I was inspired to do this show by Smithsonian-Folkways’ recent issue Classic Harmonica Blues, which includes many classics from the label’s archives, as well as a number of previously unreleased recordings from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival by artists including Mississippi’s Dr. Isiah Ross and Eddie Burns, as well as Washington, D.C.’s Charlie Sayles. The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is particularly important to me, as I’m pretty sure it’s the first place that I saw blues live as a youngster. My parents always took my brother and I there, often in tandem with July 4 celebrations at the Lincoln Memorial.

On the Smithsonian Folkways blog there’s a nice Q&A entitled “Inhaling the Blues: How Southern Black Musicians Transformed the Harmonica,” with my folklorist Barry Lee Pearson, who compiled the set together with Jeff Place.

Click here for a preview of three songs.

Here’s the playlist from my show:

Les Blank with his newly received Lifetime Achievement Award at the Folk Alliance Conference, Memphis, February 2011. Photo by Scott Barretta

Documentary filmmaker Les Blank, who died on April 7 at 77, is featured in an interview on this week’s Highway 61. I conducted the interview back in February 11 when Blank was in town for the Oxford Film Festival, where he showed three films — Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Dry Wood (about Mardi Gras in south Louisiana, featuring Creole musicians Canray Fontenot and Boisec Ardoin– you can watch it here). The following weekend he was to be honored at the Folk Alliance Conference in Oxford, and he stayed for the interim week at the home of my neighbor, documentary filmmaker Joe York. We interviewed him in my living room, and had a great time with Les that week talking about his various passions, including Southern food.

Blank made films on a wide variety of topics (most can be purchased at his website) — including tea, garlic, and gap-teethed women — but is perhaps best known for his films about American vernacular music. In addition to the films noted above, his subjects have included bluesman Mance Lipscomb (A Well Spent Life), cajun music (Spend It All) Mardi Gras (Always a Pleasure), Afro Cuban drumming (Sworn to the Drum: A Tribute to Francisco Aguabella), old time fiddler Tommy Jarrell (Sprout Wings and Fly), zydeco king Clifton Chenier (Hot Pepper), Tex-Mex border music (Chulas Fronteras and De Mero Corazon), Cajun masters Marc and Ann Savoy (Marc & Ann), and polka (In Heaven There is No Beer?). Together with his old friend Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records, Blank also made J’ai Été Au Bal (I Went to the Dance), a wonderful overview of music traditions in southwest Louisiana. Here’s a clip from Always For Pleasure:

A big segment of this week’s Highway 61 features Blank talking about his film about Lightnin’ Hopkins, including the wonderful scene in film where harmonica player Billy Bizor performs a song in which he cries like a baby. Here’s a clip great clip from the film:

In the interview Blank also talks about his films about Lipscomb, Rhodes, Always For Pleasure, as well as his south Louisiana films. Not included in the show was his discussion of his concert film Ry Cooder And The Moula Banda Rhythm Aces, which was unfortunately never officially released (although many clips were posted on Youtube, likely drawn from the film’s one-time broadcast on Japanese TV). Here’s a video clip from our interview with Blank on the Cooder film, followed by some clips from the film:

Ry Cooder covering J.B. Lenoir’s Down In Mississippi

Ry Cooder – Jesus on the Mainline

Excerpt

Please feel free to send any suggestions —  I’m generally not going to post information on regular club gigs because of issues of time and space, but I welcome information about festivals, new venues, or special events.

There’ll be some musical performers during the conference itself, and the poster below is for a showcase concert we’re presenting in the midst of the conference as part of the ongoing Music of the South Concert Series, which is held in the studio theater of the Gertrude Ford Center.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

10:00 a.m. FIELD SCHOOL FOR CULTURAL DOCUMENTATION
David Wharton, Greg Johnson
Blues Archive – University of Mississippi Library

12:00 p.m. A HISTORY OF SOUTHERN RECORDING STUDIOS
Jim Markel and Mark Neill (producer, eg. Black Keys)

Brown Bag Lecture, Tupelo Room, Barnard Observatory – UM Campus

1:00 p.m. SOUTHERN ROOTS MUSIC AND SWAMP SISTA CULTURE
Beth McKee, Suzi Mills
Blues Archive – University of Mississippi Library

2:30 p.m. MUSICIANS TALKING MUSIC
Valerie June, Jake Fussell, Dent May
Blues Archive – University of Mississippi Library

3:15 p.m. MUSIC AND CULTURAL TOURISM
Clay Motley, Jesse Wright, Scott Barretta
Blues Archive – University of Mississippi Library

4:00 p.m. MUSIC AND THE CREATIVE ECONOMY
Malcolm White, Tricia Walker (director of the Delta Music Institute, Delta State University)
Overby Center – UM Campus

Dinner on your own

7:00 p.m. Concert with Valerie June
Music of the South Concert Series
Ford Center for the Performing Arts

9:30 p.m. Jake Fussell and Friends
Lamar Lounge, 1309 N. Lamar Blvd., Oxford, MS

Thursday, April 4, 2013

9:00 a.m. POPULAR MUSICIANS AND SOUTHERN TRADITION
Kaitlyn Vogt, Alan Harrelson, Mel Lasseter
Blues Archive – University of Mississippi Library

10:30 a.m. FILM – “JESUS IS MY ROCK”
Film by Tyler Keith
Followed by discussion on African American Gospel Quartets
Bingo Gunter, Tyler Keith
Blues Archive – University of Mississippi Library

12:00 p.m. Lunch in Oxford

1:00 p.m. SESSION & PERFORMANCE WITH BAND FEUFOLLET
Jennifer Ritter Guidry
Blues Archive – University of MS Library

2:00 p.m. CREATIVITY AND ITS SOURCES
Ben Sandmel, Charles Hughes
Blues Archive – University of Mississippi Library

3:00 p.m. RACE, HISTORY AND MUSIC IN THE SOUTH
Keith Fudge, DeLisa D. Hawkes
Blues Archive – University of Mississippi Library

4:00 p.m. NEW ORLEANS HIP-HOP AND BOUNCE
Alison Fensterstock, Holly Hobbs, Matt Sakakeeny
Blues Archive – University of MS Library

6:00 p.m. Thacker Mountain Radio - featuring conference participants including Beth McKee, Ben Sandmel (author of the recent biography of Ernie K-Doe), Jake Fussell (leader of the Thacker Mountain house band), and Tricia Walker; @ the Lyric.

