1. "LIVE" BLUES THIS WEEK (and beyond)...

Our "Live Music" page has just been updated. Go see some "live" blues this week: http://www.cathead.biz/livemusic.html

ALSO, DON'T FORGET:
- Friday, August 1st, 7:30 PM - The Delta Cultural Center in Helena, Arkansas, presents the 2003 Summer Concert Series: Cedell Davis. All concerts are free and will be held at the Thad Kelley Courtyard stage at 415 Cherry Street, Helena. Attendees may want to bring lawn chairs, etc.
- Saturday, August 2nd, 4 PM - The 5th Annual Byhalia Blues Festival in Byhalia, MS. (See Cat Head web site for more info.)

2. RADIO SHOW INTERVIEWS STARS & SEEKS SPONSORS... TAKE 5 is a five to 15 minute probing and very personal interview with today's and yesterday's blues performers. The show is currently airing in Jackson, Mississippi on 100,000 -watt WMPR on Fridays at 5:55 a.m. and 5:55 p.m. Interviews include Johnny Taylor, Floyd Taylor, ZZ Hill, Charles Evers, BB King, Albert King, Sir Charles Jones, The Love Doctor, O.B. Buchana and scores of others like Poonanny, Lee "Shot" Williams, Bobby Rush, Betty Wright, Millie Jackson, Shirley Brown, etc. The list goes on and on. The shows producer James Poe is looking for sponsors and radio stations to carry the show. Contact him at 1-866-941-7625 Ext. 15 for more information or to otain the interviews for airing. WMPR can be heard on the world wide web at www.wmpr901.com. For the line: "The shows producer..." shows should be show's. Otherwise everything is super! (Sounds like a very worthwhile venture worthy of support.)

3. MORE ADDITIONS TO CLARKSDALE'S FESTIVAL WEEKEND...

- In the works is a Blues Biscuits & Gravy Brunch at Sarah's Kitchen for Saturday morning August 9th. Tentative time is 8:30am Biscuits & Gravy Brunch and 9:00am or 9:15am A 45 Min set with Big Pete Pearson and The Wesley Jefferson Band. Fuel up with some delicious grease, flour and blues before heading over for the start of the Othar Turner Memorial Acoustic Stage at Clarksdale Station at 10 am.
- Jim O'Neal - the co-founder of Living Blues magazine, Rooster Blues Records and Dela's Stackhouse - will be signing copies of his "Delta Map Kit" at Dela's Stackhouse on Sunflower Avenue between 3:30 and 5:30 pm on the Friday of the blues fest here (Aug. 8). Stop by, say hello and pick up a copy of his excellent map kit. (While he's there, also pick up a signed copy of his book of Living Blues interviews...)

4. NEW AT CAT HEAD DELTA BLUES & FOLK ART...

New at Cat Head:

-Greenville photographer Butch Ruth's new photo exhibit "Backstage Blues" is now up at Cat Head. The gorgeous B&W prints chronicle a decade or so of candid, off-stage blues photography. The new show includes memorable shots of Otha Turner, Mamie Davis, T-Model Ford, Eddie Cusic, Pat Thomas, Duck Holmes and other Hill Country and Delta favorites. Just $100 ea. plus s/h. (I can email a full list of subjects and/or some snapshots if you are interested.)

- Finally, the only "Clarksdale, Mississippi" blues postcards in the world have arrived! (We get requests all the time.) .75¢ each.

- Howlin' Wolf Memorial Blues Festival shirts feature a small logo on the front and a big Wolf photo with line-up on the back and come in L or XL for $16 plus s/h. The posters feature the same design as the shirt backs and include an official Howlin' Wolf Blues Society embossed stamp to prove they are for real; just $10 ea. plus s/h. (I can email photos.) Don't forget the fest is in West Point, MS on Aug. 29!

- "61/49 ... Cat Head ... Clarksdale, Mississippi" leather guitar straps by The Leather Man in Tutwiler, MS. $40 ea.

- Big Pete Pearson's "One More Drink" CD. Just $15 plus s/h. Big Pete is called "Arizona's King of the Blues" and will be playing Cat Head with Adam Riggle during the fest. (See directly below.)

- Here's our updated anniversary celebration line-up. Note the addition of Jefferson Leaux on Friday as well as the brief descriptions:

CAT HEAD DELTA BLUES & FOLK ART
1st Anniversary Celebration with FREE coffee & donuts all 3 mornings!

Fri., Aug. 8
3 PM - Jefferson Leaux (New York, NY) - Blues painter and harp/guitar player.
4 PM - Big Pete & Adam (Phoenix, AR) - "Arizona's King of the Blues."
5 PM - Jimbo Mathus w/ guest CeDell Davis (NC and AR) - Between the two, they are featured on at least a dozen CDs.

