Blues – Lemuria Books

Category: Blues (Page 1 of 5)

By Chris Goodwin. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (October 27)

Becoming a famous and beloved institution is no guarantee of permanence. So with Po’ Monkey’s Lounge outside Merigold, the creation and full expression of Mr. Willie Seaberry—farm laborer by day, internationally known juke joint proprietor by night.

After decades of those-who-know-don’t-need-to-ask operation catering to locals in search of a Thursday evening respite, the establishment rose to prominence as white photographers and journalists enthralled by its authenticity brought news of its existence to their audiences, turning it into a must-see site for blues tourists traveling the Mississippi Delta.

Alas, the death of Mr. Seaberry in 2016 was also the death knell for the lounge. We’re fortunate to have Will Jacks’ moving photographic tribute, Po’ Monkey’s: Portrait of a Juke Joint (University Press of Mississippi), to document—and remind us—of what has been lost.

A trained photographer and gallery owner who grew up not far from Po’ Monkey’s, Jacks spent a decade at the lounge, connecting with the people who worked there and reconnecting with school friends who were some of its regulars. Jacks often had his camera in hand to capture the riotous, exuberant dance floor as well as quieter moments off to the side. More than seventy of those images are reproduced in black and white in this oversized hardcover edition. That color choice denies readers the full glory of Mr. Seaberry’s famous bright outfits, but it perfectly suits the fundamental nature of a vernacular structure begun nearly 100 years ago.

Jacks gives equal time to the people and the place in his selection of shots. There are women and men, black and white, young and old pictured shooting pool, dancing, or listening to music (in the tight confines of the lounge usually provided by a DJ or jukebox, not a live band), sitting together at the tables with drinks at hand, or posing for portraits outside the building in front of an improvised screen.

But equally rewarding are the images of the building. Po’ Monkey’s was located in the house where Mr. Seaberry lived for much of his life. He reserved for himself a small bedroom at the back—the rest was richly decorated with stuffed monkeys (the juke joint took its name from Mr. Seaberry’s nickname) and posters, photographs, beads, and strand after strand of Christmas lights, which transformed the Spartan interior of a sharecropper’s cabin into a joyous space where people came to forget their cares for the night.

The photographs highlight the textures of that space, from the plastic hung to keep out the rain—a pragmatic decision that became a design feature when they were tufted to the ceiling—to the corrugated tin and candy-striped handrails of the exterior. The hand-painted signs near the front door clearly laid out the owner’s positions: No loud music, dope smoking, rap music, or beer brought inside.

An introductory essay by journalist Boyce Upholt and a photographer’s statement at the end of the book tell the particulars of Willie Seaberry’s life story as well as they can be teased out, his close relationship with the Hiter family who owns the house and farmland on which it sits, and the story of Po’ Monkey’s during its years of operation and in the time following his death.

It seems unlikely that the lounge will ever reopen, and even if it were to, it would be a different place from what its patrons have known. It was the larger-than-life personality of its owner that made Po’ Monkey’s the welcoming place that it was for so many, and it is thanks to Will Jacks that we have this record of that time and that place.

Chris Goodwin lives in Jackson. He visited Po’ Monkey’s for the first time in 2007 and hasn’t danced that much since.

Author Q & A with Will Jacks

By Guest Author

On October 6, 2019

In Blues, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (October 6)

Mississippi Delta photographer and documentarian Will Jacks celebrates the life and times of the late Willie Seaberry, owner of Po’ Monkey’s blues house in Merigold for more than 50 years, in Po’ Monkey’s: Portrait of a Juke Joint (University Press of Mississippi).

Jacks extols the history of the night club that closed with Seaberry’s death in 2016, while pondering the future of the deteriorating hand-built tenant house that was once a blues hot spot.

With more than 70 black-and-white photos and an introduction by award-winning writer Boyce Upholt, Jacks highlights the cultural significance and the need to honor it with a historical record.

Among his many talents and skills, Jacks is also a curator and storyteller, and he teaches photography and documentary classes at Delta State University.

What was it about Po’ Monkey’s juke joint in Merigold that made it such a must-see stop for Blues-loving tourists and locals?

Willie Seaberry

It was Willie Seaberry. The locals definitely came over the years because of him and the welcoming environment he created. And then the locals became the glue that made Po’ Monkey’s different from almost every other space frequented by blues tourists. The mix of tourists and locals created an amazing atmosphere of sharing, and when that atmosphere was combined with the visual drama of the structure and its location in the middle of a farm, well, there was a perfect recipe for an incredibly unique experience–and a good time.

You say in the book that Willie Seaberry knew you (a regular at this establishment for a decade), but you don’t think he knew your name. Tell me about your relationship with him.

Will Jacks

Willie was never great with names, but he had an ability to hide that and make everyone feel as if he were their best friend. I saw him do this over and over and over again. Someone would enter the club–usually a tourist that made yearly trips to the Delta–and give him a warm greeting as if they were family. Willie would reciprocate, and the guest would feel as if it was just a matter of time before Willie came to visit at their home. It wasn’t that Willie was disingenuous–he loved sharing a good time with his guests–it’s just that so many people came in and out of his life that it must have been impossible for him to keep track of all those names and faces.

I was no different. Even though I visited most Thursday nights, I didn’t see Willie as regularly outside of that environment as his closest friends and family. So, I doubt he ever knew my name. I don’t recall a single time that he called me by it, but I could tell from our interactions over the years that he knew who I was. He just didn’t know my name.

He would often ask me to bring him posters I’d made. He liked the portraits I’d used for them. So, I would, and he would give them away and sometimes sell them. He gave me photo books that others had given him over the years. He didn’t much care for them but knew I would. So, he shared them with me. He liked to tease me the way a favorite uncle does. He sometimes would vent to me. He would buy me beer and let me into the club for free. I drove his truck a few times to run errands for him (and for me). I spoke at his funeral.

