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[light music playing]

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[blues music playing]

[♪]

[woman] A party had developed. People were mingling,

and you could sense that people were very different from one another.

It was really beautiful.

And it's hard for people to recreate that moment,

the moment in time that this was.

[♪]

[Zandria Robinson] You felt the need to get this music out there,

and you felt the need to create a space

for younger generations to both see this music

and have access to this music and imagine a new world.

[♪]

[♪]

[audience applauding]

[announcer] Memphis, despite the claims of New Orleans and St. Louis,

is the home of the blues.

[audience applauding]

Beale Street is where the blues began.

[♪]

[James Alexander] My mother took me down to Handy Park on Beale Street.

It had to be in the late '50s.

I mean, I wasn't even in music or anything like that.

But we went to see Bobby "Blue" Bland and BB King,

and they were performing on a flatbed truck.

You know, I didn't realize that back at the time, but that particular performance,

my mother taking me down on Beale Street

and seeing their performance would have a hell of a effect on me.

[man] No one can tell you why Memphis is as magical as it really is.

It's as magical as the Egyptian place from whence it took its name.

[man 2] All the hell Memphis has done is taught people how to talk, dance, and play music.

You know? And we still do that.

[man 3] Memphis and this area has a rich musical heritage.

They have a jewel here, and they don't really realize it,

and they don't really cherish it,

and they don't really study the history that much.

This city and this area has been a hotbed for years,

has one of the richest histories of any music city in the world.

[Jamey Hatley] There is this kind of erasure that happens in Memphis again and again.

Memphis is the city of good abode.

For who?

[♪]

[man 4] Blues had been recorded in Memphis since the 1920s, but the city had never embraced it.

The city was adamant about keeping the Black people in their place.

[man 5] Growing up in the 1940s and '50s in Memphis, the racial divide was virtually absolute.

There were very limited circumstances in which

white people and Black people were together.

Parents didn't really approve of that kind of music,

so you'd go to bed at nine or ten o'clock at night and turn on the radio,

and there would be Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, people like that,

who had made it into Chicago and had become electrified.

[blues music playing]

[Henry Nelson] Growing up, here's what the blues was.

We had front yard concerts. It was a neighborhood thing.

[♪]

That's what you heard every Saturday, all day Saturday.

Like, the blues, to me, it was entrenched into a kind of community.

[Nelson] Now, my parents grew up, that's all they listened to, was the blues.

♪ You know that I'd rather be The devil ♪

♪ I'd rather be the devil ♪

♪ Than to be that woman man ♪

[Nelson] The blues was not necessarily to be shared.

You know, it was something that you brought into your home.

It was something that you went to the juke joint to listen to.

[woman singing]

It was a very private thing.

It was something that, um, belonged

to a culture, to Black people.

♪ The woman that I loved ♪

[Dom Flemons] While we tend to think of the blues as being born out of slavery,

it's important to remember that the blues is born out of post-Reconstruction

and strict segregation and sharecropping.

I think the blues comes from impossible situations.

♪ He done got her back again ♪

♪ You know I laid down Last night ♪

♪ Oh, I laid down last night ♪

[man 6] By '65, Memphis was essentially pretty barren.

There were no art galleries,

just a small group of artists, poets, some musicians.

Those people would be attracted to whatever it was here in Memphis.

[man 7] John McIntire, the sculptor,

put together a coffee house called The Bitter Lemon.

[John McIntire] Originally, it started with a dream up in Michigan.

I came to Memphis. I was teaching at the Art Academy.

I found a building for 150 bucks out on Poplar.

I had a little bit of money saved up.

We had a little stage in a corner.

It was about four, five inches off the floor.

That's all the stage was.

So that's how it got started. And we had one singer. [laughs]

[student] Okay, this is reel number two

in Memphis State Oral History project

documenting jazz and blues in Memphis with Furry Lewis.

Reel number two.

[playing "Natural Born Eastman"]

♪ I woke up this mornin' With the sight of rain ♪

♪ Around the curve was A passenger train ♪

♪ Under the boiler Was old hobo John ♪

♪ He was a good ol' hobo But he's dead and gone ♪

♪ Dead and gone ♪

♪ Good ol' hobo But he's dead and gone ♪

♪ I'm on the road again ♪

♪ I'm a natural born Eastman On the road again ♪

♪ I'm gonna leave Memphis To spread the news ♪

♪ The Memphis women Don't wear no shoes ♪

♪ I got it written In the back of my shirt ♪

♪ I'm a natural born Eastman I don't have to work ♪

♪ I don't have to work ♪

♪ I'm a natural born Eastman I don't have to work ♪

[Zeke Johnson] When I first heard Furry Lewis,

that was just complete transformative situation.

And I got him to show me his tuning right there at The Bitter Lemon.

Once I heard it, I ran home and put my guitar in that tuning.

I started making that sound, and I said, "Oh...

there is a God."

[♪]

[Nancy Jeffries] We were going around the country on our way to San Francisco

in our Volkswagen bus-- so clichéd now--

and stopping in different cities on the way and finding out where the clubs were,

if there was a coffee house or something.

Memphis was one of the stops.

♪ I'm like, baby ♪

♪ Please don't go The way I love you... ♪

And we really liked it there. We stayed there for a little while.

We were very interested in the blues,

and we were friends with a bunch of people who were blues fanatics,

and they would go to the South and collect 78 RPM records

from the old neighborhoods trying to preserve this music

that hadn't really gotten a fair shot at being preserved.

[John Larkin] I don't think many Memphians actually called themselves hippies.

Memphis was more of a bohemian culture.

It had more of a beat philosophy to it

than it did a hippie philosophy.

Until we got LSD, of course.

And then, you know, that changed the whole game.

