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2010 We Are the Blues: Individual and Communal Performances of the King Biscuit Tradition Robert Webb Fry II

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COLLEGE OF MUSIC

WE ARE THE BLUES:

INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNAL PERFORMANCES OF

THE KING BISCUIT TRADITION

By

ROBERT WEBB FRY II

A Dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2010

Copyright © 2010 Robert Webb Fry II All Rights Reserve

The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Robert Webb Fry II defended on March 29, 2010.

______Frank D. Gunderson Professor Directing Dissertation

______Leigh H. Edwards University Representative

______Michael B. Bakan Committee Member

______Denise Von Glahn Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members.

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I dedicate this dissertation to my wife, Laura, and our two children, Lillian and Oliver. Without their patience, support, and love, the completion of this project would not have been possible.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation, like the performance and realization of the King Biscuit Festival, is a collaborative effort among all those who attend, participate in, and perform Helena’s annual celebration of the blues. The research for this dissertation would have been impossible without the kindness and generosity of festival organizers, locals of Helena, performers, and the many fans that I have met and befriended over the last seven years. First of all, I am thankful to the city of Helena and the hospitality of all those with whom I have come in contact. I would especially like to thank Terry Buckalew, director of the Delta Cultural Center; Jim Howe, current owner of Helena’s radio station KFFA; Sunshine Sunny Payne, DJ of the famed King Biscuit Time Broadcast; and Bubba Sullivan, local merchant and festival organizer. Each of these individuals took me in at the start of my research, sharing with me stories, memories, and a history of Helena and its musical traditions that far surpasses what has been documented in historical and scholarly works. Their early contributions to this project introduced me to many of the people, places, and themes that form the core of my dissertation. Throughout the course of my research, I have had the unique opportunity of meeting and talking with many legendary blues musicians. I would especially like to thank the King Biscuit Entertainers, Pinetop Perkins and the late Robert Lockwood Jr., for sharing with me first hand memories of Helena’s famed King Biscuit Time broadcasts; and Reba Russell for allowing me to use and analyze her lyrics in this dissertation; and Bobby Rush for welcoming me into his home and helping me to understand the “true” meaning of the blues. I would also like to thank the many blues fans I have met over the last seven years. Your dedication to Helena, the blues, and the King Biscuit Blues Festival inspired and shaped this dissertation. I would especially like to thank Mike Miller, Dean and Hayley Cummins, and Mary Rodgers, whose festival experiences and memories are retold in the

iv following pages. They have served as informants and friends, and without their contributions, this dissertation would have been impossible. I am honored to have such a supportive and helpful dissertation committee, including Frank Gunderson, Michael Bakan, Denise Von Glahn, and Leigh Edwards. Each committee member has brought unique perspectives and insight to the dissertation, allowing me to further explore questions of the role of the tourist in the production of a musical place. I am especially grateful to my advisor, Frank Gunderson, for his continued support and helpfulness throughout the research and completion of this dissertation and throughout my entire graduate career. His friendship and guidance have motivated me throughout my graduate studies. Michael Bakan has served as a mentor since I arrived at Florida State University. His guidance inside and outside of the classroom allowed me to further speculate on the themes of this dissertation and formulate my initial questions concerning the festival as a site for social and musical interaction. Denise Von Glahn has been supportive of my research since I arrived at Florida State University. Her insight on the role of place in the creation and reception of both musical compositions and musical places inspired me to look beyond the documented history of Helena’s tradition and look instead at the creation, promotion, and consumption of place by the many people who make up the festival community. Leigh Edwards has contributed vital insights on the images and myths of Southern music. Her research on Johnny Cash and American identity has provided a model for examining myth making in popular culture and the many ways we, as fans, interpret and evoke meaning from both the music and the way it is presented by both the artist and the music industry. In addition to my committee members, I would like to thank the Musicology faculty at Florida State University, including Douglass Seaton, Benjamin Koen, Dale Olsen, Jeffery Kite-Powell, and Charles Brewer. In seminars, independent studies, and conversations outside of the classroom, they have offered praise and critique of my scholarship, inspiring and motivating me throughout my graduate studies. I would also like to thank all of my graduate colleagues with whom I have interacted inside and outside the classroom. I would especially like to thank Trevor Harvey and Pacho Lara, who joined me in attending the festival and provided valid insight on my research as fellow ethnomusicologists, friends and tourists.

v I would like to thank my parents, Robert and Barbara Fry, who have offered support throughout my life. Because of their words of encouragement, I have never had any doubt that I could complete this or any other endeavor. Their motivation and love have inspired me to be the best scholar and person that I can be. Lastly, I would like to thank my wife, Laura Fry, and my beautiful children, Lillian and Oliver. Throughout the course of the research, writing, and editing of this dissertation, they have offered me love, patience, and support. I would especially like to thank my wife for being both my number one fan and critic, ensuring me that I was capable of such a project and motivating me to keep going. Throughout this project she has listened, offered ideas, and served as a role model in research and writing. Her scholarship is my inspiration and the model of excellence that I aim to achieve.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...... x

Abstract ...... xiii

CHAPTER ONE: Traveling Into the Delta ...... 1

Background and Significance...... 7

Review of Literature...... 9

The Blues and King Biscuit Time ...... 10

Authenticity and the Preservation of Culture ...... 11

Touristic Authenticity ...... 15

Methodology ...... 19

Chapter Outline ...... 20

CHAPTER TWO: Into the Delta: Blues and the Performance of Place...... 22

Recalling the Delta in the Blues...... 23

Which Delta Do You Hear? ...... 24

The Delta ...... 26

Hearing the Delta in the Blues...... 27

Presenting Place: The Delta as a Marker of Musical Authenticity ...... 32

Promoting Place: Tourism and the Realization of an Authentic Musical Site ...... 37

vii Touring Place: Interactions with the Delta as a Rite of Passage...... 40

Conclusion ...... 46

CHAPTER THREE: Main Street of the Blues: The Realization, Creation, and Promotion of a Musical Place ...... 49

Ignoring Tradition: Blues as the Sounds of Normalcy...... 49

Establishing and Broadcasting Tradition: King Biscuit Time and the King Biscuit Entertainers...... 54

Realizing and Promoting Tradition: The Establishment of Helena As a Musical Place ...... 59

Performing Tradition: Mutual Performances of Blues Authenticity...... 71

Conclusion ...... 80

CHAPTER FOUR: Performing and Preserving the Biscuit: Tourism as Theatrics of the Festival Space...... 82

Performing the Biscuit ...... 82

Preserving the Biscuit...... 90

Becoming a True Blues Fan ...... 94

Interacting with and Becoming the Local ...... 96

Becoming the Tradition: Past Participation as a Tourist Attraction ...... 106

Saving Our Biscuit: Tourists and the Performance of Preservation ...... 114

Conclusion ...... 121

CHAPTER FIVE: We are the Tradition: Individual and Communal Performances of the Blues ...... 125

“Who’s Your Mayor?”: Mayor Mike and the Performance of Tent City...... 126

viii “We’re Getting Hitched in Helena”: Dean and Hayley and the Performance of an Intimate Tradition...... 148

Who is Tom Rodgers?: The Blues Buddies and the Performance of Remembrance...... 162

Conclusion ...... 179

CONCLUSION: Returning Home to the Delta ...... 181

APPENDIX A: List of Interviews ...... 190

APPENDIX B: Oral History Documentation ...... 192

APPENDIX C: Copyright Permission...... 193

APPENDIX D: Planning Your Trip ...... 194

APPENDIX E: Memories of the Festival ...... 201

Bibliography...... 211

Biographical Sketch...... 221

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 Sunshine Sonny Payne during a live broadcast of King Biscuit Time ...... 4

Figure 1.2 Door from a delivery truck for Interstate Grocer Co...... 4

Figure 1.3 Muddy Waters’ Cabin at the Delta Blues Museum ...... 5

Figure 1.4 The Crossroads, Clarksdale, Mississippi ...... 5

Figure 2.1 The Big Black Boom...... 33

Figure 2.2 Callendar’s Minstrels ...... 34

Figure 2.3 Memphis International Airport baggage pick-up ...... 42

Figure 2.4 Jim Neely’s Interstate BBQ (Memphis Airport)...... 43

Figure 2.5 The Blues Highway...... 44

Figure 2.6 JB’s Spirit Shop...... 45

Figure 2.7 River Bend Restaurant ...... 46

Figure 3.1 Interstate Flour delivery truck...... 56

Figure 4.1 Experience Helena ...... 85

Figure 4.2 Helena’s Cherry Street A ...... 87

Figure 4.3 Helena’s Cherry Street B ...... 88

Figure 4.4 Festival vendors and their customers ...... 89

Figure 4.5 Visiting JB’s Spirit Shop...... 100

Figure 4.6 Bubba’s Blues Corner ...... 101

Figure 4.7 Abandoned lot ...... 103

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Figure 4.8 Gist Music ...... 103

Figure 4.9 Bill Abel performing...... 105

Figure 4.10 Double rainbow...... 107

Figure 4.11 CeDell Davis on the Heritage Stage...... 110

Figure 4.12 Robert Lockwood Jr’s final performance at the Biscuit ...... 113

Figure 4.13 Petition to save the Biscuit...... 118

Figure 4.14 The Biscuit will always be in Helena A...... 120

Figure 4.15 The Biscuit will always be in Helena B...... 120

Figure 4.16 Keeping the blues alive ...... 123

Figure 5.1 The beginning of a blues community...... 127

Figure 5.2 Tent City USA...... 127

Figure 5.3 Ghost town ...... 128

Figure 5.4 Photograph of the author performing in Tent City...... 128

Figure 5.5 Mike Miller, Mayor of Tent City ...... 131

Figure 5.6 Dean and Hayley Cummins ...... 149

Figure 5.7 Dean and Hayley Cummins’ wedding invitation...... 150

Figure 5.8 Dean and Hayley’s wedding ...... 150

Figure 5.9 Mary Rodgers at her home...... 162

Figure 5.10 Blues Buddies...... 163

Figure 5.11 Memorial for a fan ...... 163

Figure 5.12 King Biscuit souvenir...... 166

Figure 5.13 Memories of festivals past ...... 167

Figure 5.14 Tom’s “Blues” quilt ...... 167

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Figure 5.15 Tom, Red, and Pinetop Perkins...... 168

Figure A.1 The author as a guest on King Biscuit Time ...... 201

Figure A.2 Show 15,570...... 202

Figure A.3 Claiming a spot on the Levee...... 202

Figure A.4 Lockwood Heritage Stage ...... 203

Figure A.5 Sonny Boy Williamson Main Stage...... 203

Figure A.6 Dancing his blues away...... 204

Figure A.7 Dancing to the blues...... 204

Figure A.8 We are the blues ...... 205

Figure A.9 Street performer on Cherry Street ...... 205

Figure A.10 Never too young to play the blues...... 206

Figure A.11 Street performers in front of the King Biscuit Festival Gift Shop ...... 206

Figure A.12 Pinetop Perkins...... 207

Figure A.13 Bobby Rush...... 207

Figure A.14 Watermelon Slim...... 208

Figure A.15 Honeyboy Edwards ...... 208

Figure A.16 The late Sam Carr...... 209

Figure A.17 Sunshine Sonny Payne and the late Robert Lockwood Jr...... 209

Figure A.18 The late Sam Meyers...... 210

Figure A.19 Terry Buckalew and James Cotton...... 210

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ABSTRACT

The rapid decline of regional American identity throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a subsequently increasing recognition and interest in America’s cultural past have resulted in the promotion of small-town America as a tourist destination. Local communities throughout the country exhibit local culture and present their homes as theatrical spaces where tourists are permitted and encouraged to experience the “real” America, believed by many to be disappearing in an increasingly homogeneous society. In this dissertation, I present an ethnography that explores the formation and continuance of Helena, Arkansas, as a tourist destination and as a music place. I illustrate that Helena’s adopted blues identity emerged and has evolved through a history of complex socio-musical interactions between host and guest cultures and between individuals and institutions. More importantly, I explore the larger issue of the blues as a signifier of “tradition,” arguing that, for many attendants, the blues serve as a soundtrack while the city serves as a performative space that permits the creation, performance, and remembrance of newly formed social traditions occurring within the festival space and larger musical tradition. This dissertation provides insight into the role of the fan, both local and visitor, in the establishment and realization of a music place. Through the theatrics of tourism, both Helena and its connection to the blues tradition is revitalized each October, resulting in a presentation of Helena that meets the desires of both host and guest communities. While the city during the festival is promoted as an “authentic” portrayal of the Delta and the historic blues tradition, I suggest that the personal experiences and newly formed social traditions that occur during the time and space of the festival result in the realization of an authentic tourist and local experience.

