♪♪ >> This program is made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

(group singing mournfully) (Begins strumming "St. Louis Blues") ♪♪ ♪ I hate to see that evening sun go down.

♪ ♪ I hate to see that evening sun go down.

♪ ♪ 'Cause, my baby, she's gonna ♪ leave my town ♪ Fellin' tomorrow ♪ like I feel today.

♪ If I'm feelin' tomorrow, baby, ♪ ♪ like I feel today.

♪ I'm gonna pack my suitcase make my get away.

♪ ♪ Hey, hey.

♪ I know this St. Louis woman, she wears a diamond ring.

♪ ♪ Says she leads a man around by her apron string.

♪ ♪ Get away my window, or knocking on my door.

♪ ♪ I got a brand new sweetie, I can't use you no more.

♪ ♪ Hey, hey.

♪ I got the St. Louis blues, I'm just as blue as I can be.

♪ ♪ Bum beedle um bum.

♪ Oh my baby got a heart like a rock cast in the sea.

♪ >> King: "The St. Louis Blues", sung by Sam Chatmon, one of the last of the old-time Delta bluesmen.

W. C. Handy, who later wrote and recorded many blues songs, wrote "The St. Louis Blues."

But the real blues weren't written; they were lived.

'Cause the blues is more than music.

The blues is a feeling, too.

The blues is being down, missing a woman, losing a woman, feeling alone, needing a job, well, going through hard times, wanting to move to a better place.

The blues to many people are many things, but to me, the blues is life as we lived in the past, as it is now in the present and as it will be in the future as long as people have problems.

But the blues actually came from all over the South, wherever black people played music.

But it was here in the Mississippi Delta, probably more than anywhere else, that the blues was born.

Willie Brown, one of the earliest of the Delta bluesmen, singing "The Mississippi Blues."

♪ Going down in the Delta.

♪ Where I can have my fun.

♪ Going down in the Delta.

♪ Where I can have my fun.

♪ Where I can drink my white ♪ lightning and gamble.

♪ I can bring my baby home.

♪ Don't that Delta look lonesome.

♪ ♪ When that evening ♪ sun goes down.

Just about drift off.

♪ Don't that Delta ♪ look lonesome.

♪ When that evening ♪ sun goes down.

♪ Well you'll be ♪ looking for your baby.

♪ Don't know where ♪ she could be found.

Boy, I look all over town for her, you know that?

>> King: The flat hot Delta where around the turn of the century black people started singing a new kind of music.

Where back then, black people lived much as they had in slave times.

Where there was no end to the cotton, no end to the flat fields, no escape from the work they'd been doing for what seemed like hundreds of years.

The Delta had not changed and would not change for a long time.

The blues started here--and here.

(group singing a work song a cappella) But the roots go much deeper, to Africa.

To the rhythms and the tribal chants of that far-away home.

And to the years of slavery, when the leader would call out and the workers would follow.

And the work would go on and on.

♪ Well oh baby.

♪ What you want me to do?

>> King: But the music of the blues is more than rhythm alone.

♪ I gave you my money.

♪ And I for you.

>> King: The roots of the blues are in the field holler too, the solitary song of one man alone in the fields from sun up to sun down.

♪ I was a-waiting on my ♪ simmer chains.

>> King: You can hear the rhythm of the work song and the mournful cry of the field holler in "Low Down Dirty Blues" sung by Son House.

He and Willie Brown recorded some of the earliest Delta blues.

♪ Mmmm mmmmm.

♪ Mmmm mmmmmm.

>> King: Son lived long enough to enjoy the rediscovery of country blues in the 1960's.

Willie Brown, his close friend, and most of the others didn't.

♪ Well, you know the sun ♪ is going down.

♪ I said behind that ♪ old western hill.

♪ I said behind that ♪ old western hill.

♪ You know I ♪ wouldn't do a thing.

♪ Not against my baby's will.

♪ Well, you know that's bad.

♪ I declare that's too bad.

♪ Mmmmm.

♪ I declare that's too bad.

♪ You know my ♪ woman done quit me.

