Blues music has long been a religion for Morgan Freeman — which says a lot, coming from a man who once played God.
“Blues was the first ‘gospel’ music that I ever heard, because I didn’t go to church,” the Academy Award-winning actor shared in a recent Zoom conversation from inside his farm home in Charleston, Mississippi. It’s the same area where, as a young boy, he heard his first music notes.
“I couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 years old at the time,” the actor, now 88, explained. “It was a very rural setting, and the road from my grandmother’s house was a cotton field. I remember guys often coming to just hang out, and they played music with their guitars and just sang and sang.”
Those soulful performances struck a chord in Freeman, who also spent part of his youth on Chicago’s South Side but reconnected with the blues when he moved back to the Delta at the age of 12. Though he never learned to play guitar himself, Freeman was hellbent on keeping the culture and viability of the blues alive. In 2001, he partnered on a venture to open the Ground Zero Blues Club in nearby Clarksdale, Mississippi, to provide a platform for emerging artists. Its name, of course, pays homage to the birthplace of Delta blues and carries on the legacy of the town’s turn-of-the-century juke joints that became a mecca for many musicians.
Now, for the first time, Ground Zero — in coordination with Visit Mississippi, Visit Clarksdale and Memphis Tourism — is taking the show on the road, presenting Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience at venues across the country, including Ravinia on Aug. 1.
The first-of-its-kind extravaganza is a two-part experience. There’s the music production, where a league of young Delta blues musicians will be paired with an orchestra (in this case, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and possibly some special guests from Chicago’s blues scene.
But it’s also part cinema: Freeman, in recorded bits, lends his trademark narration to a sweeping film about the past, present and future of the blues and its place in the story of America.
“If I was going to do a class about the blues, I would impress that this is not just a form of music. It’s a form of history,” Freeman said. “It tells a lot about Black people, and in many cases, the pain and how we overcame.” Or, as guitar legend B.B. King once said, “Playing the blues is like having to be Black twice.”
One of Freeman’s business partners, Eric Meier, added that the show takes great lengths to tell the legacy of the Blues over more than 100 years, explaining that “the narration and music evolve together.”
“We start the performances with the work songs from the sharecroppers in the 1930s. And then as we move through the night, the music follows the Great Migration and moves up the river from Memphis to Detroit to Chicago … and finally the impact of this music genre on R&B and rock musicians [years later],” Meier said.
Pairing an orchestra with blues musicians was no easy feat, said Meier, who was inspired after seeing hip-hop paired with a symphony.
“It’s a balancing act of trying to keep the authenticity and energy of the blues, but add the richness of a symphonic arrangement and not make it sound like muzak,” he said. “I would say when you get the electrification of the blues, it’s a little easier. But if you take some of the early songs by folks like Son House and Robert Johnson, there’s a lot more work that needs to be done, and you don’t want to overwhelm it with orchestral sounds. But I believe we’ve done it.”
A strong motive for producing the Symphonic Blues Experience, Meier said, is having audiences understand “this is a music genre that could have died, and it didn’t. It actually evolved.” The majority of the Blues musicians on the tour are under the age of 40, and that, Meier said, “sends a really good message that the blues is not going anywhere and we’ve got the next torchbearers, the younger generation that are taking this as their own.”
It’s a theme they saw play out in the wild reception to Ryan Coogler’s recent Southern horror movie “Sinners.” The film, which features an incredible Buddy Guy cameo and scenes with Clarksdale talent Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, takes place in Mississippi and is inspired by the lore of Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads in exchange for his musical gifts. Around the time of the premiere in May, Ground Zero Blues Club hosted a celebration party for the cast and crew, and distributor Warner Bros. paid for free IMAX screenings for the Clarksdale community.
“As far as Hollywood is concerned, I think it’s a new genre for [movies],” Freeman said about “Sinners.” He still hopes that someday, he’ll be able to portray a blues musician on the big screen. A movie called “Hate to See You Go” was announced in 2021, in which Freeman was set to portray a Chicago blues musician, Sonny Bell, who “refuses to retire,” according to IMDb — though the production has since stalled.
“I don’t think it’s totally dead yet,” Freeman said of the project, which had also cast Chicago rapper Common. “But, you know, these things percolate for many years. … It would be fun to do it, except that I can’t play a guitar,” he joked.
Instead, Freeman and Meier are focused on paying it forward, using proceeds from the Symphonic Blues Experience and some special 25th anniversary celebrations for the club next year to help fuel their Ground Zero Arts Foundation.
The goal “is to have funding come back to the community,” said Meier. “With Ground Zero, we found a way to fill the void, and now we’re just trying to build on that.”