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CHAPTER ONE

TRAVELING INTO THE DELTA

I hate traveling and explorers. Yet here I am proposing to tell the story of my expeditions (Levi-Strauss [1955] 1977, 3).

I arrived in Helena, Arkansas, on October 4th, 2005, two days before the beginning of the twentieth annual King Biscuit Blues Festival.1 Although this was not my first visit to the Delta, Helena, or the annual festival, this was the first time that I had arrived early enough to witness the transformation of Helena from its twenty-first century reality into the collective performance of the annual festival experience. My initial intentions were to investigate and document what I expected to be the stark contrast between “present reality” and the festival’s “historical simulation.” However, like the thousands of blues fans who would soon join me on Helena’s famed Cherry Street, I was immediately drawn to those sites, objects, performances, and cultural experiences that both signified and reinforced my own perceptions of the Delta’s cultural, geographical, and musical past: “authentic” encounters that validated both my numerous trips to the Delta and the research project as a whole. My previous research trips to Helena had been conducted alone. On this trip I was glad to be accompanied by a traveling companion from Florida State University who was making his first trip to the festival and, also, his first cultural immersion into the landscape and soundscape of the legendary Delta region. His presence unintentionally altered my role

1 As of 2005, Helena’s annual blues festival has changed its name to the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival. Because this dissertation is primarily concerned with the tourist interpretation of the site, and because most blues fans still refer to the festival by its original name, I will refer to the festival as the King Biscuit Blues Festival throughout the dissertation.

1 in Helena from “objective” observer to that of the “well-traveled” blues pilgrim and “informed” tour guide. I was immediately overcome with an irrepressible desire to offer the blues-rookie an in-depth tour of the landscape, blues sites, and historical and cultural markers that would illustrate my own traveler’s “expertise,” while simultaneously providing the necessary experiences that, I hoped, would both augment and validate my companion’s initial excursion into and interaction with the “birthplace of the blues.” With cameras slung over our shoulders and notepads in hand, we set out on a tour of famed blues sites throughout the Delta region. We attended a live broadcast of King Biscuit Time at the Delta Cultural Center, where I was quick to point out that Helena’s significance to the blues, the very reason we were visiting the city, was largely due to the opportunities provided by this ongoing live broadcast, on the air since 1941. As we watched the broadcast, hosted by D.J. Sunshine Sonny Payne, who has hosted the program since its earliest broadcasts, we were reminded of the show’s historical importance and current relevancy to Helena and its most profitable commodity, the blues (fig. 1.1). After the show, we set out on a tour of Helena’s back streets, neighborhoods, and alleys, where I energetically pointed out abandoned buildings, decrepit housing, and boarded storefronts that had previously housed juke joints, the King Biscuit Time broadcast, infamous performance sites, and blues legends such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Frank Frost, and Robert Nighthawk. We visited the Delta Cultural Center’s exhibit, “Helena, Main Street of the Blues,” where we admired cultural objects accompanied by historical markers and a musical soundtrack that authenticated the relics while placing them firmly within Helena and the Delta’s cultural and musical history (fig. 1.2). After exhausting the sightseeing opportunities in Helena, we set out on a road trip to nearby Clarksdale, Mississippi, to visit the Delta Blues Museum. Here, we had the unique, tourist experience of observing Muddy Waters’ cabin, its legitimacy ensured by a hyperreal wax figure of Waters posed in a frozen performance and reinforced by a backdrop of historical photographs of Waters and period concert posters adorning the cabin walls (fig. 1.3). In Clarksdale, we interacted with those sites considered must-sees on any comprehensive blues tour. We visited Muddy Waters’ home site at Stovall Plantation, an abandoned parking lot that was once the location of W.C. Handy’s family home, the famed

2 Riverside Inn where Bessie Smith took her last breath, the historic WROX radio station where performances by blues icons such as Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson were broadcasted, and, of course, the celebrated crossroads at the intersection of highways 61 and 49, where we quietly mocked tourists who posed in front of the marker while simultaneously sharing our own excitement with the possibility that Robert Johnson, the “King of the Delta Blues,” had visited the very spot (fig. 1.4). We concluded our visit to Clarksdale with a live performance at Reds, a “real” juke joint, where we interacted with Delta locals while listening to music that, we believed, was a faithful representation of the Delta’s soundscape. We were pleased to see a confrontation between a local musician and a heckling audience member over the quality of his musicianship. This experience further convinced us that we were in an “authentic” blues site, surrounded by “authentic” blues people, and participating in an “authentic” blues experience. We supposed our night at Reds to be a genuine experience rather than a simulation constructed by the tourist industry for the tourist. Outside the club, we ordered rib tips, promoted by the vendor as the “real thing,” from a roadside stand and devoured them on the curb as we reflected on the genuinely Delta experience we had witnessed and were currently participating in. On our short return to Helena, we drove through miles of cotton fields, a journey that culminated with our crossing the mighty Mississippi. Blaring from the car stereo were the songs of Robert Lockwood Jr., CeDell Davis, Frank Frost, and Pinetop Perkins, musicians with a direct connection to the surrounding landscape we viewed through our car windows. Their music served as both an accompaniment to the scenery as well our own soundtrack as we journeyed further into the Delta. We were convinced! This was not a mere sightseeing trip or passive visit to a museum. We, the fans, were completely immersed in a performance of the Delta, surrounded by its inhabitants, landscape, and music, cultural and geographical signifiers that validated our desired otherness while providing a theatrical space to perform our own notions of “real” America and, therefore, ourselves.

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Figure 1.1. Sunshine Sonny Payne during a live broadcast of King Biscuit Time. Photograph by author. October 7, 2006.

Figure 1.2. Door from a delivery truck for Interstate Grocer Co. Photograph by author. October 8, 2006.

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Figure 1.3. Muddy Waters’ Cabin at the Delta Blues Museum, Clarksdale, Mississippi. Photograph by author. October 8, 2006.

Figure 1.4. The Crossroads, Clarksdale, Mississippi. Photograph by author. October 8, 2006.

5 It was during this specific sightseeing excursion that I fully realized the fine and often vague line between ethnographer and tourist and came to terms with my dual role as both researcher and the subject of my own research. Although I have attempted to approach the festival as an academic observer, my experiences during the event, within the landscape, and among others who organize and attend the annual event have drawn me into the production, transforming my role from an outside observer into a participant, tourist, and performer of the annual communal gathering. In the introduction to his book Culture on Tour, Edward Bruner poses the question: “Was I a closet ethnographer on tour, or a closet tourist doing ethnography?” (Bruner 2005, 2). Bruner’s question illustrates obvious yet often-overlooked similarities between tourist and ethnographer. Differences arguably exist in their initial intent, yet both are attracted to a specific site through what is perceived to be an opportunity to observe and participate in a cultural experience unobtainable in everyday life. The music ethnographer seeks to capture, translate, analyze, and present a portrait of the music culture being studied. An analysis is based upon photographs, interviews, archival research, video and sound recordings, and documentation of the researcher’s own personal experiences. Once collected and theorized, the findings are shared with colleagues through academic conferences, publications, and lectures, where the “expert” shares his/her experience with others who, like the researcher, are fascinated with experiences of and interaction with musical and cultural otherness. The tourist, while he/she does not approach the culture with the same type of academic rigor, leaves the site with a very similar snap shot, obtained through a collection of tourist commodities including photographs, recordings, souvenirs, communal interactions, and memories of his/her own engagement with the tourist destination and its “unique” cultural objects. Like ethnographers, tourists analyze and share their findings with colleagues through “unofficial” living room lectures and water cooler conferences, where the one who has visited the site, and has the objects to validate the pilgrimage, shares his/her experiences with those who will not or have not yet interacted with the destination. There are obvious similarities in both the collection and presentation of both travelers’ experiences, but academia is clear to mark the difference between tourist and

6 ethnographer. The tourist is believed to be naïve in his/her acceptance of the cultural production, blindly accepting the staged authenticity created by the tourist industry for the tourist. The ethnographer, on the other hand, is expected to see past the facade and document speculative reasons for the production, noting what such a simulation can inform us about the festival space and society more broadly. However, in the production and collective performance of the King Biscuit Blues Festival, the line between reality and staged authenticity is often blurred. On the surface, the presentation and performance of the festival can be described as a mere simulation of the site’s perceived past, yet it is simultaneously a new site that bears no resemblance to the past, nor does it try to, focusing instead on the realization of “authentic” experiences and newly formed traditions that occur among participants in the present. Therefore, the tourists’ analyses of the destination and their experiences become as crucial as the ethnographer’s analysis in understanding the production, performance, and perception of the collective ritual. The realization of the tourist agency within the presentation and remembrance of the cultural production and my own personal transformation during the festival has led me to move beyond the well-told historical narrative of Helena’s blues tradition, focusing instead on the people who make the annual pilgrimage to Helena each October to perform the multifaceted tradition that the blues represents.

Background and Significance

On November 21, 1941, King Biscuit Time premiered on Helena, Arkansas’ KFFA 1360 AM. As one of the earliest programs in the Mississippi Delta to broadcast the blues, King Biscuit Time provided new opportunities for both regional performers and audiences, establishing Helena, Arkansas, as a center for the performance and dissemination of the blues. The King Biscuit Time program is still on the air, broadcasted daily from the Delta Cultural Center. The continuation of King Biscuit Time has resulted in the creation and promotion of Helena’s multifaceted blues tradition and identity and has established Helena, Arkansas, as a tourist destination that any “true blues fan” must visit.