But we were never best friends. To insinuate that on my part would be disingenuous. I was still one of the many photographers and filmmakers that asked for his time. That was always the crux of our relationship. It just happened that I was the one documentarian that was out there the most, and the one who lived just a few miles away. Because of this, we would see each other outside the confines of his weekly party, and that helped our relationship go further than subject/photographer but not as far as close friend and family.

In what state of repair is Po’ Monkey’s at this time, and what, if any, plans are taking shape for its future?

The structure is still standing, but it’s seeing some decline due to lack of use. The exterior signs have been removed as they were sold at auction last year along with many of his belongings and interior decor.

As for future plans, that’s not my decision to make. There are others in charge of those decisions, and solutions are complicated for a myriad of reasons. I am in touch with many of those stakeholders, but it’s not my place to share whatever plans are being considered, and even then, I don’t know what all is being specifically discussed.

I can say, though, with confidence that all involved are concerned primarily with appropriately honoring what Willie Seaberry built. That seems simple enough on the surface, but when you dig into the specifics it’s much more challenging. Cultural preservation is a tricky thing. I feel certain that something will happen to honor Willie. As to what that is, we’ll all just have to be patient and trusting to until that answer emerges. And perhaps even more so, we will all need to be ready to pitch in to help when and if that time presents itself, as the best preservation is one that is led by community.

Tell me about the images in your “Portrait of a Juke Joint,” and the way you decided to present them in this book–black and white, with no identifications of people or their behaviors in the shots. Over what period were they taken, and how long did it take to produce this book?

I chose black and white specifically because I wanted the people to be the focus–I didn’t want the viewer becoming overly seduced by the colorful space. The structure was compelling, yes, but it was the people, and specifically the locals, that made it magical.

There are to titles because I didn’t want anything to lead the viewer as they look through the photos. I want the viewer to have room to imagine what has occurred before and after the image they are pondering. Sometimes with captions, the words create too much context. I felt there was enough context already in the photos, and anything more would risk the work becoming didactic, which I hope to avoid.

Ultimately, what do you hope to accomplish through this book?

I hope to show that Po’ Monkey’s was a complex place that was more than just a tourist spot. It was crafted from a complex history and became significant both despite that history and because of it.

We will never see another Po’ Monkey’s again, but we will see spaces all around us that become culturally significant without intending to be. Knowing that this is the case, how can we as communities do better jobs of recognizing and supporting those people, moments, and places?

I hope this book will help us as a state, and in particular those in positions of power, consider what we’ve done well but also, and perhaps more important, what we haven’t done well as we have consciously crafted an economy built around a very complex and often painful history.

I hope this book will help give a deeper understanding to just how difficult historic preservation can be.

And finally, I hope this book will help us ask the right questions so we can get to the right answers as to how we can share with future generations the lessons taught by Willie Seaberry.

Will Jacks will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, October 22, at 5:00 to sign and discuss Po’ Monkey’s: Portrait of a Juke Joint.

Roger Stolle’s ‘Mississippi Juke Joint Confidential’ goes straight to the source of blues music

By Guest Author

On August 2, 2019

In Blues, Southern Culture

By DeMatt Harkins. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 28)

Over the past century, blues music has evolved while nonetheless retaining its core elements and purpose. In Mississippi Juke Joint Confidential, Roger Stolle, accompanied by photographer Lou Bopp, demonstrates this is equally the case with its archetypal venue.

Early in the millennium, Stolle moved from St. Louis to Clarksdale to open Cat Head music shop. Since then, he has gone on to start the annual Juke Joint Festival, produce several artists’ records and tours, become a contributing editor for Delta Magazine, deejay locally and on satellite radio, helm a trio of blues documentaries (We Juke Up In Here, M is for Mississippi, and Hard Times) and host the web series Moonshine and Mojo Hands.

In his follow-up to Hidden History of Mississippi Blues, Stolle begins by clarifying that self-declaration does not a juke joint maketh. Spots such as the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, Roosters in Sardis, Junior Kimbrough’s in Marshall county, The Subway Lounge in Jackson, The Do Drop Inn and Sarah’s Kitchen in Clarksdale, and Po Monkey’s out from Marigold all earned the distinction. These clubs are less refined, more raw. Many may not be up to code, let alone legal businesses.

Juke joints initially popped up as the lone secular, social outlet during Mississippi’s sharecropping era. They hosted such legends as Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, and Son House. Today’s equally sensational Mississippi juke joint musicians live practically off the cultural grid. But that doesn’t mean they don’t pack ‘em in.

While patrons most certainly feel the music in a Mississippi juke joint, they may not necessarily be able to see the band. As Stolle points out, contemporary juke joints tend to be paeans to resourcefulness. With that comes architectural and design anomalies. The band may be around a corner from half the crowd, or even placed in front of a bathroom. Not to mention, the look of the place may be spare or a collage of bygone marketing campaigns, amateur signage, and Christmas lights. Despite unconventional layouts and incongruous styles, juke joints function as the means to a musically euphoric end.

At the heart of Mississippi Juke Joint Confidential is a pair of chapters sourced from many of Stolle’s interviews with owners and musicians. The raconteurs include T-Model Ford, Terry “Harmonica” Bean, Sam Carr, RL Boyce, Lightning Malcolm, Mary Ann Action Jackson, Robert Belfour, Sarah Moore, James Super Chikan Johnson, LC Ulmer, and the legendary Honeyboy Edwards, among others. Collectively they paint a vivid picture of this underground musical scene—often with head-shaking hilarity.

