Highway 61 Radio

Tonight at 6pm bluesman Jesse Robinson brings back the Monday night blues tradition to Farish Street with a new series, “Blues at Sunset,” at the new club F. Jones Corner. Robinson previously hosted a Monday night series at the same location in the 1990s, when Field’s occupied the site. Like Field’s, F. Jones Corner features an outdoor stage behind the club and will be featuring bands there when possible. Each week Jesse will be paying tribute to a different blues musician, and for the inaugural week it will be the late Sam Myers. I interviewed Jesse last week for my column in the Clarion Ledger.

“There’s a need to recognize and pass on the legacy of the musicians who have passed,” says Robinson, who serves on the Mississippi Blues Commission. “We’ve been doing that with the Mississippi Blues Trail markers, and I feel that there’s a need to educate people about the musicians who played music back in the day.

“Sam and I played together on and off for 35 or 40 years. When speaking of the blues, Sam Myers was the man and he’s missed in the blues arena. There’s really no one who can fill his shoes but what I can do with these tributes is to bring some of the older songs back and do them the way they should be done.”

Jesse Robinson, left, playing behind Sam Myers at the Subway Lounge in Jackson. I acquired this photograph at the dedication of the Mississippi Blues Trail Marker acknowledging the Subway Lounge several years ago. Jesse founded the late night blues tradition there back in the 1980s along with his "500 Pound Blues Band," named after his then vocalist "Big Daddy."

As usual the two-day, two-stage Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans was pretty overwhelming and the three-day Ponderosa Stomp conference offered a lot of great moments. There was a really nice writeup in the New York Times on the Stomp by Jon Pareles, and I thought I’d offer a couple of memories through a photo gallery. This doesn’t even begin to cover the dozens of great shows I caught by artists including Jerry McCain, ?  and the Mysterians, rockabilly wildman Roddy Jackson, and country songwriter/producer Cowboy Jack Clement.

Mississippi's L.C. Ulmer, circa 80, was joined on stage by three burlesque dancers. He was glad to pose backstage with a couple of them for me.

From left: Lil Buck Sinegal, Lazy Lester, Warren Storm and James Burton. Lazy Lester, whose recording "Pondarosa (sic) Stomp" provided inspiration for the annual event, was joined on stage by legendary guitarist James Burton (Elvis, Ricky Nelson), and swamp popper Warren Storm, who played drums behind Lester, Slim Harpo and others at Excello Records back in the '50s and '60s. Storm also had a great set of his own, backed by the Haunted Hearts. Lester was one of many artists at the Stomp backed by the wonderful band led by guitarist Lil Buck Sinegal, which included Buckwheat Zydeco (aka Stanley Dural) on the organ.

One of the rawest and wildest sets of the Stomp was turned in by Houston guitarist Little Joe Washington

Mobile, AL resident Lil Greenwood, who recorded R&B in the late '40s and '50s before becoming Duke Ellington's vocalist, sounded and looked great at 83. Hopefully her performance at the Stomp will be a springboard for a career revival

British blues/R&B researcher John Broven, center, chaired a panel featuring Joe Bihari of Modern Records (left) and Marshall Chess, the son of Chess Records owner Leonard Chess. Bihari discussed traveling the Deep South with his talent scout Ike Turner back in the early '50s, and recalled that he never shook a deejay's hand unless he had a $100 bill folded in it. Chess recalled growing up at the Chess studios with artists including Etta James, Chuck Berry and Sonny Boy Williamson 2. Broven has a thick new book out called "Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Indepdendent Rock'n'Roll Pioneers," which appears to provide the most comprehensive analysis of the recording industry in the decades following WWII. Visit johnbroven.com for more info.

On a freeform panel (from left) Dr. John, drummer Bob French, and arranger Wardell Quezergue discussed topics including New Orleans drummers, the failure of labels to pay royalties, and how relatively little recognition Quezergue has received for his arrangements of songs recorded by artists such as Jean Knight ("Mr Big Stuff"), Dorothy Moore ("Misty Blue") and King Floyd ("Groove Me").

