:14He got all he had
00:53:16And he started on
00:53:17Down the road
00:53:20Got all he had
00:53:21And he started on
00:53:22Down the road
00:53:271969 marked the
00:53:28150th birthday
00:53:30Of the city of Memphis
00:53:32Bill Barth, who had remained
00:53:34The blues show's prime mover
00:53:36Suggested that the celebration
00:53:37Include an expanded version
00:53:39Of the blues show
00:53:40And the city
00:53:42Desperate for good publicity
00:53:43Since the death
00:53:44Of Martin Luther King
00:53:45Agreed
00:53:50And so we ended up
00:53:52Over at Robert Wilkins' house
00:53:54Because we needed to talk
00:53:55To him about the show
00:53:56The Prodigal Son
00:53:57And The Rolling Stones
00:53:58And this and that
00:54:01I remember Barth
00:54:02Being on Reverend Wilkins' phone
00:54:04In the house
00:54:04Going, yes, I'm calling
00:54:07Collector of Robert Wilkins' house
00:54:08Yes, I'll hold
00:54:09And then he got somebody
00:54:11On the phone
00:54:12And started telling his tale
00:54:14A few minutes later
00:54:16I'm back out on the porch
00:54:18And Barth comes out
00:54:20And says, excuse me
00:54:22Reverend Wilkins
00:54:22But Mick Jagger
00:54:24Wants to talk to you
00:54:25On the telephone
00:54:27And Robert Wilkins
00:54:28Doesn't get up
00:54:29He doesn't get up
00:54:29Out of his chair
00:54:30Or anything
00:54:30He kind of just leans
00:54:32Over and says
00:54:33Tell the boy
00:54:34I'll talk to him
00:54:35In person
00:54:37And so that put
00:54:39The thing in the works
00:54:41For the Rolling Stones
00:54:42To come
00:54:43And do a benefit
00:54:45For the old blues guys
00:54:46For the
00:54:47Through the Memphis Country
00:54:48Blues Society
00:54:48For our show
00:54:50And they said
00:54:51If you guys can
00:54:52Get the city together
00:54:53To get us plane tickets
00:54:55We'll come and play
00:54:56For Union Scale
00:54:58Which was like
00:54:5950 bucks a man
00:55:00You know
00:55:00Or something like that
00:55:02And so when we went
00:55:03Back to the city of Memphis
00:55:04Back to Brandon Davis
00:55:06He just freaks out
00:55:07It was just too much
00:55:09For him
00:55:10All he could see
00:55:12Was trouble
00:55:12Trouble
00:55:13Trouble
00:55:13Trouble
00:55:40There were two great
00:55:41White vans
00:55:42Full of television equipment
00:55:44Behind the show
00:55:44And strange men
00:55:46Wearing khaki shorts
00:55:48Blue knit golf shirts
00:55:49And little yellow
00:55:50Canvas hats
00:55:52Bultzing around
00:55:53A forest of cameras
00:55:54And microphones
00:55:55Muttering to each other
00:55:56In alien accents
00:56:00Yeah I'm driving away
00:56:03It's brighter than day
00:56:06City behind
00:56:08I'm burning my mind
00:56:09I'm driving away
00:56:11It's brighter than day
00:56:13It's brighter than day
00:56:14It's brighter than day
00:56:14I'm burning my mind
00:56:15Barth had been trying to talk to people on the city council
00:56:19Get some support from them
00:56:21Something
00:56:21And we're getting nowhere
00:56:22And getting nothing from them
00:56:24And then they realized that the Goodyear blimp was coming overhead
00:56:29And PBS was filming
00:56:30And once the city was aware of that
00:56:33They had a banner
00:56:35That they hung up backstage
00:56:37I mean the show had almost already started
00:56:40When somebody's up there doing that
00:56:44I'm going to Brownwood now
00:56:46Y'all like to have me play Brownwood?