Most people have seen guitars played on stage. Few have seen them used to defend a mid-performance knife attack. Also presented here is sage advice against chugging a pint of gin, right before playing the first song. Which juke joint is referred to as The Bucket of Blood? And perhaps everyone needs to visit the juke joint whose house chicken dances and drinks beer.

In addition to the high jinx, also evident are hard workers simply trying to provide a service to the community. Proprietors such as Red Paden and Sarah Moore echo they are not in it for the money. They recognize everybody needs a place to let it all hang out.

Several of Stolle’s subjects reminisce about juke joints’ days of yore. John Horton explains his preference for the old solo acoustic acts because it’s a greater feat to hold an audience’s attention, all night, by yourself. Along those lines, Jimmy Duck Holmes points out why blues was hollered—musicians were contending with a full room of revelers without the benefit of a sound system. And one can only imagine how raucous the Harlem Club in Inverness became when young David Lee Durham was relegated to peeking in the window to catch a set by Howlin Wolf or Muddy Waters.

Stolle additionally expounds on the cultural significance of moonshine, the profound history of Clarksdale’s Riverside Hotel and Bay St. Louis’ 100 Men DBA Hall, Bilbo Walker’s long journey from musician to juke joint operator, and the ins-and-outs of traveling internationally on blues tours.

Although juke joint music is known around the globe, Stolle and Bopp offer not only a peek into, but also an itinerary for what cannot be replicated outside of Mississippi.

DeMatt Harkins of Jackson enjoys flipping pancakes and records with his wife and daughter.

Roger Stolle will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Mississippi Blues” panel at 4:00 p.m. at the Galloway Foundery.

From Massachusetts to Mississippi in Tammy Turner’s ‘Dick Waterman: A Life in Blues’

By Guest Author

On June 17, 2019

In Biography/Memoir, Blues, Music

By DeMatt Harkins. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (May 19)

In simply stating, “anyplace they give you food through iron bars is going to be good food,” Dick Waterman encapsulates himself. Tammy L. Turner’s Dick Waterman, A Life in Blues demonstrates his belief in getting the most of life. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

A member of the Blues Hall of Fame, Waterman managed, booked, and/or photographed essentially the entire Delta Blues revival as well as the electric blues apex of the 60s. Who else could write B.B. King’s biography, introduce unreleased Robert Johnson tracks to Eric Clapton, or receive an apology from Bill Graham? Guided by his level head and committed heart, Dick made many allies and musical history.

As a young stutterer in Massachusetts, Waterman found full expression in the written word. His Boston University journalism degree initially landed him sports and financial assignments near Greenwich Village and Cambridge. Dick bore witness to each areas’ historic folk explosion.

The heady minimalism tangentially included Delta Blues. A dialed-in segment became keenly interested in the solo acoustic blues artists of the 20s and 30s. When it came to light that certain members of the anointed may still be living, the quest was on.

Waterman supplemented his early career by freelancing music features and part-timing with the agency handling the rediscovered Rev. Gary Davis and Jesse Fuller. Based on hearsay, he backed into his life’s work.

During a Boston stint in ‘64, someone heard Bukka White say that Ma Rainey saw Son House at a Memphis movie theater recently. Contemporary of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, Son House stood prominent among the original guard. The notion he was alive created urgency.

Eschewing foresight, Waterman, a computer programmer, a future guitarist of Canned Heat, and the eventual owner of Yazoo Records and Blue Goose Records, all jumped in a Beetle headed for Memphis.

A week roving Memphis and Tunica County produced a phone number. House’s stepdaughter in Detroit explained he’s been living in Rochester, NY for years. They got back in the car.

Upon arrival, they had no problem meeting and field-recording House. But while others in the party felt satisfied, Dick wondered what would become of him. Where’s the recognition? He used those tapes to secure a booking at that year’s Newport Folk Festival.

Equipped with this vested mindset, Waterman’s reputation among promoters and artists organically accumulated a staggering list of legendary clients and partners. They included Mississippi John Hurt, Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Skip James, Robert Pete Williams, Little Walter, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Arthur Big Boy Crudup, J.B. Hutto, and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Although some artists leaned brazen, many proved incredibly vulnerable. Dick deftly advocated for appropriate appearance fees, realistic travel schedules, and overdue royalties for decades.

When these artists traveled to Boston, they stayed at Waterman’s apartment. On one occasion, a friend arrived to visit Son House. He brought a Radcliffe student named Bonnie Raitt. When Buddy Guy and Junior Wells played support on The Rolling Stones’ 1970 European tour, Dick asked Bonnie to join him. She would never register for another semester. Their romantic relationship would evolve to a strictly professional one, and Waterman booked Raitt’s gigs through the mid-80s.

Over the years, talent rosters dwindled, and the music landscape changed. In 1984, Bill Ferris, then Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss, invited his old friend Dick to present his photos at a brown bag lecture. They first met when Bill was in grad school at Penn.

Within two years, Waterman moved to Oxford for a fresh start and a return to his roots. He dabbled in promotion, scored a weekly column with the Oxford Eagle, pulled out his cameras for the first time in 20 years, and began marketing his classic shots. Today, Dick still calls The Velvet Ditch his home.

By interweaving primary source and narrative, Turner recounts Waterman’s incredible achievements and hilarious horror stories and, in every case, exhibiting how his conscientiousness benefited the perpetuation and documentation of American music.

DeMatt Harkins of Jackson enjoys flipping pancakes and records with his wife and daughter.

Tammy Tuner will be at Lemuria on Saturday, June 22, at 2:00 p.m. to sign copies of Dick Waterman: A Life in Blues.