7 Helena’s renowned blues tradition has become the city’s key tourist draw and its most recognizable cultural exhibit. Since 1986, Helena has hosted each October what is believed by many fans to be among the premiere blues festivals in the world. Due to the city’s association with the historical and continuing radio broadcast and the iconic musicians who made their way through KFFA’s studio; its location in the place where the blues is believed, by many, to have begun; and the provided opportunities for tourist engagement with the festival space and host culture, Helena has become associated by fans around the world with the blues and its annual festival. There are attendees who are unaware of Helena’s musical legacy before the first festival in 1986, yet its formation and continuance is directly linked to a lineage of historic, transforming, and newly formed blues traditions. Helena’s rich musical and broadcasting traditions and its position in blues history and mythology have resulted in the formation of its promoted blues identity and the reason for the city’s annual celebration. Blues fans, however, often say that the reason for their return attendance and allegiance to the tourist space is the opportunity to participate and perform in the annual festival experience. The festival may be firmly rooted in notions of Helena’s blues past, but it is only fully realized through the visitor’s participation in and performance of Helena’s blues present. The importance placed on both past and present in the fulfillment of the tourist experience suggests that Helena’s historical traditions are enhanced by newly formed social traditions that offer both the host and guest communities unique opportunities to both witness and perform notions of cultural authenticity in a theatrical space that, as one attendee stated, “reeks the blues.” In this dissertation, I illustrate that Helena’s annual festival emerged and has evolved through a history of complex socio-musical interactions between host and guest cultures and between individuals and institutions. More importantly, I explore the larger issue of the blues as a sonic signifier of “tradition,” arguing that, for many attendees, the music merely serves as a soundtrack, which accompanies newly formed traditions created and maintained within the festival space. For the majority of the people I have met, the King Biscuit Blues Festival is not a passive event that one attends on occasion, but rather an important part of one’s yearly routine and therefore a yearly ritual in one’s life. This observation leads to a series of

8 questions concerning tourist motivation, including: What does this festival mean to the fan? Why has this become such an important event in the lives of so many people? Why do so many people insist on attending this specific festival religiously? And, most importantly, what are their stories? Therefore, in this dissertation, I explore the many ways tourists interact with and perform a music place. Through the theatrics of tourism, Helena’s blues tradition is revitalized each October. For both host and guest communities, the rejuvenation of Helena’s musical and social traditions serves as a signifier of the broader concept of tradition, which provides opportunities to establish new traditions within the festival space. The city is promoted as an authentic site of the Delta and the historic blues tradition. I suggest, however, that it is the personal and communal experiences among all participants during the time and space of the festival that results in the realization of an “authentic” tourist experience.

Review of Literature

A project on music tourism and fan culture draws from several disciplines on a host of topics. To truly understand the presentation and perception of a musical place by both host and guest cultures, an understanding of the blues tradition and its historical and current presence in Helena, Arkansas, is first needed. In addition, an analysis of the concept of authenticity and how this concept is promoted by the tourism industry and realized by the local and temporary communities is also required. For many tourists and locals alike, the line between fabrication and reality is blurred, resulting in a cultural production that borrows from both the constructed and realistic past. In this presentation, concepts of the authentic, often discredited by academia, become as crucial as historical documents in understanding how the blues fan interacts with and transforms notions of the blues and tradition.

9 The Blues and King Biscuit Time

There are many sources that provide valuable background on the blues as both a folk and commercial genre, but few discuss or analyze the significance of the King Biscuit Time legacy on Helena’s current identity as a music place. Exceptions are David Rotenstein’s article “The Helena Blues: Cultural Tourism and African American Folk Music” (1992) and Robert Palmer’s book Deep Blues (1981), the latter being an especially valuable source for exploring the history of the blues in its cultural context. Palmer provides a thorough account of blues history from the nineteenth century to the development of the Chicago sound in the mid-twentieth century, and he devotes an entire chapter to the King Biscuit Time broadcast and the soundscape of Helena, Arkansas. Although this source includes valuable historical and cultural facts, Palmer fails to give adequate attention to recent social structures shaped by the King Biscuit Time broadcasts. Written five years before the premiere festival in 1986, his book does not address the yearly blues festival. In this dissertation, I move beyond the treatment of the King Biscuit phenomenon as a mere historical legacy, focusing instead on the development of the festival as a space for dialogue concerning regional identity for the residents of the Delta and the realization of experiential authenticity for all participants of the annual event. In addition to Palmer’s book, a number of other sources are considered standard in blues literature, such as Charles Keil, Urban Blues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), Samuel Charters B, The Country Blues (New York: Da Capo Press, 1975), Harry Oster, Living Country Blues, (New York: Minerva Press, 1975), Paul Garen, Blues and the Poetic Spirit (London: Edison Press, 1975), Jeff Todd Titon, Early Down Home Blues (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), William Ferris Blues from the Delta. New York: Da Capo Press, 1984), David Evans, Big Road Blues (New York: Da Capo, 1982), Paul Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning (New York: Horizon Press, 1960), Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began (New York: New Press, 1993), Paul Oliver, Conversation with the Blues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Jim O’Neal, The Voice of the Blues (New York: Routledge, 2002), and David Grazian, Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Like Palmer’s Deep Blues, these sources are crucial to an

10 exploration of both the historical and current state of the blues tradition and its presence in Helena, Arkansas. Of special interest for this topic are those studies that deal specifically with the interaction between audience, performer, and place such as Keil (1966), Ferris (1984), and Grazian (2003). In each of these sources, the unique interaction between the blues performer, the audience, and the performance space is discussed, providing theoretical models for examining this continually transforming relationship. Another key blues source for my research is Elijah Wald’s Escaping the Delta (2005). The book’s primary subject is a reevaluation of the myths surrounding Robert Johnson’s career. Wald’s refreshing and insightful approach to reexamining the myths and signifiers of authenticity questions our current conceptualization of the blues and directly connects to my own questions concerning touristic notions of the blues and the marketing of the Delta as a tourist attraction. Wald’s discussion deals primarily with Johnson’s recordings and how they were placed at the heart of the blues canon due to romantic notions constructed during the 1960s folk music revival. I will build upon these ideas, arguing that such signifiers have continued into the present, realized through the recent emergence of blues tourism and that industry’s promotion of music places. As a result, canonic representations of the blues have continued and expanded, giving weight to specific locales, festivals, and performers, which are marketed as evidence of the “authentic” blues tradition.

Authenticity and the Preservation of Culture

Tourists’ perceptions of the festival site are directly connected to individual notions of “authenticity.” Historically, sources have attempted to define and preserve a so- called “authentic” tradition when exploring this term in relation to the blues. This desire for the preservation of authenticity has been a recurring theme in ethnographic literature and explored most thoroughly in folklore studies. The term “authenticity” may be extremely problematic, but it is crucial to this project and raises recurring questions in all fields concerned with documenting, researching, presenting, and interpreting music and culture. Although the concept has been applied to different musical forms and geographical

11 regions by varied disciplines in myriad ways, the themes of preservation and presentation are shared. Within these two broad themes, one can explore the very foundation of the discipline of ethnomusicology and its continuing transformation. A brief discussion of the term “authenticity” and its application in folklore studies grounds my questions concerning authenticity in a body of literature that has explored and continues to explore this concept and its relevance to the study and perception of music and culture. In her book In Search of Authenticity (1997), Regina Bendix traces the term’s development, arguing that while authenticity in the pre-Enlightenment era was primarily concerned with religious and spiritual truth, the Enlightenment directed philosophers to seek authenticity in secular realms. In this quest, the concept of authenticity is often associated with a return to nature, which is clearly seen in Rousseau’s idea of the “noble savage.” According to Lionel Trilling: “From Rousseau, we learned that what destroys our authenticity is society” (1972, 93). For Rousseau, an authentic existence is one in which man returns to his purer state by living in accordance with nature. Referring to Rousseau’s quest for authentic existence, Mira Morgenstern states: “…the attainment of authenticity is always possible, even in the midst of a corrupt and decadent society” (1996, 7). It was precisely this possibility that led and continues to lead scholars, writers, artists, musicians, scientists, the tourist industry, and the general public on a quest for the authentic that is in opposition to what is often interpreted as a decaying and homogeneous American society.2 This influence can be observed in the emergence of disciplines in the 19th century concerned with cultural presentation, documentation, and representation. Within this body of literature, one observes a historical and continued search for the authentic self as well as the concept’s transformation through the quest for and the claiming of authenticity of the

2 The postmodern quest for the “ideal” America is directly related to the Western quest for utopia. Like the touristic perception of the “authentic” America, the ideal society is often believed to be in opposition to the reality of modern life. Although commonly described as a moment or place in the past, the quest for utopia illustrates a hope that the idyllic nature of these places may be regained. For a discussion on the Western quest for utopia see: Schaer, Claeys, and Sargent (2000), Rusen, Fehr, and Rieger (2006), and Kemperink and Roenhorst (2007).

12 “other.”3

Of special interest to my dissertation is the work of John and Alan Lomax. Like earlier song collectors, the Lomaxes focused on the preservation and documentation of what they felt to be disappearing musical forms. This is clearly evident in a quote taken from Alan Lomax’s essay “The Saga of a Folksong Hunter” (1960):

It is only a few sentimental folklorists like myself who seem to be disturbed by this prospect today, but tomorrow, when it will be too late, when the whole world is bored with automated mass-distributed video music, our descendents will despise us for having thrown away the best of our culture (185).

In this statement, Lomax associates preservation and history with notions of authenticity. Lomax desires a return to musical forms that represent the past and serve as opposition to modern forms of music making and dissemination. In this desire for and presentation of the past, one observes not only the preservation of the authentic but also its construction, a process clearly seen and heard in the Lomaxes’ marketing of Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly). Our modern perception of Lead Belly is that of the isolated prisoner and musician who clearly represents the African American folk performer and whose musical output illustrates a repertoire characteristic of “genuine African-American folk music.” This perception is directly linked to Lead Belly’s persona as constructed by the Lomaxes. After the Lomaxes discovered him in Louisiana’s Angola prison, Lead Belly traveled the country with the Lomaxes performing at concerts, dinner parties, and other organized events. Although pardoned and released from prison, he

3 The concept of otherness is a recurring theme in Western philosophy, which suggests difference from one’s self and everyday reality. Edward Said describes the “other” as the opposite, that which is different from and inferior to the West (1979). While otherness is a stated desire for the blues fan and is realized through an interaction with the landscape, the host community, and the blues, I would suggest that for many blues fans, the other is not perceived as inferior but rather as a romanticized ideal. Through the theatrics of tourism, visitors to the festival site believe they have agency in the production and preservation of the festival experience. Therefore, the guest community, for a brief period, is able to become the other and perform notions of their “authentic selves” in a theatrical space that presents the blues, the Delta, and the local culture as evidence of an American utopia.

13 continued to perform in prison clothes at the Lomaxes’ request. Alan Lomax recalls: “When we went to New York, Lead Belly begged to accompany us. My father gave a talk and Lead Belly sang at a smoker given by a Philadelphia club. He was the hit of the evening. Seated at the speaker table, dressed in his convict clothes, which my father had kept” (Cohen 2002, 52). Elijah Wald paints another picture of Lead Belly:

Lead Belly was neither exceptionally devoted to blues nor unaware of the popular music around him, whether black or white. He consistently linked himself to Blind Lemon Jefferson, the biggest star in his home region, and once he discovered that he could attract a white audience, he began dreaming of movies and recordings. The Lomaxes chose to focus on his more traditional repertoire, but when he was left to his own devices he was a big Gene Autry fan, enjoyed singing pop and country tunes like “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes,” “Springtime in the Rockies,” and Jimmie Rodgers yodels and imagined himself performing with Cab Callaway’s band (2004, 233).

In these conflicting representations of Lead Belly, one witnesses an active desire for the preservation of a so-called authentic tradition, a music and culture perceived to be spared from the rapidly changing modern world. Although the Lomaxes’ focus on the musical genre as authentic was not new to the folklore field, their inclusion and showcasing of the performer highlights a transformation in the perception of American roots music and notions of its authenticity. Referring to this transformation, Benjamin Filene explains: “By dispensing with the second-hand interpreters and foregrounding the rural musicians who created the folk music, the Lomaxes added a new source of authenticity - the performers themselves. Purity now was attributed not just to specific folk songs, but also to the folk figures that sang them” (2000, 58). In this connection between authenticity and the individual musician, misrepresented images of African Americans similar to those seen on the minstrel stage are restated and validated, providing a clear connection between the field of folklore and the marketing of a so-called authentic music by the recording and broadcasting industry.

