Spooney's Barbecue, Johnson Street, Robert Johnson's three headstones and other images associated with Greenwood and the Delta are getting national exposure this week around a PBS series on the blues.
The "Blues Breaks," produced by the Mississippi Broadcasting Networks, appear before and after the seven internationally acclaimed documentaries produced by famed director Martin Scorsese. The films run until Saturday.
The 60-second glimpses of "the birthplace of the blues" follow Greenwood musician and writer Steve Cheseborough to juke joints, gravesites, defunct plantations and crossroads famous for blues lore. Most of the sites and material are based on excerpts from Cheseborough's book "Blues Travelin'."
Cheseborough said the "Blues Breaks" are the Mississippi Broadcasting Networks' contribution to the celebration of the Year of the Blues, which Congress declared for 2003.
"I like to think it's always the year of the blues in Mississippi," Cheseborough said. "But I'm glad our local network is getting into it, and I'm honored to be a part of it."
Some of the spots feature living blues artists James "Super Chikan" Johnson of Clarksdale, Willie King and Vasti Johnson and take viewers on a Delta tour that includes Dockery and Hopson plantations.
Robert Mugge, who wrote, directed and produced the "Blues Breaks," says the Mississippi Broadcasting Networks intends for the 13 shorts to add regional flavor to the big-budget documentaries by Hollywood directors.
"Our aim was to make them as informing and entertaining and as high impact as possible," said Mugge, a filmmaker in residence at the public television subsidiary. "We wanted to do some things that sort of bring it back into focus on just a few issues that we consider important about the blues."
High-definition versions of the "Blues Breaks" have been sent to program directors at public television stations all over the country.
"Other stations have told us they'd like to make use of them on to the end of the year," Mugge said.
The director noted that Cheseborough's knowledge of the area made him the perfect host for the 13 spots.
"He knows more than anybody I know," Mugge said. "He knows where literally all the the bodies are buried and all the interesting stories surrounding the blues took place."
The two began collaborating after meeting a few years ago at the Crossroads Film Festival in Jackson. Cheseborough appears in Mugge's documentary "Last of the Mississippi Jukes," released this year," and he credits Mugge's 1991 film "Deep Blues" for inspiring him to move to the state.