Author Q & A with Tammy L. Turner

By Guest Author

On June 16, 2019

In Biography/Memoir, Blues, Music

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (June 16)

It was about a decade after music professor Tammy L. Turner met blues promoter/producer Dick Waterman in a class at Ole Miss that she came to realize “he had an important story that needed to be told,” and she has captured his extraordinary career in the memoir, Dick Waterman: A Life in the Blues (University Press of Mississippi).

Born in 1935 into an affluent Jewish family in Massachusetts, Waterman began his career in the 1950s as a journalist, honing his skills as a writer and photographer. It was his interest in the folk music of Greenwich Village and Cambridge in the 1960s that would lead him to a position as a music promoter in Boston, which eventually brought him to his “calling in life” with his pursuit of Mississippi Delta Blues artist Son House.

Waterman’s significant influence on decades of American music became evident in the careers of many big names in the music industry, in a variety of genres. Today he lives in Oxford, retired but “still busy.”

Turner resides in Kentucky, where she teaches a variety of university courses in music history. She is especially interested in 20th century music, including blues, jazz, rock, and classical music.

You hold a doctoral degree in music history from the University of Mississippi. Tell me about how you became interested in music–specifically blues music, and Dick Waterman in particular.

I had little exposure to blues music until I took Dr. Warren Steel’s African American musical traditions class at Ole Miss. It was in this class that I also met Dick. He was a guest at one of our class meetings and brought with him a number of his iconic black and white photographs from the 1960s, including a number of the early blues artists with whom he had worked.

Your research for this book is evident in the details, conversations, and interviews you reveal. How long have you known Waterman, and when did you realize his story should be published as a book?

Tammy Turner

Although I met Dick over two decades ago when he was a guest in our class, I did not have an opportunity to converse with him that day. I had classes of my own to teach and left immediately after the class ended. I graduated with my degree a couple of years later and moved away from Oxford.

As I continued my university teaching career, I eventually taught courses in both jazz and rock ‘n’ roll history. Blues music is a component in both courses, so I began to study blues more intently. I remembered Dick and his photos and, over the years, regretted missing such an excellent opportunity to talk with him about his work. In 2011, I traveled to Mississippi to do some blues research and was able to reconnect with him and we spent a delightful afternoon discussing his career.

Through a series of events, I helped arrange a photo exhibition and lecture for him in western Kentucky, where I reside. I enjoyed working with him and felt he had an important story that needed to be told. I approached him with the idea, and, after some consideration, he was amenable to the idea and granted me full access to the details of his life and his archives.

Waterman’s career in blues really began with his journey with Nick Perls and Phil Spiro into the Mississippi Delta in 1964 at the height of the Civil Rights movement to find bluesman Son House, who had faded into obscurity two decades prior. What did this lead to?

They found House, but not in Mississippi. Through contacts they made in Mississippi, they learned he was living in Rochester and drove there to meet him. In meeting House, Dick found a mission. It was in finding Son House that he found his calling and began his career in blues booking and management.

What would you say Waterman accomplished in the blues world (and other music genres)?

Dick played such a critical role in 20th century blues history. He was one of the three men who rediscovered Son House. Due to his tireless efforts, House came out of retirement for approximately 10 years and recorded an album with Columbia Records.

In June 1965, Dick founded Avalon Productions, which was the only agency at the time devoted solely to representing African American blues artists. He helped book some of the most important blues festivals of the 1960s and ‘70s, including the 1969 and 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festivals, and he helped establish others.

He worked with several older bluesmen to reignite their careers, including Mississippi Fred McDowell, Skip James, Robert Pete Williams as well as others. He discovered a young singer/guitarist named Bonnie Raitt and assisted her career. He also convinced Buddy Guy to leave his day job as a mechanic in Chicago to pursue music as a full-time career. Musicians trusted him to handle their careers because he earned a reputation for honesty and integrity.

Waterman has left his mark on America’s musical history as a promoter and manager for artists who included many big blues names–and some of the biggest rock and other performers in the world, including James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, and many others. What would you say drove him, and continues to drive him, to become such an important influencer in American music?

Dick inherited a tremendous work ethic from his father, who was a medical doctor. He also has a staunch sense of fairness and both a willingness and determination to advocate for others, especially those who are not in a position to advocate for themselves. It was never his goal to become famous, but to protect the older blues artists from exploitation, to demand competitive compensation for their work, and fight for royalties that some of them were being denied.

Today, Waterman lives in Oxford, where he moved in the mid-‘80s. What is he doing today?

Dick is retired, but still active. After a few decades away from photography, he returned to photographing musicians in the 1990s. In 2003 he published a book of his most iconic works titled Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archives and in 2006 wrote the text for The B.B. King Treasures book. He sells his photos, both new and old, at his website dickwaterman.com. He still receives requests for photo exhibitions/lectures and as a guest speaker discussing his work in the blues at various events and classes.

Tammy Tuner will be at Lemuria on Saturday, June 22, at 2:00 p.m. to sign copies of Dick Waterman: A Life in Blues.

New ‘Charley Patton’ book is a study of the Father of the Delta Blues

By Guest Author

On July 11, 2018

In Blues

By DeMatt Harkins. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 8)

In September of 1984, Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with It” topped the US singles chart, as Prince’s “Purple Rain” dominated the album chart. Meanwhile in Belgium, four recording sessions from The Great Depression were the order of the day. That month, scholars descended upon Liège University for the International Conference on Charley Patton. The occasion marked the 50th anniversary of the pivotal Mississippi Blues legend’s passing.

Charley Patton: Voice of the Mississippi Delta compiles nine presentation transcriptions from that forum. Each piece, some revised or amended, explores the man who brought us “Pony Blues,” and “High Water Everywhere,” as well as his ripple effects.

Seven years after the conference, while attending a proper headstone dedication in Holly Ridge, Mississippi, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty compared Patton’s body of work to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Significantly, Charley Patton is the earliest Delta Blues musician with a known history.