[funky music]

[Marcia Hare] I had just got out of high school.

Oh, it was a colorful time. [laughs]

Well, maybe the LSD brought the colors out in everything.

But we were definitely tripping, like, daily.

We weren't just tripping once in a while.

We were tripping all the time.

[psychedelic music]

[Jeffries] So it was a giant, mass experiment,

and in the beginning of it, people really did do it

to seek some knowledge, some connection.

It was the opposite of dulling your senses.

It was the opposite of that.

It was waking up.

We came to feel that the people who had developed this style

from which rock and roll music really came,

we felt that they were being forgotten.

So for us, it was kind of like, "Well, here is this guy

who has zero money and lives in a shotgun shack,

but I see him as someone who's created a movement.

I see him as someone who's given us a precious gift."

["Parchman Farm Blues" by Bukka White playing]

♪ Judge give me life This mornin', down on... ♪

[Bob Palmer] Blues music developed in rural areas of the South in the 19th century.

Memphis, at the top of the Delta,

became the headquarters for early bluesmen.

Musicians found plentiful work on Beale Street,

while labels like Brunswick and Vocalion

recorded Furry Lewis and other blues artists.

By the 1960s, the public found blues recordings difficult to obtain.

Most of the players were presumed lost.

[Joe Callicott] I ain't been lost.

I've been right here.

Ask anybody.

[man] People like Furry Lewis, Bukka White, and Gus Cannon were living among us,

but in many ways, they had been neglected and forgotten.

[man 2] And there was this whole resurgence, then, in country blues.

[♪]

[Flemons] So from 1920 to, let's say, 1934,

you have Vaudeville blues, which is popular music.

Then around 1925, you start to see that blues start to evolve and change

and become more of a single solo male guitar-oriented blues,

and that's considered country blues.

Innumerable people were coming south,

looking for the people that they'd rediscovered on 78 records.

[Nelson] And they were mostly white-- they were all white, as a matter of fact.

They'd come down, go into the Delta,

but mostly they stopped here.

[muffled humming]

"Even The Birds Were Blue."

On the scene at about this time was a New Yorker named Bill Barth,

one of the strange breed of northern musicologists

like Sam Charters and the Lomaxes

who spend their lives looking for the blues without ever quite finding it.

[Jeffries] You know, Bill Barth was part of a group of people

who were known for collecting 78 RPM records,

and they would make field trips to the South.

We spent a lot of time playing music and hanging out.

You know, like, going to the people's houses.

We'd go see Reverend Robert Wilkins or Furry Lewis,

other people who lived in the Memphis area, spend time with them,

Nathan Beauregard, and play music with them.

I mean, in hindsight, it was probably really silly and kind of shocking to them

to have these hippie characters coming and hanging out.

For us, it was kind of like, well, we love this music,

and we went there to find this music, to promote this music.

We decided to have a blues festival,

and we wanted to get all the old blues guys

and give them a chance to make some money,

and we wanted to call it the Memphis Country Blues Society.

[Jeffries] The idea for the festival

was to pay homage to the originators of this musical style

that was, you know, influencing such a large movement in rock music at the time.

[Jim Dickinson] Bill Barth rented the Shell.

The only money involved was my session check from Cadillac Man, $65,

and Barth had a lump of hash the size of a softball.

And between that hash and my $65,

we put on the first Memphis Country Blues Festival.

[♪]

[Jeffries] So, you know, the principles of the Blues Festival,

the ones who signed the papers,

were myself, Bill Barth, Randall Lyon, and Bob Palmer.

That was a funny group of people.

I mean, Bob Palmer was, you know, already a writer and a musician,

and he came from Little Rock to be there.

[♪]

[Bob Palmer] The entire show was put together within a group of musicians,

photographers, artists, writers, and friends,

working together as a Memphis Country Blues Society.

[Jeffries] And Randall Lyon was a crazy artist.

[mystical music]

[♪]

But lots of people helped. It was a community thing.

Well, I just figured that was the best thing that could happen to you,

to be caught up with a group of people who have this heroic enthusiasm,

you know, for what they're doing, I mean, it's, like, that's beautiful.

We had what you would call "[indistinct] furorae."

We were in poetic furor.

[♪]

[Jeffries] We were amateurs. We were definitely amateurs at work.

You know, just skimming by, really,

in terms of the legalities and everything else.

[♪]

[♪]

[Bob Palmer] We sold ads in the program to local firms

and used the money to print tickets and posters as well.

And the newspapers and even a congressman spoke out in favor of the show.

[man] This was kind of a new idea.

You know, "Blues music? In a Shell?"

It had only been for symphonic music before then.

[Nelson] Before '66, there was no integration out here.

There was not a sense of safety here for Black people.

I mean, that place is not mine.

So there's a generation who never felt invited to the park.

[♪]

[Robert Gordon] So they announced this first festival, 1966.

And just before the festival,

an Imperial Grand Wizard from the Ku Klux Klan

held a rally at Overton Park.

That was the world,

this world of inequality

and blind, rabid hatred of Blacks by whites.

And in the same place,

they drew about a thousand people to this blues festival.

[overlapping chatter]

[Bob Palmer] There were middle-aged and elderly couples,

crew-cut executive types, college students, teenagers,

and all the freaks in town.

[man] We were all young. We were all confused.

Vietnam was this big sack of shit hanging over all our heads,

and nobody knew from one day to another if they or their friends were gonna be around.

You just didn't know. So everything was okay to experiment with.

You know, everybody was welcome.

There was nobody excluded from anything.

You'd see guys in uniform there. And they were fine.

You know, they were fine with it. We were fine with them.

[♪]

[man] Almost everybody was there.

Furry Lewis, Reverend Robert Wilkins, Bukka White.

