By MARIA SHERMAN AP Music Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — It happened out of necessity. Academy Award-winner Morgan Freeman was in Clarksdale, Mississippi, 25 years ago when some out-of-towners asked where they could hear blues music. Musicians were abundant; venues were not.
“There was no place where we could guarantee that you could go in and hear it,” he told The Associated Press. “So, we had to establish that.”
Freeman and his business partners, then-Mayor Bill Luckett and Howard Stovall, were inspired to open a juke joint in Clarksdale called Ground Zero Blues Club. Then, much more recently, they created “Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience,” a touring ensemble of blues musicians who marry the beloved Southern genre with classical, symphonic compositions. On Friday, they’ll release an album under the same name.
The legendary actor is a producer and narrator on the release, not a performer. That’s left up to the professionals: all-star acts like Taj Mahal, Keb’ Mo’, Shemekia Copeland, Tiernii Jackson, the Stax Music Academy Choir, the Chineke! Orchestra out of London, and many more.
“I like the blues. I like music. I cannot claim to be an aficionado. That’s not my place,” says Freeman. “I’m an enthusiast, but that’s a necessity.”
From live performances to a full-length record
Before the album, the “Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience” traveling performances were born out of a simple idea: How could Freeman and his team bring this music to the world?
“Blues is an important American story birthed in the Mississippi Delta out of hardship but obviously resonates with people and cultures on a global basis, both for how good it sounds, but also the message underneath it,” said Eric Meier, Freeman’s partner and co-producer on the project who joined the actor’s blues club in 2018. “We conceived of this concept to really take this music to new geographies and new audiences.”
Turning the live performance into an album meant cutting down a nearly two-hour show to around 45 minutes across 12 tracks, while still honoring the format. It includes video vignettes as well as “cinematic narration,” courtesy of Freeman, recorded at the club in Clarksdale.
“We offer a musical story, a 100-year arc from the 1930s to modern day, so the evolution of blues music,” says Meier.
Freeman’s idiosyncratic voice opens the record, describing the genre with a real poetry, delivered atop a haunting rendition of Blind Willie Johnson’s 1927 gospel blues classic, “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.”
“This is music that gave voice to a people, to their pain, their hope and their resilience,” Freeman recites. “Music isn’t just melody, you know. It’s memory, it’s history wrapped in ribbon, the echoes of lives lived and lost, heartache and hope all tangled together. And nowhere is that truer than in the blues.”
Freeman wants to keep the blues alive
The last song on “Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience” sees singer-songwriter Muddy Waters’ great-nephew Keith Johnson covering Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Göransson’s “I Lied to You” from the Oscar-winning 2025 film “Sinners.” It brings the 100-year story of blues to its coda, but it also serves as a reminder of the film’s ability to bring the genre into mainstream conversation.
That’s something Freeman hopes to accomplish, too. He wants to make sure blues is not forgotten.
“It is a responsibility that we’ve taken on. And the hope is that it, like everything else that catches on, takes root, as it were. You know, the blues is actually America’s music,” he says. “So, it’s incumbent upon us to water it, nurture it, keep it alive, keep it going.”
Meier adds that their album project predates “Sinners” — he says director Ryan Coogler told him the film’s juke joint was partially inspired by Ground Zero Blues Club; the film is set in Clarksdale after all — but it has been “a wonderful coincidence” that both works have the power to bring the blues to the masses.
And maybe one day, “Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience” will receive the same kind of critical praise given to “Sinners.” The album is eligible for the 2027 Grammy Awards.
“We will be submitting in multiple categories,” says Meier. “You got room on your trophy shelf, Morgan?”
“Yeah, yeah. I want it,” Freeman smiles.
Adding Grammy Award-winner to his Academy Award-winner title? “Sounds pretty good to me.”