Born in Bolton, Mississippi, Charley Patton moved with his family to the atypically egalitarian Dockery Farms near Drew. In the Delta, he excelled as a prolific musician, master showman, and regional celebrity. Although only one photo exists of a sharply appointed Patton, he recorded 71 songs from 1929 to 1934.

These songs were heard and seen by the Mississippians who migrated north forging the first guard of Chicago Blues. Expats Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Elmore James would later leave their mark on yet a younger generation, domestically and abroad. The direct line of influence from Charley Patton is evident, and the impact is profound. Hence, the legion at Liège.

Robert Sacré not only organized the Conference, but also edited Charley Patton: Voice of the Mississippi Delta. The professor at the host university opens with a primer of traditional African music’s journey to the 20th century South. Arnold Shaw follows with comparisons of Patton to fellow Blues stalwarts, Bukka White, Son House, and Robert Johnson. The common thread being self-exploration. Focusing on the individual and not the collective was brand new with post-emancipation African American music.

University of Memphis’ David Evans’ piece provides a thorough Patton biography, replete with updates culled from interviews conducted since 1984. He thoughtfully surveys Patton’s life, recordings, spirituality, relationships, and identity. Evans seeks to understand how a Blues musician simultaneously stayed a juke joint draw while remaining the go-to party act for adults and children, black or white. From there a second Liège professor, Daniel Droixhe, analyzes the mechanics of the famous cannon through Patton’s chord and lyrical structure.

Pivoting to the effect of Patton’s music, noted Louisiana music author John Broven demonstrates how Delta Blues traveled south to Baton Rouge. Similarly, through 16 songs, Mike Rowe traces the progression of Blues from an acoustic Delta style to an electric Chicago style.

Having befriended Howlin’ Wolf in the late 1960s, Chicago journalist Dick Shurman recalls the last years of a musician who genuinely studied at the feet of Charley Patton. An invaluable viewpoint follows from Luther Allison. Born in Magnolia, Arkansas, he moved to Chicago at age 14, eventually joining the Chicago Blues scene, alongside Jimmy Reed, Freddie King, and Little Walter.

Providing a current assessment of Chicago music (in 1984), Living Blues magazine co-founder and editor Jim O’Neal, who is coming to this year’s Mississippi Book Festival, addressed the conference. At that time, Koko Taylor, Little Milton, and James Cotton ruled the roost. While Mississippi still influenced Chicago, O’Neal points out that it was now a two-way street of artistic inspiration.

As Evans suggests in the book’s contemporary conclusion, a lot has evolved within blues since 1984. Yet at the same time, different iterations and artists experience revivals on a cyclical basis, revealing the style’s long history. Point being, Charley Patton maintains as much relevance today as he did thirty and eighty years ago.

DeMatt Harkins of Jackson enjoys flipping pancakes and records with his wife and daughter.

Author Q & A with Robert Gordon

By Guest Author

On March 26, 2018

In Blues, Music, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 25)

Memphis’s Grammy and Emmy award-winning author and filmmaker Robert Gordon highlights his city’s lesser known artists who he proudly emphasizes brought “something different” to the Memphis music scene through their authenticity and uncommon styles.

Memphis Rent Party: The Blues, Rock & Soul in Music’s Hometown is a collection of 20 profiles and stories composed throughout his career of more than four decades of passionate writing about the music of his beloved Memphis.

Gordon’s previous books, all about the American South, and its music, art, and politics, include It Came from Memphis, Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters, and Respect Yourself. His work on Keep an Eye on the Sky was selected as a Grammy winner.

His film work includes the documentaries Johnny Cash’s America and William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton. His Best of Enemies was shortlisted for an Oscar and won an Emmy.

Born and raised in Memphis, he still calls the city his home and touts: “I drink my whiskey neat.”

Memphis Rent Party: The Blues, Rock & Soul in Music’s Hometown is a collection of essays about Memphis artists and producers who you believed best convey the spirit of Memphis. What exactly is a rent party?

When I was studying the Harlem Renaissance about 40 years ago, I learned about rent parties, where people who couldn’t make the rent would throw a party, charge admission, sell booze, and get by another month. I loved the idea of friends helping friends by having fun together. And it occurred to me then, way back, that “Rent Party” would be a great name for a collection of stories. The work is already done, you’re throwing a few stories together to get a book deal. But it turned out, when I had the opportunity, I took it much further, interconnecting the stories with new text, digging up old unpublishable pieces, and generally putting in a full book’s effort. The result, Memphis Rent Party, is a lot of fun–like a rent party should be, but it was a lot more work than I anticipated.

And by “unpublishable” I mean, for example, I wrote a piece about the mother of jazz greats Phineas and Calvin Newborn. It’s hard enough to get a piece of either of them published, but on their mom? No way. So, I wrote that for myself, put it in a drawer, and moved on. I dug it out for this, because I could finally get it out.

How did you choose these particular stories?

I didn’t set out with a particular goal, but one formed as I got into the material. I saw a unifying theme, a sense of individuality that is epitomized by Sam Phillips and by what Sam sought.
Elvis would have been singing Perry Como-style ballads and become a forgotten minor entertainer if it hadn’t been for Sam. Sam affirmed for him that the wild streak in him, the uniquely Elvis part of Elvis, was OK to reveal, was something to pursue.

That’s the spirit that unifies the book. These are individuals who have created their own characters, forged new paths. These are not followers, they’re people cutting their own path–and very often, that path becomes a major highway that lots of people follow.

What was it that attracted you to this music at a young age–music that was so unlike your growing up years, at a time when you described your teenage self as a “rebellious outsider” and as a “seeker.”

