2011 Juke Joint Festival

Clarksdale, Mississippi

April 14 – 17, 2011

One Hundred Blues Artists Up Close and Personal!

Story and photos by Ray Proetto

NOTE: This article first appeared in the E-Zine, Blueswax, on May 6, 2011.

The first official performance of the Juke Joint Festival kicked off Thursday, April 14, on the Delta Cinema stage. It featured the North Mississippi String Band, an all-acoustic band playing a country/bluegrass-sounding version of the blues. The band members included local Blues artists Jimbo Mathis and Alvin “Youngblood” Hart on guitars and harmonicas, Jamison Hollister on violin, and Justin Showah playing standup bass. The show included many traditional songs such as “Carrier Line” and a few humorous numbers. The down-home country feel of the band was the point of it all and at times was intentionally exaggerated for humorous and fun effect. The band ended the second set with “Who’ll Suck My Gravy When I’m Dead and Gone.”

May 8, 2011, is the Robert Johnson Centennial, which means it has been one hundred years since Robert Johnson’s birth.

In honor of this event, festival planners Roger Stolle, Nan Hughes, and Goldie Herberg booked one hundred blues artists to perform at the 2011 Juke Joint Festival. There were fourteen daytime and eighteen nighttime festival stages within a few block radius. I use the term “stages” loosely. Many were merely the sidewalks in front of stores, nightclubs or cafes. Regardless of the location, musicians were never very far from their audiences and always easily accessible to their fans. In addition to the planned performances, there were many unofficial jams on the streets and at other locations. It was one of these spontaneous performances that I will never forget…

After leaving the Delta Cinema, I wandered up Delta Avenue until guitars inside the Bluestown Music store caught my eye. As I walked in, Ronnie Drew came up front and ordered me and another customer to follow him toward the back of the building! He stopped at a storage closet no bigger than five by fifteen feet and asked an elderly man playing guitar if we could sit and listen. The man smiled and welcomed us inside. The man was L.C. Ulmer, an eighty-two-year-old blues musician who just recently began a recording career of his own. Ulmer sang with a deep, resonating voice and a real Mississippi accent. L.C. as he called himself, loved to talk.

In between songs he spoke about his music as four or five more people began listening from just outside the closet. At first, he spoke of how the guitar he was playing had new strings, which he said don’t stay in tune until you break them in. After playing those strings for more than an hour, he said, “I’ve almost got these [broken in].” He pleaded his case that older guitars had better sound. His white electric Silvertone requires two speakers to play in stereo. L.C. beamed as he explained how he bought it for only six dollars from a man who was throwing it away!

After playing and talking to his tiny audience for a half hour, Rosalind Wilcoxarrived and joined him in the closet. Rosalind is a local artist, musician, and chairman of the Coahoma County Community College Arts Department. She plays drums for L.C. when he’s in town to perform. With nowhere to sit, she found a spot on some kind of electronic device turned on end. Soon she took out a beautiful, pearl white “electric dobro” and let LC play it while she accompanied him on quite a few songs.

L.C.’s style seemed to shift with each song. I heard traditional Delta blues, Hill Country blues, and one song which seemed closer to Chuck Berry. My favorite was one in which he sang, “You better think about it before you leave.” L.C. spoke for a long time about his work as a music teacher and how he can play or teach guitar, violin, mandolin, drums, or “pretty much anything you put in front of me. I’ve been playing guitar for seventy-two years.” Then he played “Hoochie Coochie Man,” sounding nothing like Muddy Waters. He said he doesn’t like to “mark” other musicians’ songs. “If I do I change ’em up to make ’em my own.” He added, “Why would I want to sound like B.B. King or Muddy Waters? I want to sound like L.C.” When the music finally ended, a very small group of us had been treated to a ninety-minute spontaneous concert by the old blues master and his beautiful and talented accompanist. It doesn’t get any better than this! Although I was one of the lucky few in that closet Thursday night, I was often just as close to musicians throughout the festival. This up-close and personal experience with the blues is what the Juke Joint Festival is all about.

 

Three days later while photographing Rosalind Wilcox at the Children’s Blues Art Exhibit, I ran into L.C. and offered to buy him lunch. On our way to the Stone Pony restaurant, I called an attractive female friend of mine to join us for lunch. She arrived with a female cousin of hers and the two women also brought along their college-age daughters, increasing the number of women at the table to four. As we sat down at a large table, L.C. looked at the women, then looked at me and yelled out, “Hot Dog! This is going to be one helluva lunch. You just made my day.” An hour later, when lunch was over, I couldn’t get L.C. to leave the table. He kept the women talking for another hour, and when we finally left the restaurant, he walked up Delta Avenue arm in arm with both my friend and her cousin!

With so many blues artists playing throughout the weekend, it was almost impossible to decide who to see and who to skip. The decisions were often painful because I knew I was passing up incredible performances with each choice. Fortunately, many artists played more than once and, if you missed a favorite, you might catch them the next day.

There were many older traditional-style performers, but for me, Robert “Wolfman” Belfour stood out in the pack. His voice was a deep, soothing drone on top of his steady repetitive Hill Country guitar rhythms. Then, in unexpected flourishes, he would cry out in a voice dripping with emotion and his guitar would respond in kind. On his version of “Catfish Blues,” his voice rose in unison with the higher guitar notes in the style Jimi Hendrix borrowed from  Mississippi bluesman. This was Hill Country and Delta Blues at its most basic and deeply emotional core.

