The final days of the Kickstarter campaign for the documentary The Blues Society, directed by Augusta Palmer, are upon us. It captures the Memphis Country Blues Festival between 1966 and 1969, a time when blacks and whites came together in a city full of strife and segregation.

They describe the project as “A movie about a collective of artists and musicians in Memphis who loved Blues music enough to change the way we think about it.” I could get behind that; in fact, I did! Here is a short video about the project.

It features some incredible footage of and music from Furry Lewis, Reverend Robert Wilkins, Fred McDowell, John Fahey, Booker White, along with new interviews with GRAMMY-nominated author and producer Robert Gordon (author of It Came From Memphis, Respect Yourself; Can’t Be Satisfied); Reverend John Lewis; Peter Guralnick (author of Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll; Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke; Last Train To Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley; Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom; Feel Like Going Home: Portraits In Blues and Rock ‘n’ Roll; and Searching For Robert Johnson). It also tells the story of a peaceful, integrated gathering just one week after a Ku Klux Klan rally on the very same site and during the time and in the city of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968.

Augusta Palmer is daughter of Deep Blues author, Memphis Country Blues Society member, festival organizer, and later, longtime NY Times critic Robert Palmer. The full-length documentary will arrive around the spring of 2018, but the Kickstarter ends in just six days from today.

The rewards include the obvious, a copy of the film, as well as a lot of vinyl. Check it out!