When Garry Burnside told me where we were playing on a Sunday night, I was confused. The place was almost to Highway 4 along Highway 309 near Wyatt and Chulahoma, but I didn’t see anything but houses. He had said there would be a lot of cars parked beside a house, and when I found that, I turned in. Although there were no signs, there was a sort of rough juke joint behind a house, and that turned out to be the spot.
Roosevelt’s Place is the name of the semi-secret spot; no signs will lead you there, and there is no logic to when or if they have a live band; it’s basically a two-room shack. The larger front area contains the small bar and pool table, and the much narrower, smaller back room barely has space for the band and perhaps ten or so patrons. But this is the environment in which Hill Country blues thrives, and must be somewhat similar to the vibe at Junior Kimbrough’s old juke along Highway 4 before it burned.
Whether Roosevelt’s is open to the public as such is also unclear; it certainly draws a crowd from people who live in the area and know about it, although I expect that many nights there is just a DJ and not a band. Visitors should enquire in the area to see if a band is playing.
Roosevelt’s Place is behind a house on the east side of Highway 309 about a mile north of Highway 4.
Blues singer Beverly Davis’ family owns the only store in Chulahoma, a small town about halfway between Senatobia and Holly Springs in the Mississippi Hill Country, and in October of 2021, they allowed her to hold the first annual Chulahoma Blues Festival in a cleared field behind the store on Highway 4.
Chulahoma has a long history with the blues. Photographer and blues researcher Michael Ford visited in the early 1970s, and the rural community was home to blues legend Junior Kimbrough’s second and most famous juke joint until it burned down in April of 2000. More recently, the area has continued to be the scene of occasional blues yard parties and at least one clandestine juke joint.
October is still hot in the Mississippi Hill Country, and this particular Saturday afternoon was steaming, but a fair number of people turned out to see Beverly Davis as well as Duwayne Burnside and the Garry Burnside Band, and the weather cooled off after the sun went down. There was plenty of good food, great blues and dancing in front of the stage, and like so many Hill Country events, the feeling that we were standing on historic ground where these kinds of events have been going on for over a hundred years. The festival is intended to be an annual event.
I drove up to Covington to Breakfast Cove on a Saturday morning to meet up with a friend so that we could discuss the possibility of a West Tennessee Music and Heritage Festival in Mason for the next year, and after breakfast, I drove on to the Covington Square where there was some sort of car show and sale day going on. Covington, like many West Tennessee towns, is built around an historic square with a courthouse in the center, and Covington’s is fairly well-preserved so I found quite a bit to take pictures of. North Main Street off the Square was the traditional Black business district, where there used to be cafes and pool halls; a few cafes still remain on Spring Street. My biggest find was the beautiful Hotel Lindo, which has been restored and converted to condominiums; it was a truly huge hotel for what at the time it was built must have been a small town indeed. On a window of the square was a poster for an afternoon concert by Southern soul artist Big Poppa at Mason’s Zodiac Park that I would have like to have attended if I could. But I had to play with Duwayne Burnside at the Chulahoma Blues Festival in Mississippi, so I headed south through Memphis and into Mississippi.
After Sherena Boyce and myself attended the Jimmy “Duck” Holmes party behind Sean “Bad” Apple’s juke joint in Clarksdale, we went different directions. She wanted to go to Kent Burnside’s performance at a new club called Gentleman Lyfe, which usually hosts more of a hip-hop crowd, but I wanted to catch Johnny Rawls’ performance at Hambone.
However, when I got to Hambone, I was somewhat disappointed. Rawls typically has a large band with horns on his albums, but at Hambone, he had a stripped-down trio band instead. Worse, the place was so crowded that I could not get anywhere near the stage. So I left there and headed around the corner to Gentleman Lyfe for Kent Burnside’s performance. Sherena got there about an hour after I did, but although Kent gave some rousing performances of Hill Country standards, the long day had taken a toll on me, and I was running on fumes. Ultimately, I left to head back to the hotel and to bed.
