Clarksdale, Mississippi — The production crew from the blues documentary “M for Mississippi: A Road Trip through the Birthplace of the Blues” will host a booth this Thursday and Friday at the Mississippi Blues Marathon Expo in the Jackson Convention Complex.

The Blues Expo — an official preamble to Saturday’s Mississippi Blues Marathon — will feature multiple vendors as well as live blues music, including performances by artists featured the award-winning film “M for Mississippi.”

“The film ‘M for Mississippi’ showcases the state of Mississippi blues today,” according to Roger Stolle, one of the film’s producers. “By mixing firsthand accounts of cotton plantations and chain gangs with live music at traditional juke joints and house parties, we sought to capture the essence of this amazing living history and the personalities behind it.”

The movie “M for Mississippi” is available on DVD and features two accompanying CD soundtracks. It is a Blues Music Award and Living Blues Award winner and has been screened in the US, Canada, Italy, Belgium and Denmark.

Filmed in 2008, “M for Mississippi” is an entertaining, week-long road-trip movie that visits a dozen veteran bluesmen throughout the Magnolia State — including legends James “T-Model” Ford, LC Ulmer and Jimmy “Duck” Holmes. Three of the film’s producers — Roger Stolle of Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art, Jeff Konkel of Broke & Hungry Records and Kari Jones of Mudpuppy Recordings — will be attending the “M for Mississippi” booth at this week’s expo.  (Cinematographer Damien Blaylock and recording engineer Bill Abel rounded out the production team.)

“Roger, Kari and I will be on hand to discuss the movie and offer a selection of our blues DVDs and CDs,” explained Jeff Konkel. “We’re excited to be introducing Jackson to our movie and record labels during the Blues Marathon Expo.”

The Blues Expo will be held at the Jackson Convention Complex (105 Pascagoula Street) and open from 5pm-9pm on Thursday, January 7th, and 10am-7pm on Friday, January 8th.

When John wrote about The Delta Blues Museum and Muddy Waters’ cabin, he showed me this amazing book called Lost Delta Found.

The book was published in 2005 but it collects the lost work of John W. Work, Lewis Wade Jones, and Samuel C. Adams. These men were scholars from Fisk University. Their work took place in the 1940s and their goal was “to document adequately the cultural and social backgrounds for music in the community,” the black community of Coahoma County, Mississippi.

Author and filmmaker Robert Gordon and musician Bruce Nemerov have compiled the results of the folklorists’ study, including individual entries about musicians, such as Muddy Waters, general writings about the Delta, musical transcriptions of the traditional songs, and interviews. These scholars–Work, Jones and Adams–left us a treasure.

In particular, John W. Work III recorded these notes about Muddy Waters: “Muddy Water would like to join the church but to do so would mean abandoning his guitar–a sacrifice too dear to make now.” (120)

“John W. Work took this famous photo of Henry Sims and McKinley Morganfield on Stovall’s plantation in Coahoma county in the summer of 1943 . . . Courtesy of Center for Poplar Music, Middle Tennessee State University; John W. Work III Collection.” (119)

Our good friend Willie King passed away on Sunday. There are no words to express how sad we are. I’ve put a few of our favorite pictures below – if you have any you would like for me to post please email them to the store and I’ll post them. Also, here is a video. A link to Willie’s website and more video on the Highway 61 Radio website.