Sat., Aug. 9
2 PM - Andria Lisle (Memphis, TN) - Book signing author of "Waking Up In Memphis."
3 PM - Willie Kinard, Rev. Nollie, Wild Bill & Butch Anthony (MS and
AL) - Meet these folk artists and hear about their work.
6 PM - John Lowe (Memphis, TN) - One-man band plays loud blues, rock and more on custom Lowe-bow guitars.

Sun., Aug. 10 - BBQ maestro Willie Kinard grills from 11am-2pm
9:30 AM - Mr. Tater (Clarksdale, MS) - Very unique, original acoustic blues.
10 AM - Bobby "Blues" Rutledge (Leland, MS) - Acoustic blues by the Delta heavyweights.
11 AM - Big George Brock (St. Louis, MO) - Legendary 72-year-old harmonica player - real deal!
1 PM - Elam McKnight and Keith Carter (FL) - Southern duo plays Delta-to-Chicago blues.
2 PM - Steve Cheseborough (Cleveland, MS) - 1920s & 30s blues on a National Steel guitar.
3 PM - Bill Ellis (Memphis, TN) - Great acoustic blues from Memphis.
4 PM - Eric Hughes (Memphis, TN) - Energetic acoustic blues from Beale Street.

PLUS, REMEMBER that the fun doesn't stop at 6 pm Sun., Aug. 10. Jacqueline's Blues Bar at 990 MLK Dr. will host an OPEN JAM on that Sunday night to keep everything going! (Plan now to take that extra vacation day... or start practicing that "sick day" phone call now...)

5. OTHER LOCAL MUSIC/ARTS NEWS...

From Clarksdale Press Register:

Sorry. We accidentally deleted our Press Register emails this week. Please go to www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=2038 and search for these articles if you are interested by the headlines:
Jul 28, 2003 Bus station lease signed
Jul 26, 2003 Cops target pirated CDs, movies
Jul 23, 2003 He's throwing weed-eating party at the Crossroads Jul 23, 2003 Blues festival gets new Friday headliner

(Also, see Panny Mayfield's wonderful Clarksdale Press Register article on Big Jack Johnson and Sam Carr below.)

6. NEW CLARKSDALE VISITOR'S CENTER...

Planning to bring a bus tour or other large group to Clarksdale?
Contact Bubba O'Keefe at 662-645-8874. He is working with a new non-profit downtown revitalization group to open the new Clarksdale Visitor's Center in our restored Greyhound Station. The building is located near the Delta Blues Museum and the Delta Avenue Shopping District. Anyone will be able to stop into the center to pick up tourist info and find out what's going on. For bus tours and other large groups, the center will also help facilitate reception type events inside the old bus station, including local food, "live" blues, guest speakers, etc. The plan is to have the center open - in some sense of the word - by early next month. NOTE: The Clarksdale Visitor's Center is also looking for donations and volunteers to help maximize its potential.

7. ANOTHER GREAT MUSEUM TO VISIT...

Earlier this year another blues museum opened in Mississippi. Add it on your next trip itinerary (along with Clarksdale's Delta Blues Museum and Leland's Highway 61 Blues Museum). It's the River City Blues Museum in Vicksburg; summer hours Tuesday-Saturday 9:00-5:00; admission $6 adults, $4 seniors and military; children under 12 free.

Vicksburg's River City Blues Museum collection includes over 100 originally recorded and some "one of a kind" records, over 50 framed photographs, 17 guitars and 2 banjos, original sheet music, Blues songs on piano scroll sheets, unique musical instruments such as washboards and handmade porch strings, video documentaries, and written and oral histories.

8. ANOTHER COOL PBS BLUES DOCUMENTARY...

BLUES GREATS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES IN BLUES STORY ON PBS

This August and September, PBS stations across the country will air Blues Story, a documentary that features numerous living icons of the blues for the first time telling their own story, in words and song. Blues Story is expected to be a keystone component of PBS pledge drives this year. Featuring a who's who of blues performers giving their own first person accounts of the origin and power of this music, the film includes newly-shot, exclusive footage of Bobby "Blue" Bland, R.L. Burnside, Ruth Brown, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Koko Taylor, Little Milton, Pinetop Perkins, Rufus Thomas, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and many more. Blues Story is the result of five years of filming throughout the Mississippi Delta, in Memphis, Chicago and other regions. It features in-depth interviews, performances and archival film clips and stills to tell the story of one of America's most lasting art forms. The film's executive producers are Shout! Factory co-founder and Chair Richard Foos and Jay Levey, who also produced and directed Blues Story for Imaginary Entertainment. A music industry artist management veteran, Levey has produced and directed numerous television and film projects, been a live event-producer, and won a Grammy for video direction. Jim O'Neal, the co-founder of Living Blues, America's first blues magazine, served as executive consultant and associate producer. Edward Marritz is director of photography. He was cinematographer on the Academy Award winning documentary "Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision."