00:57:01And people came from Europe
00:57:04From all over the country
00:57:05Not in massive numbers
00:57:07But in numbers
00:57:10Along with the people
00:57:11From the region of the south
00:57:15So my brother Tommy and I
00:57:17Headed south
00:57:18We drove down in this Volkswagen
00:57:19Driving down
00:57:20I'd recognized all the local signs
00:57:22I mean
00:57:23I was going to Brownsville
00:57:24I'm going to take that right-hand road
00:57:25I mean everything about it
00:57:26I mean you know
00:57:28Tommy and I just laughed at ourselves
00:57:30Quoting blues lyrics back and forth
00:57:34And that woman I love
00:57:36And she's got great long curly hair
00:57:39That year
00:57:40Having a three-day festival
00:57:42It really expanded somewhat
00:57:43I mean before that
00:57:45We really hadn't been able to draw too much
00:57:47Of the whole Memphis soul music thing
00:57:48But that was a whole different circuit
00:57:54So even though we are considered a soul artist
00:57:57When it's all said and done
00:57:58It all really comes from blues and gospel
00:58:04Anyway
00:58:04When you hear all this music coming up
00:58:07It's all in your bones and stuff like that
00:58:09Thank you very much
00:58:11This time it's a great pleasure for me to introduce
00:58:14A fast coming rising group
00:58:18Ladies and gentlemen
00:58:20A great big hand
00:58:22For the upcoming Wild Kids
00:58:50Because at that time we didn't have a vocalist
00:58:53So you know
00:58:54As you can see
00:58:57I was trying to do the vocals
00:58:58So that was kind of special
00:59:02To say the least
00:59:05Got to, got to, got to, got to get it
00:59:08All the earth's in the lovin'
00:59:11Get it ready
00:59:12Get it ready
00:59:13Get it ready for me
00:59:15Yeah
00:59:21Somebody help me
00:59:38It was like 105 degrees
00:59:41And they came out
00:59:42And the cameras went up
00:59:43And everything got ready
00:59:45And they did their whole set
00:59:47And it was like brutal
00:59:49Doing, because there was dancing
00:59:50And everything involved
00:59:51With their whole set
00:59:54And at the end of it
00:59:55The camera guy said
00:59:56Okay, let's do it again
00:59:57We got our levels
01:00:02It was a rude awakening for us
01:00:04And the realities of what goes on
01:00:15That was unusual for the blues festivals
01:00:17To have the barquets on stage
01:00:19Because the barquets are cool
01:00:21You know what I mean
01:00:22They're, they're new cool
01:00:25At 69 I was running away from home
01:00:28I grew up in West Memphis
01:00:29And at that time
01:00:31Parents would let you roam for miles
01:00:33And I roamed the Memphis a lot
01:00:35There was a 25 cent bus
01:00:36But I remember
01:00:36Wichita was happening that summer
01:00:39And I wanted to be there
01:00:41You know
01:00:41It was like the summer of love
01:00:43And I'm 15 years old
01:00:44So I left home
01:00:45And I thought if I came to Overton Park
01:00:48I could get a ride
01:00:51I started hanging out
01:00:52With the hippies that were here
01:00:56I literally felt for the first time
01:00:58I had found my tribe
01:01:11The only way that you can sing blues like this
01:01:14Is to actually feel them
01:01:16Deep down inside the soul
01:01:17Ladies and gentlemen
01:01:19Book of White
01:01:25I remember, you know
01:01:27Marcia holding the umbrella
01:01:29With such a beautiful juxtaposition
01:01:31You know, it was like
01:01:32Well said in terms of
01:01:33Whoever staged that
01:01:36I was a dancer
01:01:38I probably wanted to dance
01:01:40With the umbrella
01:01:41And they probably
01:01:42Made me sit down
01:01:44With the umbrella
01:01:48In this photo
01:01:49You see Marcia
01:01:50I don't need nobody
01:01:52Protecting me
01:01:53You know
01:01:54And I certainly don't need
01:01:55Anybody protecting me
01:01:56From these black people
01:01:57Because look
01:01:58I'm helping them
01:01:59They've helped me
01:02:00I'm helping them
01:02:01You know
01:02:02And it was an inversion
01:02:04Of what society understood
01:02:12I mean my parents
01:02:14Grew up in Jim Crow, Mississippi
01:02:17Like they had actual
01:02:18For real deal
01:02:19Segregation
01:02:21One of my great uncles
01:02:24Was actually killed
01:02:25By a white man
01:02:26Because he confronted
01:02:28Him about saying something
01:02:29To his daughter
01:02:30In a store
01:02:32These things are very real to me
01:02:35I don't know how I will fail
01:02:38I love this time
01:02:40I told my mother
01:02:42I don't know
01:02:43Take two
01:02:44Counting out of the bill
01:03:03She went out now
01:03:05Thank you
01:03:06My ladies and gentlemen
01:03:08And I know
01:03:10Lord and I know
01:03:12That my time is long
01:03:181969 yesterday
01:03:21So I love it
01:03:24Darling
01:03:34What time can I get a train going
01:03:37to the land?
01:03:41It slips
01:03:42I don't know
01:03:43I don't know
01:03:45If you know
01:03:46I'm going to
01:03:47I know
01:04:00You
01:04:00Can't
01:04:02Maybe
01:04:02I'll
01:04:02You
01:04:07Have
01:04:32Young man coming on now, comes from Houston, Texas.
01:04:40His name is Johnny Winner.
01:04:46I have an announcement to make now.
01:04:49I'm going to have Mrs. Mary Palmer, Bob Palmer's wife, speak to you for a minute.
01:04:54She's been taking tickets here for the last couple of days, spending her days and nights
01:04:58up there at the gate, and she has something she wants to say to you.
01:05:03800 people paid admission here.
