Written by Malcolm White
By the time I moved to Jackson in the spring of 1979, just in time for the Easter Flood, I had already lived in Washington D.C., Los Gatos, California and New Orleans. I committed to a one year contract for a job offer I simply could not refuse. My plan was to get a good year’s experience and sock some money away before heading back to NOLA where a job offer to return to my old restaurant team and my idea of southern, global culture awaited. For a lot of reasons and thirty five years later, I’m still here. If I had to name three, I would say opportunity, love and comfort are the most obvious, but Eudora Welty, Margaret Walker Alexander, William Winter, Willie Morris, Sam Myers, Cassandra Wilson and Charles Evers were a few more.
My best friend Michael Rubenstein made sure I met all the right people and touched all the essential bases in that first year. The music scene was ripe and the community was ready to enjoy a good gathering. I felt free and empowered, untethered and boundless. I worked hard and took chances and the climate suited my clothes. And it was home of the great southern, Greek-American “comeback sauce”.
When I presented B.B. King, Mose Allison, John Lee Hooker, Big Joe Williams or Dr. John, Ray Charles or John Prine, people came and supported those shows. I called for a parade and people showed up in costumes, ready to march. I opened clubs and restaurants and people came to eat and drink. I met every writer who came to Lemuria or The Book Worm and attended every lecture and concert from Allen Ginsberg at Tougaloo to Ace Cannon at Pop’s Around The Corner to James Brown at the Masonic Lodge.
And when I called my brother Hal in 1985 and told him I had the lease on the old GM&O Freight Depot in downtown, he packed his bags and we started construction on what would become Hal & Mal’s, now 30 years and two generations in the making. And this place we created, would become the organic gathering place of the Jackson we envisioned, a place to eat local food, to hear traditional music and to celebrate our home, our town, our culture.
Rich, diverse, urban and rural, Jackson is an enigma and an oasis. “Diddy Wah Diddy”, Willie Dixon would say, “ain’t no town, ain’t no city, just a little place called Diddy Wah Diddy”.
Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. Please join us and photographer Ken Murphy in celebrating Jackson tonight at 8:00 at Hal and Mal’s.
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