(Seated left to right) Bruce Nemerov, Robert Gordon and host Gene Edwards.

“What I found were some pieces of paper on the floor at the Lomax Archives,” says author Robert Gordon. They were documentation about the 1941 field trip when Muddy Waters was first recorded, but writings weren't by Alan Lomax. They were from Fisk University scholars. Gordon was researching his biography on the blues great, but he took what he calls a “right turn” and set off in pursuit of more of these papers.

 

Bruce Nemerov, Gordon's collaborator on Lost Delta Found, knew about the Fisk University research--John Work and others had accompanied Alan Lomax on his trips through the Mississippi delta—and asked Gordon “to keep an eye out. And lo and behold, Robert found the stuff.”

 

The “stuff” were manuscripts by John W. Work, a noted composer; Lewis Wade Jones, a sociologist; and Samuel C.Adams, Jr., a graduate student. These African American scholars explored the Mississippi delta with Alan Lomax. They wanted to document the black community, to find the cultural and social background for the music being created at that time and place. Fisk University and the Library of Congress, Lomax's employer, were to publish a joint study of their research. But the papers were lost.

 

Now they are found. When Gordon and Nemerov brought all the research together, “A bigger picture than we realized existed came together. And it was great because one guy's got a sociological angle, one guy's got a musicologial angle, and one guy's got this sort of anecdotal presentation.” Together Gordon and Nemerov prepared these papers for publication. Their book, Lost Delta Found, tells us about the people and place that gave birth to the blues. They allow long silent voices to speak again.

 

One of the early blues voices is has been making music all along. The first time David “Honeyboy” Edwards was ever recorded was in 1941. “It was one Saturday evening in Friar's Point, Mississippi , and I was playing the blues with my harp and guitar and I was on the court square,” he says. “He walked up with his book under his arm, dressed up, had a nice suit on and everything. And I was half high in the crowd, playing the blues there. He said, “I'm Alan Lomax from the Library of Congress and I'd like to do some recording. I'd like you to make records for me.'”

 

Edwards has been writing and singing the blues for over sixty years. “There's something, a verse in the blues that if you sand them, somebody has done that. You may sing your woman as done gone,” he adds. “Something in the blues hits a lot of people because there's some verse in there, somebody done done it. It's just, the blues are like a story.”

 

Of the place, Clarksdale , Mississippi , the home of the blues, Edwards remembers, “This was a real city, oh yeah. Had picture shows there, theatres, restaurants, and big lights lit up every night.” These days, Clarksdale celebrates its heritage everywhere--in museums and inns, on the streets and in its blues clubs. One of the most famous is Ground Zero, where host Gene Edwards caught up with Mississippi native and Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman. He helped to develop the venue to celebrate the music he grew up with. “I remember these Sunday mornings just sitting on the porch, sitting with them, rocking with them, clapping with them, and stuff, and that was, and you know, that was the delta blues.” “Honeyboy” Edwards sings at Morgan Freeman's place.

 

“We'd be honored if you would do a song for us,” encourages the host, and the legend entertains with two of his original songs. Gordon and Nemerov included transcriptions of other delta songs in their book, and Nemerov brings three of them to the show. Joined by guitarist Gene Bush, he sings songs that surrounded the blues sixty years ago.