Robert Gordon

This music hit harder and deeper than anything I’d ever heard. It didn’t say, “I’m hear to rock you.” It didn’t say, “Let’s be entertained.” Though all music is just a combination of notes, the delivery of this music felt different. It had history, meaning, and heft. I wanted to understand it in a way that Molly Hachet, Kiss, and later, Boston–pop groups of the time–offered no deeper meanings.

One of your earliest (if not your first) face-to-face encounters with a music legend was with Furry Lewis, a solo blues artist from Memphis who was “about 80 years old,” when he opened for a Rolling Stones concert in Memphis in 1975. What “bonded” you with Furry almost immediately?

I think the bond was me to Furry, and Furry–initially, anyway–saw me as just another curious person knocking on his door and shelling out a couple bucks. But he did soon recognize me, because I returned often. His duplex was a place different from anyplace I knew, and being there, being with him, observing his environment and his friends–it all posed many questions to me, made me curious, opened up avenues to explore.

You began your writing career in the mid-80s when you began feeding now-defunct magazines stories about musical talents that weren’t first tier stars, but those who offered listeners “something different.” You say that theirs was a “shadow influence.” Describe what that means.

The most clear sense of shadow influence is that many pop hits were built on, of simply copies of, previous blues, soul, or other songs. The Stones cut Robert Johnson songs, and Fred McDowell and the Rev. Robert Wilkins. The Stones were influenced by artists that many of their fans would never realize. All of pop music was. That day in 1975, when I heard Furry open for the Stones, he was immediately more interesting than they were. Nowhere near as huge–in sound, popularity, onslaught, or in any way–but imbued with more than the Stones could hope for. That was in part because he was a living relic of a previous time, but also because I think fewer notes say way more than many notes. In music, in cinema, in writing, it’s about the space, the air, the room you leave, nor the room you take up.

In the book’s preface, you predict that 100 years from now, the music of these marginalized artists “will still be popularly unpopular–will still be hip.” Explain why you believe that.

History has shown it to be. Popular music doesn’t remain popular. It catches a sense of time, then moves on. The Romantics or the Cars scream “1980s,” but they don’t have much power other than that now. They evoke a time. These marginalized artists also evoke a time, but more than that, they tell a story. A personal story, a universal story, a news story of the day–their songs and lives and art.

OK, I’m interrupting myself, because here’s the key: individuality. The credo of godhead Sam Phillips. “Give me something different.” Pop artists capture their times, sound like anyone in those times could. These more marginalized artist sound only like themselves. Individuality lives on, popularity fades with the times.

What is the book about the overall message of Memphis Rent Party?

It’s about flouting the trends to become a unique individual. It’s the Sam Phillips mindset applied to people Sam never encountered. He encountered Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King and Jerry Lee and Johnny Cash and Elvis, and for all of them, he shifted them away from their pop dreams to finding their own artist.

By expressing themselves, these people created new paths, new styles, new trends. And the same is true about the people in the book. They’re all sui generis–they created their own thing. Sam once said, Nashville has a follower’s mentality. That’s why he stayed in Memphis.

An accompanying LP will be released by Fat Possum Records, with the artists on the soundtrack among those featured in the book. What kind of music will the soundtrack have?

This soundtrack, like the Memphis and Mississippi artists it covers, is all over the place. There’s blues, jazz, country, rock and roll. There’s everything but gospel, but there’s definitely the gospel of rock and roll.

Do you have potential projects that you want readers to know about?

I work on a lot of projects at once. In this kind of work, you have to. I’m hoping to announce a new feature doc, music-oriented, real soon. I’ve got several feature docs in the works. I’m shooting in North Carolina for two weeks in April for the second half of a documentary with a UK artist, Bill Drummond. We shot the first half in Kolkata, India. He’ll do his thing in the two places and, I think, the different reactions he gets will reveal a lot about the world we live in today.

Robert Gordon will be at Lemuria on Monday, March 26, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from Memphis Rent Party.

‘Live from the Mississippi Delta’ provides a front row seat

By Guest Author

On October 30, 2017

In Blues, Photography

By DeMatt Harkins. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (October 15)

No matter how well one may know Mississippi, more layers, subcultures, and haunts appear. They prove endlessly fascinating from a historical, literary, culinary, or musical perspective. In her first book, Live from the Mississippi Delta (University Press of Mississippi), photographer Panny Flautt Mayfield shares her snapshots encapsulating all of these in the greater Clarksdale area.

live from the ms delta While the Coahoma County seat may not be a booming metropolis, the camera-wielding Mayfield frequently found herself in the right place at the right time, during culturally significant events and times over the past 30 years. Her casual stream-of-consciousness photo journal lets the reader in on the energy, with the perspective only a local could provide.

Clarksdale functions as one of the more important blues towns in a state filled with many. Famous native sons include John Lee Hooker, Son House, Ike Turner, and Sam Cooke.And Muddy Waters, W.C. Handy, and Robert Johnson lived there as well. On those shoulders stands a world-renowned musical legacy that supports an enduring local music scene and pilgrimage destination.

This is what Mayfield documents. She exhibits the role Clarksdale and surrounding radius palys in blues past and present–intertwining people, events, and locations, decades and miles apart.

Two excellent sources of material prove to be the town’s Sunflower Blues Festival and King Biscuit Blues Festival in neighboring Helena, Arkansas. Mayfield’s tome displays excellent shots of stalwarts Bobby Bland, Albert King, Little Milton, Denise LaSalle, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Charlie Musselwhite, Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, Pinetop Perkins, Junior Kimbrough, and Honeyboy Edwards–each pictured in the throes of performance.