Piano Red was there, Fred McDowell was there.

♪ ...Furry go tell 'em Grand Central Station

♪ That's the only place You know ♪

♪ Anybody ever ask you Which way Furry go ♪

♪ Tell 'em Grand Central Station ♪

♪ That's the only place You know ♪

♪ Say, my Monday woman Live on Beale and Main ♪

♪ And my Tuesday woman Bring me pocket change ♪

♪ And my Wednesday woman Bring me daily news ♪

♪ And my Thursday woman Buy my socks and shoes ♪

♪ And then my Friday woman Puts it on the shelf ♪

♪ The Saturday woman Give me the devil ♪

♪ If she ever catch me here ♪

♪ My Saturday woman ♪

♪ Give me the devil If she ever catch me here ♪

♪ Say, I got a Sunday woman Who cooks me somethin' to eat ♪

♪ I got a woman, good God ♪

♪ Her mouth every day In the week ♪

♪ Oh, Lord, I got a woman ♪

[crowd applauding, cheering]

And as a Black musician, we was going places that our peoples couldn't go

because they wanted to hear us play.

It was all-white facilities.

Couldn't nobody come see us but them, you know?

But the fact over the Shells there, since it was a wide-open thing,

you know, wasn't an enclosed thing, it was open,

so everybody got a chance to really come and enjoy the music.

["Keep It Clean" by Sid Selvidge playing]

[indistinct]

♪ Give 'em a Coca-Cola ♪

♪ Lemon soda Chocolate ice cream ♪

♪ Take soap and water Lord, to keep it clean ♪

[loud cheers and applause]

♪ Give 'em a Coca-Cola ♪

♪ Lemon soda Chocolate ice cream ♪

If you were on stage

and you'd look out in the audience

and you saw the unity

and everyone caring for each other--

Even watching over the kids,

whether it was your child or someone else's child,

you made sure that kid was okay.

It was a wonderful and a beautiful thing.

[Marcia Hare] A lot of people, when they look at the '60s now,

they see everybody stoned out of their minds at Woodstock,

you know, playing in the mud and dancing to the music.

So yeah, that was part of what went on, definitely.

But people did it with a motivation.

I think most people,

maybe when it gets to be 500,000 people in a meadow,

the motivation slips.

[light conversation din]

[♪]

[♪]

[applause]

[♪]

[audience applauding]

[Rev. Robert Wilkins] Thinking about how good the Lord was to me.

Spared me all these many years,

and yet in pretty fair health and strength.

And yet able to tickle these strings.

Now, I want to thank the Lord for it.

Now, I said, "Lord, I ain't got enough tongue to thank you."

I said, "How am I gon' do it?"

He said, "Wilkins, take the guitar

and make the guitar say, 'Thank you, Jesus.'"

Hold on a minute.

Then I took the guitar with this...

♪ Thank you, Jesus Thank you, Jesus ♪

♪ Thank you, Jesus, thank you Jesus, thank you, Jesus ♪

♪ Thank you, Jesus Thank you, Jesus ♪

♪ Thank you, Jesus, thank you Jesus, thank you, Jesus ♪

♪ Thank you, Jesus Thank you, Jesus ♪

[♪]

[♪]

[Rev. Robert] I didn't do any playing music around Memphis until--

just regular until about 1928, I started recording records.

[interviewer] Who did you record it for?

[Rev. Robert] Oh, this was the Brun-- What was it, Brunswick?

[interviewer] Were they recorded here in Memphis?

[Rev. Robert] I recorded here in Memphis.

Recorded in Auditorium twice and Peabody Hotel once.

[interviewer] Is it your son that sometimes plays?

[Rev. Robert] Yes, my son.

[Rev. John Wilkins] When I was small, we'd go to church

and I stand up and play with him, yeah, with my little old guitar and stuff.

[laughs]

It was my dad playing the blues.

I was too young to

travel to anything with him during that time, back in the '20s.

Back in the '30s and '20s, I wasn't even born.

So, you know, he was traveling then, you know.

["In the Army of the Lord" by Rev. Robert Wilkins]

♪ Got my war clothes on ♪ ♪ In the army of the Lord ♪

♪ Got my war clothes on ♪

♪ In the army of the Lord ♪

♪ Got my war clothes on ♪

♪ In the army Of the Lord ♪

♪ Got my war clothes on ♪

♪ In the army Of the Lord ♪

[Brian Guinle] When we went to the show, sat down

and started hearing all these people I had never heard before,

didn't even know who they were.

I looked at my friend, I said, "All these guys are doing

is just playing all this old New Orleans music."

And this guy looked at me like I was absolutely crazy.

And he says, "New Orleans?

Where do you think this music came from?"

He said, "Those are all handy tunes.

Those are all blues. That music came from Memphis."

[Mary Lindsay Dickinson] I realized that what was happening here

was really important.

These men were geniuses. They were American heroes.

They should be-- As Jim would put it, in other, more advanced societies,

they would've been worshiped as shamans.

[man] These two fringes of society came together,

and mainstream society took notice, basically because they had to.

It was kind of like a big announcement: "We're here."

[crowd cheering, applauding]

[man] See you next year!

[♪]

♪ Ain't got no Special ride ♪

[Jeffries] And we spent half the year in Memphis doing the blues festivals

and half the year in New York.

That's how I remember it.

[street din]

Bob, Bill and myself started The Insect Trust then.

The worst named band in history.

Gradually other people came in.

[♪]

♪ Within the little honeycomb ♪

I always think of it as, like, an early on art rock band.

You know, it's, like, jazz, blues, everything mixed in.

♪ There's a man Down the way ♪

We needed to work as a band,

and New York was the place to do that.