Blues Story, through the words and music of the artists who made the music, provides overviews of what made the blues what it is, including

- Origins - connection to African fife and drum tradition, plantation life.
- Early Artists - Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, etc., the advent of the Victrola.
- The Women - The stars of the '20s and '30's: Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Mamie Smith.
- Down In The Delta - Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, "the Devil's Music".
- King Biscuit Time - From Helena, Arkansas to the world: Sonny Boy Williamson, described by Pinetop Perkins, Robert Lockwood Jr. and B.B. King.
- Juke - Still going today: Willie King and the Liberators captured live at one of the sole remaining juke joints, Bettie's Place in Prairie Point, Mississippi.
- St. Louis, Texas and West Coast Blues - Gatemouth Brown, Lowell Fulson, Charles Brown, T-Bone Walker are there.
- Jump Blues - "Dressed up, first class" blues singers and band swing it: Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner. Still, per Ruth Brown, sophistication aside, the south was still segregated.
- Memphis - Beale Street and the rise of B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland and Rufus Thomas on the radio.
- Chicago - Buddy Guy tells it like it was with Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Wolf's right-hand man, Hubert Sumlin tell a wolf's tale with gusto.
- Blues Revival and the Birth of Rock - Elvis and the British, the folk movement embraces the blues.

9. LOCAL BLUES ARTICLE BY C'DALE'S PANNY MAYFIELD...

Casting for memories By: Panny Flautt Mayfield July 26, 2003 'As members of the original Jelly Roll Kings, Sam Carr of Lula and Big Jack Johnson of Clarksdale, are among the headliners of the 2003 International Notodden Blues Festival in Norway July 31-Aug. 3. It is one of the largest blues festivals in Europe. A sister city of Clarksdale, Notodden is the sister festival of the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival, slated for Clarksdale on Aug. 8 and 9. This article is an account of conversations during a fishing trip when Mayfield rode shotgun with Carr and Johnson to Phillips Bayou. It was written at the request of editors for the 'International Notodden Blues Festival Tabloid.'

