“A high point”: The singer that Morgan Freeman loved working with
We’ve all faced the dilemma of meeting someone we greatly admire and wondering what we could say to them. On one hand, you want to express your admiration, but on the other, you don’t want to come across as just another fan. It’s a real paradox and one that Morgan Freeman encountered on the set of Just The Beginning.
Blues is one of the most important genres in music history. It showed the development of music at the time and was one of the first genres to use different effects on their instruments that were otherwise shunned by many other styles of music. By embracing fuzz and distortion, blues musicians showed that emotion could be conveyed through sound alone.
Many blues legends are still cited as some of the most influential musicians of all time. A number of these artists are responsible for those who made the shift to rock music, which eventually created a sound that can still be heard throughout the music industry today. If we didn’t have the blues, then there would be no escaping it; music today would look very different.
Despite coming from Chicago, a city famous for its blues scene, because of the time that he was there, he didn’t get into the genre until he left. “When I lived in Chicago, as a kid, it was back in the big band era. It was during the 1940s, World War II,” Freeman said, “So, I was familiar with the music stars of that time: Duke Ellington, CountBasie, Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, and groups like that… It wasn’t until I left Chicago that I got into the blues.”
Like many listeners, when he eventually got into the blues, the genre stayed with him and continued to be a big part of his life. He has no doubt had the chance to meet a number of his heroes; however, he has rarely had the chance to work with them. That was until he stepped foot on the set of Just The Beginning and discovered they would be doing a scene with Johnny Mathis.
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner Mathis was an American pop and jazz singer who also had a sound that stemmed directly from blues music. There is no doubt that Freeman came across his music at some point during his blues journey, and this manifested as pure excitement when the two finally got to work together.
Freeman described shooting the scene as “A high point,” saying, “Getting Johnny to be in the movie was a special, smart move by Ron [Shelton, the director]. Not only was he so sweet to work with – he still has his voice!”
