Our Indiegogo Campaign is now over, but you can still help us tell this amazing story by donating directly to our production company here!

In the mid-1960s, a collective of artists and musicians came together to celebrate blues legends like Furry Lewis, the Reverend Robert Wilkins, and Bukka White  by creating the Memphis Country Blues Festival , held what is now the Levitt Shell. Held only one week after a KKK rally was convened at the same bandshell, the series of 4 events held annually in 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969 achieved national notoriety with the release of a recording of the 1968 festival on Sire Records, coverage in Rolling Stone by Stanley Booth, and a nationally aired version of the 1969 concert on a fledgling PBS.

The organizers of the festivals included Memphis music luminaries like Jim Dickinson, Sid Selvidge, Lee Baker and Jimmy Crosthwait as well as members of 1960s cult band The Insect Trust: Robert Palmer, Bill Barth, and Nancy Jeffries. Artists like John McIntire, Lydia Saltzman and Randall Lyon joined forces with musicians and bohemians to form a new cultural space. Players at the festivals included Nathan Beauregard, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sleepy John Estes, and Johnny Woods as well as Lee Baker, Moloch, The Insect Trust, and Colonel Bruce Hampton, and John Fahey.

The Blues Society will combine a wealth of archival materials with new interviews to trace the journey of the Memphis Country Blues Festivals from improvised local celebration of American blues masters to an event of national prominence.

Poster by John McIntire

The Campaign

We began production with a little over $14,000 worth of paypal contributions from people like you. We shot 17 interviews in Memphis this summer, and are now asking for your help to move forward.

Our goal is to raise $29,650. Funds raised will pay for:

• Additional interview shoots in Memphis, New York, and the West Coast
• The creation of a website for the project
• The first stage of editing

The Perks

We have AMAZING perks for donors at ANY price range, including private screenings, downloads & blu-rays, books, vinyl, and more. Through the generosity of donors like Fat Possum Records, you can buy perks at market value and still donate the entire amount to this project.

Scroll down to see more Perk photos at the bottom of the page…

The Director:

Augusta Palmer is the daughter of Memphis Country Blues Society Member Bob Palmer. She is best known for The Hand of Fatima (2009), a feature documentary about music, mysticism, and family history. Her award-winning documentary and experimental video work has screened in national and international festivals, as well as theatrical runs at venues like New York’s Anthology Film Archives. A is for Aye-Aye: An Abecedarian Adventure (2015), her fiction short has screened at film festivals from New Zealand to New York, recently receiving an award for Best Animation at the New Jersey International Film Festival. She is also an Assistant Professor of Communication Arts at St. Francis College.

Risks & Challenges

Making a feature-length documentary can be a long process, and it’s not for the faint of heart, but director Augusta Palmer has been here before, completing features and shorts; and refusing to give up.

When a Kickstarter for   did not make its full goal in June, we kept going. Donors gave via paypal, have received their perks (except for blu-rays and downloads of the film, of course), and production got started with a vengeance – 17 interviews for The Blues Society were filmed in Memphis and Mississippi by a fantastic crew that included Juan Carlos Borrero, Sean Faust, Nicki Newburger, and Forest Erwin.

We hope to earn our full goal in this campaign, but if we don’t we will definitely keep going, shooting interviews and editing our new footage. It may mean the project takes longer but we are doggedly determined to tell this story.

The interviews we’ve done, with James Alexander, Stanley Booth, Jimmy Crosthwait, Mary Lindsay Dickinson, Robert Gordon, Reverend John Wilkins and many more are far too moving, too exciting and too important. The director feels honored to have heard their stories and can’t wait to hear more.

So your support is vital, and every donation will make a huge difference to this documentary.

Other Ways You Can Help

• Share your story with us. I know there are still a lot of folks out there we haven’t talked to, so get in touch: bluessocietyfilm@gmail.com
• Share our campaign with friends, family, and friendly strangers on the street!
• Like our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/The-Blues-Society-1808...

• Join our mailing list: http://eepurl.com/b7uxMn

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT & YOUR STORIES

PERKS, MORE PERKS!