14 A focus on the performer provided audiences during the 1960s folk revival with new criteria for judging authenticity in American folk music, a genre that had only been in the public light since the 1920s. By exoticizing Lead Belly, the Lomaxes established a music, an image, and a way of being that was deemed authentic by the hordes of people who were being introduced to this music for the first time. Although the discovery and marketing of Lead Belly as the quintessential folk musician is a small part of the long and fruitful career of both John and Alan Lomax, I argue that the images and sounds documented, preserved, and exoticized continue to inform our notions of authenticity in American music and are continually used in the marketing of both the blues and the South through the tourist, heritage, and recording industries. More recent folklore scholarship has questioned authenticity’s construction and perception by the public. In his book Romancing the Folk (2000), Benjamin Filene traces the history of an American folk music consciousness from the beginning of the 20th century through the American folk revival of the 1960s. Although Filene questions these constructions, he does not engage in the debate over whether music is authentic or inauthentic. Instead, he explores the making of authenticity in the United States and the resulting meanings for the listeners. According to Filene, authenticity is realized through a public memory constructed by producers, writers, song collectors, and academia through the marketing and promotion of America’s musical past. Filene states: “At base, memory work is a set of goals and cultural strategies - an effort to string lines between past, present, and future” (2000, 131). In this construction, both representations and misrepresentations of culture and place become part of our sonic memory, which directly informs our perceptions of America’s musical past and, in return, our perceptions of musical and touristic authenticity.

Touristic Authenticity

From the above overview of how authenticity has been discussed in folklore studies, it is apparent that the concept, although transforming, is firmly rooted in the preservation,

15 production, and presentation of music and culture.4 Recent scholarship, however, has been more critical of such notions. Of special interest for this project is David Grazian’s Blue Chicago (2003). Grazian explores both the construct of authenticity and how it is created and recreated for blues fans in the Chicago urban blues tourist industry. Grazian explores the merchandising and marketing of music for economic gain and questions our modern- day conceptualizations of what constitutes authenticity in the blues. Although Grazian deals primarily with the urban blues scene in Chicago, his book is a crucial source for understanding the expectations of the blues tourist and how such expectations are realized through a constructed performance of both music and place. Grazian illustrates the fabricated construction of these notions while also pointing to the fact that for the tourist industry and the tourists, the concept is real and is a key marker of their tourist experience. Therefore, one should not merely avoid the issue but rather analyze what this concept means to those who use it as a promotional tactic and to those who utilize it as a signifier of a genuine blues experience. In addition, for many blues fans the concept of authenticity applies to their own experiences within the site rather than just serving as a marker of unadulterated music, therefore returning to Rousseau’s idea of “authentic existence.” While the music is the initial draw for participants to the King Biscuit Blues Festival, once they are at the festival, they find opportunities to perform notions of tradition and community that are in opposition to their everyday lives. The touristic focus on experiential authenticity is evident in the many ways fan culture interacts with the musical place.5

4 The concept of authenticity, when used to describe music, is most often associated with an attempt to replicate historical instruments, performance practice, and timbre. Although many blues fans value historical accuracy in performance, the concept is most commonly used to describe a meaningful experience. I suggest that, in the case of the blues, authenticity is not connected solely to historical recreation but also to present social experiences, which are accompanied and reinforced by the rich musical and performative tradition of the blues. 5 For discussions of the guest culture’s interaction with the tourist site see MacCannell (1976), Smith (1977), Fine and Speer (1981), Bruner (1991), Urry (1992), Cantwell (1993), Reader and Walter (1993), Wang (1999), Filene (2000), Waitt (2000), Cohen (2002), Badone and Roseman (2004), Gibson and Connell (2005), and Kim and Jamal (2007).

16 Of special relevance for this project is anthropologist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s work on tourist interaction. In her book Destination Culture, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett addresses the many ways tourists interact with, perceive, and validate cultural sites. Regarding visitors to Plymouth Plantation, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett states: “Visitors do not ‘passively’ watch a performance on a stage, look at displays in a museum, or take ‘rides’ through installations in a theme park. They actively engage the site and those in it” (1998, 195). According to Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, interaction with the site transfers “authenticity” from a concept used to validate the past into a validation of the present experience, which is realized through the visitors’ engagement with what is alleged to be the very site where the past was created and preserved. Therefore, the festival site, like museums and historical reenactments, puts culture on display, yet differs in the visitor’s perceived experience. Through the festival, the tourist is provided with a means of entering and actively interacting with the displayed culture. Within this interaction, the object on display moves beyond the historical or cultural artifact and includes the festival space and the performers and locals who are seen as the creators of the culture on display. The objectification of the city, its residents, and its music tradition has resulted in a transformation of Helena’s cultural heritage into a touristic commodity. This transformation can be observed in the current regeneration of King Biscuit Time. In New Forms of Consumption: Consumers, Culture, and Commodification (2000), Gottdiener points out that due to a fascination with “otherness,” regional cultures around the world have advertised and marketed differences as tourist destinations. Referring to the promotion of small town America, Jeff Kunerth explains: “Many small towns are betting their futures on an aging population in search of its past. Bypassed by the interstates, those communities hope to draw tourists back off the highways by turning their main streets into living movie sets of small-town America” (qtd. in Rotenstein 1992, 139). Therefore, for the Delta, both otherness and authenticity are manifested in a remembrance and subsequent promotion and performance of an imagined past. Referring to the heritage industry’s promotion of the past as a tourist destination, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett states: “They transport tourists from a now that signifies hereness to a then that signifies thereness. The attribution of pastness creates distance that can be traveled” (1995, 370).

17 Although the above sources provide insight into the transformation of Helena into a constructed tourist site, they do not fully address the agency of the tourist in such a construction. Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (1976) addresses this role, arguing that authenticity is realized by the tourist through a collective experience that is absent in the alienation of modern life. Borrowing from Victor Turner’s work on pilgrimage (1969), MacCannell associates the tourist’s quest for an “authentic” experience with religious pilgrimage. This association provides a theoretical model for exploring the tourist’s role in the realization of an “authentic” performance and in the individual transformative process that occurs through such an experience. The transformative process suggests that the tourist’s quest for authenticity is not rooted solely in musical genre, race, and location, but also in a perceived experience of belonging to the culture being celebrated. Edward Bruner’s Culture on Tour (2005) reinforces this notion. As an anthropologist hired as a tour guide in Bali, Bruner conducted extensive research on the expectations and realizations of authentic performances by cultural tourists. Bruner argues that through witnessing a perceived “authentic” experience, tourists develop a sense of attachment to and a deeper understanding of the host community (Bruner 2005, 147). I suggest that it is through the perceived understanding of the host culture and traditions that tourists take part in the performance of the King Biscuit Festival. Through this performance, tourists become part of the community and take on the responsibility for its realization, well being, and continuance. Host and guest communities meet in a liminal state, united by the desire to revive and save individual and collective notions of tradition. Tamara Livingston defines a revivalist tradition as follows:

Any social movement with the goal of restoring and preserving a musical tradition, which is believed to be disappearing or completely relegated to the past. The purpose of this movement is two fold: 1. To serve as cultural opposition and as an alternative to mainstream culture and 2. to improve existing culture through the values based on historical value and authenticity expressed by revivalists …. Core revivalists, whether insiders or outsiders, tend to feel such a strong connection with the revival tradition

18 that they take it on themselves to “rescue” it from extinction and pass it on to others. (1999, 68,70)

For locals of Helena, the festival weekend provides an opportunity to revive their beloved city, its unique cultural traditions, and collective and individual memories of Helena’s past. Through such a performance, Helena’s uniqueness and cultural significance is passed on to visitors who simultaneously perform newly formed traditions and notions of themselves while returning vibrancy to the city of Helena and its most famous export, the blues. Therefore, the King Biscuit Festival is not a unilateral construction created by the tourist industry for the tourist, but rather a bilateral construction created through a dialogue between and performance by all those who participate in the annual celebration. For the majority of people who participate in Helena’s annual celebration, their only knowledge of Helena is through the performance of the festival. Therefore, “otherness” is not rooted solely in the product of a preserved or constructed past but also in the performance of its present through the establishment of what Neil Rosenberg describes as a “transformation of traditions,” or newly formed traditions, that are based on pre- existing rituals (1993). It is in the creation and continuance of these transforming traditions that authenticity is fully realized. For both host and guest cultures, Helena’s annual production is a revitalization of the blues tradition, which provides a stage and soundtrack for revitalizing and performing notions of kinship, small-town America, and one’s perceived authentic self.

Methodology

As described in my opening monologue, for the past six years, I have immersed myself within the Helena festival culture and community. I have camped alongside other blues fans; sat atop the levee sharing music, drink, and camaraderie; stood alongside others in opposition to forces which threaten the festival; visited fan’s homes outside of the festival weekend; and kept in contact with others through emails, phone calls, facebook, and other forms of social networking. My immersion reflects a desire to conduct fieldwork

19 through a participatory approach, and it has resulted in a real connection to these people and a shared love for the festival and its host city. Therefore, while I focus on the stories and experiences of the many people I have met over the years, this is also the story of myself and my own transformation from tourist and researcher to temporary local and from mere observer to festival participant. My own transformation alludes to one of the key reasons for attending and returning to the festival. This is not merely a place to hear the blues but rather a festival that utilizes the landscape as a stage and the blues as the soundtrack for an annual family reunion, the realization of heightened community, the creation of new traditions, and the remembrance of past experiences. This work includes commentary from performers, festival organizers, and Helena locals, but it is primarily concerned with the fans who, for three days every October, become the locals and the performers of a temporary but “real” blues community in the heart of the famed Arkansas/Mississippi Delta. I conducted extensive archival research in the Delta Cultural Center (Helena, Arkansas), the Delta Blues Museum (Clarksdale, Mississippi), the University of Mississippi Blues Archive (Oxford, Mississippi), the University of Memphis Blues Archive (Memphis, Tennessee), and the Arkansas State Archives (Little Rock, Arkansas). The majority of my research is based on the stories, memories, and analysis of festival participants combined with my own experiences and transformation during the course of my festival attendance. My primary goal is to document and accurately narrate tourist expectations and experiences of the King Biscuit Festival. However, my involvement links me directly to not only the telling but also the production of history. For this reason, this ethnography will also document my experiences with the music and the people and will record my own expectations and understanding of Helena and its annual festival.

Chapter Outline

The following chapter, Chapter 2, titled “Into the Delta: The Blues and the Performance of Place,” introduces the importance of place in our current perceptions of the “authentic” Delta and its soundtrack, the blues. Through an analysis of the Delta’s

20 connections, both real and fabricated, to the historic and present blues tradition, I illustrate a strong association between blues promotion in academia and in the early recording and broadcasting industries and the importance of place in the realization of a postmodern tourist experience. In Chapter 3, “Main Street of the Blues: The Realization, Creation, and Promotion of a Musical Place,” I address the King Biscuit Time legacy as an identifier of local identity and touristic authenticity. By tracing the realization, adoption, and later promotion of Helena as a musical place, I demonstrate the influence that Helena’s historical legacy and its validation and performance by the guest community has on the city’s present identity. In Chapter 4, “Performing and Preserving the Blues: Tourism as Theatrics of a Festival Space,” I explore the many ways that host and guest communities perform the city during the festival. In addition, in this chapter I illustrate how touristic authenticity is realized through ordinary happenings that occur unplanned among the newly formed festival community and within Helena’s backstage areas. Such happenings have resulted in a heightened eminence within the festival community and an adopted agency for the preservation and continuation of both the King Biscuit tradition and the newly formed traditions that are performed within the festival space. In Chapter Five, “We are the Tradition: Individual and Communal Performance of the Blues,” I present three case studies of regular festival participants, arguing that reasons for attending and participating in the event are rooted much deeper than in the festival’s mythological landscape and its accompanying soundtrack. They are also rooted in the creation and preservation of a communal stage that both permits and encourages individual and collective performances of creation, preservation, remembrance, and the memorializing of personal and communal experiences, social interactions, and newly formed traditions that are collectively realized through the annual King Biscuit Blues Festival.

