The Origin of the Blues and the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi
A discussion of the origins of the blues, from the documentary The Blues Lives On!: The Delta Blues Museum.
Great Museums Television (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
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News •
“Dr. Funk” joins Minnesota Blues Hall of Fame
• Oct. 19, 2026, 3:00 AM ET (Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder)
Transcript
MORGAN FREEMAN: If you're pulling a load, if you're hoeing, if you've got a pick in your hand, and somebody goes . . .
[Singing]: Take a this hamma, ha!
That's where the work is.
[Singing]: Car' to the captain, ha!
Blues.
[Music in]
NARRATOR: You can hear the human heartbeat through a stethoscope. But sometimes you can hear it much more clearly through a microphone. You know this music. It clings to you like a second skin.
PETER ASCHOFF: Big Mama Thornton and the Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters—how can you not love a music whose artists have names like that? You don't just love this music; you LOVE THIS MUSIC!
CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE: There's somethin' about blues that really described how I felt inside. It was like it was my comforter.
TONY CZECH: A lot of people wanna put the blues in almost, you know, a wailing and gnashing of their teeth. But blues is very, very celebratory.
NARRATOR: And one place where the blues is celebrated with gusto is at the Delta Blues Museum, an old railroad depot in Clarksdale, Mississippi—the very place where blues legend Muddy Waters and others like him took the train and the blues to the rest of the world. Now the rest of the world comes here, in search of the history and the future of the blues.
MORGAN FREEMAN: I think that the blues music is probably our most enduring classical music.
PETER ASCHOFF: This is simply the most influential American music in the 20th century, hands down.
SUPER CHIKAN [Singing]: You don't love me, little girl, the way you used to do.
[Music out]
[Singing]: Take a this hamma, ha!
That's where the work is.
[Singing]: Car' to the captain, ha!
Blues.
[Music in]
NARRATOR: You can hear the human heartbeat through a stethoscope. But sometimes you can hear it much more clearly through a microphone. You know this music. It clings to you like a second skin.
PETER ASCHOFF: Big Mama Thornton and the Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters—how can you not love a music whose artists have names like that? You don't just love this music; you LOVE THIS MUSIC!
CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE: There's somethin' about blues that really described how I felt inside. It was like it was my comforter.
TONY CZECH: A lot of people wanna put the blues in almost, you know, a wailing and gnashing of their teeth. But blues is very, very celebratory.
NARRATOR: And one place where the blues is celebrated with gusto is at the Delta Blues Museum, an old railroad depot in Clarksdale, Mississippi—the very place where blues legend Muddy Waters and others like him took the train and the blues to the rest of the world. Now the rest of the world comes here, in search of the history and the future of the blues.
MORGAN FREEMAN: I think that the blues music is probably our most enduring classical music.
PETER ASCHOFF: This is simply the most influential American music in the 20th century, hands down.
SUPER CHIKAN [Singing]: You don't love me, little girl, the way you used to do.
[Music out]
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