Another traditional-sounding musician I enjoyed was Bernie Pearl, who played with bassist Michael Barry. Pearl is a perennial student of the blues who has been playing guitar for fifty years. He played both electric and acoustic steel-body guitar. I enjoyed his set most when he jumped on the steel guitar. A crowd pleaser called “Bumble Bee” mixed gritty slide playing with the impressive dexterity of his fingerpicking. “Shake ’Em On Down” inspired some in the crowd to dance despite the early performance time of 11 a.m. Pearl’s guitar playing was very traditional sounding and represented technically demanding interpretations of his many influences. His acoustic playing had a light and airy old-time feel which had me reminiscing about some Jorma Kaukonen acoustic recordings I’ve heard.

 

 

For a completely different sound I caught Tyrannosaurus Chicken! outside Stan Street’s Hambone Art Gallery.  Smiling Bob Lewis and Rachel Ammons are the most unlikely duo in the world of blues. Pushing sixty with graying hair and a long, wild beard, Lewis has teamed up with twenty-five-year-old Ammons, who sports long, dark hair and drop-dead good looks. Their music is a mix of traditional blues and originals with a gritty, trancelike and at times bluegrassy sound.

Both are multi-instrumentalists. Lewis usually plays guitar, slide guitar, and banjo, while Ammons alternates between slide guitar, banjo, and a powerful, hyperactive, and mournful violin… no, make that fiddle. Both handle vocals and sing many harmonies and choruses in unison. Lewis’ sandpaper gruff vocal style contrasts with Ammons’ high-pitched primal screams and moans to create a compelling sound unlike anything you have ever heard.

On Friday I caught Jacqueline Nassar during the Phillip Carter Blues Jam at the Ground Zero Blues Club. Nassar is a young woman with impressive guitar skills and a powerful, yet beautiful voice. I was blown away as she performed a moving version of the Alicia Keys song “Fallen.”

I have to give credit to Aubrey Powell, a one-song amateur who stepped on stage at Ground Zero and sang a rousing version of “Proud Mary” which would have made Tina smile. Powell danced all over the stage and belted out the song as if it were her own!

La La aka Laura Craig provided another standout performance at Ground Zero which included some slow-stirring songs mixed in with lively boogie-woogie piano. Her version of John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery” had her fans quietly riveted to every note as her piano and vocals successfully evoked the mournful sorrow of the song.

Brandon Santini and Victor Wainwright performed as a harmonica and piano combo at the Bluesberry Café. The interplay between the two was magical on an extended version of “Going Down Slow.” The song began quietly with soulful vocals and light piano from Wainwright. Santini stepped up the tension with aggressive harmonica flourishes, which were answered with piano runs to match. The song’s power ebbed and rose again and again as the duo traded licks and solos, then it ended as it had begun, with Victor’s soft soul singing.

The Bluesberry Café followed up one impressive performance with another from Watermelon Slim. He played solo with laptop slide guitar in a style all his own. Steady slide guitar rhythms accompanied his deep-voiced lyrics. That deep voice wouldsuddenly thunder and moan prompting his slide guitar to explode violently, taking his songs to a whole new level of passion.

Terry “Harmonica” Bean had the Friday night crowd at Redd’s hopping. His boundless energy and charismatic stage presence inspired his band as much as the audience. The place was packed and rocking when a woman named Giusy from Milan,Italy, had the thrill of a lifetime when she was invited to jam on guitar with Bean and his backing band, the Cornlickers.

On Saturday I was thrilled to catch one of my favorite bands at the Delta Amusement Café.Blue Mother Tupelo combines country, gospel, blues, and rock to create a high-energy, down-home sound that I can’t get enough of. The husband and wife team of Ricky and Micol Davis were backed up by Greg Cobb, a twenty-three-year-old powerhouse on drums. Rick yand Micol sing as a duet and join together for harmonies on most songs. Ricky sounds like a very capable country singer and Micol brings a beautiful, yet warm and accessible voice. You can clearly hear the church in her gospel-influenced style. In fact, they closed their show with an a cappella gospel version of “I Wish I Was in Heaven Sittin’ Down.” Playing onlytambourines, it was an emotional performance as Ricky sang deep bass notes to contrast Micol’s soaring gospel. Just before it was over, Micol’s voice was so beautiful it gave me chills and stood up all the hair on my arms!

The Sunday morning air on Delta Avenue in Clarksdale was thick with edible smoke from Redd’s sidewalk barbecue as Honeyboy Edwards performed his ancient, droning blues for a large crowd. But it was the next band up in front of the Cat Head Delta store that earned my personal award for the big surprise of the festival. Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band has just three members and packs one of the biggest, baddest sounds in Blues music today. Reverend Peyton plays vintage National Resonator guitars from 1929, ’34, and ’35.

Breezy Payton handles washboard and Cuz Persinger plays drums. Peyton has a big, black beard covering his very white face and hanging well below his chin. With small, dark, crazed eyes, wild penetrating expressions, and incredible frenetic energy, he can only be described as the embodiment of Jack Nicholson’s character from “The Shining” on meth! Yet he is just as comfortable performing a poignant Charlie Patton gospel song as he is the crowd-pleaser they finished the set with, “Two bottles of Wine.” This last song launched off a rocket pad and never let up as Breezy lit her washboard on fire (literally), Persinger broke speed records on drums, and The Reverend played his National Resonator slide guitar as if he were the devil trying to scare Jesus right out of you!  If you haven’t seen this band perform, correct that shortcoming as soon as possible.

On Monday at 11 a.m, I stopped in the Cat Head Delta store to buy some blues magazines and chat with owner Roger Stolle. We spoke about L.C. Ulmer and how the festival has grown over the years.  It was a gray day as I drove out of town through the mostly empty streets listening to my new Blue Mother Tupelo CD. Ricky and Micol Davis were singing again… “I wish I was in heaven sittin down.”  I didn’t have to long for heaven after spending four days in Clarksdale’s blues heaven. Those four days will carry me through anything for a long time to come.

 

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