SongCircle on 07/01/11

To preface the start of the 2011 Waterfront Blues Festival, KBOO's live coverage of which kicks off immediately following today's Songcircle, we'll feature the legendary audio documentary, Blues in the Mississippi Night, featuring famous folklorist Alan Lomax's 1948 interview with the great bluesmen Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy, and Sonny Boy Williamson about the origins of the blues deep in the Jim Crow south. The three men speak openly -- perhaps for the first time -- of the virulent racism they grew up with, and how blues music grew out of that environment as both an expression of and balm for the pain of prejudice, interspersed with illustrative tunes. Before the BluesFest kicks off, hear where the blues truly began!