Give My Poor Heart Ease

This is a short preview trailer. You can watch the entire film at no charge on the Folkstreams website. Folkstreams is a nonprofit whose mission is to find, preserve, contextualize, and stream documentary films on American folklife.

Watch the entire film at Folkstreams

An account of the blues experience through the recollections and performances of B.B. King, Son Thomas, inmates from Parchman prison, a barber from Clarkesdale, a salesman from Beale Street, and others. "Give My Poor Heart Ease" is one of a series of films made in Mississippi in the mid-1970s by William Ferris and the Center for Southern Folklore and produced in association with Howard Sayre Weaver. This field work is the basis for Ferris's 2009 book Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues.

  • Film by: Bill Ferris
  • Produced by: Yale University Media Design Studio with the Center for Southern Folklore
  • Cinematographer: Dale Lindquist
  • Sound: Robert Slattery
  • Editor: Dale Lindquist, William Ferris
  • Other Credits: Produced in Association with Howard Sayre Weaver.
  • Funding: With support from: Ford Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; Edward W. Hazen Foundation
  • Original Format: Film: 16mm
  • © 1975, William Ferris, Yale University
  • 21mins, Color