Gene Edwards and Morgan Freeman

Gene Edwards: Tell me about the music in the delta when you were growing up, what you remember.

Morgan Freeman: When I was growing up, we weren't really famous for the music. I mean we were but we weren't. I don't think you were aware, when you were in the midst of it, what you were in the midst of. You were just there. So we had our places to hang out and our favorite musicians, one of which was James Gatemouth Lightening. These were the people we danced to as kids and knew intimately.

Gene Edwards: They were your neighbors

Morgan Freeman: Yeah. They were, they were what, I suppose the term you would use is sustaining because when Friday night comes around, all the kids are allowed out for how long kids are allowed out on Friday night, so that's who we went to visit.

Gene Edwards: And they played on the streets.

Morgan Freeman: They didn't play on our streets. I was in Greenwood , but I remember I spent my very early childhood up to the age of six and one half in Charleston , Tallahatchie County , the next county over and they used to have some blues men who were just like CC Lighters . They just came around. If you had a mason jar full of gin, they hang around. And I remember that. I remember these Sunday mornings just sitting on the porch,

Gene Edwards: Just hanging around

Morgan Freeman: Sitting with them, rocking with them, clapping with them and stuff. that was, and you know, that was the delta blues.

Gene Edwards: Why did you stay. I mean you could be anywhere.

Morgan Freeman: I didn't stay. I came back.

Gene Edwards: Well, why did you come back?

Morgan Freeman: I came back because I went everywhere, I saw everything, and I really realized two things. First one was that in all my life the most comfortable place for me, to me, was here. No matter what else was going on, there was a comfort zone. So when I ran, when I left, and I did leave running. I didn't get far, but I did leave running. I went to all these different places. I was in New York , Los Angeles , San Francisco , Chicago , Philadelphia , Pittsburgh . I mean name it.

Gene Edwards: Broadway shows, television, movies.

Morgan Freeman: Yeah. And what I saw and experienced informed me that you know in all this, you never felt quite the same. You never felt quite as comfortable. Now I don't know that I can blame that so much on the area so much as I can blame that on my parents, my grandmother. You know what I'm saying. But wherever I think you find your comfort zone, that's where you're going to wind up.

Gene Edwards: So does that feed you? You are the hardest working man in …. Recharge batteries?

Morgan Freeman: Absolutely. I mean everything about being back here. Having hookied up with Bill is one of the best things that ever could have happened. You know, I got roots that go back generations so I feel very right about where I am.

Gene Edwards: What do Hollywood people have to say about that when you say I've got to get on the plane and go back to the delta?

Morgan Freeman: The first time, they say, you're going to Mississippi ? Yeah. And then a lot of them have come here subsequently and the best part of all that is then they go, oh it's so beautiful, the people are so friendly, oh it's so.

Gene Edwards: The food's so good.

Morgan Freeman: The food's so good.

Gene Edwards: The music's so nice.

Morgan Freeman: Right. So I said, well you know, there you go.

Gene Edwards: (Note: This interview was conducted on October 21, 2005, eight weeks after Hurricane Katrina.) Do you have the sense?... I have the sense that in the last eight weeks, the world's attitude toward Mississippi has changed. Sine the world came here.

Morgan Freeman: The world has gotten a clearer look. That's the problem, one of the problems that's been since, I suppose since the sixties, is that we've been looked at through the prism of the news rather than… I mean, there is a lot about history that we cannot excuse

Gene Edwards: Should not.

Morgan Freeman: No. But I don't think our history is darker than the rest of the country's. I never saw anybody beaten, a handcuffed man anywhere in Mississippi .

Gene Edwards: What's the last eight weeks done for you? You were involved in the Mississippi Rising and…

Morgan Freeman: Yeah. I don't know that it's done anything for me.

Gene Edwards: Or done to you.

Morgan Freeman: Well, it's the fact that we have this tragedy that has occurred across the sweep of the Gulf Coast — New Orleans , Mississippi , Alabama . We're supposed to be the poor stepchild. So what I think has happened is it turns out that we're not quite that, we were a little richer than that, and I think part of this last eight weeks has shown the world that. That our richness is real.

Gene Edwards: Some really wonderful people live down live down here.

Morgan Freeman: Yeah.

Gene Edwards: I want to talk about Bill Luckett . Did he find you? How did this happen?

