Performances will begin Sept. 8 at the company's home at The Theatre at Saint Peter's. To purchase tickets, visit www.yorktheatre.org or call (212) 935-5820.
Blind Lemon Blues was created by Alan Govenar and Akin Babatunde and has musical arrangements by Akin Babatunde, Cavin Yarbrough and Alisa Peoples Yarbrough. Babatunde directs and choreographs.
Blind Lemon Blues was presented as a York Mainstage production in 2007 for a limited ten-performance run featuring Benita Arterberry, Akin Babatunde, Timothy Parham, Lillias White, Cavin Yarbrough, Alisa Peoples Yarbrough and guitarist Sam Swank. Casting for the upcoming engagement will be announced shortly.
Jefferson was a blind street musician who played his guitar with a tin cup tied to it until a Paramount Records scout discovered him. Between 1926 and 1929, he made more than 80 records and became the biggest-selling down-home blues singer in America.
Blind Lemon Blues, according to press notes, "is set in New York City in 1948 at the last recording session of the legendary Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly, and combines elements of traditional blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, soul, doo-wop, and rap to evoke the enduring legacy of Blind Lemon and his contemporaries Blind Willie Johnson, Lillian Glinn, Hattie Hudson, Bobbie Cadillac, Lillian Miller and Leadbelly himself."