Although the scheduled outdoor shows ended at 5 PM, Sean “Bad” Apple, who recently converted the old Club 2000 on Issaquena Avenue into the Bad Apple Blues Club, had a private invitation-only Jimmy “Duck” Holmes performance in the backyard of his club, which my friend Sherena was able to talk our way into since she knew Jimmy. The performance before a small crowd sitting on the ground was intimate, in Homes’ usual way, and was intended to highlight his new CD release. Sherena managed to buy copies of the disc and a T-shirt as well.
After dinner, I began my first night of the Juke Joint Fest at Red’s Blues Lounge in Clarksdale to catch Grenada bluesman Frank “Guitar” Rimmer Jr. To my amazement, the place was packed with people. After a year of almost no live music, it was so good to see people back in a nightclub enjoying good blues in person. Unfortunately, Red’s has always been restrictive with regard to filming and sometimes even photography, so after Rimmer’s first set, I headed around to Bluesberry Cafe to catch Robert Kimbrough Jr, son of the late Junior Kimbrough. Robert was the first blues artist I met at my very first Juke Joint Festival back in the day; at that time he was selling a burned CD with a few songs on it. He has come a long way since those early days, with four studio albums to his credit. His performance at Bluesberry Cafe included songs from his new album The Pain Won’t Stop and several covers of songs recorded by his late brother David Kimbrough III, notably “Home Alone.” As at Red’s, there was a significant crowd at Bluesberry Cafe too, and the mood was jovial on the streets. It was a great way to kick off this year’s Juke Joint Fest.
I am not sure how my friend Sherena Boyce became aware of Australia Jones “Honeybee” Neal, but at some point a couple of years ago, she began to tell me of this female blues artist who was kin to the late Paul “Wine” Jones and who sounded something like Jessie Mae Hemphill. Since that time, we had wanted to help her market and promote herself as an artist, but the pandemic got in the way. Finally, here in April 2021, with the worst of the pandemic seemingly subsiding, we set up a time for her to come to Clarksdale so we could shoot still photos and video footage of her that we hope will enable her to gain notice and get more live performances.
“Honeybee,” as she likes to be called, lives at Indianola, in the Delta, but her guitar style more resembles the Hill Country style of blues than that of the Delta. She is furthermore a traditionalist, and has avoided the influence of most modern blues; her repertoire consists of old, traditional lyrics like “Baby, Please Don’t Go” or “Catfish Blues.” Her appearance should be welcomed at a time when most blues is of the Southern soul variety, and where female blues artists are few and far between outside of Southern soul.
Sean “Bad” Apple, blues musician and entrepreneur extraordinaire in Clarksdale was gracious enough to provide the use of his new club, the Bad Apple Blues Club, for our video and photo session on a Saturday afternoon before a small crowd of people who were in Clarksdale for the full week before Juke Joint Festival. His club, in the former Club 2000 building on Issaquena Avenue, has something of the authentic juke atmosphere of Red’s, but if the color scheme of Red’s revolves around red, Apple’s club revolves around blue. The space is tiny, but the atmosphere is warm and convivial. As for Australia Jones “Honeybee” Neal, she is a new voice of Mississippi blues that we will be hearing about for some time to come.
Mattie B’s is an old ballfield and juke joint in far western Marshall County, where for the last month or so, they’ve been having live Hill Country blues with Duwayne Burnside. The address is Byhalia, Mississippi, although the club is really closer to Independence, in Tate County. Beginning on Sunday nights in November, the blues night has moved to Friday nights since the third week in December, and will continue in January after a hiatus for the holidays.
On one particularly cold and wet Sunday night, the crowd was late in arriving, and the musicians were just chilling, hanging out, and playing pool.
Memphis is known for great barbecue, but strangely, barbecue is rarer in Mississippi, so when a new place appeared in the town of Coldwater, in Tate County, advertising itself as “blues and barbecue,” my interest was piqued, to say the least.
