Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, Miss., has it all: ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, monkeys riding dogs!

Juke Joint Festival spotlights Miss. blues history

JACKSON, Miss. — In Clarksdale, epicenter of the blues, this year’s Juke Joint Festival has everything from legendary blues singers like Grammy-winner David “Honeyboy” Edwards, all the way to racing pigs and monkeys riding on dogs.

More than 50 musical acts are scheduled to play at the three-day event that starts Thursday in the Mississippi Delta city that was hometown to blues icons Son House, Junior Parker and John Lee Hooker and childhood home of playwright Tennessee Williams.

Fans will hear most of the daytime music outdoors and not in a juke joint — the kind of black-owned, quasi-legal liquor and gambling houses that once peppered the Jim Crow South. About half of the 16 nighttime venues, however, are in authentic, surviving juke joints, including Anniebelle’s Lounge and Red’s Lounge in downtown Clarksdale, across the track from Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club.

The city, once surrounded by a sea of cotton plantations, is also home to the myth-drenched crossroads of U.S. highways 49 and 61, where legend has it the great bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his guitar-playing dexterity.

Roger Stolle, festival co-founder and a columnist for the “Blues Revue” magazine, likes to make the argument that Clarksdale is central to the origins of the blues and rock ‘n’ roll. W.C. Handy was living there when he first took note of blues music, and most early Delta bluesmen have some connection to Clarksdale, he said.

Ike Turner was living at the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale when he and his band drove up to Memphis to record “Rocket 88″ for Sun Records in 1951, said Stolle. Many musicologists consider that the first rock ‘n’ roll song.

But when Jimbo Mathus makes his Thursday presentation — “Mosquitoville: Mississippi Songs and Stories” — he will focus more narrowly on the local history of Quitman County around the 1880s. Mathus, founder of the now-defunct band Squirrel Nut Zippers and operator of the Delta Recording Service in Como, said it’s a showcase of the state’s folk music through tales of railroads, floods and race relations.

Although the festival usually draws an international crowd — last year’s event drew about 3,500 from 43 states and 17 countries — Mathus said he created his presentation for Mississippians.

“It’s something to make people curious about their history. One thing everybody in Mississippi can relate to is mosquitoes,” said Mathus, who plays a blend of blues and country and performs internationally with different groups.

Honeyboy Edwards, meanwhile, has the kind of blues resume that cannot be replicated.

Stolle said the 94-year-old Edwards, is living history: a link to one of the blues realm’s most compelling and influential figures.

“He hoboed, he hung out with Robert Johnson,” Stolle said. “His storytelling ability is really fantastic. He can tell you what color the sky was on a certain day.”

Stolle said Edwards will play two sets and give a question-and-answer session on Friday at 3 p.m. at the Delta Blues Museum with a show called, “Conversations With Honeyboy.” All of Edwards’ performances will be free.

Other performers include Big Jack Johnson, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, Big T Williams, T-Model Ford and Big George Brock, who used to play with Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters.

Brock, a harmonica-player and vocalist who lives in St. Louis, said he looks forward to the annual gig in Clarksdale that’s been held for the past seven years. But he relishes any chance to play Delta blues, which he described as honest music.

“The blues ain’t nothing but the truth. I play it with a feeling. I don’t play those sad blues. I don’t want nobody feeling worser than I do,” said Brock, who explained that he used to sit-in with Waters, Wolf and B.B. King “because we’re all from the same place.”

But there’s more than just music.

In addition to racing pigs, there will be monkeys riding on the backs of dogs — an act that Stolle said is always a crowd pleaser.

“An ex-rodeo clown broke all his bones, but wanted to keep doing shows so he came up with this ridiculous act,” said Stolle.

There’s a $10 cost to cover all night activities that include 16 venues with 17 acts. A train, equipped with a wagon built by local Mennonites, will carry music lovers from one show to another, from downtown Clarksdale, past the crossroads to Hopson Plantation. In 1944 it became the world’s first fully mechanized cotton farm, an occurrence that ultimately helped spur the Great Migration of black laborers to the North.

Robert Pendergrass, a 49-year-old from West Plains, Mo., said he’s been to every Juke Joint Festival.

“It’s almost like a small-time fair. I always catch the potbelly pig races and the dogs that monkeys ride on,” Pendergrass said. “For a blues lover like myself, the music is just great.”

On the Net:

Juke Joint Festival: www.jukejointfestival.com