For the next year the historic Cabildo on Jackson Square, which houses the Louisiana State Museum, is hosting the exhibit "Unsung Heroes: The Secret History of Louisiana Rock'n'Roll," which was co-curated by the museum and the non-profit Ponderosa Stomp Foundation. The sizable exhibit contains panels on topics including swamp pop, the Louisiana Hayride, rockabilly, garage bands and New Orleans R&B and soul. Above is Fats Domino's Steinway baby grand piano that was salvaged from his home in the 9th Ward

Soul vocalist Sir Lattimore Brown, who recorded some wonderful singles for labels including Sound Stage 7 back in the '60s, getting a kiss from his beautiful daughter Wraquel, who he hadn't seen in decades. The picture was taken outside of the Banks Street Bar in New Orleans, where Brown performed last Monday night. He was backed by Oxford's own Wiley and the Checkmates, who also backed Brown (and Bobby Patterson) at the Stomp on Wednesday.

The Lattimore Brown story is a fascinating one. Read here about soul enthusiast Red Kelly’s efforts to find Brown, who had truly fallen on bad times. Kelly, who arranged the show the Banks Street Bar as a benefit for Brown, runs the excellent soul blogs The Soul Detective, The “B” Side, and The “A” Side

Tonight’s edition of Thacker Mountain Radio will be held at 7pm at the Lyric Theatre on the Oxford Square. Musical guests are country artist Paul Overstreet and theMemphis-based vocalist/standup bassist Amy LaVere. Later tonight LaVere will join Shannon McNally at Proud Larry’s.

The guest author tonight is David Robertson, the author of the new biography W.C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues. A couple of weeks ago I liked to a review of the book in the L.A. Times, and have been reading it this week. I wrote a short article about it today for the Clarion Ledger, and am scheduled to interview Robertson later today. I’ll hopefully be featuring that on the radio show and perhaps here as well in the near future. Robertson will also be signing his book on Friday at Lemuria Books in Jackson at 5pm.

- Blues-rocker Eric Sardinas is playing at Rooster’s Blues House on the Square tonight.

- Jimbo Mathus and the Tri-State Coalition, who put on a great show at last week’s Crawdad Hole Festival in Jackson, are appearing at the Carroll County Market in Carrollton, MS, which is one of the state’s most interesting venues.

- This Easter Sunday the Foxfire Ranch north of Oxford is featuring Pontotoc’s Terry “Harmonica” Bean (link is to a profile I wrote for the MS Arts Commission). I’ll be posting the next month’s schedule for Foxfire soon. Update: April 19th: Cedric Burnside and Lightning Malcolm, April 26th:  Bill Howl-n-Madd Perry.

Calvin Newborn, 2009, holding a picture that explains why his nickname used to be "Flying Calvin"

- Several years ago Memphis guitarist Calvin Newborn, whose father Phineas, Sr. led one of the best bands in the Mid South in the ’40s and ’50s and whose brother Phineas, Jr. was regarded as a genius of jazz piano, left the Bluff City for Florida. Before he left he cut a couple of nice CDs for Yellow Dog Records (Newborn’s page at the label’s website is here).

Sunday’s Florida Time Union profiled Newborn in tandem with his performance at a festival over the weekend. In the interview he talks about Memphis music, his brother’s genius, drug addiction, and his current life in Florida. There’s also a video interview with him and a couple of nice photos.

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- There’s a pretty damn interesting interview with Bob Dylan — and a sample track from his forthcoming CD Together Through Life — in today’s The Times (UK) in which he expresses his thoughts on topics including Barack Obama, Ulysses Grant and the South. Here’s an excerpt:

BF: When you think back to the Civil War, one thing you forget is that no battles, except Gettysburg, were fought in the North.

BD: Yeah. That’s what probably makes the Southern part of the country so different.