♪ Man, looked like a ♪ whole lot what a day.

♪ You know she ♪ stopped writing.

♪ Wouldn't even send me ♪ no kind of word.

♪ Oooh wooo.

♪ I said she wouldn't send ♪ me no kind of word.

♪ She turned her ♪ little back on me.

♪ 'Bout some old low ♪ down thing she heard.

>> King: During the day, many blues musicians would do farm work, chopping cotton, picking cotton, or hauling logs in lumber camps.

They were great musicians, legends now, but then they were black and poor and that was how they lived.

But at night and on weekends, for white dances and for their own in juke joints, small crowded black bars, they'd play the blues.

In my day we learned the blues songs from the records and the radio.

But back then, blues musicians learned from each other.

This is Dockery's Plantation in the heart of the Delta near Greenville.

If you had to pick out one single spot as the birthplace of the blues, you might say it all started right here.

Willie Brown played here.

Son House played here.

And here at Dockery's another blues singer was working the fields by day and playing his music by night.

He was Charley Patton, called the Father of the Delta Blues.

>> Bout to go to jail about this spoonful.

♪ It's all I want in ♪ this creation is I'm about to go to jail about this spoonful ♪ In all a spoon', ♪ 'bout that spoon' ♪ The women goin' crazy, ♪ every day in ♪ their life 'bout a... ♪ It's all I want, in this ♪ creation is a... ♪ I go home (wanna fight!)

♪ 'bout a... ♪ Doctor's dyin' (way in Hot Springs!)

♪ just 'bout a... ♪ These women goin' ♪ crazy every day in ♪ their life 'bout a... ♪ Would you kill ♪ a man dead?

(yes, I will!)

♪ just 'bout a... >> King: Nathan Beauregard, age 97, a contemporary of Patton's, sings Charley Patton's Spoonful.

♪ Go to jail about a spoonful.

♪ Go to jail about a spoonful.

♪ Spoonful, you'll go to jail ♪ 'bout.

♪ I'd fight my papa 'bout.

♪ Whoa, fight my papa ♪ 'bout a spoonful.

♪ Fight my papa ♪ 'bout a spoonful.

♪ Fight my papa.

♪ Straight up, ♪ Give it a stir, stir.

♪ Had no business ♪ starting it.

♪ If you know you ♪ couldn't keep it up.

♪ Nothing but a ♪ little bitty stir stir.

♪ Little bitty stir stir.

(group singing) ♪ Don't want no jailhouse... >> King: Parchman Penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta.

Until very recent times Southern penitentiaries operated as plantations.

The black inmate lived much as his grandfather had in slavery.

And here, the old slave work song survives in prison chants.

Booker T. Washington White, Bukka White served time here.

Bukka was a great admirer of Charlie Patton and like Patton, he played music in the juke joints and honkytonks.

And like Patton, his life was full of hard times.

Hard times led to trouble, and for Bukka White trouble one night in a juke joint led to Parchman.

You can hear echoes of the prison work song in Bukka White's blues.

♪♪ >> King: The Delta was the cradle of the blues.

But blues were being sung all over Mississippi, by men like Ishman Bracey, Bo Carter, Garfield Akers, Sam Collins, Rube Lacey, Mississippi John Hurt, Son Thomas and a whole lot more.

And throughout the South, from Texas to Georgia and on into the Carolinas, black men and women had the blues and sang them.

People like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, and Huddie Ledbetter, known as "Leadbelly."

But still, the center was the Delta, home of a man who had the shortest, but most spectacular, career of any blues singer.

One who played with Son House and Willie Brown.

One you often hear spoken of as the greatest country blues singer who ever lived: Robert Johnson.

I always heard that he was a young man that liked to play his music, liked to be around musicians that played, and of course had a great influence on many musicians that we know about today.

But one thing, we don't even know what he looked like.

All we can guess from his music is that he was a driven man, singing about the hell-hound on his trail.

He perfected the technique of using a bottleneck or copper tubing on his strings making his guitar wail and cry.

He'd play the juke joints and dances, chasing women and singing about his hard times with them.