21

CHAPTER TWO

INTO THE DELTA: THE BLUES AND THE PERFORMANCE OF PLACE

Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name (Alice Meynell 1889, 6).

Although place can both consciously and unconsciously inform musical composition, it is not a unidirectional influence but rather a dialogue among place, performer, musical composition, and listener perceptions. Therefore, while the environment contributes greatly to the musical composition, listener perceptions also inform music, which, in turn, informs place. I argue that the Delta can be heard in the blues, but I also suggest that what the listener is hearing and perceiving as the “Delta” is a combination of sonic references to the landscape and the landscape’s romanticized perception. In this chapter, I trace this dialogue through a discussion of the blues genre and its connection to the Mississippi Delta. By tracing the blues from its earliest musical forms to the current marketing and commodification of the blues by the recording and tourism industries, I illustrate that although the Delta informs the blues, the blues also inform the Delta, a complex dialogue that results in a perception of the blues and the Mississippi Delta forged from the listener’s understanding of both lived and constructed reality. This understanding also provides insight into the ways in which fans and tourists interact with, interpret, and shape the Delta’s landscape. Like music, musical places are perceived through a negotiation between history and romanticized notions. Our preconceptions of the

22 Delta and the many ways we interact with the tourist space are a direct result of the close association between music and place, as a closer look at this multifaceted relationship will demonstrate.

Recalling the Delta in the Blues

The song lyrics of Muddy Waters’ “My Home is in the Delta,” the first track of his 1963 album Folk Singer, inform the listener that Waters is leaving Chicago and returning to the place where he and the blues were born, the Mississippi Delta. Although the title and lyrical references provide us with this information, there are musical references as well. Waters avoids the urban guitar style and the forceful, syncopated vocal characteristic of his Chess recordings, instead returning to an acoustic-inspired style that vocally and instrumentally resembles his earliest recordings conducted by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress at Stovall Plantation, Clarksdale, Mississippi (Waters [1941] 1993). This referencing of an earlier recording and therefore an earlier form of the blues illustrates Waters’ personal and musical connection to the Mississippi Delta, through which he reclaims authenticity for his musical output and invites the listener, through musical and textual references, to recall both the landscape and soundscape of the region. Waters’ sonic representation of place illustrates a relationship between the Mississippi Delta and the blues in which landscape informs music and, in return, music informs landscape. In many cases, including the above example, the musician offers insight into this relationship through a deliberate connection to a specific place. For Muddy Waters, this is achieved through the title and lyrics of the song and through stylistic references to his recordings with Lomax at Stovall Plantation. Waters unfolds his own interaction and connection with the Delta and replays it for the listener. For Waters, the Delta represents home but also his own musical past. Therefore, the listener, through Waters’ recollection and sonic depiction, gains insight into the interaction among Waters, the Blues, and the Mississippi Delta, an interaction that directly connects both Waters and the blues to the landscape from which they come.

23 The above example purposely makes the connection between the landscape and the musical composition, but these associations are often inadvertent, occurring through an unconscious representation of both the landscape and the people who call it home. Examples may include the use of local musical instruments or influences from both nature and manmade sounds that make up the sonic environment and therefore the sonic memory of both composer and performer. One such example can be heard in a comparison of two versions of the African American folk song “Shake Em Down.” In Compton Jones’ recording of the song, the instrument of choice is a diddley bow, a one-stringed instrument often constructed by stretching wire against the side of a wall or any flat surface and played by plucking the string with one hand while sliding between pitches with a found object such as a piece of metal or a bottleneck (Jones [1979] 2000). Although the one-string bow is not unique to the Delta, the construction of the diddley bow and its style of playing do reference the Delta, its residents, and African American folk music in one of its earliest forms. A later recording of “Shake Em Down,” played in an early blues style by Ranie Burnette, demonstrates a direct reference to the diddley bow throughout the song’s introduction (Burnette [1979] 2000). Burnette plays the melody on the guitar, and his use of the slide illustrates a sonic connection between blues guitar and the diddley bow, a direct reference to a musical instrument that has its roots in the Mississippi Delta. As with Waters’ return to his earliest recordings, in Burnette’s recording, listeners are reminded through sonic codes of the music’s association with the Delta’s landscape. Deliberate connections between the blues and the Delta illustrate the importance of such an association for claiming or reclaiming authenticity in a musical performance. Unintentional connections suggest that music, at least the blues, is largely informed by the environment in which it is created.

Which Delta Do You Hear?

The blues as a musical genre represents an amalgamation of previous musical styles, including vernacular, popular, sacred, and global music traditions. Although much of the

24 blues’ form, stylistic characteristics, lyrical content, and performative elements can be traced to earlier musical genres, the blues as a distinct musical form is a twentieth-century phenomenon that mirrors the development of the broadcasting, recording, and tourism industries and an increasing fascination with the African American plight and the landscape in which this experience unfolded. Therefore, our twenty-first century concept of the blues is rooted in both the African American experience that gave rise to the blues and in the genre’s presentation and misrepresentation by power-holders of the early media and the tourist industry who marketed and subsequently defined the blues based on those musical and cultural elements which confirmed their own preconceived notions of the “Delta.” Markers of authenticity in the blues include musical characteristics, instrumentation, image, social status, race, and sex. Each of these signifiers manifests in its own unique fashion, but each is also directly related to the importance of place in the composition, presentation, and reception of the blues. Therefore, the notion of place is crucial in signifying to many modern blues fans and tourists that the performance they are listening to, viewing, or participating in is an “authentic” blues piece, composed by an “authentic” blues musician in an “authentic” blues place. The concept of authenticity is therefore central in the presentation and subsequent realization of the fan’s listening, viewing, and/or participatory experience. The concept is used regularly when discussing the legitimacy of the blues as a “true” American genre and performers as convincing blues musicians; it is also employed when discussing the Delta and one’s interaction with and within the space. The myriad ways in which the concept of “realness” is used to describe the blues tradition suggests a close relationship between the performers, the music, their place of origin and performance, and the ways we as blues fans interact with each. A closer look at the performance and promotion of the Delta will further illustrate the region’s importance in the realization of what is considered by both host and guest communities to be a key signifier of an “authentic blues experience.”

25 The Delta

The Mississippi River Delta region, as defined by the Lower Mississippi Delta Commission, consists of 219 counties along the lower Mississippi River from the states of Kentucky, Louisiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee (Delta Teaching Initiative). Although this description geographically defines the Delta, popular conceptions of the Delta limit it to a much smaller area, including those counties in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana that border the Mississippi River. It is within this defined cultural region that popular culture, folklore, and the media inform us that the blues were born and survive. In her novel Delta Wedding, Eudora Welty describes the Delta as follows:

In the Delta, most of the world seemed sky. The clouds were large-larger than horses or houses, larger than boats or churches or gins, larger than anything except the fields the Fairchild’s planted. Her nose in the banana skin as in the cup of the lily, she watched the Delta. The land was perfectly flat and level but it shimmered like the wing of a dragonfly. It seemed strummed, as though it were an instrument and something had touched it. Sometimes in the cotton were trees with one, two, or three arms — She could draw better trees than those were. Sometimes like a fuzzy caterpillar looking in the cotton was a winding line of thick green willows and cypresses, and when the train crossed this green, running on a loud iron bridge, down in the center like a golden mark on the caterpillar’s back would be a bayou. (1946, 4)

Eudora Welty’s description of the Delta paints a striking image of miles and miles of open cotton fields, mirrored by the miles and miles of open sky. Scattered among this openness are small river towns, which provide brief shape to the otherwise flat and monotonous landscape of the Mississippi Delta. The primary income for this region comes from cotton and other agriculture, illustrating a landscape that has not only a connection with its residents but also an interaction with them. It is within this interaction that one can

26 observe a clear and entrenched relationship between the blues and the Mississippi Delta, as a closer look at the field holler’s relationship to the landscape and its direct influence on the blues tradition will demonstrate.

Hearing the Delta in the Blues

Historically, the holler served more than an aesthetic purpose. It was also a form of communication, a form of expression, and a means of passing the workday. Hollers were often specifically named in relationship to their context. For example, there were “cotton hollers,” “cornfield hollers,” “field hollers,” “hunting hollers,” and “water calls” (Epstein 2006, 46). In each of these holler styles, both the character and its performance were intended for a specific task. In other words, hollers interacted with the particular task and those performing it. In this context, the field holler, although accompanying the landscape, is also part of it, a soundtrack to working the Delta’s land. Fredrick Olmstead’s account of his first encounter with hearing a holler reinforces this connection:

Suddenly one raised such a sound as I never heard before: a long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling and breaking into falsetto, his voice ringing through the woods in the clear, frosty night air, like a bugle call. As he finished, the melody was caught up by another, and then, another, and then by several in chorus…After a few minutes I could hear one urging the rest to come to work again, and soon he stepped toward the cotton bales, saying “Come brederen come; lets go at it; come now, echo! Roll away! Eeoho, eeoho, eeoho, weeioho-i!” – and the rest taking it up as before, in a few moments they had their shoulders to a bale of cotton and were rolling it up the embankment (qtd in Epstein 1977, 182).

The above account describes both the function of the holler and its relationship to the land. Olmstead’s method of description is worthy of observation. He does not describe the music in strictly musical terms, but instead includes the landscape in which he experiences

27 the music. Like the wind, the holler rings through the woods, serving as an accompaniment to the landscape in which it was created. An analysis of the field holler and its influence on early blues styles will further illustrate the relationship between both styles and the Delta’s landscape.6 Although the blues were influenced by a host of styles, the field holler contributes greatly to the melodic phrasing, vocal quality, form, and lyrical content of the genre’s development. Eileen Southern discusses the similarities between the blues and field hollers: “The voice quality was strained, raspy, abrasive, nasal, and fierce; there was plenty of falsetto, humming, growling, whatever it took to sing the lament or tell the story. The melodies were strangely atonal in the manner of a field holler” (1983, 370). In addition to the vocal freedom and phrasing which directly influenced the blues, call-and-response also contributed greatly to the general form of the blues. A musical technique used in the field holler as a form of communication between workers, call-and-response directly connected both worker and holler to the landscape. Therefore, in the blues, call and response references this connection. One example of a field holler is Bama’s “Levee Camp Holler,” in which his voice can be described as forceful and open, qualities that most likely originated with the holler’s purpose as a work song and the singer’s need to project across a large area (Bama 1997). The repetitive and call-and-response nature of the text and melody reinforces important statements in the holler. This is further reinforced through the clearly annunciated text, sung in a full voice throughout phrases and finally tapering off to a hum or moan. The modal, melodic phrasing takes on a continuous quality which, like the Delta’s landscape, is flat, interrupted by small pauses and represented musically by vocal slides and sudden bursts of emotional falsetto. The defining musical characteristics that connect the field holler to the land also directly influenced the development of the blues. Therefore, the retention of these elements in blues music references the holler, the Mississippi Delta, its residents, and their interaction. This influence is also manifested in the purpose and meaning of these genres.