BF: There is a certain sensibility, but I’m not sure how that connects?

BD: It must be the Southern air. It’s filled with rambling ghosts and disturbed spirits. They’re all screaming and forlorning. It’s like they are caught in some weird web – some purgatory between heaven and hell and they can’t rest. They can’t live, and they can’t die. It’s like they were cut off in their prime, wanting to tell somebody something. It’s all over the place. There are war fields everywhere … a lot of times even in people’s backyards.

BF: Have you felt them?

BD: Oh sure. You’d be surprised. I was in Elvis’s hometown – Tupelo. And I was trying to feel what Elvis would have felt back when he was growing up.

BF: Did you feel all the music Elvis must have heard?

BD:No, but I’ll tell you what I did feel. I felt the ghosts from the bloody battle that Sherman fought against Forrest and drove him out. There’s an eeriness to the town. A sadness that lingers. Elvis must have felt it too.

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- Nashville-based writer Barry Mazor has a nice interview in the Wall Street Journal with 77-year-old folk singer and Woody Guthrie running partner Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, whose newest CD “A Stranger Here” on the alternative label Anti-Records is blues themed. In the interview Elliot reminisces about playing with Mississippi John Hurt and the duo of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Produced by Joe Henry, who’s done some really interesting records recently for Solomon Burke and Bettye LaVette, the CD features top-notch musicians including Greg Leisz, Van Dyke Parks, and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos.

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- Veteran Syracuse, NY-bluesman Roosevelt Dean died on Saturday; here’s an article reporting his death and a blog tribute that includes video of Dean performing.

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- Billboard has an article about 81-year-old Charlie Louvin on the Louvin Brothers, who has just released two albums, and hopes to record a blues album with Levon Helm later this year

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About five years ago there was a documentary released called The Last of the Mississippi Jukes that profiled Jackson’s Subway Lounge, a late night spot that was destroyed around the same time as the documentary was released. Just a couple years later we put up a Mississippi Blues Trail marker on the spot where the venue — which was housed in the historic Summers Hotel — once stood. It’s nice to acknowledge local history, but with a bit more effort the Subway might not have simply been history. Today Subway owner Jimmy King often hosts a “Subway night” at Schimmel’s Fine Dining in Jackson, and performs together with the Houserockers, who were the last house band at the Subway.

Today NMissCommentor has a post about the preservation of an over one-hundred year old venue in Mandeville, LA where early jazz greats performed. He notes the rarity of such structures, a point that’s been all too clear to me while working on the Mississippi Blues Trail. Over the last weeks I’ve been traveling a lot to blues sites around Mississippi, and thought I’d share some pictures and stories about what I’ve seen.

A couple of weeks ago Richard Ramsey, who runs the Howlin’ Wolf Memorial Blues Festival and the Howlin’ Wolf Museum in West Point, took me and photographer Ken Murphy on a tour of Wolf’s old stomping grounds in White Station and West Point, and it was sad, but fascinating, to see to the state of several of the old venues where Wolf would perform during his annual return visits from Chicago to his hometown. Richard would love to see the venue restored, and it appears to be in good enough shape that it’s not outside the realm of possibility.

The Melody Bar on Cottrell Street in West Point, photo by Scott Barretta

In 2007 a Mississippi Blues Trail marker was erected in front of the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, which has been operated by bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes’ family for over fifty years, and in the near future we’ll be erecting markers for the Queen of Hearts in Jackson, which Chellie B. Lewis has been operating since the early ’70s and which still features live blues every weekend, as well as the Po’ Monkey Lounge in Merigold, which Willie “Po’ Monkey” Seaberry has run for decades. Ken Murphy and I stopped by to see Po’ Monkey’s a couple weeks ago, and we caught Seaberry just as he was about to leave for the store in Cleveland.

