Traveling the Blues Trail with Filmmaker Ted Reed

It’s episode 19 of Making Media Now and we’ve got the blues! Listen in as host Michael Azevedo chats with Oscar- and Emmy-award winning filmmaker Ted Reed about his documentary “The Blues Trail Revisited.”  In the spring of 1970, 20 year old Museum of Fine Arts film students Ted Reed and his friend Tim Treadway drove through the south to find and record some of the last living blues legends. Their goal was to discover the very roots of American popular music, and the sources of the rock music they had grown up with. That film, the 27-minute 16mm black and white “Thinking Out Loud” was seen at a handful of festivals, and then sat in a storage facility.  Fifty years later, Reed, by now a multiple award winning documentary filmmaker, discovered his old film while in the process of moving his office. He realized he was sitting on a treasure trove; archival footage of a bygone time that no one else had ever used. His curiosity moved him to drive the identical route he had taken years before and see firsthand what had changed in the birthplace of the blues. The result is “The Blues Trail Revisited” (http://bluestrailrevisited.com)   As on his original trip, Reed was looking for the source of the spirit of the blues in the flatland cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, the lonely highways that crisscrossed the region, and a sense of the spirits of the departed blues artists he had originally sought out.    Making Media Now is sponsored by FC, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting media makers from across the creative spectrum. From providing fiscal sponsorship to presenting an array of informative and educational programs, FC supports creatives at every step in their journey. To learn more, visit filmmakerscollab.org   And if you’re enjoying this podcast, we encourage you to subscribe and leave a glowing review!   About the host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-azevedo/ and www.mrazvo.com