Memphis Blues Festival

Thanks to YouTube, I'm going to do a sort of re-creation of the Memphis (Country) Blues Festival of 1970, as shown on the original poster on the right. Some friends of mine started putting these festivals on in the late 60's at the same Overton Park Shell (wallpaper) where Elvis did his first big show. The Shell was quite the hippie hangout in those days; and the people in Memphis involved in the blues revival had something going on which was as musically exciting as the acid rock in San Francisco and which helped preserve the blues as a viable genre into the present day.

I'm not saving the best for last, because I'm so happy to find this online video of my old pal Furry Lewis (more on Furry). Until he died in 1981, I used to stop by his house on Mosby with at least a pint of Ten High sour mash bourbon whiskey, his favorite staple, and listen to him play and sing. Thanks to this video, you can do the same.



For an interesting song cycle, you can listen to the story of Casey Jones, with a chorus taken from the Memphis Jug Band's "On The Road Again" by Furry (a sometime member of the band) into his two-part "Kassie Jones" and thence into the Grateful Dead's version, using the Jug Band's words but Furry's guitar lick.

Coming up: Mississippi Fred McDowell