Traditionally Po’ Monkeys has offered a blues deejay on Thursday nights and, er, bluer fare on Monday nights, imported from Memphis. More recently the venue has also offered live music, usually arranged for out-of-town visitors by Delta State University. Less formally, frat boys from DSU have been venturing out to Po’ Monkeys for years, and according to Seaberry can often be found wrestling in the mud near the bayou across the dirt road from the joint.

Willie Seaberry in front of the Po' Monkey Lounge, photo by Scott Barretta

The best experience I had at a Mississippi juke recently, though, was on the evening on Willie King’s funeral three weekends ago. I first met and saw Willie perform in 1999 at Bettie’s Place, a converted house made mostly out of particle board off a gravel road in rural eastern Noxubee County, right on the Alabama line. In the wake of his CDs for Rooster Blues Willie began touring more outside the area, and at some point in the mid-2000s he stopped performing at Bettie’s Place. I never quite picked up on the reason why, but had the impression that the club had simply stopped existing as a venue.

At the funeral I heard from a number of Willie’s former band members that there was going to be a jam at Bettie’s later that evening, and immediately after Willie’s internment I headed over to the club. It was just about 5pm, and I didn’t suspect that music would start shortly. I was glad to find out that the bar was open and serving much needed cold beers, and was surprised to find a guitarist I didn’t recognize playing out at his car outside the club. He told me that he played at the club regularly on Sunday nights with musicians including Willie B. Smith and Willie Lee Halpert, who were respectively the bassist and second vocalist with Willie King’s Liberators back when I first started visiting Bettie’s Place. They also appear on the wonderful CD Freedom Creek.

DeKalb, MS bluesman Willie T. "Sweet Pea" Adams in front of Bettie's place. Adams worked for 30 years constructing guitars at the Peavey factory in Meridian. Photo by Scott Barretta

By 7pm Bettie’s Place was filled up with mostly locals, though there were also musicians who came from Tupelo, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa to pay tribute to Willie. First up was Willie Farmer of Duck Hill, MS, who arrived with Al White, the director of the Grassroots Blues Festival in Duck Hill, which often featured the Liberators; White also hired Willie King for blues education projects. Farmer plays some originals, but much of his repertoire is drawn from B.B. King and Albert King, and it was inspiring to see him close his set out with a cover of one of Willie King’s songs.

Next up, I think, were Ryan (16) and Kyle (14) Perry of the Tupelo group Homemade Jamz, who performed a dynamic set along with some local musicians — their nine-year-old drummer sister Taya stayed at home. I remember seeing Willie enjoying Homemade Jamz at several festivals, and how he gave them encouragement. There was nothing he enjoyed more than seeing young people take up the blues, and he would have been proud. Ryan and Kyle were with their dad Renaud, who’s a real blues lover, and I think it was the first time at a real juke joint for all of them.

Brothers Kyle (on bass) and Ryan (on guitar/vocals) Perry of Homemade Jamz at Bettie's Place, photo by Scott Barretta

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Another of the performers at Bettie’s was Birmingham George Conner, who was one of Willie King’s influences as a young man. Conner lived in Chicago for many years and recorded for Rev. Houston Harrington’s Atomic H label as “George Corner.” Two tracks by Conner are available on the CD reissue of the Delmark compilation “Chicago Ain’t Nothin’ But a Blues Band,” which collects recordings on Atomic H. [Thanks to Dick Shurman for correcting earlier (mis)information I posted.]

The label also featured the first recordings of Macon, Mississippi native Eddy Clearwater [Harrington], who was Rev. Harrington’s nephew. Clearwater was honored, along with Willie King and Carey Bell, on the “Black Prairie Blues” MS Blues Trail marker last year]. At Bettie’s Place Conner was joined by musicians including harmonica player Jock Webb of (I think) Birmingham, who often played with Willie.

