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ÿÿÿÿ û 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 º Ã : Bill Ferris
Sound Bite: Blues music/guitar. Track One: Bill Ferris, a UNC Professor of
History and Senior Associate Director of the Center for the Study of the American South
recently published a book entitled “Give My Poor Heart Ease.” ((Bill in his office,
Book cover))
14:15 The title is taken from the verse in highway 61 blues that says, “I walked Highway
61 til I give down in my knees, trying to find somebody to give my poor heart ease.”
((Him actually saying it, reading from the book, or recording the actual book))
Track Two: The book features more than 20 interviews about black life and blues music
in the heart of the American South. It is illustrated with Ferris’s photographs, and
includes a CD & DVD of original field recordings.
11:37 Blues is a very powerful music and I would argue that it is the great music of
American music history. Without the blues we could not imagine, jazz, country, gospel,
rock ‘n’ roll, hip hop as they are. The blues has been a music that allowed people
to endure survive hardship during slavery during Jim Crow. Whenever people have been
suffered, whether it’s racial violence or lost love, the blues sort of takes you in
its arms and it says its ok you’re going to get through this. Music is the sort of
the ship that carries you to safe haven and that’s what the blues is all about for me.
((B Roll over top toward the end)) Track Three: Bill Ferris collected these images
while traveling down Highway 61 in his native Mississippi through the 1960’s and 70’s
when racial tensions were high. 4:33 Growing up in the 60s made very angry
about injustice and racial segregation and I saw this work as a way to bridge my own
world as a white Mississippian with that of black Mississippians. These were voices that
would be ignored or forgotten. They were not voices that would be remembered in the library
stacks and books. And I decided I would not allow to happen with the people I was able
to talk to and interview. My focus was music, blues and other forms, but I wanted to put
that music in a much broader context which was the lives of the people i was visiting.
And that’s what this book really does. It lets the musician speak and I simply frame
it… and then they take it and talk. Track Four: Give My Poor Heart Ease includes
musicians that are unknown like the inmates at Parchman Penitentiary. Here inmates work
28 thousand acres of penal farm in what Ferris calls the most dreaded place in Mississippi.
23:20 When I recorded in parchment I filmed and recorded work chants which are the oldest
music that goes back to African work chants where you have a leader, a caller, who sings
a line and then a chorus of workers responds and that call and response sets up a timing,
a pacing so that if you’re chopping wood or hoeing cotton in a very hot climate it
keeps you from over working. ((Live Nat sound/video clip))
25:30 And the blues grew out of work chants. Many blues singers would listen to these work
chants to get verses and they would put these verses in their blues. So this music is a
very powerful link to the past, to African roots, and to the present in the way that
blues has been composed. Track Five: Often times in his journey down
Highway 61 Ferris would knock on the doors of famous blues musicians. That is how he
met James “Son_ Ford” Thomas. 29:20 With some musicians we were together
for several days. With others like James Thomas we were together for over years of time. Maybe
15-20 years. We would travel, I would go visit him. He would come spend time with me. And
when we were together I had my tape recorder and camera and I tired to capture those moments.
James Thomas is the musician I spent most time with.
Track Six: .James Thomas sang the Delta Blues each Saturday night here in Kent’s Alley,
a neighborhood of Leland, Mississippi where the blues developed in a dramatic way.
((Nat Full clip of Thomas in Kent’s Alley)). Track Seven: Ferris also interviewed B.B.
King, a name synonymous with the blues. Born on a plantation in the Mississippi Delta,
King is considered by Ferris to be the greatest blues performer in history.
9:00 I was blessed to meet B.B. through a talk I gave at a black history conference
on blues and I played and spoke about B.B’s music and a young woman came up afterward
and said ‘I work for BB King I think he would like to meet you and comet to your class.’
And I said that would be a great honor. He came to several of my classes when I taught
at Yale University and we were able to get him an honorary Doctoral Degree at Yale and
that began a long friendship that continues. We’ve visited over the years.
((Nat Full clip of BB)) Track Eight: Ferris tells his students at
UNC-Chapel Hill that there are many worlds waiting to be noticed, like the world of blues
he discovered along Highway 61. They just have to open their hearts and minds to listen
to the voices who are waiting to speak to them.
((Background blues music)) ((Maybe a video clip))
// :49 I feel very blessed to be at the UNC because all of my archives of films and recordings
are here in the Southern Folk Life collection. I work with the very best students and with
faculty, colleagues who appreciate this work. And the UNC press has created an absolutely
beautiful book with the CD and the DVD in it. And I feel like this is a very nice place
to have ended this career and to be able to do the things I do today.
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