[Harp-L] Re-Introduction

[William Donoghue <fessormojo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Allow me toi re-introduce myself to Harp-L members. I was an active member years 
ago and I thought it would be a good time to get back on-line with you fellows.

First of all, I'm known in the blues field as 'fessor Mojo. About ten years ago 
I had the privilege of assisting Stephenson Palfi, the producer of Piano Players 
Rarely Ever Play Together, the award-winning documentary on Professor Longhair, 
Tuts Washington (his mentor) and Allen Toussaint (his protégé). I have probably 
watched that brilliant documentary a couple of dozen times and it is my 
favorite. (If you are looking for the DVD the only place I know you can get it 
is the old reliable Louisiana Music Factory in New Orleans LA. Anyway, Palfi 
discovered that I was a bit of an investment guru (I write an investment 
newsletter for MarketWatch.com) and he dubbed me "'fessor Mojo." 

 
I liked it and adopted it. You have to be given blues names, you can't just make 
them up. I appeared on eight blues festivals using that name as a Delta blues 
educator. I can't play or sing anything.
 
In 1995, I was in Memphis on a sort of exploratory vacation week. I had visited 
Memphis on book tour (yes, I am a published author and publisher) and was 
curious and well it was Elvis week in August and I thought that might be fun. I 
was always curious about where rock started. I had listened closely to the 
interview segments in the Last Waltz video and was intrigued by Levon Helm's 
description of the mix of gospel, blues, jazz, "show" music (minstrel shows), 
bluegrass and country and how it came together in the mid-1950s and it seemed 
magic.
 
Reading a guidebook called the Blues and Jazz Lover's Guide To America, I 
discovered for the first time exactly where the Mississippi delta was. So, I 
called up a record store in Clarksdale MS and hired a guide for two afternoons 
to show me around. With my luck, it turned out to be Jim O'Neal, co-founder of 
Living Blues. I love music documentaries and have probably seen every jazz, 
blues or roots music concert film or documentary of quality ever made. I thought 
that I would like to take a few days off and go through the motions of doing one 
to see how it was done. Fortunately, I took my video camera along.
 
Soon, I was at Sonny Boy Williamson's grave and we planned to visit Sonny Boy's 
last two sisters. I interviewed them each separately. Both had a bit of 
Alzheimer's but their long memory was clear and they would speak of Robert 
Johnson as if he had just left the room. It was a life-changing afternoon.
 
What they told me was that Sonny Boy was the youngest of 21 children, he was the 
only musician in the family and his name was Alex (not Aleck). I didn't know at 
the time but those facts would help me discover the real story behind the 
mysterious bluesman, Sonny Boy Williamson II AKA Alex "Rice" Miller (among other 
names). Three months later the two sisters died together in fire and I helped 
pay for their burial.
 
In the 15 years since then I have interviewed over 300 friends, fans, family and 
fellow musicians about Sonny Boy. The quest took me to interviews with B. B. 
King, James Cotton, Pinetop Perkins, Frank Frost, Sam Carr, Sunny Payne, Hugh 
Smith (the long-time host of King Biscuit Time), Gayle Dean Wardlow, Honeyboy 
Edwards, Jerry Ricks, Rick Estrin, Eric Burdon, and many others. I interviewed 
three of Sonny Boy's family this week and over the last 15 years I have even 
found three people who told amazingly similar stories about seeing his ghost. 
That man has some strong Mojo.
 
Fortunately most of my interviews are on commercial quality video shot by 
professionals and all of the interviews are transcribed to help assemble a book, 
a documentary and a screenplay.
 
Also along the way Robert Lockwood Jr. asked me to write his biography and we 
spent a lot of time together. Along the way, I've met a lot of good friends and 
gotten to know some of the greatest blues poets in blues history. This music, 
the people and the blues has touched me in a way that I never expected.
 
What has surprised me is how the personal stories, the lyrics of the blues 
poetry, the confluence of God's music with the devil's music, the social 
injustice of the delta, the history, the undercurrent of civil rights, the 
economy of the delta, the unavoidable traumas of delta life (tornadoes, floods, 
sharecropping, plantation accounting, gospel and blues, Blacks and whites, and 
the hope, accomplishment and achievement of the Black community in spite of it 
-- all built into a music that allowed those who could not complain to express 
their frustrations in blues poetry.
 
Sonny Boy's harp, blues poetry, history, love stories and family secrets are 
weaving together into a tapestry of a story that will make the distraction of 
being assigned someone else's name, the late-in-life recording career, and dying 
with an invitation to the Newport Folk Festival and to tour with The Band and 
maybe Bob Dylan in his hip pocket.
 
For a few years I had the honor of being investigative reporter Jack Anderson's 
publisher and I won a national award in investigative journalism. At one point, 
I had my own national TV and radio shows and have been on the NYTimes 
Best-Seller List but this story is the one I was born to tell and it is my goals 
to have the story told largely in the words of the people who lived in.
 
So that's what I bring to the table. I have bent over backwards to make my 
research exhaustive (I have a bigger library of original blues magazines than 
the Library of Congress), objective (with the minimum of connective speculation 
appropriate -- we can't always know what peoples motivations are nor do the 
people know that about themselves) and accurate (you would be surprise at how 
many stories and facts from back in the '40s, 30s and 20s can be traced to two 
sources and confirmed).
 
Wish me luck and help me fill in the gaps if you can. It's a story worth waiting 
for.
 
By the way, there is a lot of new information reported on www.Sonnyboy.com .
 
'fessor Mojo
 
 
William E. Donoghue
218 C Foss Creek Circle
Healdsburg CA 95448
707-395-0147 home
206-954-4762 cell