Truckin’ My Blues Away

“Truckin’ My Blues Away” is a music-rich hour-long special that introduces listeners to the stories and sounds of four older Southern bluesmen—and to the efforts of Tim Duffy, founder of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, to help lift these musicians from poverty and obscurity.

The musicians cover a wide swath of the South: Boo Hanks from Virgilina, Va.; Captain Luke from Winston-Salem, N.C.; Eddie Tigner from Atlanta; and Little Freddie King from New Orleans. In their own words and performances, these men bring us the story of a music, an era and a culture that are uniquely American.

The program is co-produced and co-written by Richard Ziglar and Barry Yeoman, who traveled around the South collecting interviews and field recordings of the musicians. Yeoman, who co-produced our Gracie Award-winning program “Picking Up the Pieces,” narrates.

“Truckin’ My Blues Away” was engineered by Dave Tilley of Bogue Sound Studios in Durham, North Carolina, where the narration was recorded, and by Ben Pizzuto of AARP Radio.