Benefit for the Delta Blues Education Fund

All the Blues Gone, Photographs by Rex Miller

This project was one of the few where people, when called, actually said "tell me more"; but it truly was a good cause. Working in tandem with the Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the Delta Blues Education Fund combined the irresistible elements of Blues music, children, education and the elderly, in a program that brought older Blues musicians into inner city schools to teach the Blues to underprivileged children. It was a win-win-win in other words, and its work continues today.

This benefit evening for the Delta Blues Education Fund visually transformed the gallery into a little piece of the Delta. Low lights and candles, sawdust on the floor and cotton — lots of it, in shrubs and branches — filled the space, hung on walls and stairs, and were garlanded on and around Rex Miller's black and white photographs of Delta blues musicians. These, in turn, were literally framed in rustic wood fragments taken from actual local "shotgun shacks." Panels of rusted, corrugated steel served as a backdrop on the gallery’s platform/stage.

Mr. Johnnie Billington and his pickup band performed, transporting us all. Well into his seventies, he was a fine musician and noted teacher, one of the faces of the Delta blues that had been documented by Rex Miller. His evocative photographs captured the passing of a moment and lifestyle in the history of American music, wonderful and revealing portraits of the oldest practitioners of the oldest blues style in the country. Almost all have passed by now.

Suspended sculpture by Ludwika Ogorzelec