USA – Southern Road Trip
13’ 18”
| Peter’s car travelling on dirt road between cotton fields | Music | 14:00 |
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| PETER: It’s literally about as kind of happy as I get. I mean I feel like I’ve taken a really deep breath. Like everything is sharp, clear, the windows down, good music on, the road is there. I can do whatever I want. | 14:29 |
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| Music | 14:45 |
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| MAHER: For the best part of twenty years Peter Kayafas has been taking pictures in the South. | 14:53 |
| Montage of Peter’s photos | Music | 15:00 |
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| MAHER: His photographs capture a part of America blighted by a civil war and racial conflict. | 15:10 |
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| Music | 15:16 |
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| MAHER: They capture the South’s contradictions -- its earthiness and its refinement, its hospitality and its hatreds, its celebrations, its tragedies. | 15:23 |
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| Music | 15:37 |
| Scenes along the road | MAHER: We’re heading down Highway 61 – the Blues Highway -- deep into Mississippi, with no particular mission in mind other than to take photographs, listen to music and speak to people along the way. | 15:42 |
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| PETER: Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker. I’d say that Highway 61 is | 15:55 |
| Peter driving. Super: | one of the most historically relevant roads in America because of the number of important musicians and artists and writers that lived along it and travelled along it. | 16:01 |
| Band playing in juke-joint | Music | 16:11 |
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| MAHER: Tonight, Highway 61 has brought us to Clarkesdale where blues man John Lee Hooker got his start. | 16:25 |
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| Singing | 16:31 |
| George and Peter play pool |
| 16:47 |
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| GEORGE: When you say blues to me, the first thing that comes to my mind is black. Blues got started, it started with black people – people who were oppressed | 16:57 |
| George | – they were just beat down, mistreated, cheated. | 17:10 |
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| MAHER: George Messenger owns one of Clarkesdale’s juke-joints. | 17:17 |
| Exteriors of Juke joints | There aren’t many left now. Most have closed down, like so many other businesses in this once prosperous cotton town. | 17:24 |
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| Years ago, George tried to leave as well. GEORGE: I left and went to | 17:33 |
| George. Super: | Europe and the living conditions over there were so much better than what was here and I didn’t ever want to come back to the South. | 17:38 |
| Exteriors. Music shops | MAHER: But George had to come back to run the family business after his parents died. If it weren’t for the blues enthusiasts who now come to town, George says Clarkesdale would have closed down altogether. | 17:55 |
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| GEORGE: We got some guys here that still | 18:10 |
| Big Jack plays guitar on porch | play the blues – we got Big Jack Johnson. | 18:12 |
| Big Jack plays and sings. Peter takes photos | Music | 18:16 |
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| BIG JACK: I heard this thing by BB King… (plays) …and that got in there man and whoooo !!! that sound, that feelin’ got in there man and lord have mercy, I had to do it !! | 18:57 |
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| MAHER: Sadly Big Jack Johnson is one of the last of his kind. He says younger musicians don’t play the blues any more. | 19:21 |
| Big Jack. Super: | BIG JACK: I was playing ‘The Catfish ‘, and’ Baby Please don’t go’ and ‘Good morning school girl. They don’t want to play that, they want to play that other stuff… [sings]… And all that kind of stuff. Stuff I didn’t want. They don’t want this stuff here we got. This is our stuff and it’s gone. | 19:29 |
| Big Jack plays and sings | Sings | 19:49 |
| Peter’s car driving along dirt road |
| 20:06 |
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| PETER: That’s an extraordinary thing to see – to have a private concert, really, by one of the great living – what’s left of the great living blues musicians. So for me it was great; I thought that Jack was extraordinary. | 20:11 |
| Cheerleaders at university football game | Music | 20:26 |
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| MAHER: 60 miles and another world away we land in Oxford, Mississippi. It’s homecoming at Ole Miss, one of the South’s most prestigious universities. And thousands of ex-students are here for a big football game. | 20:53 |
| Brass band plays | Brass Band | 21:08 |
| Man at football game | MAN: It’s not just the game. Here it’s the traditions and everything that have gone on for years. | 21:15 |
| You men at football game | YOUNG MAN: Some people think that traditions are bad, but I think down here we really love traditions. | 21:22 |
| Young girls around Homecoming Queen | MAHER: What does it mean to be homecoming queen? HOMECOMING QUEEN: You just walk out at half time and get presented | 21:34 |
| Homecoming Queen | and announced and it’s just kinda fun for a day – you’re just queen for a day. It’s fun. | 21:38 |
