New York Times on Documenting the Blues in Mississippi Delta

Shine and Sam Carr in Dundee, Miss., in 2001
Photos by Margo Cooper

The Mississippi Delta blues has reached national media again as the New York Times writes a feature on the movement to preserve the cornerstone of American culture in the Delta.

L.C. Ulmer in Ellisville

The article by Fayemi Shakur features Margo Cooper who produced a documentary on the histories of the Mississippi blues from families and communities in the Delta and north Mississippi. The documentary is called “Deep Inside the Blues,” featuring B.B. King, R.L. Burnside and Bobby Rush to name many within the work.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

“It is, for her, a love letter to the people she befriended in the Deep South. It is also, for her, a love letter to the genre that entranced her when she was a teenager. What started simply as a passion for the blues in high school developed into something deeper, as she discovered love and suffering, survival and self-determination, joy and pain, a light in the darkness.”

In other Mississippi Delta news, people in the South and possibly around the world are preparing to travel to Clarksdale for the Juke Joint. Here is the lineup so let’s get ready for a real Mississippi weekend.

Callie Daniels is a staff reporter for HottyToddy.com. She can be reached at callie.daniels@hottytoddy.com.