[title subtitle=”WORDS Dwain Hebda
IMAGES courtesy Allan Hammons”][/title]
Ask Munnie Jordan what she thinks about the return of the state’s premiere blues event – King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena – and she fairly squeals with delight.
“It feels great!” she says, her voice reaching a pitch one part howl and two parts purr. “I think if I had to pick one word that would be the most emphatic about the sustainability of this festival, it’s authenticity. We are sitting right here on the Mississippi River and the Arkansas Mississippi Delta where all the blues singers came from. We have kept King Biscuit Blues Festival full of authentic blues and I think that’s why our visitors keep coming back.”
Like most everything else last year, King Biscuit Blues Festival fell silent and with it, the spirits and fortunes of its hometown Helena, Arkansas. For the first time since its founding in the mid-1980s, visitors and artists alike stayed home while the locals hunkered down and dreamed of next year.
If there was ever any doubt the seminal music festival would be back at some point, all were dashed when organizers started polling musical acts about returning in 2021.
“In 2019, that was great and then we did our lineup for 2020 and we ran into that hitch,” says Munnie, referring to the pandemic with genteel Southern grace. “We told every single artist, ‘We would like for you to keep your deposit. Keep it. Just tell us that you’ll be there for 2021.’
“Then, with the generosity of some of our grantors, were able to pay every one of the artists that did not have a deposit ten percent of whatever we were going to pay them for the 2020 festival. We said again, ‘Here’s ten percent of what we were going to pay you, but we want to make sure you will be with us in 2021.’ And, one hundred percent, everybody’s going to be back. Except one guy who died.”
That means from October 6-9, six stages will again host an all-star lineup of performers, each wailin’ proclaimin’ or confessin’ hard times, bad luck and no-good, two-timin’ lovers in one of the most uniquely American art forms.
“When we started this right here on the Mississippi River, with the levee as the amphitheater of our stage, people feel like they’re coming back to where it all started,” Munnie says. “The scenario is so typical – it’s on the river, it’s not downtown like in some big city. It’s in the fields of where it happened. It’s just the authenticity of it, I do think.”
Music doesn’t get more raw or elemental than the blues, a musical taproot from which sprang jazz, R&B, rock and roll and hip-hop; cross-pollinating country and western, gospel and bluegrass along the way. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, the origins of the blues are hard to pinpoint save for one thing – Arkansas has been a pivotal player in the birth and development of the soul-stirring, heart-rending, foot-stomping genre.
“Blues and its offspring have long since crossed the globe, but its standard-bearers are largely confined to the Mississippi River Delta, especially eastern Arkansas and western Mississippi,” writes Stephen Koch in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “Though other popular musical strains have caught on over the decades, at their core is blues.”
Here in Helena, the blues seep out of the very Delta dirt upon which the town is built. In the 1920s and 1930s, as the music was taking off, the city was a well-known spot for traveling musicians who made their way to the wild, freewheeling city to entertain in the saloons, juke joints, nightclubs and other hotspots to be found.
The late Pinetop Perkins, a Helena regular, gave the Daily World a summary view of the city. Reminiscing the scene in the 1940s and 1950s, he was quoted as saying, “1940s Helena ain’t nothin’ like it is now. I used to play all night long at a club called the Hole in the Wall. We got paid $3 a night plus all the whiskey we could drink. We’d play all night and then go home and sleep until it was time to play again. Those were the days.”
Also in the 1940s, King Biscuit Time debuted on KFFA in Helena, an event which blues historians consider integral to the development of the musical art form in the Mississippi Delta. King Biscuit would go on to be the longest-running radio program in broadcast history and serve as a beacon for the music’s all-time greats.
“I can tell you verbatim from visiting with B.B. King before he died,” Munnie says. “He wanted to play King Biscuitforever. When he was a little boy living in Indianola, Mississippi, he would ride his bicycle home so he could listen to King Biscuit Time live on his radio. King Biscuit was just something that all of the blues artists always referenced.”
But by the 1970s and 1980s, the town and the genre had fallen out of popular favor. Desperate to resuscitate its birthright, city fathers conceived of an idea for a music event and the first King Biscuit Blues Festival came off in 1986. In time, it would grow to an event hosting several thousand music fans.
“When we had B.B. King here, we had 30,000 people,” Munnie says. “But the attendance on average, from way back in 1986 through 2019, I would say is closer to 15,000 people, if you want to average the lowest and the highest together.”
The event has been around so long, it has developed its own tribes and traditions. Wander into the tent city that’s set up riverside and you’ll quickly learn just how deep the rules run around here. Even Munnie, who’s been the executive director of the event for twenty years, on and off, has had to earn her ticket in.
“We have Tent City that’s right on the river, one street east of where our stage is. It’s like a homecoming for these people who have been coming here for thirty-five years,” she says. “Those people, they elect a mayor, and they pitch their tents. It’s like a sacred place and all the same people come back, like, a week or two before the festival and camp out. I was never invited to go over there until about six years ago.”
Quirky though that is, first-timers can expect a warm Helena welcome during the festival. Munny says one thing to remember is to bring your own seating with which to stake out a spot. Once planted, the space is yours, a claim enforced overnight by security. She also says long-timers know to circulate from the main stage to check out the action at the other performance venues to get the full experience. And, she said, what separates the rookie from the true aficionado is snagging a cherished souvenir that proves you were there, especially the limited-edition poster that changes with each festival.
“Make sure you bring plenty of money, because you’re definitely going to want merchandise,” Munnie says with a twinkle in her eye. “All the money we take in goes to support the Sonny Boy Blues Society and keeping the money rolling in so that we can afford the good artists in the future is one of the best things about this event. I just love it.”
The festival continues to follow all CDC and state guidelines for masking and social distancing. At the time of this writing the festival was moving forward. Please visit them online or Facebook for continued updates.
King Biscuit Blues Festival
October 6-9, 2021
Helena, Arkansas
kingbiscuitfestival.com
Can’t make the blues fest? Check this out!
Building on the concept of native musicians, Helena organizers launched the Delta Roots Music Festival, a one-day event to celebrate the rich musical history of Arkansas. The event debuted in 2019 with a tribute to Conway Twitty and in 2021 will salute another musical giant, Levon Helm. Tickets for the September 25 event are just $20 for 12 hours of musical performers, food and fun. For more information, visit the Delta Roots Music Festival Facebook page.