About a decade ago, Austin resident Bonni McKeown started writing her first screenplay. It turned into the movie “The Rhythm and the Blues,” which premiered last year and tells the story of West Side blues guitarist Eddie Taylor Sr. in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, “the crookedness of the music business and the hardships faced, especially by Black musicians,” McKeown told Austin Weekly News.
Also last year, McKeown helped launch the nonprofit Four Blues as another way to help revive blues music on the West Side.
“We want to bring back the old school music. It’s a great loss that it has virtually disappeared in the community that it was so strong in 50 years ago,” McKeown, president of Four Blues, said of the blues, soul and R&B genres.
On Nov. 13, Four Blues is hosting its first musical performance — a free, all-ages concert at Austin Town Hall featuring Larry Taylor, who is Eddie Taylor Sr.’s stepson, and the Soul Blues Healers.
Professional singer Arlene Stovall will sing rhythm and blues at the event. And Four Blues partnered with the Front Porch Arts Center in Austin, which is bringing spoken word poet Awthentic — an addition McKeown said is meant to attract a younger audience.
“We want to take the seniors seriously, that they would like to have something that they used to have,” McKeown said of the blues. “And we also want to expand it into new generations.”
The theme of Four Blues’ first show is Blues Music for Mental Health, and community organizations are welcome to set up information tables.
“Blues was always a way for people in the African American community to get together and laugh about things that were really pretty serious. A lot of blues songs make fun of things that are awful, and that’s a way to keep it together sometimes,” McKeown said. “You got to either laugh or cry, and you can’t cry all the time, so you’ve got to sing and laugh.”
Blues music originated in the South as a way for African Americans to cope and share their stories. According to Four Blues, the genre came to Chicago during the Great Migration in the 1900s, finding its way to small venues on Chicago’s South and West Side.
“Blues falls at the root of American popular music, and people recognize it, whether they’re listening to jazz or hip hop or rock or whatever,” McKeown said. “Blues is part of all that.”
Since Four Blues became a nonprofit in June, the group aims to put on more musical performances. And McKeown said she hopes to apply for grants to show “The Rhythm and the Blues” locally with a Q&A.
“It’s a drama, but it requires people to think and talk about it,” McKeown said of the film. She added that a screening like this, along with other Four Blues events, aims to “help the community appreciate itself and its history.”
The free Four Blues show will take place at Austin Town Hall, 5610 W. Lake St., in the first-floor east wing classroom on Nov. 13 from 4 to 6 p.m. There will be a chicken buffet from Chef Daddy’s.
