From Publishers Weekly
For blues lovers who love their experience pure and strong, Ferris (Blues from the Delta) conducted more than 20 interviews of blues and gospel performers from the Mississippi Delta for his latest book. The author did much of this fieldwork as a graduate student during the 1960s and 1970s, capturing these singers close to where they grew up, chopping cotton and tending the farms during the day and prowling around the jukes and roadhouses at night. From among the Delta locals of sacred and secular music, Ferris interviews such blues masters as James Son Ford Thomas, Willie Dixon and B.B. King, with their words accompanied by a stirring CD/DVD of their music. There is an intriguing section on the infamous Parchman Penitentiary in the Delta, where cruel overseers and defiant inmates battle each other. Joyous, powerful and authentic, this package is designed to both inform and entertain those willing to plunge into this audacious world. (Nov.)
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Review
The stories, collected during Ferris' travels in his native lands of the Mississippi Delta, are real, raw, passionate, at times ribald and rough and at others sweeter than tupelo honey.--Carrboro Citizen
The DVD supplement. . . . Capture[s] images and actions that are seen nowhere else. . . . [They] may be Ferris's best and his most accomplished works.--ARSC Journal
An incredibly powerful book. . . . The great strength of Give My Poor Heart Ease is that [Ferris] gets himself out of the way and lets other people do the talking.--BiblioBuffet
The classic struggle between Saturday night revelry and Sunday morning appropriateness, the pain and joy in blues and gospel music, sermons and stories, are presented in print, and--luckily for us--on a CD and a DVD, compilations from Ferris's faithful work. The package is raw, unadorned, very funny, haunting, daring, and spellbinding.--Clyde Edgerton, Garden & Gun
You feel as though you've been given the truest form of insight into a place. . . . First-person insight, presented in all its soulful glory.--Independent Weekly
A treasure trove of primary scholarship. The numerous photographs and extensive bibliographies and discographies alone are worth the price of admission, but the truly uplifting community of voices in the book, as well as in the images, words, and music on the discs, is fasicinating. . . . One hopes Ferris will continue publishing for years to come.--Journal of American Folklore
[This] book takes readers, watches, and listeners as close as a book can take people into the homes, juke joints, and churches of Mississippians who made music.--The Southern Register
Ferris . . . has given historians and music fans a gift.--Anniston Star
Captures the cadences of [the musicians'] spoken voices and the stories of their lives, and the DVD and CD that accompany the book allow us to hear their music. . . . If the unhealed wound of injustice is everywhere present in these stories, many of the people telling them, like Ferris himself, have refused to see their lives reduced to race and stubbornly resist despair.--Harper's Magazine
Ferris eloquently captures the hearts of Mississippi artists, forever preserving their voices by way of manuscript, photography, video, and sound recordings. Ferris takes the reader right into the heart of Mississippi.--North Carolina Folklore Journal
Most of Ferris' subjects never cut a recording, but their songs and their stories create an indelible portrait of strength in the face of poverty and prejudice. Like the black characters in Faulkner's novels, these people endured, and thus prevailed.--Wilmington Star News
A must-have for anyone interested in the blues. . . . Provides a complete portrayal of blues culture. An accessible book that will appeal to anyone interested in American music and culture. . . . Highly recommended.--Choice
For blues lovers who love their experience pure and strong. . . . Joyous, powerful and authentic, this package is designed to both inform and entertain those willing to plunge into this audacious world.--Publishers Weekly
An autobiographical account and, more importantly a transcription of the recollections, which Ferris recorded in the 1960s and '70s. . . . The book comes with a set of Ferris' original field recordings on CD. . . . [and] a DVD that collects the documentary files Ferris shot.--Memphis Flyer
This book, CD and DVD all contain living history as it rolled out thirty or more years ago, when blues music was part of rural black family life. . . and we have the unlikely opportunity to take a meandering ramble through and closely observe the lives of the tellers.--Blogcritics
Delivers exactly what its title promises: the words and voices [Ferris] collected of Mississippians who had it rough and, in telling about it, changed American music forever.--Endeavors
A captivating and diverse multimedia experience for fans and scholars of the blues and gospel music. . . . Highly recommended for anyone interested in the blues or Southern history.--Library Journal starred review
A pretty damn impressive package, and an amazing resource of material on Mississippi folk culture.--Highway 61 Radio
There is much to love about this collection. . . . Without doubt, this wonderful multimedia set is necessary for any comprehensive blues collection.--Arkansas Review
Groundbreaking. . . . The summation of a life's work documenting and, in the process, lifting the music of a regional people who, from the depths of poverty, racism and centuries of struggle, have given the world one of its most enduring art forms.--Memphis Commercial Appeal Shelf Life Blog
The invaluable narratives and stunning black-and-white photographs . . . would be enough to recommend this book as a must-have for anyone interested in the blues, but Ferris also includes a DVD of incredible film footage . . . and an audio CD. . . Provides a complete portrayal of blues culture. An accessible book that will appeal to anyone interested in American music and culture. . . . Highly recommended.--Choice
