Blues on Beale

Most of you know that my whole professional life has been all about making TV.  For 30 years I toiled in NY doing really wonderful work making wholesome television for kids for a national audience.  Then 18 years ago we moved to Florida and started the visitor channel here in SW Florida.  So, in November of 2019 when the opportunity arrived to spend a week in Memphis, Tennessee and produce a musical documentary about the 36^th Annual International Blues Challenge, Cecily and I and our dear friends of 40 years Lynne and Jeff Ganek, agreed to tackle this challenge.  It was a peak life event for me, and I daresay all who participated.

I knew that the Blues were the foundation of almost every genre of music that we all listen to today, but I really didn’t have a grasp on the genre itself, what makes it special, how it makes you feel, how to really describe it.  What we are trying to do in the documentary is to answer those exact questions.

In the last week of January of this year we went to Memphis to experience it first-hand.  There were 14 of us that formed the crew for this production, and for me and Cecily and our other friend Steve Zink (all of us started together in the biz in the early 80s with Reading Rainbow), it was a reunion of sorts.  The old team was back together---with some younger, eager and talented people to be part of the team.

The experience was like getting back into an old rocket ship where you know where all the controls are—except that you’re 70 years old and not 40!  It was hard work, but eagerly engaged in by us all.  It felt good to be back in the saddle!!

As with all the production experiences I have had over the years, the opportunity to completely immerse yourself in something as rich as the Blues, with all its characters and talented musicians was a blissful time, only truly appreciated in retrospect.   But it was the nature of the music and the environment on Beale Street in Memphis which added the spice that is going to make this program we are making a really rich stew!

Beale Street, for those of you not familiar with it, is in the heart of downtown Memphis.  Imagine a street that slopes down from the highlands along the Mississippi River through several blocks of office buildings, then suddenly flattens out and  is alive with 100+ flashing and 'chase' neon signs

advertising  25 Blues Music Clubs, places to eat BBQ and anything and everything fried, and throngs of people in the middle of the closed off 4 blocks with guitars, harmonicas, wild garb, tumblers (yeah I ain’t kiddin’).  The place was jumpin’, especially at night when the music was going full blast.  In fact during the week when we were there, music was constant.  When you walked down those blocks you could hear music coming out of every door on both sides of the street—a magnificent stereo effect.

230 different bands and soloists from all over the world attended this event.  Individual Blues societies in major cities across the US, Europe, the Far East,  even Australia held competitions and the winners were the contestants in Memphis for this Challenge.  So they were there along with Blues aficionados and major Blues talent to celebrate this genre of music….and we were there to capture it.

In advance of the event, we listened to samples of all 230 bands and artists, and then as a group, selected our 10 top picks for who we thought might be finalists.  These were the bands and soloists we chose to focus on as they competed for the top slots and awards.  Out of the 10 we picked, 3 made it to the finals and at the final concert at the famous Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, two of our picks won awards for their innovation and talent.

We listened to a lot of music during that week and there is no doubt in my mind anymore about what makes the Blues so original and foundational.  There are many different flavors of the Blues that these competitors brought to this event, and in the next post I will describe some of the stories these talented people shared with us.