Deep Blues

Deep blues is an homage to the Mississippi Delta as the cradle of blues. The initiative was taken by Dave Stuart, the British guitar player and producer of the 'Eurythmics' and 'The Spiritual Cowboys'. In the autumn of 1990 he stopped over on a tour of his band to visit Robert Palmer, who is the founder of the Memphis Blues Festival, a critic of pop music with the New York Times, and writer of a cultural history of the Mississippi Delta in 'Deep Blues'.
Together with director Robert Mugge, Stuart and Palmer visited a number of musicians in Memphis and North Mississippi. After that Mugge and Palmer went into the Delta to make recordings of traditional blues musicians on film and on tape. These musicians play the blues on the balcony of their house or in the living room. They also visited bands that played their electrically amplified music on stages in villages and towns in the countryside.
Stuart and Mugge pay visits to notable blues towns, such as Holy Spring, Greenville, Clarksdale and Bentonia. They make live recordings of shows with Booker T. Laury, R.L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Junior Kimbrough, Roosevelt 'Booba' Barnes and the Playboys, Big Jack Johnson, Jack Owens and Bud Spires, and Lonnie Pitchford. During the trip Palmer gives evidence of an encyclopedic knowledge of his subject and he provides us with an extensive insight into the history and mythology of blues.