Mississippi Delta Gets National Attention
As reported in today's Clarion-Ledger, two towns in the Delta are set to shine in the national spotlight. Cleveland and Clarksdale are both the center of attention as they receive national historic status and potential film-making interest. Click on the headlines for the full articles from The Clarion-Ledger Online.
Dockery Farms Earns Place in History
For a brief but pivotal period, the cotton farms of the Mississippi Delta fueled the economic engine of the United States.
From the late 19th century until the mid-20th, massive plantation-style farms employed thousands of workers, sometimes in conditions not far removed from slavery, as the black dirt of the region provided cotton for textile markets across the globe. But the region's most lasting legacy is the blues. And Dockery Farms, just a few miles east of Cleveland, was its nursery.
The plantation was named Thursday to the National Register of Historic Places in a ceremony attended by Gov. Haley Barbour. Licia Hahn, a board member of the Dockery Farms Foundation, said the designation is the first step in building the former plantation into a tourism destination.
Dockery Farms was home to legendary blues musicians Charlie Patton, Son House and Willie Brown, a trio of musicians who have inspired bluesmen from Robert Johnson to B.B. King and beyond. On his Web site, one blues fan describes the Dockery plantation as being "to the blues what Jerusalem is to religion."
Movie About Johnson to be in Clarksdale Area
A long-delayed film version of the life of Delta blues legend Robert Johnson may begin filming as early as July.
Alan Greenberg wrote the screenplay, Love in Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, in the early 1980s, eventually publishing it as a book. After a failed attempt to bring the story to the screen, Greenberg said Thursday that the project is moving ahead with Tim Blake Nelson directing.
Nelson is best known for starring alongside George Clooney and John Turturro as a trio of convicts in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Greenberg said actor Mos Def is being considered to star as Johnson after Nelson balked at casting Sean "P. Diddy" Combs as the lead.
Greenberg said much of the movie will be filmed in and around Clarksdale and surrounding communities. He said it was important to preserve the setting of Johnson's brief life.
HBO Films is involved in the production, but Greenberg said he is expecting the movie to have a theatrical release.
Dockery Farms Earns Place in History
For a brief but pivotal period, the cotton farms of the Mississippi Delta fueled the economic engine of the United States.
From the late 19th century until the mid-20th, massive plantation-style farms employed thousands of workers, sometimes in conditions not far removed from slavery, as the black dirt of the region provided cotton for textile markets across the globe. But the region's most lasting legacy is the blues. And Dockery Farms, just a few miles east of Cleveland, was its nursery.
The plantation was named Thursday to the National Register of Historic Places in a ceremony attended by Gov. Haley Barbour. Licia Hahn, a board member of the Dockery Farms Foundation, said the designation is the first step in building the former plantation into a tourism destination.
Dockery Farms was home to legendary blues musicians Charlie Patton, Son House and Willie Brown, a trio of musicians who have inspired bluesmen from Robert Johnson to B.B. King and beyond. On his Web site, one blues fan describes the Dockery plantation as being "to the blues what Jerusalem is to religion."
Movie About Johnson to be in Clarksdale Area
A long-delayed film version of the life of Delta blues legend Robert Johnson may begin filming as early as July.
Alan Greenberg wrote the screenplay, Love in Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, in the early 1980s, eventually publishing it as a book. After a failed attempt to bring the story to the screen, Greenberg said Thursday that the project is moving ahead with Tim Blake Nelson directing.
Nelson is best known for starring alongside George Clooney and John Turturro as a trio of convicts in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Greenberg said actor Mos Def is being considered to star as Johnson after Nelson balked at casting Sean "P. Diddy" Combs as the lead.
Greenberg said much of the movie will be filmed in and around Clarksdale and surrounding communities. He said it was important to preserve the setting of Johnson's brief life.
HBO Films is involved in the production, but Greenberg said he is expecting the movie to have a theatrical release.
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