6 For a detailed discussion on the origins of the field holler see Southern (1983), Lomax (1993), and Floyd (1995).

28 According to Alan Lomax, the purposes of the field holler were self-awareness, self- identity, and communication. Lomax recounts his observation of hollers in the prison:

A convict, by raising his holler from time to time during the long day of toil, could announce his existence and fend off the crushing weight of prison anonymity; his signature songs voiced his individual sorrows and feelings. By this means, he located himself in the vast fields of the penitentiary (1993, 273).

Lomax’s interpretation of the field holler suggests that establishing identity, emotion, and place within the social situation is the key function of the holler. Although through the transformation from field holler to the blues these musical and social characteristics were filtered through the media and, thereby, altered in order to meet the demands of the record producers and the commercial demographic, several elements of the field holler remained. These elements located the blues musician in the Mississippi Delta and in a direct lineage of African American folk music. Their retention is evident in the free melodic contour, free rhythm, and call-and-response form heard in many early blues songs. A clear example can be heard in a recording of Rube Lacy’s “Mississippi Jail House Groan ”(Lacy 1993). As in a holler, the melody is modal and takes on a continuous free- flowing quality, which seems to mirror the uninterrupted landscape of the Mississippi Delta. Lacy interrupts his singing with brief guitar riffs that serve as a response to the call of his vocal statements. In this recording, one hears a direct connection between the holler and the blues and therefore between the blues and the landscape of the Mississippi Delta. Charlie Patton’s “Screamin and Hollerin the Blues” reinforces this connection (Patton 2003). The title of the piece implies that Patton was aware of the connection between musical genres. In this early blues recording, one can hear shifts in vocal timbre, a fluid melodic contour, and frequent slides, characteristics likely borrowed from the field holler. As in Rube Lacy’s recording, the continuously rising and falling vocal line is frequently interrupted by the guitar. Although this example is rhythmically and melodically more defined, the field holler’s influence can still be heard, illustrating its role in the development of the blues, and further connecting the Delta blues to earlier forms of

29 African American folk music, which were created not merely for aesthetic purposes but also as a tool for interacting with others and the landscape of the Mississippi Delta. Later recordings, such as Waters’ “I Feel Like Going Home,” illustrate both the unconscious continuation and the purposeful inclusion of such a connection by blues artists (Waters [1963] 1999). Waters returns once again to his earliest recordings through a direct borrowing of his earliest recorded song, “Country Blues # 1” (1941). In his 1963 recording, Waters slows down the tempo and, through the use of reverb and a drawn-out voice, creates an open texture that attempts to recapture the musical and spatial qualities captured in Lomax’s field recordings, while also painting a sonic image of the land from which his earliest recordings were made.7 Waters’ return to an earlier recording and his exaggeration of its stylistic qualities illustrate a return to both the field holler, Waters’ musical past, and the landscape from which both developed. Through Waters’ establishment of this sonic and textual connection, the listener can hear the Delta in the blues.8 The music of artists such as Charlie Patton and Muddy Waters was initially viewed as exotic by the early commercial demographic; however, its borrowing and transformation of the field holler created a music that, through musical metaphor or sonic coding, recalled a past musical genre situated within the landscape of the Mississippi Delta. This remembrance of place and its connection to music is evident in Mississippi blues performer Booker White’s description of the blues’ origin:

That’s where the blues start from, back across them fields, you know under them old trees, under them old log houses, you know. Guys will sit there at night – the moon was shining - and drink, you know…. It didn’t start in no city, now. Don’t ever get that wrong. It started right behind one of them mules or one of them log houses or the levee camp. That’s where the blues sprung from. I know what I am talking about (qtd. in Evans 1982, 43).

7 For a detailed discussion on Muddy Waters and the transformation of his song “Country Blues # 1,” see Filene (2000). 8 For a detailed discussion of the fabrication of space in the early recording industry see Doyle (2005).

30 This connection is also noted by Muddy Waters in a 1941 interview with Alan Lomax. After recording the “Country Blues,” Lomax asks about the song’s origin. Muddy Waters replies: “Well this song comes from the cotton field” (Waters [1941] 1993). Early field collectors were aware of the relationship between hollers and the blues, but their descriptions often focused on shared musical characteristics as a means of validating the blues as an “authentic” African American form. For example, Lomax states: “The principal blues melodies are, in fact, holler cadences, set to a steady beat and thus turned into dance music and confined to a three-verse rhymed stanza of twelve to sixteen bars” (1993, 275). In comparison with the previous quotes by Booker White and Muddy Waters, Lomax provides a very different description of the relationship between the blues and the holler. Lomax’s description is based in the immediately observable: the technical, musical characteristics that can be discovered through a comparison of the two genres. White’s and Waters’ descriptions are structured around remembrance and its connection to the landscape. White’s description vividly describes the field holler’s connection to the land, emphasizing the levee camp, working behind a mule, and an old log house. Waters does not refer to the blues as a representation of the landscape, but instead places it within the landscape. For White and Waters, the blues, like cotton, sprang from the landscape in which it was created. The media and academia noted the relationship between musical characteristics, but they were often unaware of its underlying coded meaning, which retained a memory of cultural history and place. Therefore, the same musical elements represent two different interpretations. On the surface, the elements reinforced concepts of authenticity and otherness for the commercial demographic. For performers, evidenced by Booker White’s and Muddy Waters’ descriptions, the same characteristics represented a collective memory of the past and directly related the blues to field hollers and, in return, to the Mississippi Delta. A closer look at the ways in which place was appropriated as a marker of cultural and musical authenticity will give further insight into current conceptions of authenticity in the blues. I have suggested a genuine sonic connection between the blues and the Delta. For many, however, the clearest connection lies not in the blues’ functional and cultural connection to the land but instead through romanticized notions presented and reinforced through music theater and the early broadcasting and recording industries.

31 Presenting Place: The Delta as a Marker of Musical Authenticity

The relationship between the Delta’s landscape and soundscape was borrowed and appropriated by the early music industry, which combined African American folk forms that represented and inhabited the Delta landscape with misrepresentations of music and image from the American stage. Through the blues tradition, the exploited images of African Americans on the minstrel stage were appropriated and reinscribed for the commercial demographic, which was being introduced to the blues for the first time. Therefore, the imagery and music of the early blues reinforced misrepresentations of African American culture, the Mississippi Delta, and the very definition of the blues. 9 Although I have argued that these early blues forms are informed by place and therefore represent place, it is important to keep in mind that for most Americans, their introduction to “Black” music was not through the mediated blues but rather through the exploited and misrepresented forms of African American music on the minstrel stage. In minstrel songs, the Delta and the Southern plantation are referenced but also romanticized. The music is connected to the idea rather than the landscape of the Delta. Dan Emmit’s “Dixie’s Land” illustrates this point (1860). The song begins with the line “I wish I was in the land of cotton.” The music and lyrics openly celebrate plantation life, sonically painting a misrepresented and romanticized picture of life in the American South. Unlike the holler, which is connected to those who worked the Delta, “Dixie’s Land” is connected to an idealized concept of the Delta, suggesting a happy-go-lucky place where African American residents sing and dance their way through the day. The iconography represented in an advertisement for Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrels reinforces this argument (figure 2.1).

9 For a detailed discussion on the exploitation and commodification of African American culture by the media see Barlow (1999), Radano (2003), and Wald (2004).

32

Figure 2.1. The Big Black Boom (1878). Reprinted at the British Library http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/evanion/Record.aspx?EvanID=024000000239

In the above image, one sees stereotypical representations of Blackness and the Mississippi Delta, African Americans performing on the landscape rather than interacting with it. The images in this poster, including passing steamboats, bales of cotton, musical instruments, and stereotypical period dress, reconfirmed misrepresentations of both African Americans and plantation life in the Delta. The poster, titled “Levee Life on the Mississippi,” is in stark contrast with the levee life we hear of in Bama’s “Levee Camp Holler.” Romanticized notions of the Delta were accepted as signifiers of authenticity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An advertisement for a performance by the Callender Minstrels reinforces the notions of both Blackness and the Delta (fig. 2.2).

33

Figure 2.2. Callender’s Minstrels, (Post 1875) reprinted at University of Virginia Library Special Collections http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam358/minstrl6.html

In the above advertisement, a backdrop of vast cotton fields accompanies another misrepresented and exploited depiction of African American culture and plantation life. Also included in the backdrop is the lone log cabin. Each of these images serves as a signifier of both Blackness and the American South. Although this type of imagery is today seen as exploited and misrepresented depictions of African American culture and experience in the South, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was accepted as reality. Sam Dennison states:

The black represented on the minstrel stage was, in summarizing characteristics stressed through songs, sketches, and dances, unrecognizable as the actual black in bondage. Yet this image was disseminated and accepted internationally as the true black. Contradictions between myth and fact melted before the avalanche of songs, depicting the happy plantation slave. Living on de old plantation and whiling away the evening hours playing on his ole banjo (1982, 154).

34 These examples, from the iconography of the minstrel stage, illustrate our many misconceptions of the Mississippi Delta and the people who call it home. The American public’s misunderstanding of African American music and culture was formed by misrepresented images, sounds, and ideologies that in turn formed the basis for judging whether a musical piece was an authentic representation of the South. As the blues became a recorded and disseminated genre, misperceptions of authentic African American culture were both accepted and reinforced by the early recording industry and its early recording artists. Therefore, while many songs reference the Delta, they also reference a constructed Delta forged through a misrepresentation of the interaction between residents of the Delta and the landscape. Such connections can be heard in Huddie Ledbetter’s “Pick a Bale of Cotton” (Ledbetter 1996). Although the song is an adaptation of an African American work song, Ledbetter’s joyous dance-like interpretation resembles Emmett’s “Dixie’s Land” more than Bama’s “Levee Camp Holler.” In Ledbetter’s song, the Delta’s landscape is recalled through references to its most fruitful crop, cotton, and the legacy of slavery in the United States. These references, I argue, are not realized solely through the interaction between workers and the land but also through misrepresentations of African American folk music and the imagined landscape of the Mississippi Delta. The first African American performers to enter the broadcasting and recording industry were met with extreme obstacles rooted in Jim Crow legislation. These obstacles, created by the white owners of broadcasting and recording corporations, were established as a method of appropriation and, in return, a means of preserving the idea of the exotic other. Radio’s format and dissemination produced a market that in itself was more prone to desegregation, but the broadcasting and recording industries attempted to preserve the division of black and white through the use of stereotypes of African American musicians and their music.10 The recording industry set out to present Black performers in a way that mirrored the presentation of Blackness on the nineteenth-century minstrel stage, a misrepresentation

10 For a further discussion on the segregation of the American airwaves see Barlow (1999) and Radano (2003).

35 which was rooted in and governed by nineteenth-century racial ideology.11 One way the early broadcasting industry attempted to preserve stereotypical images was to hold tryouts for African American performers to judge if their dialect was authentic. If black performers did not pass the tryout, they were given instruction by white performers, who had built their careers as black imitators in minstrelsy (Barlow 1999, 30-31). Johnny Lee, an African American comic from New York City, states: “I had to learn to talk as white people believed Negroes talked in order to get the job” (qtd in Barlow 1999, 31). The connection between the pursuit of musical and performance authenticity and nineteenth-century racial ideology is also evident in constructions of place. The construction of Blackness was interchangeable with romanticized notions of the Mississippi Delta, and for many listeners it was the combination of the two that validated the performer and performance. Early race records borrowed images of the South and stereotypical representations of African Americans from the minstrel stage. Posters advertising Victor and Okeh Records, pioneers of the first race series, borrowed directly from the minstrel stage to connect race records with romanticized notions of Blackness in the American South. By utilizing settings and images reminiscent of the plantation scenes in figures 2.1 and 2.2, their advertisements formed a direct connection to a place, the Mississippi Delta, while also reinforcing the happy, carefree portrayal of the African American in that setting. Through their association with minstrel theater, such signifiers of the South thereby reinforce the connection between Blackness and Southernness. An emphasis on the stereotypical image of Blackness and Southernness is also seen in the commodification of the blues performer. One such example is Big Bill Broonzy, who in 1937 was recording in Chicago with a full horn section. Just one year later, Broonzy was presented on stage at Carnegie Hall as an Arkansas sharecropper visiting the city for the first time and wearing newly-purchased shoes for the occasion. Similar constructions of the “real blues image” can be seen in the later career of Howlin’ Wolf, who performed on stage in Chicago dressed in a tuxedo. However, by the 1960s, Wolf had adopted the rural, down-south image audiences expected from an “authentic” blues

11 For a detailed discussion on the role that race played in the marketing of authenticity see Radano (2003) and Ramsy (2003).

