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Fate? Karma? Purgatory? Help me put a good spin on this.

My wife and I are heading out to Clarksdale, Mississippi for the Juke Joint Festival which is primarily a blues festival for local delta and hill country blues acts. It is a ton of fun.

We are staying with some old friends in a nearby town. They have graciously invited us to a music series hosted by local country music singer and songwriter Steve Azar. The event occurs every couple of months and features a meal by a prominent local chef (featured in Southern Living, Garden and Gun, etc) as well as cocktails and a casual performance and interview with other songwriters and musicians. It is a small group and the guests interact with the guest musicians. The tickets are fairly pricey and our friends have insisted on buying our tickets.

Other than their love of country music our musical tastes are similar to our friend's. They are going with us to the blues festival. They are also into Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, etc.

The guest musician/songwriter is named Anthony Smith. I'd never heard of him. Apparently he has written songs for some big names in the country music world as has the host, Steve Azar.

Now, I don't hate country music per se. But I have a hard time with contemporary pop country. Here is a video of Anthony Smith's:

https://youtu.be/sbNVTh2QA7k

It is going to be a long night. Fortunately the music will be acoustic. Just the guest with his guitar. I suspect the food will be great and there will be plenty of booze. And I guess it will be interesting to get some insight into the singer/songwriter world even if it is pop country.

I just think it is funny that the one type of music I can hardly stand is what is being featured. I'd prefer hip-hop or rap to pop country ;-)
n80
orpheus10
8,668 posts
 

n80, there were a lot of juke joints in E. St. Louis, Ill, and while Black, a lot of White people went to them; oddly enough, they were treated as guests, and had fewer problems than other Black people; this was in the late 50's and 60's.

Since girls was my one track mission, I never paid a lot of attention to the music, and even then I was into jazz; but I remember the music and think about it more now. The music was a blues "Gumbo", and NOLA music was deep in the mix.

All of the Blues artists of that era, who are now famous, played the juke joints, and there were a few white musicians (all on guitar) who played them as well. As good as they were, I don't know if any became famous; this was long before SRV.
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,911 posts
 
Albert King and Albert Collins were booked same night into bars on opposite sides of High street, circa 1982 if my cloudy hazy memory serves..
I picked King, brother went to Collins
about mid set they on early wireless setups w crappy range met mid street and switched bands....unbelievable....seems like but a dream today.....
King was beyond incredible...what a showman and could make that flying V scream and bend
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,788 posts
 
Yeah @tomic601, Albert’s hands and fingers were huge, and he was very strong. I’ve never seen anyone bend strings like that (the high E string bent all the way to the top of the fretboard of his Flying V!), and he did it in a real relaxed, "no hurry" kind of way, unrushed. His tone was SO thick, like a big ol’ hit off a spliff of real good weed, the kind we San Jose kids found only in San Francisco. Only schwag made it to the suburbs ;-) .
glupson
7,842 posts
 
n80,


"I’ve never been in an actual juke joint."
Those places still exist but they are not "Ground Zero" kind. I am resisting to go into details, but you have to know where to find them and you cannot go looking for them. Not as in some tourist sense "where locals go", but be one of them. As another poster mentioned, most are black and at times I felt I was the only white person who has ever set a foot there, but those were my people and fun was unimaginable. Of note, I even consider Junior Kimbrough’s place as somewhat touristy (before it burned down, of course).

As it seems that you are from the area and being a decent person, I wish this conversation was going on way back when...
n80 OP
2,116 posts
 
@bdp24 : Speaking of thick fingered guitar playing, we saw this young man at the 2017 Juke Joint Festival. He was about 17 then. He was mesmerizing. We watched him play in an old bank building for close to two hours. He's played at the White House and been written up in Rolling Stone. Hard to believe those big fat hands can do what he does. Scroll forward to about 2:30 to see him let loose:

https://youtu.be/FLQbQidC-Ks

@glupson and @orpheus10 : Ground Zero is like a Disney version of a juke joint and that's most of what you find in that area now. I'm sure there are modern versions of juke joints out there now....there are some where I live. But they don't play blues. Mostly 'DJs' 'playing' hip hop etc.

Anyway, I suspect if I had been an adult and was into the blues in the mid 1960s I would not have had the nerve to go into a typical juke joint. It would have been my loss of course. But things were very different back then.

My mother was a school teacher in 1966 or so and she had a black girl in her class who was one of the first black children to go to a white public school in Mississippi, or at least in Coahoma County anyway. She said it all went smoothly, which was not always the case of course.
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