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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
The Juke Joint Trail...
The Juke Joint Trail...
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FatJesus
15 posts
May 18, 2013
8:51 AM
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Read a nice article in the Times today, and figured it's worth sharing with the group:
Driving the Juke Joint Trail
Harp is mentioned, though mostly in passing. But I'd imagine many of the folks here could add a lot more from their personal experiences at these places (or places like it that have closed).
The money quote:
“GPS doesn’t do much for you here, does it?” he said. “This place almost has to find you.”
Last Edited by FatJesus on May 18, 2013 8:54 AM
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Bb
333 posts
May 18, 2013
10:44 AM
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Well, I've played at Gip's. They are experiencing some interesting times over there but make no mistake – Gip is a great man with a heart as big as the whole world.
-Bob
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http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/pages/Bourbon-Bleach/161722307208585
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Monk
17 posts
May 18, 2013
2:38 PM
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Gip's was allowed to reopen as long as they don't charge to come in or sell stuff. Basically free to do "house parties."
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kudzurunner
4087 posts
May 18, 2013
7:07 PM
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"Across the street, Marcus Cartwright Jr., 19, who goes by Mookie, also wearing a Panama hat, sat on an amp on the sidewalk and drew bigger crowds with every old-school song he played."
Marcus did indeed do that. He did it by sitting in a chair and singing through my PA system. As I shared here several weeks back, I played the streets of Clarksdale on the Friday and Saturday of the Juke Joint Festival. On Friday I was joined by Shine Turner; on Saturday, Shine and I played with Alan Gross. Marcus--Mookie--came up after our first set. Shine introduced him as we went on break; I insisted that he sit in, which he was quick to do. He played wonderful music, sitting on a chair, plugged in, unaccompanied.
The thing to understand about this kind of story about "the last of the real Mississippi jukes" is that it's the same story that's been written for the last fifty years. It functions in part by supressing what actually is--the actual contemporary blues music scene in the locations being described--in favor of what the journalist (often northern born or European, but occasionally a Deep South local like Rick Bragg of the NYT) wants to imagine as the remnants of a vanishing, soon-to-be vanished world.
The Indians were written about this way during their Ghoast Dancing phase at the end of the 19th century. White guilt and fascination with exotic others drives most of it. That guilt and fascination requires that Otherness be stressed and sameness--or merely the truly unexpected--be supressed.
I'm happy to say that I've played Gip's, Ground Zero, and Red's. I am in no way the only white musician who is part of the blues culture, broadly speaking, that actually inhabits such places these days in the Deep South. There are many of us. But the Vanishing Indians narrative is important to many white readers outside the region, if completely uninteresting to those who actually live here, and it lives on.
Mookie is a great player: a contemporary young bluesman from the Arkansas Delta near Helena. He made $30 or $40 from his street audience (95% white tourists) in the half hour that he played. I pulled that much out of the tip bucket and put it in his hand. That's an interesting story, too. Too real; too complicated. Not part of the narrative.
I'm not saying that a journalist in pursuit of a good story HAS to talk about Turner, Gussow, and Gross: a pickup trio consisting of a Delta blues journeyman (veteran of Sam Carr's Delta Jukes) and two Ole Miss professors who happen to have long track records as blues performers with black Mississippi bluesmen. It's just that some people will be prone to take the part for the whole, assuming that the representation of "Deep South blues culture" in the article is an accurate rather than notably narrowed and partial representation.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on May 18, 2013 7:26 PM
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Rick Davis
1828 posts
May 18, 2013
7:18 PM
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Adam, thanks for the insights.
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-Rick Davis
The Blues Harp Amps Blog
The Mile High Blues Society
Tip Jar
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6SN7
316 posts
May 19, 2013
3:43 AM
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I enjoyed the NYT article and understand Adam's drift in his post.
I use to work on occasion in Greenville in the '90's, it was before the first gambling casinos in MS, heck, Tunica still hadn't been built. I use to check out the joint jukes on Nelson ST, particularly the Playboy club that belonged to Booba Barnes. Today, it sounds like the music is still real in these places. There was a place in the west of Ireland I once visited as it was a magnet for traditonal Irish music called Doolin. I went to a bar owned by the great Irish tin pipe player, George O'Russell and was hoping to check out him and some real Irish players. Instead, all the players were from France and Scotland, tourists! That's what the town is all about now.
Last Edited by 6SN7 on May 19, 2013 3:44 AM
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