36 performer, frequently appearing at folk festivals in a straw hat, overalls, and work boots. (Hoffman 2004). The presentation of Big Bill Broonzy and Howlin’ Wolf constructs the “real blues image” through an appropriation of imagery associated with stereotypical representations of African Americans. Although the music performed by both musicians forged and represented the Urban Blues sound, both were coined “authentic” largely in relation to their willingness to adopt anticipated markers of authenticity. For Broonzy, being barefoot proved he was from the “home of the blues”; for Wolf, it was his adopted stereotypical rural image. It is obvious from the above discussion that place was a crucial factor in the development, representation, and commodification of the blues. The connection between the blues and the landscape in which it was created manifests in lived experience, as is represented in the retention of musical elements derived from the field holler and in romanticized notions rooted in imagery from the minstrel stage. Both the music and images reference the Mississippi Delta and signify authenticity. In this dialogue between sonic and visual representation and between lived experience and constructed reality, the blues and the Delta are performed. An understanding of the ways in which place is associated with the historic and current blues tradition is crucial in understanding the ways in which the Delta is perceived as a music place. Through the theatrics of tourism, both the real and imagined Delta and the blues tradition come alive, providing a theatrical space and a soundtrack to perform perceptions of the blues, the landscape, America’s past, and notions of ourselves.

Promoting Place: Tourism and the Realization of an Authentic Musical Site

The importance of place in the realization of a unique tourist experience can be witnessed in both the presentation and marketing of specific blues sites by the tourist and heritage industries and in the ways in which visitors interact with and ultimately perform

37 the landscape. The use of place as a signifier of genuineness is the result of a complex dialogue between sonic representations manifested in the blues through the retention of African American folk music and its cultural and functional connections to the land and through semiotic references rooted in the appropriation and misrepresentation of both Blackness and Southernness forged through minstrelsy and reinforced through decisions made by the recording, broadcasting, tourism, and heritage industries. In this dialogue, place is sonically and visually represented as both lived experience and as a romanticized construction. In both manifestations, the blues represents more than a musical form; it is also a signifier of “authentic” America that has and continues to be replayed in the performance of both the blues and the Mississippi Delta. A closer look at the ways which place is used to validate and authenticate the tourist experience in Helena, Arkansas, will further illustrate the continuation of this complex dialogue concerning place, music, and authenticity. The music is certainly the key draw to the city. The musicians who called Helena home serve as a who’s who of the blues: Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Lockwood, Jr., Pinetop Perkins, Roosevelt Sykes, Frank Frost, and Robert Nighthawk were all residents who have become canonic representations of the “authentic” blues tradition. In the Delta Cultural Center, which houses exhibits on the city’s and region’s history and culture, Helena’s famed and current blues tradition and their iconic performers are preserved for future generations. In this preservation, both the social implications of the blues and the reality of lived experienced are highlighted. However, preservation is also supported by blues pilgrims who are in search of an “authentic” experience of the Mississippi Delta. For many blues fans, a trip to the Mississippi Delta is not a search for a historic or living tradition but instead a step back into the past, which provides an opportunity through the theatrics of both the music and the landscape to witness and perform their own notions of the unadulterated blues. Therefore, while the initial reasons for visiting the city are grounded in the historic blues tradition, the tourist experience is validated through a pilgrimage to and interaction with Helena, a city that is presented and realized through a communal celebration of the landscape and soundscape of both the historic and romanticized city.

38 The theatrical nature of Helena is clearly promoted as a tourist attraction, as seen in the following description from Steve Cheseborough’s Blues Travelling: The Holy Sites of the Delta Blues:

The blues world hasn’t changed as rapidly as the rest of the country; in many ways it hasn’t changed a whole lot in the hundred years since the blues began. There are still cotton fields, shacks, and barbeque spots. There are courthouses and jails where defendants-many of them poor and black- receive some kind of justice. There are roads, narrow, twisting, dark, and poorly marked, leading through fields, woods and more fields, past cotton gins and other creeks. There are trains. And there is always the river- the big river with its boats, birds, fish, fisherman, levees, and bridges, its precious silt, its threats of flood.

There are old storefronts and depots in front of which the crowds gathered to listen to Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, or another of the hundreds of blues singers, most of them unrecorded and now unknown, who sang their hearts out as they passed through. And there are places where people still laugh, dance, drink, and listen to the blues.

This book will help you find what is left in the Mississippi blues world. And it will help you remember and visualize what is gone and to pick up clues from the songs, the landscape, and the literature. Let’s go (2004, 9-10).

This call for a blues pilgrimage, reinforced through the subtitle of the book, The Holy Sites of the Delta Blues, offers visitors to the Delta a guidebook for exploring the past glory of the Mississippi Delta and its most famous export, the blues. In Cheseborough’s description, the Delta and the people who call the region home are presented as tourist attractions. The leisure class, who have the luxury to take time off work and pay for gas, lodging, and food, are able to view a culture that validates their pre-conceived notions of the Delta and its cultural manifestations. Cheseborough’s description transforms the reality

39 of life into what is perceived to be a real-life performance where thousands of tourists can experience “supposed” life in the Mississippi Delta. Understanding the connection between Helena’s landscape, its soundscape, and the blues fans’ preconceived notions is crucial in our understanding of why people travel to the city and how a pilgrimage to the supposed birthplace of the blues during Helena’s annual festival weekend is perceived and realized. While authenticity is a shared concern among those attending and participating in the festival, the term’s application to a musical genre is secondary for many attendants. A perceived authenticity is realized instead through the shared experience of being a blues fan, which includes belonging to and participating in a transient community of like-minded individuals and, for many, the annual pilgrimage to Helena. This small river town in the heart of the famed Yazoo/Mississippi Delta signifies the blues and American tradition for these fans, while providing a stage for unfolding both tourist desires of otherness and romanticized notions of both collective and individual identity. Visiting the Delta enhances one’s listening and tourist experience, while the landscape, like the music, also serves as a signifier of broader concepts of tradition, realized through the annual pilgrimage to and performance on a landscape that is perceived to be the place where the blues were born and continue to thrive. The physical site is a mandatory tourist destination for any true blues fans, but authenticity is only fully realized through an interaction with Helena during the King Biscuit Festival weekend. During the first weekend of October, individual blues fans from around the globe become part of a tourist community. The annual blues pilgrimage is therefore a rite of passage, in which the mundane everyday life is put aside for an authentically-perceived experience formulated around the blues but realized through an interaction with the landscape, communal participation, the act of sightseeing, and the performance of their own self-constructed or self-realized selves.

Touring Place: Interactions with the Delta as a Rite of Passage

Borrowing from Van Gennep’s discussion of rites of passage ([1960] 1966), I suggest that the King Biscuit Blues Festival is a transformative event, allowing blues fans

40 to detach from their former selves and momentarily perform, experience, and participate in a liminal community within a specific landscape that signifies cultural otherness through the performance of what is perceived to be a disappearing America. Van Gennep outlines three stages of a rite of passage: separation, liminality, and re-incorporation. A closer look at the initial stage of separation will demonstrate the passage from everyday life to the annual weekend performance of the festival space and illustrate how notions of place, both real and fabricated, validate this transformation. Van Gennep states: “Whoever passes from one to the other finds himself physically… in a special situation for a certain length of time; He wavers between two worlds” ([1960] 1966, 18). For blues fans, the two worlds are represented by 1) their everyday lives, which are governed by work and responsibilities at home, and 2) their festival persona, which is free from real-life responsibilities and allowed briefly to participate in a blues utopia, where blues fans from around the world come together in a communal celebration of the music, the landscape, and idealized notions of small town America. There is no single rite for transitioning between everyday life and the hyperreality of the festival experience. Instead, tourists go through a series of preparatory rites as they plan their immersion into and interaction with the Delta, its inhabitants, and its unique cultural manifestations. Books on specific sites, the larger cultural region, and the blues are purchased, read, studied, and bookmarked. Artists are Googled, downloaded, viewed, and listened to. Clothes are carefully selected so that the tourists may blend in with the host and/or newly formed festival community. The weather is carefully studied. Tents and sleeping bags are pulled out of the closet. Menus are planned, and food and alcohol are purchased. Although activities vary among individual tourists, each suggests a desire to fit in and function properly within the temporary community. Through a series of preliminal rites, tourists begin the transition between “real life” and the performance of the festival culture long before the physical pilgrimage is made. When the time comes to board a plane, crank the car, or load the family into the RV, these tourists have already mentally made the transition between the mundane and the sacred. The transition, however, is only fully realized when one first enters and interacts with the Delta’s landscape. Blues tourists prepare themselves for the transformation through guide books, recordings of famed musicians, and shared experiences, but it is only

41 fully realized when they cross a symbolic threshold, enter a new world, and momentarily leave their everyday lives behind. It is here that the connection between the blues and the Delta’s landscape is fully realized. Preconceptions of the landscape’s authenticity provide markers for the visitor to interact with and therefore complete the transformation from everyday reality to another place, another time, another way of life. As one gets closer to the festival site, one is reminded of the significance of this cultural region. Tourists come to Helena from various locations and via various routes. A closer look at one specific path to the festival site will illustrate the transformative process. For many blues fans, the festival experience begins when they land at the international airport in Memphis, a city billed as the “Birthplace of Rock and Roll” and the “Home of the Blues,” titles that are proudly displayed within the airport, accompanied by images of Elvis Presley, Isaac Hayes, and BB King, some of the region’s most iconic and recognizable musicians (figure 2.3).

Figure 2.3. Memphis International Airport Baggage Pick-Up. Photograph by author. March 27, 2010

Upon exiting the terminal, blues fans are met with corporate advertisements which borrow from the region’s blues and rock-and-roll identity, signs which promote tourist destinations such as Sun Records, Stax Records, the Rock and Soul Museum, Graceland, and the legendary Beale Street. The smells of BBQ linger from the “authentic” Memphis

42 restaurants that fill the airport, many of which, such as Interstate BBQ (figure 2.4), are as recognizable as the musicians whose recordings are piped into the accompanying soundscape.

Figure 2.4. Jim Neely’s Interstate BBQ (Memphis Airport). Photograph by author. March 27, 2010.

For many tourists, such iconography combined with the supposed sounds, smells, and tastes of the Delta provide the initial markers that they have arrived. Leaving the airport, visitors to the Delta are met with billboards that once again promote music sites and ensure that they have indeed made it to the “cradle of the blues” and “the birthplace of rock and roll.” On the first leg of the trip from cosmopolitan Memphis to rural Helena, tourists leave Memphis via hwy 61, promoted by the tourism industry on roadside markers and travel literature as the “Blues Highway” (Figure 2.5).

