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Still Singing the Blues

Carol Fran
Richard Ziglar
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Still Singing the Blues
Carol Fran

Airs Friday, February 9, at 10 p.m. Still Singing the Blues features musicians in New Orleans and South Louisiana who continue to perform both traditional blues and rhythm-and-blues—often despite poverty, ill health, and the impacts of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. The hour-long, music-rich documentary burrows into the lives of three outstanding older performers: Carol Fran of Lafayette, Harvey Knox of Baton Rouge, and Little Freddie King of New Orleans. Listeners will travel with these musicians to recording sessions, street corners, birthday celebrations, and neighborhood taverns. Also interviewed are blues pianist and singer Marcia Ball; blues-and-funk guitarist Ernie Vincent; and Bethany Bultman, president of the New Orleans Musicians Clinic.

Producers Richard Ziglar and Barry Yeoman have been interviewing older Southern blues and R&B musicians for the past 18 months. Their last documentary, Truckin' My Blues Away, was commissioned and distributed by AARP's Prime Time Radio and broadcast on 325 stations. The current, independently-produced project, Still Singing the Blues, is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative and funded, in part, by a generous grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.