In 1966, The Memphis Country Blues Society created their first festival
with a fistful of dollars and what society member Randall Lyon called a
“heroic passion” for the blues. This collective from the counterculture
launched an integrated music festival featuring bluesmen like Bukka
White and Furry Lewis playing alongside younger white folk musicians
like John Fahey at the Overton Park Band Shell (now the Levitt Shell),
a space where staff restrooms were still segregated and the KKK had
held a rally just one week before. Three more versions of The Memphis
Country Blues Festival were held, attracting increasing attention from
fans in the city and people much further afield. Even in the face of the
violence following Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, the
Blues Society persevered. A recording from the 1968 festival became a
major international release on Seymour Stein’s Sire Records, and, in
1969, the festival attracted a crew from New York’s WNET, and footage of
the festival was broadcast nationally on Sounds of the Summer, hosted
by Steve Allen. Combining a wealth of archival materials with new
interviews featuring the organizers of the festival, The Blues Society
traces the journey of the festival from improvised local celebration to
an event of national prominence.
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