But Mayfield has also witnessed another level of visitor to the vicinity. She covered John Fogerty and Pop Staples attending Charley Patton’s headstone dedication in Holly Ridge. When famed Smithsonian archivist Alan Lomax returned to Clarksdale after years and years, Mayfield captured him sitting down to hear a picker. She was also on hand for sitting President Clinton’s walking tour of downtown Clarksdale. ZZ Top invited the national press to Mississippi. They were kicking off a million-dollar campaign for the Delta Blues Museum. Guess who was front and center?

Perhaps most stunning of all is Mayfield’s friendship with Robert Plant. The Led Zeppelin frontman’s academic fascination with blues music has manifested in a series of trips to Clarksdale. Throughout the book, Plant pops up, letting the golden locks hang low in practical anonymity. His rapport with Mayfield eventually landed her at his band’s 2007 London reunion concert, depicted in the concert film Celebration Day.

While undeniably interesting, global luminaries are not the appeal of Live from the Mississippi Delta. As Mayfield demonstrates, the magic is in the local mainstays. As the first black disk jockey in Mississippi, Early Wright’s Soul Man Show on WROX–replete with impromptu ads and PSAs–endeared listeners for decades. When he wasn’t opening NAACP chapters across the state, WAde Walton cut multiple generation’s hair. Mrs. Z L Hill ran the Henderson Hotel boarding house for 53 years and even hosted John F. Kennedy. The after-school blues students of Johnnie Billington flew to Washington, D.C. to play at the White House.

However, Mayfield provides more neon than neoclassical. She places the reader in the middle of Clarksdale’s finest music venues. From the dance floor, one can observe the likes of The Jellyroll Kings, Super Chikan, or Bilbo Walker playing Smitty’s Red Top Lounge, Margaret’s Blue Diamond, or the Bobo Grocery. And as the photos make clear, the stars of the evening are not always on stage.

In Live from the Mississippi Delta, Mayfield serves as her own acoustiguide. Sometimes the narrative explains the picture, other times the photo illustrates a point. Regardless she delivers an engaging look into multidimensional Clarksdale and the pleasure it holds.

DeMatt Harkins of Jackson enjoys flipping pancakes and records with his wife and daughter.

Panny Flautt Mayfield will be Lemuria on Wednesday, November 1, at 5:00 to promote her book, Live from the Mississippi Delta.

Author Q & A with Panny Mayfield

By Guest Author

On September 5, 2017

In Blues, Photography, Southern Culture

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 3)

Panny Flautt Mayfield

As an award-winning journalist and lifelong Mississippi Delta native, Panny Mayfield of Tutwiler has captured decades of blues and gospel music history through her camera lens–and her debut book, Live From the Mississippi Delta (University Press of Mississippi), tells that unique story through her unique, up-close perspective.

The recipient of more than 30 awards granted by the Mississippi Press Association, the Associated Press, the Mississippi Film Commission, and the College Public Relations Association of Mississippi, Mayfield’s work has been exhibited in museums across the U.S. and in Europe.

In Live from the Mississippi Delta, she shares more than 200 photos of Delta performers and their musicians, fans, friends, and families, taken at churches, clubs, festivals, and iconic juke joints, alongside her own detailed accounts of the lives and fortunes of dozens of familiar blues and gospel performers–including those who were Delta natives as well as international superstars who traveled from around the world to pay homage to the legends who influenced their own music.

Tell me about your childhood in Tutwiler and how you came to be a noted Mississippi Delta photographer.

Growing up in Tutwiler, a busy railroad town south of Clarksdale, I enjoyed small town life watching Randolph Scott movies at the Tutrovansum Theatre (a [portmanteau] for the Mississippi communities it served: Tutwiler, Rome, Vance, and Sumner), playing kick the can, and catching lightning bugs in Mason jars. I was aware of places like Lula Mae’s Sunrise Cafe where infectious music spilled out on the street, but it was totally off limits to me until I became an adult.

Photography fascinated me at about the age of 12. I began taking pictures and writing about cross-country family trips, became newspaper editor in high school and at Ole Miss, and began a lifelong career as a journalist and photographer.

I began taking blues photographs in the late 70s when Sid Graves founded Clarksdale’s Delta Blues Museum. Bluesman Wesley Jefferson needed a portfolio and asked me to photograph his Southern Soul Band playing at Margaret’s Blue Diamond Blues Club on the railroad tracks in Clarksdale’s New World District. I organized a folder for James “Super Chikan” Johnson who needed to get serious booking gigs.

It was Mae, Michael James’ lady, who began teaching me to dance to blues music in her kitchen. Decades later, I’m still working on my dancing and sharing the drama of the passionate music that is the Mississippi Delta blues.

After a career as a newspaper journalist and a public relations director for a community college, Live from the Mississippi Delta is your first book. How did this book come about?

My careers with newspapers, magazines, and Coahoma Community College were incredibly busy. Although I considered a book somwhere down the line, I was busy making a living and meeting ever-present deadlines until I retired in 2013. I was encouraged to put a book together by Molly Porter of Vermont, who scanned many of my photographs. Initially it was a book of photographs until Craig Gill, University Press of Mississippi’s director, urged me to include stories and text about many of the images, musicians, and events. The book itself is half text, half photos.

Explain what the blues, as a music genre, means to the Mississippi Delta.

I’m not sure if I can explain how much blues means to the Mississippi Delta. They are inseparable, conjoined. When the eminent folklorist and musician Alan Lomax returned to Clarksdale in 1994, he emphasized the similar, unique qualities of Coahoma County blues to the original rhythmic music of Senegal in Africa, and he encouraged a cultural revival in the Delta.

You helped launch Clarksdale’s Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival in 1988. Are you still involved in it?

Jim O’Neal, co-founder of Living Blues magazine, and research director of Mississippi’s Blues Trail, co-founded the Sunflower River Blues Association, and he was here last month for the festival’s 30th anniversary. In 1988, we were considered an avant-garde bunch, but we followed Jim’s lead, staging a free music festival showcasing local musicians as well as well-known artists.