Until, they say, he was murdered in 1938 at the age of 26 by a jealous girlfriend who poisoned his whiskey.

Wanting a woman's a big part of the blues.

And in those days, if a black man lost his woman, he'd lost everything, 'cause he didn't have anything else.

(ROBERT JOHNSON'S "LOVE'S IN VAIN" playing) ♪♪ >> King: Robert Johnson had auditioned in Jackson for a record company talent scout, Henry C. Speir.

From 1926 till 1940, Speir auditioned hundreds on musicians at his record store on Farish Street, sending the best of them like Charley Patton, Son House, Willie Brown, and Robert Johnson to record.

Trying to get them $50 a song.

Throughout the South of the 1920's and 1930's the blues were heard on "Race Records," recorded by blacks for blacks.

The blues were becoming profitable for the big record companies, if not for the musicians who often sold the rights to a song for a dollar.

But for every musician like Robert Johnson who recorded and left a record of their music, there were hundreds who never recorded and remained obscure.

But they sang the same blues of lost love and hard times, hoping the next day would bring something better.

Hayes McMullan of Tutwiler, Mississippi.

(HAYES SINGING "HURRY SUNDOWN") ♪♪ >> King: Another singer who Henry Speir auditioned was Tommy Johnson.

Johnson was the center of a school of blues that developed around Jackson in the 1920's.

Houston Stackhouse played the jukes with Tommy Johnson and he remembers the time that he helped Johnson fix a flat.

Then he drank Canned Heat with him.

Tommy got drunk, and Houston got sick.

>> This one come from the Delta back from my daddy's granddaddy's funeral.

He'd come down from working on two tires.

Both of his front tires, he had them stuffed full of rags and things.

And having trouble with one of the back tires.

So I said well, if you can get that tire out, we'll help you fix it.

So we stopped and helped him fix the tire.

He said, "I want some candy so bad, I don't know what to do."

I said, "Well, when we get the tire fixed, we'll go uptown, I'll buy you some candy."

So we made it to Crystal Springs, I went on into the Crystal Drug Store and got him four boxes.

He carried them out on Camper Street and that's where he made it again.

So I said, "Give me a couple of big glasses, that will settle it with me.

He said, "Come on to Crystal Springs."

He went to playing music in town on the streets.

I went to 411 going on.

Police said, "What got that boy drunk like that?"

They said, "He better come along so I can put him in jail."

So they carried me and then he came and carried me home.

They said just to lay me up on the porch.

You talk about sick.

Ole Houston Stackhouse was facedown.

(laughing) ♪♪ >> King: Blues is a lonely song sung on a front porch at sundown.

But blues can be good time music, too.

Music to drink and dance to.

This is Crawford, Mississippi, home of Big Joe Williams and his custom-made nine-string guitar.

And he knows how to use it to get this joint jumping!

♪♪ (Singing "Low Down Dirty Shame") ♪♪ [applause] (Singing "I'll Be Your Dog") ♪♪ [applause] >> King: Beale Street, Memphis.

It was one big juke joint.

Starting in the 1920's and through the 1930's and 1940's, Mississippi blacks began migrating north, leaving the plantations, looking for jobs in the city.

Memphis was the first stop along the way.

There was music up and down Beale Street.

W. C. Handy and his band was playing here.

And ragtime, popularized much earlier by Scott Joplin, was still around.

Guitarist Hacksaw Ernie from Jackson, Mississippi plays "The Guitar Rag."

♪♪ >> King: Work was hard to find in the Depression years in the South.

Some people say the Depression forced the white man to feel what the black man had felt all the time.

But what was hard on the white man was even harder on the black man.

Gus Cannon was an entertainer who couldn't find work, so he played in a traveling medicine shows that sold pills and tonics to cure every ill and featured free entertainment by black musicians like Gus.

♪♪ >> King: Beale Street was also the home of a more urban blues sound, including the music of many women.

Women blues singers were usually accompanied by pianists or groups.

Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, and Bessie Smith were playing up north, and in Memphis, Memphis Minnie from Tunica County, Mississippi.