Did that for six months of the year,

and then we'd go down to Memphis

and put the festival on for six months.

Bob Palmer worked for the magazines

and for The New York Times eventually

and all that as a writer.

We were motivated to then use some connections

that we got in New York to promote the festival.

[Bob Palmer] The Memphis Blues Festival continued for five years.

In 1969, we changed the name to

the Memphis Country Blues Festival.

[Jeffries] Well, the first two festivals were really homemade.

Silly things were going on and people were being very creative.

And to me, that was the sweetest time.

John McIntire did the poster.

Bill Barth kept coming adding people to it,

and I'd have to scribble another name in somewhere.

That's why it's so cluttered.

Bill Barth grabbed it and I chased him down the street trying to get it back from him,

but he said, "I gotta get it to the printers."

I was married to Bob Palmer, and I wasn't a musician,

and I wasn't really an organizer.

I did the drawings for the program.

They said, "Take tickets." I took tickets.

[♪]

[Bob Palmer] We had all these props.

This huge cardboard cutout of this sitting Buddha.

It was about 20 feet tall.

So all these people like Furry and Nathan Beauregard

were playing in front of this huge golden Buddha.

And there were like stage pop trees and motorcycles.

["Great Long Ways From Home" by Mississippi Joe Callicott playing]

♪ Oh, boy, We're long ways from home ♪

♪ What good is your food If your sink won't run ♪

♪ What good is your food If your sink won't run ♪

♪ What you need with a woman ♪

♪ Call her, And she won't come ♪

[marker scraping]

[Mike Vernon] Seymour Stein was looking out for projects,

and he said to me, "I tell you what,

there's a very interesting festival that's going to happen in Memphis during July

featuring Bukka White and Furry Lewis."

[chuckles] It was as if I was on the plane already.

[Seymour Stein] Mike Vernon could produce anything.

He could produce a classical orchestra.

He did David Bowie's first album.

But what he loved was the blues.

When he met these blues musicians,

I remember his eyes welled up.

Mike was in heaven.

[Vernon] I actually arrived the day before the festival

and was almost immediately whisked off to Nesbit

where I met Joe Callicott, his wife, and their milk cow.

It was a wonderful experience.

The festival was a bit of a rush.

We really didn't know what was gonna happen next.

[distant audience applause]

[Jeffries] We were never completely professional.

They became busier and a little more stressful. It was fun.

It was fun to say, "Oh, Steve Allen's on the phone," whatever.

You know, it was just fun, and we're in our little hippie apartment in Hoboken

with the phone on the wall, you know,

pretending like we're wheeler-dealers or whatever, which we were not.

But that's how people start. That's what starts it. You just go as if.

A lot of the money stuff was literally

counting dollar bills in paper bags and giving them out.

But I can tell you that it was done honestly

and done from that perspective, and that's what happened.

[♪]

It was also sort of like a school,

because in the process of enjoying each other,

we learned about each other's cultures

and how to take the music and blend it together

to where you had an amazing sound.

[♪]

[Jimmy Crosthwait] I was the MC, and I played music with Bukka White.

There was a camaraderie and a humanity that got shared

that is above and beyond the ordinary.

It was transcendental in a sense.

[announcer] Next you're going to hear

from Mr. Bukka White and my own self.

[Bukka White] So our first selection would be "Hello Central, Give Me 49."

[vibrant blues plays]

♪ Hello, Central Hello, Central ♪

♪ Would you please now Give me 49 ♪

♪ Hello, Central Hello, Central ♪

♪ Would you please now Give me 49 ♪

♪ I got a little woman She done left me ♪

♪ [indistinct] ♪

♪ My baby, she left me ♪

♪ And left Our little son crying ♪

♪ I didn't mind That woman going ♪

♪ But I just hate to see her Leave five children crying ♪

♪ I said If you find that woman ♪

♪ Would you please, ma'am Tell her I called ♪

♪ 309 ♪

[Bukka White] Yeah, well, I had to burn a guy a little.

I didn't get the right decision on it.

and so they gave me a little time down there.

But, you know, a lot of times it's not what you do,

it's the way you do it, and the way the justice you get--

you don't get justice all the time on things, and so...

Don't care how good you are, sometimes you get--

you know, you get killed for doing right

and sometimes people will let you go for doing wrong.

[♪]

[Jeffries] I was taking Bukka White from Memphis to Little Rock for a concert,

and it was just me and him, because what did I care?

I knew what I was doing, you know.

But we were pulled over by the cops, because it wasn't seemly

that I would be driving this elderly gentleman of color to this concert.

So I kind of-- You know, I was pretty--

I was pretty bold in those days.

I just told the guy, "Look, this is what I'm doing."

Everybody was prejudiced. My parents were prejudiced.

It wasn't just a southern thing.

[Bukka] I mean, all kinds of marijuana and stuff like that.

They could've busted us and sent us all to jail for six years,

and they would come in and bust us because we were Black and white at a party

playing music and just having a good time, and it was lots of fun.

[♪]

[Robinson] I think what happens is that we were like,

"Let's be friends despite power dynamics.

'Cause there's not slavery anymore, and so we can--"

But no, that's-- it's a-- it's a really difficult thing.

There is always a disconnect

that complicates cross-racial friendships, collaborations,

because that power dynamic is always sitting there in that room,

in the deep context of the music,

which is violence and pain and hurt.

-[dark tone] -[projector whirring]

[man] Furry Lewis, he lived in Memphis most of his life.

He lost his leg working on the Illinois Central Railroad.

So he got a job sweeping the streets.

[rumbling]

[Furry Lewis] Well, one thing, when you write the blues and what you be thinking about,

you be blue and you ain't got nothing harder to think about.

You just already blue just go and write it.

