Souls of the South

Blues pioneers along the Mississippi River made powerful music from hard times. Photographer Gail Mooney traveled to the Delta to find the bluesmen and -women who connect us to our disappearing past.

• Musicians
• Artists

Cotton, sugar, rice: The Mississippi Delta has some of the richest soil on the planet. But it was another export from that fertile land that truly changed our world: the blues.

All of America's popular music -- jazz, country, rock and roll, and hip-hop -- has its roots in the sound and spirit of the Delta blues. Its lyrics gave voice to the lives and laments of workers in the fields and plantations of the Deep South, who grew up in the shadow of slavery. The blues may be synonymous with sorrow, but singing it is an act of defiance, not despair. As the novelist Ralph Ellison once wrote, the blues "reminds us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go."

Remarkably, we can still almost touch the originators of this revolutionary art form. Reversing the journey the blues took north up the Mississippi River -- when African Americans left the South in search of new, industrial jobs -- photographer Gail Mooney, 57, traveled from Chicago clubs down to the Delta to capture the images and stories of bluesmen and -women while they are still here to connect us to the music's early days.

"In our conversations, we talked about so much more than their music," says Mooney, whose multimedia exhibit on the blues has just begun a U.S. tour this spring. "We talked about their childhoods, their cultural roots, and a time in America when rural life was migrating toward a more urban existence. I would listen, I would shoot, and sometimes I would capture a feeling."

These photographs feature some of the musicians who worked and studied with blues pioneers -- drummer Sam Carr is the son of the legendary Robert Nighthawk, while Pinetop Perkins (now 94 years old) and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith played alongside Muddy Waters.

Already, this generation is leaving us: Little Milton, guitarist and vocalist, and Robert "Junior" Lockwood (who learned from Robert Johnson, the most mythic bluesman of all) have passed away since Mooney began her project. Their legacy, however, is massive. Turn on your radio and some little trace of the Delta gets passed down again.

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