RE: [Harp-L] Re-Introduction

[Donnie MorTone <harp_boy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Welcome Back Fessor Moj o...
& The Best Of Luck In All You Do!
 
~Donnie~
 
> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:16:38 -0700
> From: fessormojo@xxxxxxxxx
> To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Harp-L] Re-Introduction
> 
> 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