7:00 p.m. Miss-I-Sippin’
Beverage and Food Tasting (Unofficial event)
Yoknapatawpha Arts Council

10:00 p.m. Music on the Oxford Square
Venues on the Oxford Square

Johnnie Billington, rear, with students. The one in the foreground appears to be Anthony "Big A" Sherrod, a leading light in today's blues scene in Clarksdale. Photo by Bill Steber

Bluesman “Mr. Johnnie” Billington of Lambert, who received the Governor’s Award For the Arts in 1999 for his work instructing young people in the blues, died on Monday, April 1. According to his family, he was recently hospitalized following a heart attack.Born in Crowder in 1935, Billington learned to play guitar as a child by playing along to the King Biscuit Time radio show broadcast out of Helena, Arkansas.  By thirteen Billington was playing in local groups, and later moved to Arizona and then Chicago, where he reunited with former bandmates and occasionally jammed with leading artists including Muddy Waters and Elmore James.

In 1977 Billington returned to Mississippi, and settled in Clarksdale, where he worked as an automobile mechanic. He began teaching students to play blues out of his garage, and in the early 1990s formed the non-profit Delta Blues Education Program. In addition to technical instruction on instruments, Billington taught students how to work together as an ensemble and was known for his strict emphasis on professionalism and appearance.

He included students in his own group, J.B. and the Midnighters, and taught many of the musicians active in the Clarksdale scene over the last decades, including Terry “Big T” Williams, Anthony “Big A” Sherrod, Lee Williams, and brothers Dione and Harvell Thomas.

He later began teaching out of Lambert, and worked round the state as a Master Artist for the Mississippi Arts Commission. He served as the chairman of the Sunflower River Blues Association, received the Blues Foundation “Keeping the Blues Alive” award, and appeared in the 1999 PBS documentary series “River of Song.” A full profile of Billington is one the Mississippi Arts Commission website.

Billington’s funeral service will be held this Saturday (April 6) at 11am at Delta Burial Funeral Home in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Flowers can be sent to the funeral home at 429 Yazoo Ave., Clarksdale, MS 38614.

Frank "Rat" Ratliff inside the Riverside Hotel. Photo from the Columbus Dispatch; original article can be read by clicking on the photo

Billington’s death was preceded by just a couple days by the passing of Frank “Rat” Ratliff (on Thursday, March 28).  Ratliff was the proprietor of the historic Riverside Hotel on Sunflower Avenue. It was founded in 1944 by Ratliff’s mother Z.L. Hill, and Ratliff continued to operate it following her death in 1997, and worked hard to both maintain the building and expand lodging facilities in adjacent buildings.Ratliff gave tours of the building to thousands of blues fans over the years, sharing tales of former residents including Ike Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson 2 and Robert Nighthawk. One of the hotel’s rooms was dedicated to blues queen Bessie Smith, who died there following an automobile accident in 1937 when the building housed the G.T. Thomas Afro American Hospital. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker stands in front of the Hotel.

Ratliff’s funeral will be held on Saturday (April 6) at noon at the First Baptist Church 115 Martin Luther King. His family has established the “Riverside Hotel Historical Memorial Fund” in his honor, and donations can be made via Regions bank.

On Saturday (April 6) Red’s Lounge in Clarksdale will celebrate the lives of Ratliff and Billington with musical guests including Billington’s former student Anthony “Big A” Sherrod.

B.B. King himself will be back in Indianola for his annual homecoming on Wednesday July 3, with a festival during the afternoon on the grounds of the Museum and a concert that night in the Club Ebony. Until several years ago B.B. always came back to Mississippi the second weekend of June, appearing in Indianola on Friday and then on Saturday and Sunday taking part in the Jackson area celebrations of the life of Civil Rights martyr Medgar Evers.

T-Model Ford has had a rough year, and has been in and out of the hospital for heart problems. I saw him perform at the Delta Blues Festival in Greenville last September, and otherwise he’s made some appearances at various events since then but generally hasn’t picked up the guitar.

There’s currently an IndieGogo fundraising campaign to offer him general assistance — just to make life that much less complicated for him, though he’s well known for being a rascal!  The organizers have already reached their $5000 goal, but there’s still a couple weeks left to help out, and some good folks have contributed art prints, t-shirts, and records as rewards for pledges.

On Sunday you can join T-Model, Stella, Stud and others at his home in Greenville for some old-fashioned yard-party fun and a jam session beginning at 2pm. Donations are welcome. The address is 424 Washington Avenue, Greenville, MS 38701.

I took the photo above in Greenville on December 11, 2006, the day that the first three Mississippi Blues Trail markers were dedicated (the others were at Charley Patton’s grave in Holly Ridge, and the former home of WGRM radio in Greenwood, where B.B. King used to sing with his gospel group back in the mid-’40s) — brandishing the liquor bottle was T-Model’s idea!