This recording of Highway 61 was made in a plantation graveyard with the Delta blues musician and part-time grave digger, Pat Thomas. Pat is the son of Son Thomas, the famous bluesman first recorded by Bill Ferris in the 1960s. The song Pat is singing is called Highway 61. It’s a standard among musicians, and was made famous by Bob Dylan on his album Highway 61 Revisited.
Often known as the Blues Highway because of the path it cuts through the Delta, Highway 61 parallels the Mississppi River and the Illinois Central Railroad. During the Great Migration, Highway 61 was the esape route for thousands of unemployed Mississippians in search of a new life in Chicago.
“Highway 61,” they sing “is the longest road I know. Goes from Chicago all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.”
Now Highway 61 runs by Brooklyn’s door:: Terry “Harmonica” Bean is at Franks on 6/4, Robert Belfour is at Frank’s on 6/5, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes is at the Kumble Theater on 6/5, and Corey Harris is at the Kumble on 6/6. More info and more shows are listed here: www.651arts.org.
Rambling, running, roving — travel is at the heart of the Mississippi Delta blues. Spiritual escape is made possible through the playing of music, but sometimes, it’s the player that needs an outlet. This was the case when McKinley Morganfield left the Stovall Plantation in 1943. He made his break for Chicago, where he would rise to prominence with a new name, Muddy Waters, and a new style of electric blues. Rolling Stone magazine, and the rock band, the Rolling Stones would later take their names from his lyric: “sho’nuff he’s a rollin’ stone.”
Fast forward to 2008 at 651 ARTS — this week in Brooklyn, the Mississippi Delta Heritage Project becomes a new stage for Delta musicians traveling in the footsteps of Muddy Waters. Music, once again, is the cultural crossroads that leads, albeit momentarily, out of the Mississippi, Delta.
Jimmy “Duck” Holmes performs at the Kumble on June 5th
This week in Brooklyn, expect to hear music that rarely, if ever, has made it to New York, including Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who like Muddy Waters, was recorded by Alan Lomax. Jimmy “Duck” is the inheritor of a regional style called Bentonia blues. He is the last in a long-line of players, including Skip (”I’d rather be the devil than to be that woman’s man”) James.
Another surprising style comes to Brooklyn from Sharde Thomas, who is a native of Senatobia, Mississippi and is the granddaughter of Otha Turner. Fife and Drum music cropped up throughout isolate pockets of the Deep South, but Sharde is perhaps the last to carry the torch of this now world-famous spiritual-blues tradition. It’s the sound of Eurpoean colonial marching music re-mixed (and re-mastered) by slaves and share-croppers throughout the South:
We are thrilled for April Yvette Thompson and Jessica Blank on the success of their new one-woman play, Liberty City, (of which 651 ARTS supported the development) now running at New York Theater Workshop. You only have until this Sunday (March 16) to see it- so get your tickets now: click here for tickets
