Film captures fading breed of Mississippi blues musicians

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Film captures fading breed of Mississippi blues musicians
September 20, 2009
By MICHAEL DUMAS
The Mississippi Press

"You know, that'll all be gone in 10 years."

Standing in Roger Stolle's blues music store up north in Clarksville, looking around at all the music and the older men who made it, blues man Terry "Harmonica" Bean told Stolle that, and the point really hit home.

It's a good thing Stolle and his friend, blues producer Jeff Konkel, were making a documentary about Mississippi blues, to try and capture the genre of music generally thought to have been born in the deltas and fields of rural Mississippi.

"He didn't mean the music, he was really speaking about the guys, that generation," Stolle said about Bean's comment.

The film, "M for Mississippi" chronicles his and Konkel's seven-day road trip through the state's juke joints and house parties as they recorded the 60-, 70- and 80-year-old men doing what they know and love best. The two, and fellow filmmaker Kari Jones, will screen the film at the Mary C. O'Keefe Cultural Center in Ocean Springs at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday.

The blues is still known as the devil's music in many of the rural areas they visited, Stolle said, though a majority of the musicians featured in the film only listen to two types of music, and the other is gospel.

One of the men featured could not be identified by name or hometown, because he was also the deacon at a local church.

In the film, though, he said the man makes a point to illustrate how subtle the difference truly is between some blues and gospel songs.

"(The difference) is just a couple of words," Stolle said. "It's the same music."

Stolle and Konkel, who admit they would normally be spending a good deal of time in juke joints listening to these same musicians anyway, have said they consider the film to be a love letter to Mississippi.