[man] He did that for, you know, 20 years and then he retired.

The city said you don't qualify for a retirement because you have a wooden leg,

and actually, with a wooden leg, you are not supposed to have the job you have.

So we don't know whether or not you can really get retirement.

♪ I got the walkin' blues ♪

♪ I'm going get My walkin' shoes ♪

[reporter] In February 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee,

some 1,300 sanitation workers began a strike.

This wasn't an ordinary strike.

♪ Lord knows I don't know what to do ♪

[James Douglas] We felt like we would have to let the city know

that because we were sanitation workers, we were human beings.

The signs that we were carrying said that 'I am a man'

and we was gonna demand to have the same dignity

and the same courtesy any other citizen of Memphis has.

[Martin Luther King Jr.] But let me say to you tonight

that whenever you are engaged in work

that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity,

it has dignity and it has worth.

[crowd cheering]

[tense music]

[reporter 1] Dr. Martin Luther King,

the apostle of non-violence in the civil rights movement,

has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.

Police have issued an all-points bulletin.

[reporter 2] A curfew, which requires all citizens

to be off the streets of the city of Memphis by 7:00 p.m. tonight

and remain off the streets until 5:00 a.m.

[Alexander] The Bar-Kays, we were in the studio

the night that the assassination occurred.

We had to spend the night at the studio

because posted right outside of Stax Studio was, you know, the National Guard.

[Hatley] That moment is still so fraught,

and we're, like, living it over and over and over again.

It is a hinge, and at any moment it could fall back

onto something else that is painful and hurtful just like that moment.

[Bob Palmer] It was the sore that totally separated, even more so, the community.

♪ Glory, glory ♪

♪ Hallelujah ♪

♪ When I lay My, my burden down ♪

♪ Glory, glory ♪

[Flemons] First you had the Civil Rights movement,

but afterward, the Black Power Movement came in,

and there was a big generational shift.

While ultimately the blues has been respected within the black community,

it came off a little bit old hat

and it was a little bit different in terms of the way that the protest

was being articulated and disseminated within the music community.

So I think that that led to a lot of younger African-American people

drifting away from the blues.

[Hatley] The blues was all around me.

It was always, always in the background.

♪ You know that I'd rather be the devil ♪

Me hating the blues is kind of like a fish hating water.

♪ Than to be that brother man ♪

I felt a little embarrassed,

a little twinge of something there that I didn't even understand.

So, you know, I told myself that I hated it

because I thought the blues was sad.

It was poor.

So these themes in the blues, they were not abstract to me, right?

I was not separate from them, right?

But I felt like I needed to be.

I think seeing other people consume the blues also made me turn way.

[Sid Selvidge] There were people like Furry Lewis on the ground

that totally peeled the scales off a lot of white children's eyes.

Ah, hell, I want... everybody out there

I want pictures here because I just really wanna call you that.

Let me call you sweetheart.

[light blues]

[Selvidge] He's one of the finest gentlemen I've ever met in my life.

I would say Furry Lewis is the most important male figure in my life,

other than my father and my grandfather.

[playing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart"]

♪ Won't you let me Call you sweetheart ♪

♪ I'm in love with you ♪

♪ Let me hear you whisper That you love me too ♪

♪ Keep your love light Gleaming ♪

♪ In your eyes so blue ♪

♪ Let Furry Call you sweetheart ♪

♪ I'm in love with you ♪

[crowd cheering, applauding]

♪ Oh they hung Jeff Davis On the sour apple tree ♪

[♪]

♪ Oh they hung Jeff Davis On the sour apple tree ♪

♪ As we go marching on ♪

Take your time with guitar, sing it long for me.

Do a Glory, Glory, Hallelujah.

[playing "Battle Hymn of the Republic"]

[♪]

[Lee] I think the reason that Furry tolerated me playing with him

is that I didn't get in the way.

My job was to make him sound good, you know?

And which he already sounded good. He didn't need me.

My thing was to boost his thing up, you know?

'Cause wasn't any doubt, you know, who the master was,

you know, because I was learning from him.

[distant conversation]

[Bob Palmer] Barth and I went down at one point trying to find Joe Callicott

because Barth was such a big fan of his records.

And we heard he was living down there in North Mississippi.

We got put in jail overnight the first time we went looking.

But the next weekend we found him.

["You Don't Know My Mind" by Mississippi Joe Callicott playing]

♪ Blow, gonna blow my mind ♪

♪ And when ya see me Laughin' ♪

♪ I'm laughin' To keep from cryin' ♪

♪ I'm going to the racetrack See my pony run ♪

♪ Win some money I'm gonna save you some, baby ♪

These two long-haired guys came to our house, you know, looking for this guy Joe Callicott,

and we had never heard of Joe Callicott, you know.

And I thought, "That sounds like a made-up name," you know?

My mom was at the door and I saw 'em, I thought, "Man, it looks kind of funky."

You know, kind of suspicious, you know?

You know, we'd never seen anybody with long hair, really.

So I stayed back there with a shotgun, you know? [laughs]

[Joe Callicott] Well, I'm here. I don't hardly know what to do.

[audience laughs]

I'm up here amongst all these folks

before the whole congregation.

[♪]

♪ I've been around A very long time ♪

♪ Well, I've been around A very long time ♪

[Brown] It changed my life.

I'd heard him playing music over there and started paying attention, you know.

He was like my best friend, you know, and mentor,

you know, and teacher. And he was cool.

You know, just the coolest cat you ever wanted to be.

His last words he was telling me about, you know,

drive for yourself and the other fella too,

because I was getting my driver's license, you know.

And that was the thing he told me, you know, watch out for the other people.