Coldwater is an interesting town in its own right, having been founded by the Federal government in 1942, to replace an older town of Coldwater that was flooded by the construction of Arkabutla Dam and Lake. The old town had been something of a prosaic railroad town with a traditional grid pattern of streets, but the new town was designed by an urban planner in Memphis, with curved streets typical of subdivisions. Highway 51 was four-laned and given service roads on either side, and a long, rectangular square was developed instead of the traditional four-square parks that older Southern towns were built around. Many of the old town’s houses and businesses were disassembled and trucked to the new site prior to the lake bed being filled.
But Coldwater has not been a place for eating out, or for live music, as a rule. Part of the problem was that until a few years ago, Tate County did not permit any alcohol sales, which pushed restaurants, clubs and live music to the neighboring county of Panola, where Como developed a sort of rural equivalent of Beale Street along its Main Street. So I was curious to check out this new restaurant and see what it was about.
Red’s Coldwater BBQ and Blues, despite the name, has no connection to the famous Red’s Juke Joint in Clarksdale. The latter is primarily a blues venue, the former a restaurant. But the decor of the new Coldwater restaurant does emphasize blues and music, with a piano, saxophone and other instruments on the walls, and cheerful bright colors and lights everywhere. The back room has a fairly small stage, which is used for bands on nights when the place has live music. Despite the name, the emphasis currently seems more on country music than blues, but Red’s features a weekly jam session on Thursdays, and karaoke on Fridays. The large, circular kitchen out back resembles a grain silo, and behind it is an old, historic smokehouse that was full of smoking meat when it was shown to me. It smelled delicious. There is apparently ample room for outdoor music events in warmer weather.
As for the food—delicious, but some words of caution are in order, as things are done a little differently at Red’s. The menu is quite simple, as there are basically two choices: three meats and two sides for $15, or one sandwich and one side for $10. Ordering is done buffet style; the meat choices are pork shoulder, brisket and pulled chicken, and the sides include potato hash (which has onions and peppers) and homemade macaroni and cheese. Drinks are from cold cans. It’s hard to get decent brisket outside of Texas, but Red’s has decent brisket, and in fact all the meats were really good. As for the sides, I was especially impressed with the macaroni and cheese, which had a dark golden color and sharp cheese flavor.
The owner indicates that he intends to add blues to the live entertainment mix in coming weeks, so I look forward to that. Live music opportunities are seriously lacking in Tate and Panola Counties.
As a state, Mississippi has largely chosen to avoid the stricter lockdown measures that other states have imposed during the pandemic; although many blues events have been cancelled this year, some live music has been ongoing in the state, especially in the Hill Country region. Mattie B’s, located in the rural areas between Independence and Holly Springs has been a bright spot in that regard, sponsoring blues on Sunday nights with greats such as Duwayne Burnside and Robert Kimbrough Sr. , who are children of the North Mississippi legends R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough respectively.
On a recent Sunday night, Robert Kimbrough took to the stage to play selections from his new album The Pain Won’t Stop, which is out now and available from his website. Robert calls his music Cotton Patch Soul Blues, which is a reference to a community at the intersection of Highway 7 and Highway 72 in Benton County where his dad Junior Kimbrough and the rockabilly musician Charlie Feathers once played a small juke joint in the late 1960s. Robert’s music, although unique, shows points of similarity with his father’s music, and the music of his late brother, David Kimbrough Jr.
Robert’s appearance on stage was followed by Duwayne Burnside, whose style involves many separate influences, including his dad’s music, as well as the guitar styles of Jimi Hendrix, Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
As for the venue, Mattie B’s has the true ambiance of a rural juke, with pool tables, a bar, and a large baseball field out back. Occasionally, it is the site of car shows and rap shows, but recently, the emphasis has been on blues. Beginning in December, Duwayne Burnside has moved his weekly blues shows from Sunday nights to Friday nights.