| Peter walks among crowd | Music | 21:42 |
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| PETER: From a photographic point of view, I find events to be very useful – parades, | 21:47 |
| Montage of Peter’s photos | big games, fairgrounds, amusement parks -- places where there is multidirectional activity, I find useful to photograph because it allows me to blend in a little bit more easily and photograph. | 21:52 |
| Clouds/Peter driving | Music | 22:09 |
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| PETER: I think that one of the remarkable things about the South is that there are these incredible differences between blacks and whites, and yet they practice the same religion and I love that irony. | 22:20 |
| Peter photographing church | Music | 22:31 |
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| PETER: This church I first photographed about seven or eight years ago and it’s exactly the same which is sorta nice. Have a look at that light – c’mon that’s perfect – beautiful. | 22:38 |
| Reverend Booker T preaching |
| 22:58 |
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| MAHER: Across the border from Mississippi -- in Selma, Alabama – the Reverend Booker T. Booker Jr. has invited us into his Morning Star Baptist church. | 23:12 |
| Congregation sings | Singing | 23:26 |
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| BOOKER T: It’s very important, because religion has brought us through many things in this area up until this point. As you know the civil rights | 23:36 |
| Reverend Booker T. Super: | movement, it started here, and basically it was started through the church and the young people. | 23:45 |
| Peter in congregation | Singing | 23:51 |
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| MAHER: One of those young people Rev. Booker is referring to is Joanne Bland. | 23:56 |
| Peter walks with Joanne | Four decades ago - as an eleven year old -- she walked across this bridge and into the history books. | 24:02 |
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| PETER: It sure is a beautiful river, isn’t it? JOANNE: It sure is – it really brings me back though | 24:10 |
| Archival. Selma to Montgomery march | to 1965 when I walked across this same bridge. | 24:15 |
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| MAHER: The Selma to Montgomery march, led by Martin Luther King, was a turning point in the civil rights struggle. The first attempt to cross the Alabama River was crushed, yielding some of the ugliest images from a time when this country was on a knife’s edge. | 24:22 |
| Joanne. Super: | JOANNE: And when we turned, we saw that we were surrounded, and they were beating people – just beating people – people were screaming and screaming. That’s what I remember the most – the screams. It seemed like they lasted forever. | 24:39 |
| Joanne visits children | MAHER: Joanne has made it her mission in life to keep alive the stories and lessons of those years among Selma’s young. | 24:55 |
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| JOANNE: When I was a little girl – in fact when I was about your age – I used to come to what we called mass meetings here. The people would gather here and strategise on how they were going to get the right to vote, ‘cos at one time people who looked like you and me couldn’t vote. BOY: Vote for what? | 25:02 |
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| JOANNE: Vote for anything – the mayor, the president. BOY: I didn’t vote for George Bush! JOANNE: Nobody else here did either (laughs). We hope! | 25:19 |
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| Music | 25:28 |
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| JOANNE: I can still go on my side of town – meaning the black side of town -- and see the great difference with the white side of town. | 25:36 |
| Joanne | So to me, at some period over the last forty years we should have come closer to being the same, but it hasn’t. It hasn’t and I often wonder what that says to our children. | 25:47 |
| Joanne visits former home with Peter | Joanne: I grew up right here 130AC and it’s funny – there’s a girl that lives… | 26:03 |
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| PETER: Joanne is an extraordinary person. She’s the best of what I come across. She hasn’t lost her connection to the place, even though it has done her wrong. | 26:08 |
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| Peter: May I take a picture of you on your porch? | 26:18 |
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| Joanne: Of course you can , that’s why I came over here. Peter: I thought so. Joanne: That used to be my bedroom. | 26:20 |
| Peter’s photo of Joanne/Peter driving | Music | 26:24 |
| Peter takes photos | PETER: For me, every road trip is different. It has a different dynamic. It has different results. I’m a different person when I’m there. I’m a more mature person, photographically and otherwise. I have more experience. | 26:43 |
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| You know, one of the things that I’m always a little concerned about when I go on a road trip is “Is it still going to be there ?’And of course it is. And it just gets better and better and better. | 27:01 |
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| Music | 27:11 |
| Credits: | Reporter: Michael Maher Camera: Tim Bates Editor: Woody Landay Production Company: ABC Australia | 27:18 |