But when he died he rolled over in the bed and said,

"Kenny, be a good boy and drive for yourself and the other fella too."

And that was were the last words his wife told me he said.

♪ I'm going to save you some ♪

♪ Told me that You love me free ♪

♪ And you told me That you love me ♪

[song fades]

[Bob Palmer] Bill Barth was staying at McIntire's Beatnik Manor flophouse.

He started canvassing for records with the money he'd earned

modeling nude for classes at the Memphis College of Art.

One time, he thought he heard an old record playing inside a house,

so he knocked on the front door.

Inside he saw a wizened little gnome of a man playing guitar and singing,

Nathan Beauregard.

Some said he was over 100.

Turns out they found his draft card recently, and he was only in his 70s back then.

♪ I'd go to jail For a spoonful ♪

♪ Go to jail For a spoonful ♪

♪ Spoonful You go to jail by ♪

♪ I'd fight my father for ♪

♪ Oh, fight my father For a spoonful ♪

♪ Fight my father for a Spoonful ♪

♪ Fight my father ♪

♪ [indistinct] ♪

♪ [indistinct] ♪

♪ Had no business gardnening ♪

♪ Had you know you gonna Cheat it up ♪

♪ Ain't but a litte bit... ♪

[interviewer] How did you happen to pick up the guitar? Did you hear somebody--

[Beauregard] I first started learning on the old banjo.

You seen the little round thing?

[interviewer] Banjo, yeah. I see. Uh-huh.

But you don't recall when they first started going crazy about them blues, do you?

[Beauregard] Yeah, that's what most people was after now, the blues.

Everyone you meet now mostly just wants the blues.

♪ You just can't tell now ♪

♪ What's on A sweet woman's mind ♪

[♪]

♪ Yeah, you can't tell ♪

♪ What's on a woman's mind ♪

♪ When you think She loving you ♪

♪ Yet she's putting you down ♪

[Bob] The man had been born a slave.

He's over 100 years old and he's still playing guitar at the scene.

[Johnson] He was 98. No, he was 100--

and I think it was figured out he was 102 years old.

[T. Dwayne Moore] We definitely know that he wasn't 100 years old

at the time he was rediscovered.

This was a real person. Just want you to know him.

You know, he was a real human being.

Who had experiences in Mississippi, in Ashland.

Did a lot more than play music.

He did go blind, but he wasn't blind at birth. We know that now.

So the problem with Nathan Beauregard in saying that he's 100 years old,

is that it's not true and it's a falsehood.

And if you repeat this over and over, eventually those become stereotypes.

He was there to entertain them, show them the blues,

be a representative of this African-American culture and history,

but only a representative of what they perceived it as and what they knew.

♪ We lay down On my bed ♪

[Robinson] It's difficult to create a real history

when we've got these colorblind histories.

Ones that both erase the structures of racism

and then also erase the histories that got us to this point.

To them, you don't really get the depths of it.

You don't feel the depths of it because it hurts.

Mr. Beauregard and John Wilkins,

I mean, they were sharing their souls.

[Johnson] Everybody just loved these old guys.

And then it's kind of a southern attitude of these cute old Black men.

You know, these cute old Black folks.

Some of it, you know, quite frankly, some of it was paternalistic

and we didn't even realize it at the time, but it was.

[projector whirring]

There's a subtlety to what we might think of as appropriation.

It's really an erasure.

It is an obliteration so that those people don't even exist in the landscape.

It was a blues song, "That's No Way To Get Along."

And after he start-- come on other side, religious side,

my daddy kept the same music, but he wrote the song "Prodigal Son."

♪ Now the prodigal son Left home by himself ♪

♪ Home by himself ♪

♪ Ah, the prodigal son Left home by himself ♪

The Rolling Stones recorded that song on the blues style.

-[record scratches] -[rewind audio]

["Prodigal Son" by The Rolling Stones playing]

♪ Poor boy took his father's Bread started down the road ♪

♪ Started down the road ♪

♪ Took all he had And started down the road ♪

♪ Going out in this world, Where God only knows ♪

[Nate Beauregard singing] ♪ And the last word her mama Heard him say ♪

♪ The last word Her mama heard him say ♪

We get a little rewards off his music the seven of us,

but it ain't which way it should be.

I don't think none of them got treated right

because they didn't get the money they should have gotten,

you know, and their music still--

my daddy's music still going.

They taking advantage

because people didn't know, you know.

And people still taking advantage of it.

You know, if you don't know, they still doing it.

[projector whirring]

♪ And the poor boy Got all he had ♪

♪ And he started on down The road ♪

♪ Started on down the road ♪

♪ He got all he had and he Started on down the road ♪

♪ Got all he had and he started On down the road ♪

1969 marked the 150th birthday of the city of Memphis.

Bill Barth, who had remained the Blue's Show's prime mover

suggested that celebration include an expanded version of the Blue's Show.

And the city, desperate for good publicity since the death of Martin Luther King, agreed.

[dissonant tones]

[Chris] And so we ended up over at Robert Wilkins house

'cause we needed to talk to him about the show,

"Prodigal Son" and the Rolling Stones, and this and that.

I remember Barth being on Reverend Wilkins phone in the house

sitting going, "Yes, I'm calling collect from Robert Wilkins house.

Yes, I'll hold." And then he got somebody on the phone and started telling his tale.

A few minutes later, I'm back out on the porch and Barth comes out and says,

"Excuse me, Reverend Wilkins, but Mick Jagger wants to talk to you on the telephone."

And Robert Wilkins doesn't get up, he doesn't get up out of his chair or anything.

He kind of just leans over and says, "Tell the boy I'll talk to him in person."

And so that put the thing in the works for the Rolling Stones

to come and do a benefit for the old Blues guys

for the Memphis Country Blues Society for our show.