In their tradition is Mrs. Van Hunt.

(Singing: "Jelly Sellin' Woman") ♪♪ >> King: And still singing the blues in Memphis is Memphis Ma Rainey, who borrowed the name of the great blues woman.

(Singing "Long Tall Daddy") ♪♪ >> King: But Beale Street's not what it used to be.

No more music in the park.

No people moving around from bar to bar.

And no more magic in the air.

Furry Lewis, born in Greenwood, Mississippi, is one of the last of the old-time Beale Street bluesmen.

His blues borrows from many different elements, but his sound is all his own.

>> I had a girl one time.

Her name was Pretty Carla.

Pretty Carla left me and went to Brownsville.

(Singing "Going to Brownsville") ♪♪ >> Sing that by yourself, guitar, there.

♪♪ Say it again.

♪♪ >> King: While Delta and Beale Street jukes were filled with the blues, down in New Orleans blacks had developed a different music: jazz.

Jazz is next of kin to the blues.

It often uses the 12-bar blues structure and blues chord changes.

But jazz has fuller instrumentation and more group improvisation.

Blues came from the country; jazz is the sound of the city.

(jazz music playing) ♪♪ >> King: Like jazz, gospel music had a lot in common musically with the blues.

Many blues musicians played both gospel and blues.

But it wasn't easy for them because the church would have nothing to do with the blues.

It's the other side of the coin.

The choice a musician has to make, almost between God and the devil, between the church, the fundamentalist Southern church that permitted no drinking or dancing and the fast loose life of the honkytonks.

Many blues musicians gave up the blues as they grew older and closer to death.

They had chosen the church.

They had found a home.

Those that stayed with the blues never found a home.

They were on the road, travelling gig to gig, town to town, up to Memphis, and beyond to places like Chicago.

Highway 61, the main road north out of the Delta.

(Song "HWY 61" playing) ♪♪ >> King: Throughout the 1930's and 1940's, thousands of blacks looking for work left Mississippi and moved up north to Chicago.

(Song "SWEET HOME CHICAGO" playing) >> King: "Sweet Home Chicago" was not necessarily so sweet.

Problems were the same: no jobs, no money.

Instead of shacks, they lived in tenements.

Instead of porches, they sang on street corners.

Beginning in the late 1930's, Chicago began to replace the Delta as the center of blues music.

Some of the great Mississippi musicians who moved early to Chicago were Big Bill Broonzy, Sunnyland Slim, Johnny Temple.

At first they played the same Delta blues they had at home.

That was their music.

But in Chicago, they were more likely to play in groups in neighborhood clubs and their music began to change.

After World War II, the country blues that the musicians had brought up from the South would become urban blues with electric guitars.

Would be played by Mississippi-born musicians like Howlin Wolf, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker.

In this song by Honeyboy Edwards, Johnny Shines, and Walter Horton, you can hear the direction urban blues was beginning to take.

♪♪ >> King: After World War II came the beginning of the leveling process for the American black and the beginning of the end of the country Delta blues.

Blacks were starting to gain social and economic status.

What was lost was the lonely song of the farmer working the Delta fields.

The blues had been born and nurtured in the South of the teens and 1920's and 1930's, a South that in many ways had been the same for son and father and grandfather.

As the South changed and black men and women began to claim the rights previously reserved for the whites, the old-time country blues was no longer the voice of the black youth.

Times had changed, and so had the music.

But the Delta blues would not be and could not be forgotten.

Because all of it, urban blues, rock and roll, soul and hard rock, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and me too, all of it comes right back here to the Delta.

We all learned from the old-time Delta blues.

How ever the blues have changed, its spirit remains.

Wherever the blues went, this is where they came from.

(Singing "Sitting On Top of the World") ÷¦÷¦ (Woman singing) ÷¦÷¦ [Closed Captioned by MPB] >> The blues is gonna be here till I'm dead and you and everybody else.

The blues will always stand.

It's like the world gonna stand, the blues is too.

The blues never die.

No.

>> This program was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.