Jock Webb and Birmingham George Conner at Bettie's Place, photo by Scott Barretta

Many other artists got up to play, but I was most inspired by seeing the members of King’s Liberators perform several sets. Drummer Willie James, who worked with Willie King for 36 years, acted as the informal emcee, shouting out testimonials to King between sets, and contributing his ragged but right rhythms to versions of Willie’s songs. The band was fronted by vocalist Willie Lee Halpert and featured the bass and guitar playing of Aaron “Hard Head” Hodge, who is now the president of Willie King’s non-profit Rural Members Association, which is dedicated to teaching young people old skills such as farming, canning, quilt making, and playing the blues.

Vocalist Willie Lee Halpert of the Liberators and dancers at Bettie's Place, photo by Scott Barretta

Willie James Williams and Aaron "Hard Head" Hodge of the Liberators. Behind them to left is guitarist Joe Hudson of Boyd, AL, who played with the Liberators. Photo by Scott Barretta

Blues writer Brinda Willis and her twin sister Linda Walker (Which is which?!) at Bettie's Place, photo by Scott Barretta

There were many other performers who took to the stage that evening, and music ran pretty continuously from about 7 to 11 PM. Even if I had wanted to leave I couldn’t, as there were at least several cars double parked behind me, and those folks weren’t leaving until the music was done. Willie James and the other musicians promised they would keep the music going at Bettie’s Place on Sunday nights in Willie’s honor, and I hope that they can do so.

The following Saturday Willie James, Hard Head, Joe Hudson and Willie Lee Halpert traveled over to Grenada for a celebration of Willie King at Phil’s Place, an informal venue behind Phil’s house, and were joined on stage by Jackson bluesmen Louis “Gearshifter” Youngblood and Ben Payton, Delta drummer/guitarist and artist Bobby Whalen (he painted B.B. King murals in Indianola), Little Willie Farmer, and Memphis by way of Italy bassist Tony “Gypsy” Negri. The music was inspired, and I promised to do what I could to keep the Liberators going. I’ll certainly use this space to advertise any future gigs.

- This week Highway 61 producers Joe York and Eric Feldman put together a wonderful tribute show to Willie King that weaves his commentary on various matters with his music. Tune in Saturday night at ten to listen to the show, which will be put up on the podcast shortly.

- Browsing through the net I found this article in a Tuscaloosa paper — the first in a series of four, all with original new video – about the induction next month of keyboardist and Alabama native Spooner Oldham into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame. He’ll be inducted in the “sidemen” category alongside Elvis bandmates Bill Black and D.J. Fontana.

Oldham was one of the key players in the Muscle Shoals scene, often recording at Fame; he later moved to Memphis, where he worked at Rick Hall’s American studio. It’s impossible to adequately summarize his recording career, which includes hits including Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves A Woman” and Aretha’s “I Never Loved a Man” and sessions with artists such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Townes Van Zandt. And he’s also a cowriter, along with Dan Penn, of songs including “Do Right Woman” and “I’m Your Puppet.” He and Penn reprised some of their songs on the wonderful 1994 Penn album Do Right Man, and their live duet show was captured on the CD Moments From This Theatre, released initially in the UK in the late ’90s and more recently in the U.S. 

- Another native of Alabama was W.C. Handy, whose reputation as the “father of the blues” stemmed from his successful efforts at selling blues sheet music and getting his songs recorded. Today in the Los Angeles TImes there’s a review of a new biography, W.C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues, by David Robertson. It’s published by Knopf and runs around 300 pp.. Handy wrote an autobiography in 1941 with the self-serving title Father of the Blues, but this is the first scholarly biography of which I’m aware and look forward to reading it. There have been a lot of works recently that have presented detailed, relatively unromantic analyses of the relationship of early blues and the music business and I hope this book draws on them.

