Over a long, distinguished career as a folklorist and scholar, William Ferris has made innumerable contributions to the academic study of the blues and the Southern culture that the Vicksburg, Miss., native holds so dear.

But in his latest project, a sprawling multimedia effort that includes a new book, CD, DVD and Web site, Ferris reaches beyond the dry, impassioned cataloging of regional history and traditions to tell the very personal story of his own education and the lives of the remarkable teachers — not just bluesmen but preachers, prisoners, haberdashers and domestic workers — that he met along the way.

"I see this book as, rather than my trying to interpret the meaning of the blues and other folklore worlds that I've studied, it's turning the tables and letting the people tell their own stories," Ferris says of "Give My Poor Heart Ease," which is being published by the UNC Press at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where Ferris heads the Center for the Study of the American South.

Ferris will be in Memphis to sign copies of "Give My Poor Heart Ease" at 2 p.m. Saturday at Davis-Kidd Booksellers and at 7:30 p.m. at the Center for Southern Folklore, the nonprofit heritage preservation entity he co-founded in 1972.

"The people in this book are the people Bill knew best early on," says center executive director Judy Peiser, who first met Ferris in 1970 when he asked her to edit some film he and University of Memphis ethnomusicologist David Evans had shot of North Mississippi fife-and-drum standard bearer Othar Turner. The two later teamed up to start the nonprofit center.

"This book really showcases his special ability to communicate with people the essence of traditional culture," she says. "He really opens people's eyes to the importance of studying what we know or think we know."

"Give My Poor Heart Ease" starts with the beginning of Ferris' own introduction to the world of African-American folklore and Southern cultural tradition. As a boy growing up on a farm outside of Vicksburg, Ferris would often attend church service with the family's African-American housekeeper, Mary Gordon, where he first heard black gospel music.

"As I grew older I realized there were no hymnals in the church," recalls Ferris, "and if they weren't recorded, the hymns would be lost and the stories of the people that sang them would be lost."

When he was 12, Ferris began documenting Mississippi blues and gospel culture with his Kodak box camera. In the '60s, as he worked toward a Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, he traversed the state conducting interviews and making field recordings. In 1970, Ferris began his scholarly career in earnest with the publication of "Blues From the Delta," still one of the classic tomes on the subject.

Much of the material in "Give My Poor Heart Ease" is taken from Ferris' early period, including monologues from Gordon and Rev. Isaac Thomas, the pastor at Rose Hill Church where he first heard gospel music. There are also stories from inmates at Parchman Penitentiary, where Ferris traveled in 1968 to record prison work songs, as well as musicians both obscure (Shelby "Poppa Jazz" Brown of Leland, Miss., Clarksdale's Jasper Love) and celebrated (extensive portraits of B.B. King and Willie Dixon).

For Ferris, whose lengthy résumé also includes founding the University of Mississippi's distinguished Center for the Study of Southern Culture and a stint as head of National Endowment for the Humanities, "Give My Poor Heart Ease" is the culmination of his life's work.

"I think in some ways this book is what I'm most proud of because it's been inside of me for so long," he says. "I always return to these voices and remember their stories, and I just felt I had to get that out and do it in a way that was honest and beautiful and fair to the people who were so generous with me, accepting me into their communities and homes and sharing their lives and especially their music with me."

The final realization of the project is made all the more special to Ferris because technology now allows him to present a more complete reproduction of the world he is seeking to document through the inclusion of a CD and DVD with the book. In addition, UNC Press has put up an extensive multimedia Web site for the book, givemypoorheartease.com, that includes more information, music, videos and unpublished photos.

The material in "Give My Poor Heart Ease" will find another vehicle next year in a stage production being developed at the University of North Carolina.

Excited about the possibilities of the multimedia approach, Ferris is already turning to his vast archives of material for his next project depicting his encounters with Southern writers such as Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren and Alex Haley.

"Traditionally, the folklorist would do the field recording and photographs and those things would sit on a dusty shelf in an archive and from time to time appear in an article or a book," says Ferris, "Now you can bring all that back to life through a project like this."

William Ferris book signings for "Give My Poor Heart Ease"

2 p.m. Saturday at Davis-Kidd Booksellers at Laurelwood, at Poplar and Perkins Extended; and 7 p.m. at the Center For Southern Folklore, 123 S, Main St. Admission: Free. The Folklore center book signing will be followed by a concert at 8:30 p.m. by Blind Mississippi Morris & Brad Webb. Admission: $5. For more information, call 525-3655 or visit southernfolklore.com.