01:05:06There are well over 3,000 people out there.
01:05:10This is a benefit, people.
01:05:13We try to make a little money for these people who have made such great music in your great
01:05:19city all of their lives.
01:05:21It's your city, it's your music, you should be proud of them both, and damn it, why can't
01:05:29you even pay for your own tickets, people?
01:05:34I'd like to pass a hat for these people who've never had any recognition all their lives.
01:05:41It's their music you're listening to.
01:05:44It's their music you're loving.
01:05:46Now please, please people, for them.
01:05:53My one and only public speech.
01:06:00There were people climbing the walls to get in, and I think there were a huge bunch of people
01:06:08there that wanted to see Johnny Winter and didn't care about the blues people at all.
01:06:35By now, there must be in the world a million guitar virtuoses, but there are very few
01:06:42real blues players.
01:06:45The reason for this is that the blues demand such dedication.
01:06:50This dedication lies beyond technique.
01:06:52It makes being a blues player something like being a priest.
01:06:57Virtuosity in playing blues licks is like virtuosity in celebrating the mass.
01:07:02It is empty.
01:07:03It means nothing.
01:07:05Johnny Winter can play rings around Furry Lewis.
01:07:07The comparison is ludicrous.
01:07:10I ain't gonna look, but I take my time.
01:07:12But when Furry Lewis, at Winter's age, sang My Mother's Dead, My Father's Just Well's-to-Beat,
01:07:18he was singing his life, and that is blues.
01:07:23I saw my gin, I saw the street, the police rumble to my woman's gate, she come to the door,
01:07:29sitting all the head and said, Furry you up until my fallen dead.
01:07:32A
01:07:33.
01:08:11In the early 60s, young black and white musicians based in and around Memphis embarked on an
01:08:17effort to revive interest in that city's blues tradition. For their efforts, some of these white
01:08:23performers have been exposed to the criticism that only black people can sing the blues with
01:08:28any authenticity. This is an arguable position, but it's one that I don't think stands up. In 1969,
01:08:36it would be difficult to maintain, for me anyway, that melancholia and the ability to express it
01:08:42musically is the exclusive property of the black man.
01:08:52It's ours. It's ours. You know? Just simply because it's ours. It's our legacy.
01:09:20It's our legacy.
01:09:38Things I've done here, most likely when I was supervising over here, I kept the grass cut.
01:09:56Oh, I feel great, I feel great.
01:09:58Back in the play, plus I got my three daughters with me this time.
01:10:01And everything, it feels great to come back and redo it again.
01:10:05Brings back old memories.
01:10:07How my daddy sat there and talked, and all those guys, you know.
01:10:12My God, I remember coming here years ago, years ago.
01:10:16A young guy, a real young guy there.
01:10:17I'm not going to see it.
01:10:28The blues is about having nothing and creating joy.
01:10:33Putting the joy and the survival on record.
01:10:38We need that right now.
01:10:40People need that.
01:10:42Live home by himself, by himself.
01:10:47Live by yourself, by himself.
01:10:51Live by yourself, by himself.
01:10:53Live by yourself, live home by himself.
01:11:02All I could see when I was too young and too ignorant was that the pain and the sadness was
01:11:10mine.
01:11:11And I didn't want it.
01:11:12But I had to get that to get the joy of it.
01:11:16To get the survival of it.
01:11:19And I'm not going to let it go.
01:11:38We all sit down and eat and all be merry and glad, all be merry and glad.
01:11:44We all sit down and eat and we all be merry and glad.
01:11:48We all sit down and eat and we all be merry and glad.
01:11:53That'll be a way to get along.
01:11:56Let's do it!
01:11:57Let's do it!
01:11:58Let's do it!
01:11:59Let's do it!
01:12:20All right.
01:12:23Now this..
01:12:28This song here now has been delegated to seize my grave kept clean.
01:12:35Oh, one kind favor I ask to you.
01:12:41One kind favor I ask to you.
01:12:46Just one kind favor I ask to you.
01:12:52Just see if my grave kept clean, my heart stopped beatin' and my hand got cold.
01:13:04My heart stopped beatin' and my hand got cold, it won't long before I then shake it grow.
01:13:21Oh, two white horses in a line, two white horses in a line.
01:13:31That red, two white horses in a line, they gon' take me to my buried ground.
01:13:58Oh, two white horses in a line, two white horses in a line, two white horses in a line.
01:14:19Have you ever heard your callin' sound?
01:14:34Oh, two white horses in a line, two white horses in a line, two white horses in a line.
01:14:53Every length in my Jesus' name.
01:14:58Every length in my Jesus' name.
01:15:02Every length in my Jesus' name.
01:15:08One kind favor I ask to you.
01:15:13One kind favor I ask to you.
01:15:17Just one kind favor I ask to you.
01:15:22Just see if my grave kept clean.
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