Brings to life the right heritage of the Mississippi blues tradition.--Valley Voices
Ferris reaches beyond the dry, [dispassionate] cataloguing of regional history and traditions to tell the very personal story of his own education and the lives of the remarkable teachers . . . that he met along the way.--GoMemphis
This magnificent and invaluable volume illuminates blues music, the broader African American experience, and indeed the history and culture of America itself.--SirReadaLot.org
The ultimate multi-media collection of interviews, original music and film about the blues.--Delta Magazine
A beautiful memorial to Mississippi African Americans and their lost world [and] a tribute to the folklorist who captured their stories and songs for posterity.--The Journal of Southern History
[Ferris] is a hero for blues lovers and folklorists the world over….There is much to love about this collection….Without a doubt, this wonderful multimedia set is necessary for any comprehensive blues collection.--Arkansas Review
Personal, anecdotal, lively and full of the same spirit that helps bring blues music to life. A great mix of stories from some renowned blues greats alongside people known only in their neighborhoods.--Publishers Weekly Indie Top 20 Selection
A book that will transport its readers, though it's meant to be experienced at a walking pace. . . . A multi-faceted portrayal of blues history that makes accessible a community and a genre of music with incalculable influence.--Inside Higher Ed BlogU
[A] blues goldmine.--Carolina Arts & Sciences
An exceptional work, simultaneously one of the most beautiful and one of the most important that has ever appeared on the blues.--ABS Magazine
Take a walk through people's lives. That's what the experience of exploring this combination book, CD and DVD is like. . . . The films are a treasure trove of information. . . . Were an anthropological writer [to] decide to, s/he could write a career's worth of books, papers and treatises from the content of just one package of book, CD and DVD.--BC: BlogCritics.org
This multimedia package is a valuable addition to scholarship in the traditional arts . . . casual blues fans and lovers of Mississippi culture will appreciate its unpretentious presentation style.--The Clarion-Ledger
Ferris' fieldwork proves to be every bit as important and impressive as the now-famous Mississippi recordings made by John and Alan Lomax in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. . . . Ferris' audio and video recordings . . . are unpolished gems, further preserving pieces of Mississippi's musical past that may have otherwise been forgotten.--The Vicksburg Post
Review
A powerful book that presents a deep and probing look at music, culture, and Mississippi at particularly important moments in history. The stories told here work on multiple levels, as biographical context for creativity and artistic power, but also as literary expressions of the highest order.--Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University
These voices express the blues in a deep and truthful way. They touched my heart.--B. B. King
This book is indispensable for anyone who cares to know the roots of Mississippi blues music. William Ferris interviewed dozens of people who spoke about their lives, their music, both secular and non-secular. They talked about field songs, prison chants, hymns and spirituals they sang in church. Some of these interviews are painful to read, but like singing the blues they make the pains bearable, and sometimes even comic. Give My Poor Heart Ease includes much more than simply blues music; it covers a wide spectrum of African American and American experience in a place that just happens to be in Mississippi.--Ernest J. Gaines, author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Gathering of Old Men, and A Lesson Before Dying
These stories and photographs evoke memories of my childhood and a world gone by but still with us--the blues are now and forever.--William Christenberry, artist
Like Bill Ferris, I grew up in Mississippi. My life is continually shaped by the blues. This book captures those rich voices so well.--Morgan Freeman
I have only begun to dig into this trove of American culture, and I have already listened to 'Jaybird in the Air' about a hundred times. It is the greatest song of the Trickster I've ever heard. This book, these films, and this music are filled with the history of both blues and American music. These powerful voices use music to rise above and to survive tragedy, and their lives are an inspiration.--T Bone Burnett
Blues and jazz are America's most treasured gifts to the world. These powerful stories bring us face to face with the blues and remind us that the music was used to survive in the face of adversity and terror.--Quincy Jones
I reveled in these stories.--Toni Morrison
From the Inside Flap
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, folklorist William Ferris toured his home state of Mississippi, documenting the voices of African Americans as they spoke about and performed the diverse musical traditions that form the authentic roots of the blues. Illustrated with Ferris's photographs of the musicians and their communities and including a dual CD/DVD that presents his original field recordings and films, this book features more than 20 interviews relating frank, dramatic, and engaging narratives about black life and blues music in the heart of the American South. Oversize, with 45 halftones and a dual disc CD/DVD.
About the Author
William Ferris is Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History and senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ferris coedited the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and is the author of Blues from the Delta. Rolling Stone magazine has named him among the top ten professors in the United States. In 2010, Ferris received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.