Morgan Freeman: I was building my house which is out of the ordinary for the area. Have you ever built a house? So it was getting to be dire. So I was looking for a way to get away the murder. So I needed some help and another friend of mine who is in construction took over the job of being project supervisor for me. He said, “You need a good lawyer.” So he introduced my wife to Bill Luckett and she started glowing. So I had to meet him and the rest is just one of those things that happens when you meet the right person.

Gene Edwards: But from that point to this point, how did you get there? And what was it like when you walked in here for the first time?

Morgan Freeman: Well, this was just an old building, the floors falling apart, ceiling coming in. He's also a builder, which was why he was so good coming in. We started dating is what happened Everybody laughs when I say that… Anyhow, we started dating and in order to go to dinner, we'd have to go a long ways. We'd have to go to Cleveland . We'd have to go to Oxford , We'd have to go to Memphis . And we started also started out hanging out around here because there was a little blues club called the Crossroads, and every now and then it would be open and live music and the place would just be crammed with people. And there would be someone in there from Australia , England , Japan , across Europe, Scandinavia . Look at all these people coming here to hear the blues and there's no place that you can count on. That's criminal. This is Clarksdale Mississippi , storied home of the delta blues. Why isn't there? We have to do something about this. Well first we need a place to eat so ha says, “I think I'm going to build a restaurant.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, How about if I help?” He said, “I gotta think about that. Okay?” (laugh)

Gene Edwards: Did you feel the hook?

Morgan Freeman: Right so you know, we built a restaurant, got it up, going and right after that, started working on this.

Gene Edwards: Are there moments when you say to yourself, what in the world was I thinking about?

Morgan Freeman: Never. I know exactly what I was thinking about. There are moments when my business manager will say what were you thinking about because, you know, getting into particularly in the restaurant business for anybody anywhere. If it is an overnight success, it's going to be an overnight failure. It just works that way. You know but if you can sustain it, pretty soon, it will be able stand on it's own.

Gene Edwards: What's your best moment in this place, do you know?

Morgan Freeman: I we've had a lot of them.

Gene Edwards: You've had some good times.

Morgan Freeman: My wife and I love to dance together. It's one of the things that proves to us that we belong together. And sometimes we come here and the right music is going, and it's a jam and it's like this is the only place to be.

Gene Edwards: I remember the blues divas.

Morgan Freeman: I was just clowning around. I was in Dana Point, California, with Harry Belafonte a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking he said, “You know Sidney Poitier and I were great friends but I've always known that I was the much better actor because I could convince people that I could sing and he couldn't do it.”

Gene Edwards: Well. Look around Clarksdale . Tell me about Clarksdale the future, the promise the hope to make all these things happen.

Morgan Freeman: Clarksdale is, I think particularly for the delta, it's like a microcosm, and whatever happens here will happen. If you've got an overview of this area and you get up in the area and you look down. AndiIt's like looking down on Switzerland . It's farmland. We grow food, fiber,

Gene Edwards: Cotton.

Morgan Freeman: If it grows, we can make it grow here. It's foolish of us to try and change that, but the down side of it is that we have a large portion of our population who are generationally here to this land without access. I mean if I have 1000 acres of land to farm, I don't need 1000 hands to pick the cotton.

Gene Edwards: One day you did.

Morgan Freeman: One day I did. That's part of the down side of our legacy, that this area, up until maybe 30 years ago, this area, oh, it was important to the farmers to have uh a cheap labor force. Just like it's important right now. Why do we have these people streaming up from Mexico ? It's important for our society to have cheap labor so it's almost the same way there. Now we're stuck with that labor force, and we have not been able to gear everything else around to something else. We have to decide what else there is first. Can we do, what other kind of industry can we offer youth? My feeling is first education. Just be a place where people can get education. The whole country is falling short with that, “No Child Left Behind” not withstanding. The other thing is, I think that we are rather uniquely positioned for tourism, a growth industry. Tourism because this is a part of the world that people don't know, and when they come down here, they're mightily impressed by it. They just think it's so different from the rest of the country.

Gene Edwards: I had a guy on the street tell my you know we didn't pay much attention to those blues fans until we realized that some of them were driving Lexuses> (laugh) I thank you for all you're doing.

Morgan Freeman: A great pleasure.

Gene Edwards: It's always fun.