"If I could see my past life on television, I wouldn't believe it
myself," Sam Carr says during a fishing trip with Big Jack Johnson on Phillips Bayou near Moon Lake. Swapping tales about their early days with the Jelly Roll Kings, Big Jack says, "Sam was the boss. He'd get in a fight with someone, and if he couldn't whip him, he'd go home, rest up, come back and fight him again. That's probably because he was raised by himself." Today's mild-mannered, courtly drummer - usually playing beneath a snappy, feather-trimmed straw hat - agrees. "I was raised by myself and had to defend myself. After I whipped the first boy with my jelly bucket at school, that was it; they left me alone," Sam says. Sam's daddy was Robert Nighthawk, a blues legend, but Nighthawk wasn't around when his son was growing up. "The Carrs raised him," says Doris Carr, Sam's wife of 56 years. "I grew up between Jeffrey and Dundee, and learned what I did on my own," Sam says. Doris says Sam was 15 when he went to Helena to stay with his daddy. "Robert came back again to Helena in 1941, and he didn't drink," she continues. "He played slide and his guitar strings were never tight. His voice was sweet. He never sang louder than my speaking voice." Describing the spell of Robert's performances, Sam says, "Men fell out when he sang, Annie Lee, This Is My Last Goodbye and Sweet Black Angel. People around here were used to picking and chopping cotton and didn't go anywhere to festivals like they do now. People didn't have money, but they paid a dollar to hear him." In 1935, Sam moved to St. Louis and put together Little Sam Carr's Blues Band. Ellis Johnson, Big Jack's brother, played with Sam four or five years, as did Big George Brock. "I played guitar, but I couldn't keep a drummer," says Sam. "I bought one drum a week until I had a set and learned how to play. I never wanted to sing; I couldn't remember the words." Sam says blues bands in the country didn't have drums like city bands, but kept time with a one-string bass wire and foot on a tub. In St. Louis, Doris sang with the band. Bandmate Frank Frost, who was living in East St. Louis at the time, learned to play guitar listening to Nashville radio shows. "You and Frank had a special routine playing the same guitar together," prompts Doris. Sam says he followed his daddy's back beat style of playing - "changing right on the top of a song." On Oct. 6, 1960, Sam and Frank left St. Louis for Coahoma County to help pick cotton on his family's farm. "Frank could pick 500 pounds a day," says Sam. "It rained and rained; it took three days getting to the house." During their stay they heard Jack Johnson playing Big Boss Man at the Savoy Theatre by the railroad tracks in Clarksdale. "Frank didn't want to hire Jack because he was blowing harp, playing guitar and singing," says Sam. "'We don't need nobody,' Frank said. 'We've been playing together two years.'" "I hired him anyway, and we found out he was pretty good." They became the Jelly Roll Kings around 1962. "Back then, we played 'back in the woods' music," says Big Jack. "We're uptown now." What was it like in the early days? After playing past midnight at Smitty's in Clarksdale, they took off for the country through muddy fields to Fred's near Dundee where buffalo (fish) was cooking, and corn whiskey was for sale. Sam says he would announce, "I'm not going to play a thing 'til I get a drink." What did you drink? "Anything. I'd start with a full fruit jar," says Sam. "We drank all that whiskey; we didn't care," says Big Jack. "We played all day Sunday with no sleep; got home sick Monday morning and had to face the boss man." Wearing white coats, the Jelly Roll Kings were the house band at Conway Twitty's place on Moon Lake. "One night there was a shooting. Sheriff Jessie Bonner came in there, pulled off his belt and pistol, and stopped the fight," Big Jack says. Recalling a gig in a country juke, Sam says, "I've seen a man
killed over a pack of Camel cigarettes, and I stopped a man once from whipping a horse." "'You hit him again, and I'll cut your head off,'I told him and put a knife on his neck. I was really pushing my luck, but the man stopped." "The Lord stopped my ways when I was 50 years old, and I changed overnight," Sam says. "Nobody liked me; no one would give me a drink of whiskey. I wanted people to like me like they did Jack and Frank." Praising Frank Frost, Big Jack says, "I tried my best to keep him alive. He was a monster - he played guitar, harp, keyboard and sang at the same time. He was a monster. "Frank had all kinds of women. There were so many, Doris (Carr) had to keep a book for him. "We didn't have money, but we lived like real folks and enjoyed ourselves to the highest," says Sam. Frank Frost died Oct. 12, 1999, in Helena. "I wrote the song So, long, Frank Frost the day I got the call," says Jack. It's part of his Roots Stew album. Since then, both Sam and Big Jack have recovered from serious health problems. "You ain't nothing but a machine - like a car with parts that wear out," says Sam. "When I got sick, I could hear these pumps working and not just my heart. "When you do something bad, it comes back to hound you. I did many bad things and I know that's why I've suffered. "When Jack was sick, he was shaking; his whole body was shaking." In May, Jack was performing in London when his wife, Annette, picked up his 2003 W.C. Handy Award in Memphis. Sam - who has more Handy nominations that he can count and who has been invited to sit in with Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin - packed festivals this spring in Australia. "The Lord put you all together," said Annette Johnson. "No one could play like Sam and Frank and Jack."
©Clarksdale Press Register 2003

10. CHRIS DUARTE DOES MISSISSIPPI...

Everyone from Buddy Guy to John Mellencamp seems to be recording
Mississippi blues albums these days. (I'm not complaining.) Now, Chris
Duarte is taking his turn...

From a PRESS RELEASE: "Chris Duarte is a master of the art of electric guitar, a complete musician whose full-throttle sound is rich with subtlety and nuance. Romp, recorded at Sweet Tea in Oxford, Mississippi, is as brash and raw as Chris's music can be. Grounded in the blues and sometimes revealing a dark emotional side, his songs make room both for
high-energy musicianship and deep feeling. The title song updates Junior Kimbrough's raucous juke joint sound, while three instrumental tracks revel in the pure joy of the sound of the electric guitar. With John Jordan (bass) and Ed Miles (drums), the Chris Duarte Group is a power trio for the new millennium, and Romp catches them at their soulful best."

SELECT UPCOMING DUARTE DATES:
JULY 31 MONTGOMERY, AL, SUMMER MUSIC SERIES w/KENNY NEAL
AUGUST 2 NEW ORLEANS, LA, TIPITINA'S w/ LITTLE FREDDIE KING
SEPTEMBER 18 DARDANELLE, AR, ROMEDIOS
SEPTEMBER 19 SPRINGFIELD, MO, MURPHY'S
SEPTEMBER 21 ST LOUIS, MO, BROADWAY OYSTER BAR

www.rounder.com

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THANKS!