Oscar Winner Morgan Freeman Makes Surprise Career Move at 89

Morgan Freeman is stepping into new creative territory, with the Oscar-winning actor unveiling a music project rooted in the blues.

Freeman, 89, who currently stars in Taylor Sheridan’s series Lioness, narrated and produced the album, titled Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience.

The LP was released on Friday, August 7 through the Decca Records website, with streaming and digital download availability set for August 14.

Across 12 tracks, the album traces a century of blues history and brings together an impressive lineup that includes Taj Mahal, Keb’ Mo’, Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell and the Chineke! Orchestra.

In a statement to the Daily Mail, Freeman reflected on his lifelong connection to the genre, saying: ‘The blues has been part of my life since I first heard it on my grandmother’s porch in Mississippi.

‘This album is my way of honoring that music and the stories it carries.’

‘I heard the blues for the first time on my grandmother’s porch in the Mississippi Delta, and it has never left me,’ Freeman also said in a press release, per Rolling Stone. 

‘Having Taj Mahal kick off this album with a cover of Son House’s classic Death Letter Blues strikes the perfect tone for the introduction of this album.’

The cover Death Letter Blues from the new album was released on Juneteenth, and the actor expressed it ‘is not just symbolic – it is the truth of where this music comes from and who made it. I hope people listen and remember.’ 

The song was first released in 1965 and recorded by Delta blues musician Son House.

Other tracks on the LP include Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground and Cadillac Assembly Line.

A three-date tour in support of the album also kicked off on August 7 with a show in Houston. 

Additional stops include a performance in Memphis on September 26 as well as a concert in Gulfport, Mississippi on October 17. 

Daily Mail has reached out to reps for Freeman for comment. 

‘The blues. It’s come from the most basic, visceral expression of humanity,’ Freeman said during an interview with CBS Mornings. ‘It comes from a field holler.

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‘African Americans, those people whose closer connected to the origins in Africa, they have their own way of working and it’s a rhythm thing.’ 

Freeman also pursues his passion for blues music as a co-owner of the blues club Ground Zero in Mississippi. 

‘I was raised primarily in Mississippi with a few excursions outside, but the best of my growing up was spent in Mississippi in the Delta – Greenwood, Mississippi, to be exact,’ he said last year at his Chautauqua Lecture Series, per the Chautauqua Daily.

‘My association with the blues is really not an association at all,’ the Million Dollar Baby star explained at the time. 

‘It’s just there in the air. You start hearing it at a very young age, because there are a lot of guys going around plucking on guitars and singing sad songs.’

He added, ‘The blues has this beginning with African Americans because working in the fields, they had a work holler, as it were.’

Along with the new album release, Freeman has been featured on other songs in the past. 

The actor previously appeared on the song Bombs Away by B.o.B. in 2012, and was a narrator on Metro Boomin and 21 Savage’s 2020 album titled Savage Mode II. 

Freeman has been keeping busy on the screen as well. 

He recently reprised his role of Edwin Mullins in the Paramount+ series Lioness. The third season recently premiered on August 2. 

The spy thriller was created by Taylor Sheridan and the cast also includes Nicole Kidman, Zoe Saldana as well as Michael Kelly. 

Freeman recently opened about starring on the show and applauded Sheridan’s writing.

The actor expressed to The New York Times earlier this month that his writing ‘has to do more with the human experience, what people are actually going through, emotionally, in a lot of cases.’ 

Elsewhere during his conversation with the outlet, the star opened up about choosing which projects he takes on. 

‘If somebody offers you a job, it’s very nice if they’re offering you also an exciting script, but in reality, two or three things come into play.’ 

He continued, ‘What are they going to pay you? If they’re going to pay you enough, then you overlook some of the glitches in the script that happen to be there.

‘Sometimes you can mention things that are in the script that don’t quite work out for you and by and large, that gets worked out.’ 

Freeman is also known for his roles in The Shawshank Redemption, Driving Miss Daisy and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy.