\n<\/p>\n
\n\tMorgan Freeman<\/a> has spent the last five decades playing Batman\u2019s Bat-Tech supplier, the president of the United States (multiple times), Nelson Mandela, and God himself, but since 2001, he\u2019s also been the proprietor of his very own juke joint. He co-founded Ground Zero Blues<\/a> Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi \u2014 a state where he spent part of his childhood \u2014 after realizing that visitors to the site of Robert Johnson<\/a>\u2018s crossroads had no place to hear the blues.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe latest offshoot of that venture is the just-released album Morgan Freeman\u2019s Symphonic Blues Experience<\/em>, which does just what the title promises, adding tasteful orchestral arrangements by London\u2019s Chineke! Orchestra to new takes on blues standards. Taj Mahal covers Son House\u2019s \u201cDeath Letter Blues,\u201d Keb\u2019 Mo\u2019 revs up Albert King\u2019s \u201cCadillac Assembly Line,\u201d and Shemekia Copeland reclaims Johnson\u2019s \u201cTraveling Riverside Blues,\u201d nodding to Led Zeppelin\u2019s reinvention of it along the way. The album, which also includes historical narration by Freeman, benefits the Ground Zero Arts Foundation, the club\u2019s charitable arm. It grew out of a touring live show of the same name featuring local orchestras alongside Ground Zero regulars, with Freeman\u2019s filmed narration.<\/p>\n \n\tThe 89-year-old Freeman (resplendent at home in a dashiki) and Ground Zero co-owner and CEO Eric Meier joined Rolling Stone<\/em> on a Zoom call to talk about Freeman\u2019s own musical history, why he\u2019s jealous of Denzel Washington, his thoughts on retirement, and more.<\/p>\n \n\tMorgan, you heard the blues on a porch in Mississippi as a very young child. What do you remember about it? \n\tWere you drawn to it at that point, or was it just part of the atmosphere? And you moved to Chicago in the 1940s, and you missed the Chicago blues \u2014 that wasn\u2019t part of your experience growing up. Did you ever have any interest in becoming a musician yourself? So you could\u2019ve kept playing the horn, maybe.
Morgan Freeman:<\/strong> I remember moonshine in a Mason jar. I remember fried fish. I remember going with my grandmother to a pond or a creek somewhere and fishing with a cane pole. Those are snatches, just like this guy with gold teeth on my grandmother\u2019s porch. He\u2019s drinking moonshine out of a Mason jar and he\u2019s got a guitar and he\u2019s, yeah, music-ing. I was three or four years old.<\/p>\n
Freeman:<\/strong> No, not particularly. It was just music. By the time I was five it was Glenn Miller. And \u201cTuxedo Junction,\u201d \u201cFive O\u2019Clock in the Afternoon.\u201d And a little bit of Count Basie. Not drawn to it, it\u2019s just that was the music in the air. People would have their Philco radios turned up. You\u2019re not old enough to remember that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Freeman:<\/strong> Not at all. Yeah. South side of Chicago was a jungle. You had to thread your way through that carefully. Yeah, growing up, hoodlum-ism was one of the easier choices to make.<\/p>\n
Freeman:<\/strong> In high school, I was in music. I sang with the glee club \u2014 tenor, then bass because the bass guys couldn\u2019t handle it. And in the band I blew the alto saxophone. But at 16, I suffered pneumonia and pleurisy. Got an abscess on my lung for that, for my pleurisy. And the doctor said, \u201cNo more horn. You won\u2019t be able to do it. You won\u2019t be able to get into the Air Force either.\u201d I got into the Air Force and I didn\u2019t have a mark on my lung.<\/p>\n
Freeman:<\/strong> I could\u2019ve.<\/p>\n