Selling The Blues

[dropcap]When[/dropcap] tourists started showing up here, I couldn’t figure out what they saw in the place,” says Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, a 67-year-old blues musician and owner of the Blue Front Café. It’s a scruffy little drinking spot and informal music venue — a juke joint. The floor is weathered concrete. The barstools are hammered together from raw lumber and painted blue. Heat comes from a piece of oil-field pipe converted into a wood-burning stove.

“My parents started the Blue Front in 1948, and it ain’t been nothing but a juke joint ever since,” says Holmes, a slow-moving medium-built man with a rich, grainy speaking voice. He is sipping a late morning beer and smoking a long menthol cigarette. “It ain’t nothing fancy, but it’s authentic and original, and that’s what the tourists like, I’ve come to understand. They don’t have anything authentic in their regular lives, so they feel drawn to it. They want a taste of it. For a lot of blues fans, that’s what it’s all about.”

In the last eight or nine years, he says, a slow trickle of tourists has increased to a steady flow and sometimes an unwelcome deluge. On summer weekends, tour buses have become a regular sight in Bentonia, a tiny, half-derelict farming town just outside the Mississippi Delta. “Australia, Great Britain, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Israel, France, Argentina — you name it,” he says. “We had 200 from Belgium and they like to ran me ragged. New York, California, Montana — all over America. See, this is where American music comes from. It all started with the blues.”

The influx of outsiders at the Blue Front Café reflects a widespread effort in Mississippi to promote cultural tourism based on the blues. Long known for poverty and racial injustice, the state has rebranded itself as the “Birthplace of America’s Music.” Elvis Presley was a Mississippian, and so was Jimmie Rodgers, a founding father of country music. But the slogan refers mainly to Mississippi’s deep blues heritage. Most of the early, influential bluesmen were born here, and the state dominates the Blues Hall of Fame, with Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, B.B. King and many more. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″][/three_fourth]

Bentonia, MS – 3/11/2015 – Jimmy “Duck” Holmes stands on the front porch of his Blue Front Cafe. The Blue Front Cafe opened in 1948 under the ownership of Carey and Mary Holmes, an African American couple from Bentonia. In its heyday the Blue Front was famed for its buffalo fish, blues, and moonshine whiskey. Jimmy “Duck” holmes took over the cafe from his parents in 1970 and has continued to operate it as an informal, down-home blues venue that has gained international fame among blues enthusiasts.

Merigold, MS – 3/12/2015 – Willie Seaberry has operated Po’ Monkey’s Lounge, a juke joint in his home, since 1963. The Mississippi Blues Trail marker on the property reads: “The rural juke joint played an integral role in the development of the blues, offering a distinctly secular space for people to socialize, dance, and forget their everyday troubles. While many such jukes once dotted the cotton fields of the Delta countryside, Poí Monkeyís was one of the relatively few to survive into the 21st century. Initially frequented by locals, Poí Monkeyís became a destination point for blues tourists from around the world during the 1990s.”

Bentonia, MS – 3/11/2015 – A photograph of Jack Owens, a legendary blues musician from Bentonia who established a specific style of guitar playing now referred to as “Bentonia Style”, hangs in the Blue Front Cafe. The Blue Front Cafe opened in 1948 under the ownership of Carey and Mary Holmes, an African American couple from Bentonia. In its heyday the Blue Front was famed for its buffalo fish, blues, and moonshine whiskey. Jimmy “Duck” holmes took over the cafe from his parents in 1970 and has continued to operate it as an informal, down-home blues venue that has gained international fame among blues enthusiasts.

Merigold, MS – 3/12/2015 – The scene inside Po’ Monkey’s Lounge. The Mississippi Blues Trail marker on the property reads: “The rural juke joint played an integral role in the development of the blues, offering a distinctly secular space for people to socialize, dance, and forget their everyday troubles. While many such jukes once dotted the cotton fields of the Delta countryside, Poí Monkeyís was one of the relatively few to survive into the 21st century. Initially frequented by locals, Poí Monkeyís became a destination point for blues tourists from around the world during the 1990s.”

Clarksdale, MS – 3/14/2015 – Christone ìKingfishî Ingram on the front porch at Ground Zero Blues Club in downtown Clarksdale. Kingfish is a 16 year old blues guitar prodigy that is hailed by many as the future of Mississippi Blues.

The Mississippi Blues Commission, working with national grant money and funding from local communities, has nearly completed the Blues Trail. It consists of 215 signs marking significant locations in blues history, with a website and phone app to guide tourists. Several new blues museums have opened in the last decade, including the $15 million B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, and the number of blues festivals has increased from a handful to more than 50.

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