Handy was on my mind last week when I was visiting Tutwiler together with photographer Ken Murphy, with whom I’m working on a blues project. It was in circa 1903 at the Tutwiler railway station that Handy first recalled hearing the blues played by guitarist who used a knife as a slide. According to Handy, “The singer repeated the line [Goin' where the Southern cross' the Dog] three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.”  The lyrical reference is to the crossing of the Southern and Yazoo Delta (Yellow Dog) railroads in Moorhead, further south in the Delta. What I’ve found fascinating about this is the fact that Handy — who at the time had worked regularly as a musician in the Deep South for years — would find a pretty standard blues to sound “weird,” which really attests to the newness of the music at the time.

Mural in Tutwiler depicting W.C. Handy's first encounter with the blues, photo by Scott Barretta

Sonny Boy Williamson II's great nieces Lacristal Powell and Vatrice Powell unveil a Mississippi Blues Trail marker in his honor. Photo by Scott Barretta

I’m still recovering from the Blues Today Symposium last week, which I followed with a nice tour of the Delta on Saturday with my fellow former Living Blues editors David Nelson and Amy van Singel. It began with the unveiling of a Mississippi Blues Trail marker unveiling in Glendora, the hometown of Sonny Boy Williamson II. Speakers at the event included the current mayor, Johnny B. Thomas, who is a cousin of Sonny Boy, Sonny Boy’s nieces pictured above, Vitrice McMurry, whose mother Lillian was the first to record Sonny Boy for her Trumpet label in Jackson, and Bubba Sullivan of the Sonny Boy Blues Society and the Bubba’s Blues Corner record store in Helena, Arkansas.

The marker is on the site of a venue where Sonny Boy used to play; there’s another marker adjacent to it that explains how the site was also occupied by a store owned by J.W. Milam, one of the murderers of Emmett Till. Just down the road from the marker is the cotton gin where Milam and others found a gin fan that they tied to Till’s body before throwing Till into the Tallahatchie River. The gin was recently converted into a museum in Till’s honor. After leaving Glendora we drove down to Greenwood via Money, where the Till saga began.  The store where the teenaged Till reputedly whistled at a white woman has nearly fallen down and given the fact that the site might be interpreted as a starting point of the civil rights era it’s rather sad and inexplicable that there’s no public marker or memorial there.

- Bronzeville Blues. The Blues Trail keeps moving forward at a rapid pace — the Sonny Boy marker was #63 — and in light of that it was disappointing to read this article from the Chicago Tribune which addresses how efforts to brand Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood as a blues mecca have failed. Bronzeville is the historic South Side area that was home to institutions such as the Regal Theater, Gerri’s Palm Tavern and the residences of many bluesmen. Last year I was fortunate to get a wonderful tour of Bronzeville with veteran bluesman Billy Boy Arnold; I wrote up some of his commentary in a special Chicago issue of Living Blues.

- This year’s inductees for the Blues Hall of Fame were recently announced by the Blues Foundation; a ceremony will be held on May 5 in Memphis, the day before the Blues Music Awards ceremony. The performer inductees are Irma Thomas, Son Seals, Taj Mahal, and Reverend Gary Davis. Non-performer inductees are Mike Leadbitter, a British blues researcher who was an editor of the pioneering magazine Blues Unlimited; Clifford Antone, who ran the blues club Antone’s in Austin for many years; Bob Porter, who has produced dozens if not hundreds of albums over the years, hosted radio shows, and written many articles and liner notes; and Jeff Hannusch, whose book ”I Hear You Knockin’,” which profiles New Orleans musicians, was selected as a Classics of Blues Literature.

Mississippi finally gets some recognition in the “classic recordings” category, with the singles “Boom Boom” by John Lee Hooker and “Sitting on Top of the World” by the Mississippi Sheiks. Another recordings noted are the single Caldonia by Louis Jordan and the albums T-Bone Blues by T-Bone Walker, Amtrak Blues by Alberta Hunter, and the 2 CD set “Blues With a Feeling,” a compilation of recordings made at the Newport Folk Festival by artists including Mississippians Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, Eddie Boyd, Willie Dixon, Mississippi John Hurt, Mississippi Fred McDowell and the Chambers Brothers (from the Tupelo area).