Morgan Freeman releases blues album and sets sights on Grammy

Morgan Freeman has turned to music production with a new blues album. The Oscar-winning actor has produced the Morgan Freeman Symphonic Blues Experience, a record of songs that are around a century old. It features leading blues singers and music from the UK's Chineke! Orchestra. Freeman also sings and narrates parts of the project.

Freeman began with a mission to open authentic blues clubs in Mississippi, in the Deep South where the music originated through slaves and their descendants. He said the blues is a lament and pain. He described workers getting up before dawn, being taken to cotton fields and chopping weeds all day. Those shared laments, he said, came from people who were forced to live that way.

He fears the genre and the history linked to slavery could be forgotten. Asked whether the shameful period in American history had contributed to the music's source being overlooked, Freeman said: "That's a good thought. And it could very well be a truth that, ah, geez, who wants to remember that? You're right. But still, there are corners where it's nourished and sooner or later, it'll sprout."

The album includes Keith Johnson, the great nephew of late blues legend Muddy Waters, who helped bring the genre to an international stage in the late 1950s and 1960s. Johnson appears on the record and tours schools teaching the history of blues, which has influenced R&B, rap and rock. He said black people have been fighting for a long time and African-American people refuse to be ignored, adding that taking a stance starts with something like the blues.

Freeman is known globally for films including The Shawshank Redemption and Million Dollar Baby, for which he won an Oscar. He now uses his platform to promote the blues. He said a Grammy win next year would "spike my good feelings." His stated aim is to make the sounds of the past resonate with audiences today.

Freeman has also taken legal action against people who copy his voice using AI to make money. He said the practice is "pretty nice" on one hand but "stealing" on the other. He said lawyers are needed to stop it and that much of the material is hard to trace back to its origin.