And they said, "If you guys can get the city together to get us plane tickets,

we'll come and play for Union Scale,"

which was like 50 bucks a band, you know, or something like that.

And so when we went back to the city of Memphis, back to Brandon Davis,

he just freaks out. It was just too much for him.

All he could see was trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble.

["Brighter Than Day"” by The Insect Trust playing]

♪ The fire before night ♪

♪ But before the day Can wash it away ♪

♪ Start over again ♪

[♪]

There were two great white vans full of television equipment behind the show,

and strange men wearing khaki shorts, blue knit golf shirts

and little yellow canvas hats

bossing around a forest of cameras and microphones

muttering to each other in alien accents.

♪ I'm driving away It's brighter than day ♪

♪ City behind, come burning My mind I'm driving away ♪

♪ It's brighter than day Awake in the night ♪

Barth had been trying to talk to people on the city council,

get some support from 'em, something,

and we getting nowhere and getting nothing from 'em.

And then they realized that the Goodyear Blimp

was coming overhead and PBS was filming.

And once the city was aware of that, they had a banner that they hung up backstage.

I mean, the show had almost already started when somebody's up there doing that.

I'm going to Brown tonight. Y'all like hearing me play Brown?

[♪]

♪ And I'm going on brown ♪

♪ I'm going to take that Right hand road ♪

And people came from Europe, from all over the country.

Not in massive numbers, but in numbers,

along with the people from the region of the south.

♪ Right hand ♪

[Peter Guralnick] So my brother Tommy and I headed south.

We drove down in this Volkswagen.

Driving down, I'd recognized all the local signs.

I mean, I was going to Brownsville, I'm gonna take that right hand road.

I mean, everything about it. I mean, you know, my--

Tommy and I just laughed at ourselves quoting blues lyrics back and forth.

♪ And that woman I love, She got great long curly hair ♪

That year, having a three day festival, it really expanded somewhat.

I mean, before that we really hadn't been able to draw

too much of the whole Memphis soul music thing.

That was a whole different circuit.

[Alexander] So even though we are considered a soul artist,

when just all said and done, it all is really comes from blues

and gospel anyway.

When you hear all this music coming up, gets all in your bones and stuff like that.

Thank you very much. This time, it's a great pleasure for me

to introduce a fast coming rising group.

Ladies and gentlemen, a great big hand for the upcoming Bar-Kays.

[♪]

♪ You don't know like I know ♪

♪ What that woman Has done for me ♪

♪ 'Cause in the morning She's my water ♪

♪ In the evening She's my cup of tea ♪

♪ Yes, as long as I live ♪

♪ [indistinct] ♪

♪ Everything's Gotta be alright ♪

I mean, because at that time, you know,

we didn't have a vocalist. So, you know, as you could see.

[laughs] I was trying to do the vocals.

So that was kind of special to say the least.

♪ Got to, got to, got to get ♪

♪ All of that tender lovin' ♪

♪ Get it ready Get it ready ♪

♪ Ow, get it ready for me ♪

[♪]

♪ Somebody help me ♪

[♪]

♪ Nobody know I don't know ♪

♪ Nobody knows Like I know ♪

♪ You don't know You don't know ♪

♪ You don't know ♪

[Jeffries] It was, like, 105 degrees,

and they came out and cameras went up and everything got ready

and they did their whole set.

And it was, like, brutal during,

'cause there was dancing and everything involved with their whole set.

And at the end of it, the camera guy said, "Okay, let's do it again, we got our levels."

[laughs]

It was a rude awakening for us in the realities of what goes on.

You better do the whole thing.

[laughs] I'm going home, y'all. I'm going home.

[Nelson] That was unusual for the blues festivals

to have The Bar-Kays on stage because The Bar-Kays are cool.

[chuckles] You know what I mean? They're new cool.

In '69, I was running away from home.

I grew up in West Memphis and at that time,

parents would let you roam for miles.

And I roamed to Memphis a lot. There was a 25 cent bus.

But I remember Woodstock was happening that summer

and I wanted to be there, you know.

It was like the summer of love and I'm 15 years old.

And so I left home,

and I thought if I came to Overton Park, I could get a ride.

I started hanging out with the hippies that were here.

I literally felt for the first time I had found my tribe.

[♪]

[announcer] The only way we can sing blues like this

is to actually feel them deep down inside the soul.

Ladies and gentlemen, Bukka White.

[crowd cheering]

[♪]

[Jeffries] I remember, you know, Marcia holding the umbrella

with such a beautiful juxtaposition.

You know, it was like well said in terms of whoever staged that.

[Hare] I was a dancer.

I probably wanted to dance with the umbrella

and they probably made me sit down with the umbrella.

[Gordon] In this photo, you see Marcia,

"I don't need nobody protecting me."

You know, "And I certainly don't need anybody protecting me from these Black people,

because look, I'm helping them.

They've helped me. I'm helping them."

You know, and it was an inversion of what society understood.

[♪]

[Hatley] I mean, my parents grew up in Jim Crow, Mississippi.

Like, they had actual, for real deal segregation.

One of my great-uncles was actually killed by a white man

because he confronted him about saying something to his daughter in a store.

These things are very real to me.

♪ ...dollar bill ♪

♪ Oh, this seargent Told my mother ♪

♪ He went take two Hundred dollar bills ♪

[♪]

[audience applause]

Without a doubt. Thank you.

[indistinct]

♪ Mama, yeah And I know ♪

♪ Lordy, I know My time has come ♪

1969. Yes, indeed.

[♪]

♪ Oh, I love you darling ♪

[crowd applauding]

♪ What time can I get A train going ♪

[♪]

[♪]

[♪]

[muffled conversation]

[announcer] Young man coming on now comes from Houston, Texas.

