William R. Ferris

Blues from the Delta

William Ferris, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, has written a book as deep as the blues: rich in conversation, reference, history, and firsthand experience with blues musicians and the culture that informs the music. The poetry, games, house parties, religious and secular traditions of black life in the Delta are explored in living prose that is also a work of immense scholarship.

Folklore and the African Novelist: Achebe and Tutuola

Chinua Achebe has emphasized that one of the greatest achievements of tribal society in Nigeria is its ability to utilize folklore with facility in conversation. The greater the body of lore the speaker possesses, the more effective his conversation will be. Though Achebe refers specifically to his Ibo traditions, his statements could be extended to Tutuolas Yoruba background. Achebe stresses that a person is respected for his use of oral lore in a conversational context rather than for his knowledge of numerous tales and proverbs.

B.B. King: September 16, 1925–May 14, 2015

You touched our hearts in such enduring ways. I first heard “The Thrill Is Gone,” when I applied for Conscientious Objector status at Fort Bragg in December 1969. Your song bonded that moment in my memory, and those feelings return each time I hear it. You and I visited often over the years—overseas in Frankfurt and London; on campuses at Yale University and the University of Mississippi; in Washington at the White House, the Old Post Office, and Constitution Hall; in New Orleans, Memphis, San Francisco, and Vicksburg; in Parchman Penitentiary; and with Alex Haley, Shelby Foote, and Mose Allison aboard the Delta Queen. I remember your familiar, warm greeting, “Hello, Bill. How is the family?” In concert, the piercing sound of Lucille’s strings and your powerful vocals respectfully bowed to each other—Lucille never played when you sang, and you never sang when she played. The expression on your face—eyes closed tight—captured the bottomless grief and longsuffering face of the blues. You defined the sound that is synonymous with the blues. Your blues deliver a clarion call of love that will forever ring around the globe. You marked my heart with your music. Wherever there is suffering, wherever loneliness, wherever love is felt, your spirit, your voice, your music will be heard. You will live on as the best, the brightest our world has known. You left this world a far better place than the one you plowed in those Mississippi Delta fields. Your music gave birth to a sound of indescribable beauty— a magisterial work truly befitting a king. B.B. King, you are our nation’s true royalty. We salute you and your gift of love and beauty. We carry your memory in our minds and in our hearts. Your great legacy will inspire future generations, just as it has our own.