I asked Jim at that time what he thought of today’s Sunflower (festival), and he said he was glad it continued to be a unique, grassroots event where people felt comfortable and at home. This year, we had people from New Zealand, Italy, Germany, Paris, and Bangkok, Thailand.

I’m still publicist for the festival and I love our multiracial, diverse membership. I believe this contributes to the success of our festival.

Your book includes sections on Delta landscapes, “homegrown” and international blues musicians, Delta festivals, juke joints, and more, and your career as a photographer has given you front-row access to scores of musically influential events and people. What have you enjoyed the most and what have you found to be the most challenging?

My book begins with my own beginning in Tutwiler–also the birthplace of blues. it’s where W.C. Handy first head a guitar being played with a kitchen knife in 1903, and where the charismatic Robert Plant paid tribute in 2009 to the music that influenced his own phenomenal career.

I have been one incredibly person to have this background and to fine-tune it in Clarksdale, center of the blues universe. My books “homegrown icons”–radio broadcaster Early Wright, who invited me to his birthday dinners every February 10; and barber Wade Walton with his stuffed monkey Flukie–are just as important to me as international celebrities ZZ Top, James Brown, and Garth Brooks.

Describe Clarksdale’s association with its “sister city,” Notodden, Norway.

Clarksdale’s sister city relationship with Notodden, Norway, began in 1996 with initial visits by Norwegian journalists, musicians, and then city offiicials interested in researching blues history to enhance their own international festival and its connection with the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival.

Norwegian officials dined on catfish; were entertained at the Rivermount Lounge, a local club favored by Little Milton, Ike Turner, and Bobby Rush; and were taken to a Marvin Sease blues show at the City Auditorium that went on until 2 a.m. The next morning, they attended a service at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church at Friar’s Point, where members lined up to shake every Norwegian’s hand. Overnight, we became “cousins,” and exchanges between the two cities have flourished.

Tell me about the cover of your book.

live from the mississippi delta I get emotional about the cover of my book. The musician–Arthneice Jones–is one of the most talented and articulate bluesmen I have known. A harmonica master and singer/songwriter, Arthneice was leader of The Stone Gas Band–a talented and popular bunch who played all over north Mississippi and Memphis before his untimely death. A musician who worked in concrete, Arthneice intrigued, charmed, and connected intimately with Sunflower acoustic audiences each summer with sidewalk philosophy mixed with music.

My initial choice for the book cover was a juke joint scene from Shelby’s Dew Drop Inn. But when University Press of Mississippi emailed, unannounced, the image of Arthneice imposed on raw Delta cotton fields, i cried. It was so perfect.

Do you have any plans for more books?

As a journalist trained to condense news and feature articles into brief, interesting opening lines with zero personal commentary, writing a book was a new experience. Fortunately, Craig Gill and the UPM staff were patient and encouraging. Helpful also were remembrances of my mother’s storytelling traditions.

A future book about 25 years of celebrating America’s great playwright with the Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival is a possibility.

Collecting the Blues

By Lisa

On September 3, 2015

In Blues, Staff Blog

Fans of the blues can take their love one step further by collecting books on the subject. From beautiful coffee table picture books to long-reading books, there’s something for every blues lover.

To start at the very roots of the blues, “Slave Songs of the United States” published in 1867 by William Francis Allen is the foundation for a serious blues collector—but incredibly rare. Other works on African American song like “Negro Workaday Songs” were also published in the 1920s from small university presses. Moving into the mid to late 20^th century there are several titles which can still be found in first edition, but perhaps even more importantly, they are still in print in paperback: “The Country Blues” by Samuel B. Charters (1959) documents country bluesmen like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson; “Blues People” by Amiri Baraka (1963) written under the name Leroi Jones was the first modern blues book written by an African American; and “Blues from the Delta” written by Mississippian William Ferris (1978) includes full documentation of a Clarksdale House Party with Wallace “Pine Top” Johnson.

Music scholars and field workers have been documenting the blues for many years but recently some exceptional books have been released based on this research. William Ferris published “Give My Poor Heart Ease” (2009) which documents the blues in the Mississippi Delta in the 1960s and ’70s, and George Mitchell released “Mississippi Hill Country Blues 1967” (2013) with a showing and signing at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Another gem is Birney Imes’ “Juke Joint” (1990) which was released in a signed limited edition in slipcase with a Foreword by Richard Ford. The variety of blues covered in modern scholarship today is admirable, from “Southern Soul Blues” by David Whiteis (2014), which includes chapters on Ms. Jody and our own Bobby Rush, to a new classic from the late and great American collector of folk music Alan Lomax—“The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax,” (2012) with newly published photos and an essay by Tom Piazza.

Blues books are not the easiest type of book to collect because they do not have a wide readership and publishers print in small batches. Not only is it hard to get a first edition, if you wait too long, the book may already be out of print. If your blues collection is filled with first editions all the better, but just having these wonderful books in any form is a treasure for your home library.

Originally published in the Clarion-Ledger

Category: Blues (Page 1 of 5)

Will Jacks’ ‘Po’ Monkey’s’ allows one last visit to famous, shuttered Delta juke joint

Author Q & A with Will Jacks

Roger Stolle’s ‘Mississippi Juke Joint Confidential’ goes straight to the source of blues music

From Massachusetts to Mississippi in Tammy Turner’s ‘Dick Waterman: A Life in Blues’

Author Q & A with Tammy L. Turner

New ‘Charley Patton’ book is a study of the Father of the Delta Blues

Author Q & A with Robert Gordon

‘Live from the Mississippi Delta’ provides a front row seat

Author Q & A with Panny Mayfield

Collecting the Blues

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