Still Singing the Blues, again

Dear friends,

Last week, I received an unexpected email: Our 2010 radio documentary series “Still Singing the Blues” would be resurrected by a Midwestern radio station. The news brought me back to some of the most delightful months I’ve ever spent working.

Richard Ziglar and I had applied to the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities to chronicle the state’s blues and R&B traditions. It seemed like a longshot, but they surprised us by saying yes, and cut us a decent-sized check. So we hired some humanities consultants, bought ourselves plane tickets, and headed down to the Pelican State.

Over several visits, Richard and I hung out in back-of-town bars and rural honkytonks from Pigeon Town in New Orleans to the Old Breaux Bridge Highway. We traveled with country bluesman Little Freddie King to the Black Pot Festival in Lafayette. We got serenaded by honey-voiced singers, fed by musicians’ wives, invited to living-room jam sessions, and twerked by one drunken bar patron. Our friends Ben Sandmel and John T. Lewis organized a concert in our honor at New Orleans’ Mother-in-Law Lounge, even as the lounge’s future was in doubt.

We interviewed tremendous musicians. Some, like bilingual diva Carol Fran and guitarist Harvey Knox, have since died. Others, like 85-year-old King, are still with us. They entrusted us with their stories—such a privilege—and we hope our documentaries offer them a bit of immortality.

It felt like such a precious time. Louisiana blues informs much of the region’s other music, but its own existence as a living tradition is tenuous. It’s hard to survive as a musician anywhere, and New Orleans is no longer the affordable city that gives artists a running shot at survival. Many of the bars we visited have since closed.

Our series aired on 200 public and community radio stations. Over time, podcasts eclipsed radio documentaries, and ours fell out of rotation. (It remains online for download.)

That’s why I was so happy to learn that “Crossroads,” a contemporary blues and soul show produced by KMUW in Wichita, Kansas, acquired the series for broadcast this month. Throughout February, host Chris Heim is focusing on Louisiana music.

You can listen online at https://www.kmuw.org. 

Part 1, “Still Singing the Blues,” features the stories of Fran, Knox, and King. It will air Friday, Feb. 13 (11 p.m. Central Time) and Sunday, Feb. 15 (8 p.m. Central Time).

Part 2, “Crescent City Blues,” takes listeners into the New Orleans neighborhood joints that keep the blues and R&B alive. It will air Friday, Feb. 20 (11 p.m. Central Time) and Sunday, Feb. 22 (8 p.m. Central Time).

I hope you will listen!

Plus, what I’ve been reading:

• Adam Serwer on how Minneapolis’ community proved MAGA wrong.

• Ruth Marcus on how Jeff Bezos brought down the Washington Post. (Alternate link.) 

• John Woodrow Cox on a secretive legal weapon that the Department of Homeland Security is using to target Americans (published just before many of his coworkers were laid off).

• Sarah Jeong’s biting commentary on our descent into authoritarianism—structured as a guide to buying a gas mask.

• John Archibald’s visit with a football referee who was forced to leave Alabama for Mexico, a country whose language he neither reads nor writes fluently. (Alternate link.)

A podcast I’m appreciating:

The Brothers Ortiz, about two Texans who grew up together but ended up on opposite sides of the law. Reported and hosted by Sean Flynn.

And a song for this moment:

Singer-songwriter Tim Grimm stood in front of an American flag in a packed bar in San Antonio and sang his protest anthem “Broken Truth.”

Here’s to a spring thaw soon.

All best,
Barry Yeoman