In 1978, Alan Lomax asked me to make a film with him in Mississippi. Worth Long had been wanting to make the video equivalent of the classic LP (now available again as a CD from Rounder), Blues in the Mississippi Night. He interested Paula Tadlock and the Mississippi PBS station and we spent six weeks shooting blues singers, railroad crews, story tellers, church services, and picnics. The 30+ hours of footage was edited into an hour program that aired on PBS in 1980. The program was cut apart and restructured to fit the format of the American Patchwork series that aired on PBS in 1990.
This is the original 1979 version wih 3.5 hours of extra video features.