The critically acclaimed film The Blues Society, directed by Dr. Augusta Palmer, played select theaters and festivals earlier this year and now it’s available for rental or purchase on all major cable, satellite, and digital platforms.
The feature-length documentary reevaluates the life of the Memphis Country Blues Festival through the lens of race, the counterculture of the ‘60s and the genre of Memphis blues. The Memphis Country Blues Festival (1966-1969) all started with a minimal down payment and a drug exchange.
“I didn’t want to just make a concert film,” says Palmer. “I loved the arc of the story. The initial stake was guitarist Bill Barth’s baseball-size chunk of hash and guitarist Jim Dickinson’s sixty-five-dollar check from a Sun Studios session. It was white and black musicians playing together during the height of the civil rights era. The KKK held a rally in that same public park a few days before. I wanted to understand what this moment meant to the people involved.”
The film follows the festival from its start in 1966 as an impromptu happening, through a period of cross-pollinization with New York’s East Village scene, and up to the 1969 festival, which mushroomed into a three-day event. The movie addresses the stories of blues masters like Furry Lewis, Nathan Beauregard and Rev. Robert Wilkins—who had attained fame in the 1920s and 1930s, but were living in obscurity by the 1960s. It’s also the tale of a group of white artists from the North and the South who created a celebration of African American music in a highly segregated city.
Lewis gained a popular following in the ‘20s, but fell into obscurity as the popularity of “race music” fell in the ‘30s and nearly disappeared post World War II. His touring days were cut short when he lost a leg in a railroad accident in 1917. He worked for decades sweeping the city streets, so the efforts to recognize his musical accomplishments echo the 1968 Sanitation Strike, where each worker’s sign proclaimed “I AM A MAN,” underlining the racist refusal to honor African Americans’ basic humanity.
Folks sought out Lewis after he was featured in The Country Blues by Samuel Charters. He played regularly at Memphis coffeehouse The Bitter Lemon, building close relationships with these young blues enthusiasts. He was a father figure to the members of The Blues Society, and they ultimately fought to help him get a pension.
“Everyone can appreciate the blues music in this film, but love for this music didn’t cure white supremacy, and white blues fans were part of a power structure that took advantage of black artists.”
Musician Bill Barth was a cofounder of the Memphis Country Blues Society, played in a band with Augusta’s father, Robert Palmer, and was a central organizer of the festival. He was always looking for the old blues masters, including famously finding blues great Skip James in a Mississippi hospital.
In ‘66, Barth was canvassing for old 78 (rpm) records when he came across blind proto-bluesman of the ‘20s Nathan Beauregard playing guitar and singing. He looked old, and without asking, Barth billed him as over 100 years old. Much later, his draft card and census were found putting him most likely in his 70s. Beauregard would become known for playing his Japanese electric guitar in an almost acoustic style while singing lonesome songs in his high voice. Beauregard passed away in 1970, only a few years after being brought back to the spotlight. He was buried in an unmarked grave. In 2023 Palmer went to the dedication ceremony of a new gravestone for him provided by the Mount Zion Memorial Fund.
“Bill was a blues aficionado, collector and historian,” says Palmer. “He would walk around Memphis going door-to-door looking for old blues records to buy. There’s books and movies about these collectors. I wish that Nathan Beauregard lived longer. There’s not a lot of interviews with him. He was more of a symbol to the Blues Society than an actual person. He was lauded at festivals and by Sire Records in ‘68. But he was not taken care of or properly remembered.”
Reaching into the present, the film ends at a 2017 concert where John Wilkins returns to the stage he last shared with his father Rev. Robert Wilkins 48 years earlier. Robert wrote “Prodigal Son” in the ‘20s, but was made famous in the ’60s by the Rolling Stones, who initially didn’t properly credit the blues artist. The Blues Society members were outraged, the press pressured the band and its label, and Wilkins was eventually paid royalties on the song. Wilkins wound up being the groundskeeper for The Levitt Shell, the new name of the venue where the festivals took place.
To provide social and historical context, Memphis writer and filmmaker Jamie Hatley talks about how she initially avoided the blues to try to separate herself from the cultural poverty it implied and addressed. Henry Nelson, an African American from West Memphis, Arkansas, talks about how he was hoping he could get a ride to Woodstock, but somehow wound up at the Memphis Country Blues Festival. And Don Flemons discusses how for many young blacks, the rise of the more radical Black Panther movement, distilled the cultural value of the blues.
“We all love the idea that music conquers all,” says Palmer, “Everyone can appreciate the blues music in this film, but love for this music didn’t cure white supremacy, and white blues fans were part of a power structure that took advantage of black artists. I love the enthusiasm of that white hippy idealism, but the rules were much more stringent back then. There were segregated bathrooms for employees at the bandshell. Racial inequality has become more and more clear to the nation since the pandemic. We’ve come a long way, but still have a long way to go.”
The Blues Society premiered Indie Memphis and won the Audience Award, won best Doc Feature at the Oxford Film Festival, and was released theatrical in New York City, Memphis, Columbus, Ohio and Portland, Oregon.
“I’ve been thinking about more ways to do outreach,” says Palmer, “I spent seven years making this cross-generational historic project. We’re already working with high school students, and the Music Maker Relief Foundation is working with us to develop ideas. Their mission is to help preserve the music of the American South by helping musicians. We’re looking forward to bringing this film to new communities to continue this conversation of music, race and culture.”