[crowd cheering, applauding]

His name is Johnny Winter.

[cheering, applauding]

[man] I have an announcement to make now.

I'm gonna have Mrs. Mary Palmer, Bob Palmer's wife, speak to you for a minute.

She's been taking tickets here for the last couple of days,

spending her days and nights up there, the gate.

And she has something she wants to say to you.

[Mary Palmer] 800 people paid admission here.

There are well over 3,000 people out there.

This is a benefit, people.

We try to make a little money for these people

who have made such great music in your great city all of their lives.

It's your city, it's your music,

you should be proud of them both.

And damn it, why can't you even pay for your own tickets, people?

I'd like to pass a hat for these people who've never had any recognition all their lives.

It's their music you're listening to.

It's their music you are loving.

Now, please, please, people, for them.

[crowd applauding]

My one and only public speech. [laughing]

There were people climbing the walls to get in.

And I think there were a huge bunch of people there

that wanted to see Johnny Winter and didn't care about the blues people at all.

[indistinct lyrics]

[music fading]

[Palmer] By now, there must be in the world a million guitar virtuosos,

but there are very few real blues players.

The reason for this is that the blues demand such dedication.

This dedication lies beyond technique.

It makes being a blues player something like being a priest.

Virtuosity in playing blues licks

is like virtuosity in celebrating the mass.

It is empty, it means nothing.

Johnny Winter can play rings around Furry Lewis, the comparison is ludicrous.

♪ I ain't gonna look But I take my time ♪

But when Furry Lewis at Winter's age sang

"My mother's dead, my father's just wills to be,"

he was singing his life, and that is blues.

♪ I've sold my gin I've sold it straight ♪

♪ The police run me To my woman's gate ♪

♪ She come to the door She nod her head ♪

♪ She said, "Furry, you welcome To my foldin' bed" ♪

Ha-ha!

[crowd cheering, applauding]

[ominous tones]

[record static]

[orchestral instrument notes overlapping]

[♪]

[bird chirping]

In the early '60s, young Black and white musicians based in and around Memphis

embarked on an effort to revive interest in that city's blues tradition.

For their efforts, some of these white performers have been exposed to the criticism

that only Black people can sing the blues with any authenticity.

This is an arguable position, but it's one that I don't think stands up.

In 1969, it would be difficult to maintain, for me anyway,

that melancholia and the ability to express it musically

is the exclusive property of the Black man.

[feedback screeches]

It's ours.

It's ours. [laughs] You know?

We could just simply because it is ours. It's our legacy.

[birds chirping]

[light blues playing]

[♪]

[♪]

Things I've done here, most likely when I was supervising over here,

I kept the grass cut. [laughing]

[conversation din]

[laughs] Oh, I feel great. I feel great. Back in the play.

Plus I got my three daughters with me this time and everything.

It just feel great to come back and redo it again. Brings back old memories.

How my daddy sat there and talked to Furry Lewis and all those guys, you know.

And my God, I remember coming here years ago, years ago,

a young guy, a real young guy then.

[♪]

[Hatley] The blues is about having nothing and creating joy.

Putting the joy in the survival on record.

We need that right now. People need that.

♪ The prodigal son left home By himself, home by himself ♪

♪ Ah, the prodigal son Left home by himself ♪

♪ The prodigal son Left home by himself ♪

♪ And that's the way For me to get along ♪

[Hatley] All I could see when I was too young and too ignorant

was that the pain and the sadness was mine, and I didn't want it.

But I had to get that to get the joy of it,

to get the survival of it, and I'm not gonna let it go.

♪ And he told his son, "Go and kill my fattest calf, kill my fattest calf" ♪

♪ He told his son "Kill my fattest calf" ♪

♪ When told his son "Go and kill my fattest calf" ♪

♪ And that'd be the way To get along ♪

♪ We gon' sit down and eat And we all be merry and glad ♪

♪ All be merry and glad ♪

♪ We all sit down and eat And we all be merry and glad ♪

♪ We all sit down and eat And we all be merry and glad ♪

♪ That'd be the way To get along ♪

[♪]

[crowd cheering, applauding]

[Rev. John] All right.

Now this, we gonna do another one.

["See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" by Furry Lewis playing]

[Furry] This song here now has been delegated

to see that my grave is kept clean.

♪ Whoa, one kind favor I ask of you ♪

♪ One kind favor I ask of you ♪

♪ Just one kind favor I ask of you ♪

♪ Just see that my grave Kept clean ♪

♪ My heart stopped beatin' My hand got cold ♪

♪ Heart stopped beatin' My hand got cold ♪

♪ My heart stopped beatin' And my hand got cold ♪

♪ It wasn't long before I was in this shady grove ♪

♪ Whoa Two white horses in a line ♪

♪ Two white horses in a line ♪

♪ There is two white horses In a line ♪

♪ They gon' take me To my burying ground ♪

♪ Have you ever heard Your coffin sound ♪

♪ Ever heard Your coffin sound ♪

♪ Ever heard your ♪

♪ Oh, you know Furry's in the ground ♪

♪ Have you ever heard Your coffin sound ♪

♪ You can dig my grave With a silver spade ♪

♪ Dig my grave With a silver spade ♪

♪ Dig my grave with A silver spade ♪

♪ You can let me down With a golden chain ♪

♪ Whoa Every link in my Jesus name ♪

♪ Every link in my Jesus name ♪

♪ Every last In my Jesus name ♪

♪ Every link in my Jesus name ♪

♪ One kind favor I ask of you ♪

♪ One kind favor I ask of you ♪

♪ Just one kind favor I ask of you ♪

♪ Just see that my grave Kept clean ♪