43

Figure 2.5. The Blues Highway. Photograph by author. March 27, 2010.

On Highway 61, tourists cross into Mississippi and begin their final journey into the place where the blues were born. Along the drive, historical markers celebrating blues artists, civil war battles, and the region’s natural beauty are viewed through car windows. Welcome signs greet tourists and blues fans, reminding them of the Delta’s hospitality and the festival experience they are already participating in. Along with the iconography and advertisements that line the legendary highway, tourists are further drawn into the production by the landscape. Miles and miles of open cotton and soybean fields, the sparse placement of homes, and the occasional desolate town reinforce the media’s representation of the landscape and reaffirm that they have entered the famed Delta region. After a brief drive through this inviting and reaffirming landscape, tourists meet the intersection of highways 61 and 49. Blues lore informs us that it is at this location that the King of the Delta Blues, Robert Johnson, traded his soul for a virtuosic guitar style that would influence generations of blues and rock musicians. Johnson’s legendary crossroads are claimed and promoted by cities throughout the Delta, the most famous being the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi. For many tourists, the intersection of highways 61

44 and 49 evokes blues and place authenticity, reaffirming that they are in the heart of the famed and mythological Delta. Turning on to Highway 49, blues fans make their final leg of the pilgrimage to Helena. Along the highway, signs advertising the festival and Helena’s connection to the Delta are displayed. Finally, in the distance one can see the bridge that crosses the Mississippi River and provides the final portal into Helena, the “Main Street of the Blues.” Upon arrival, tourists are greeted by signs, as seen in figures 2.6 and 2.7, that welcome them to the city, reconfirming that not only have they reached the home of the blues but they are indeed insiders, welcome to participate in its annual performance.

Figure 2.6. JB’s Spirit Shop. Photograph by author. October 6, 2007.

45

Figure 2.7. River Bend Restaurant. Photograph by author. October 6, 2007.

The journey into Helena and the interaction with the Delta’s landscape serve as a threshold, a portal that signifies a transformation from everyday life to a transient community that performs notions of the Delta, cultural otherness, and individual and collective identity. It is in this process of transformation that the notions of place become relevant. Blues fans can attend blues festivals across the globe on any given weekend of the year, but there is only one King Biscuit Festival. Situated in the heart of the Delta, Helena does not merely host a festival but becomes a festival, allowing blues fans a place to celebrate not only the music but also the land from which it came. Therefore, the tourist’s individual and collective transformative experiences are only realized through the transformation of the city, which reaffirms preconceived notions of the authentic Delta.

Conclusion

The “real” and “fabricated” relationship between the blues and the Delta points to a historic and current dialogue concerning the importance of place in the realization of an

46 “authentic” blues experience. The connection between place and sound is evident in the borrowing of pre-existing musical forms, such as the field holler, which was directly connected to the land from which it developed. However, the connection is also evident in the appropriation of this connection in the marketing of the blues as a popular genre and Helena as a tourist destination. In both manifestations, the blues represents more than a musical form; it is also a signifier of “authenticity” that has and continues to be replayed in the performance of both the blues and the Mississippi Delta. This performance reinforces postmodern notions of perceived authenticity and place. Nicola MacLeod states: “If postmodern society is characterized by the dislocation of people from their temporal and spatial identities, then it may be argued that the postmodern condition is that of placelessness” (2006, 226). The increasing homogeneity of American society and the perceived continued disappearance of regional and national identity manifest, for many, in a sense of dislocation but also in a nostalgic desire to witness and interact with a “real” American place in which the tourist can entertain theories of his/her own past and present through the performance of a communal experience in a specific, “genuine” place. In “Blues Traveling, the Holy Sites of the Delta Blues,” Steve Cheseborough describes the King Biscuit Festival as follows:

This huge, free, three day festival takes place on three stages in historic downtown Helena, The setting contributes as much as the music does to the good feeling here. At the main stage, the audience sits on the levee. Vendors set up on the streets, including local folks selling home-cooked foods. Musicians, too, are allowed to set up and play on the street, and some top-notch ones do. Local stores, bars, and restaurants stay open, many of them enjoying their busiest days of the year. There is an acoustic/heritage stage with intimate performances from acoustic or smaller-group acts and a gospel stage. The spirit of Sonny Boy Williamson seems to hover over the proceedings, inspiring the performers and relaxing the audience (2004, 58).

47 Cheseborough’s discussion of Helena’s blues tradition does not mention Helena’s famed musicians by name but rather describes them through the landscape on which they perform. In his brief description, we are reminded that the festival takes place in “historic downtown Helena,” which is as important to the tourist experience as the music. We are reminded of the city’s proximity to the Mississippi River through a description of the main festival’s stage. Cheseborough does not disclose the stage’s location but rather refers to it as a place where tourists sit to experience the featured artists. He reminds us of the opportunities to experience small town America and its musical and local traditions by mentioning street performers, local merchants, and intimate acoustic sets on the Heritage stage. Cheseborough focuses primarily on individual and communal interaction with and within the landscape of the festival space. For blues fans visiting the Delta, notions of authenticity are not rooted solely in witnessing a preserved past or interacting with historic objects, but also in individual and collective performances of the blues tradition in real space and in real time. As Trouillot states: “Authenticity is not a type or degree of knowledge, but a relationship to what is known” (Trouillot 1995, 148). In the case of the blues tradition, what is known is a complex dialogue based in both lived experience and constructed notions of the past and present. Although contextualized very differently, they both rely on a specific place, Helena, Arkansas, as the stage for unfolding these notions. Through such theatrics, the landscape of the Mississippi Delta, like the blues, is collectively performed. It is a performance that unfolds the past and authenticates the present through the real and imagined landscape and soundscape of the Mississippi Delta. A discussion of Helena’s historic and transforming blues tradition will further illustrate the importance of place in the realization, by both host and guest communities, of Helena as a musical place.

48

CHAPTER THREE

MAIN STREET OF THE BLUES: THE REALZATION, CREATION, AND PROMOTION OF A MUSICAL PLACE

Only that traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better (Thoreau, [1856] 1906, 205).

Ignoring Tradition: Blues as the Sounds of Normalcy

Most blues fans today would immediately associate Helena’s musical legacy with the blues tradition and would begin the city’s musical story with the initial broadcast of King Biscuit Time in 1941; however, this is a relatively recent narration of Helena’s musical history. Until the formation and success of the first festival, the blues and the King Biscuit broadcast were merely sonic side notes in Helena’s vast soundscape. Their neglect is evident in a collection of essays published by the Phillips County Historical Society titled Helena: The Ridge, the River, the Romance (1977). In the publication, local writers and amateur historians share their research and memories of Helena’s past. The collection includes stories of Civil War battles, Native American life on the Mississippi, archeological finds, and personal accounts of growing up in the city. Many of these stories also recall the sounds of Helena. The essay collection includes an array of interesting information on Helena’s musical past. It is also a noteworthy source for what is not included or what is mentioned as a mere side note to Helena’s more “respectable” forms of music making. In an essay titled “Helena’s Music and Musicians,” Helen Mosby recalls:

49 Reflecting on the past, I can understand why our little river town of Helena has been widely recognized as a point of reference in the world of music. It has been called the “little Salzburg,” or as Roy Reed of the New York Times once wrote: “an embryonic music center” (1977, 71).

Mosby’s essay points to a vibrant music scene at the turn of the twentieth century, well before radio and recordings were the primary source for musical dissemination and the sounds of blues, country, and rock were at the top of the popular charts. She points out that Helena had an opera house, built in 1870 and, according to Mosby, modeled on European theaters. Mosby recalls:

It was one of the finest in the South. We were on the circuit for such traveling performances as “Maggie and Jigs,” “Al G Fields Minstrels,” “Blossom Time,” and the “The Merry Widow.” Civic music concerts were also held there, Helena was the smallest town in the United States to be a member of the Civic Music Center (71).

Mosby’s recollection of the Opera house and many of its visiting performers points to a sense of pride for the city’s musical heritage and recalls Helena as a thriving river port city with a vibrant art music and theatrical scene. According to the author, music making was not merely a spectator event but was also an important component of Helena’s local culture. After listing well-known national musicians and ensembles that graced the Old Helena Opera House’s stage, Mosby briefly discusses local musical productions that occurred within the performance space:

Among the successful amateur productions presented at this little Delta La Scala was “Carman” starring Nina Heden (now Mrs. Ervin Beisel) and directed by Kurth Donath of the famous Donath School of Music. Mr. Donath also directed the Melody Club giving annual concerts at the opera house. (71)

50 Following a brief discussion of Helena’s famed opera house, which burned to the ground in 1920, Mosby introduces the reader to a list of noteworthy musicians who started their careers in Helena but soon left the city for bigger opportunities. She points out that, “There was a pretty little girl who sang ‘Mighty Like a Rose’ before a large crowd...She became Frances Greer of the Metropolitan Opera Company” (72). She mentions Bob Evans, who would leave Helena to study at Juilliard and would go on to become a featured singer with the Radio City Music Hall Glee Club and, for two years, the MC for the Miss America Pageant (72), and William Warfield, whom Mosby describes as “one of our greatest baritones” (73). Mosby continues with a list of musicians who, at the time of the publication, were continuing to make their mark in the classical music tradition:

Phillip Best, pianist and artist, Ann Sugg Stone who is known throughout the state as a fine pianist and accompanist; Anna Leslie Coolige Richardson, professional harpist living in the Dallas area; and Christine Coates Norris, a concert pianist who has appeared numerous times as guest artist with important symphony orchestras-she teaches and performs in Columbus Ohio (73).

Mosby’s brief essay provides an introduction to several music traditions and artists in Helena, placing emphasis on the city as a place known for its musical production and heritage. However, she fails to give adequate attention to Helena’s most famed musical tradition, the blues. She briefly mentions the King Biscuit Entertainers, Robert Lockwood Jr. and Sonny Boy Williamson, but they are not the focus of her article, and she fails to allude to their larger influence on the blues tradition and their impact on Helena’s current cultural identity. Written nine years before the première of the King Biscuit Blues Festival, Mosby’s essay suggests that until the formation of Helena’s festival, the blues were thought of as an intriguing side note to the more “credible” forms of music making in the community and that many locals did not realize the far-reaching impact already made by these musicians or the ways that their lives and music resonated with blues and rock fans around the globe. Fans and music scholars have long associated Helena and its iconic musicians with the legendary blues tradition, but many Helena community leaders and

51 locals would not fully accept this identity or realize its potential until the weeks following the first annual festival in 1986. Helena’s self-appointed title as the “Main Street of the Blues” and her adopted tourist identity as a blues Mecca would not be fully realized until the mid 1980s, even though the musical traditions that led to the celebration and transformation of the city’s identity were present throughout the twentieth century. These traditions were heard first in the fields that surrounded Helena’s town center, in the juke joints and makeshift performance venues located throughout Helena, and later over the airwaves when the King Biscuit Time radio program was broadcasted across the larger Delta region. This lineage of musical and broadcasting traditions points to the presence of the blues in Helena throughout most of the 20th century. Sunshine Sonny Payne, famed D.J. of King Biscuit Time, recalls the normalcy of the music in Helena, and the many opportunities for hearing the blues as a young boy growing up there:

On a Saturday afternoon or a Saturday night, all you had to do was go down to the landing where the boats docked, or down along Walnut Street and these guys would be out on the corner singing…They would come into town in the evenings after picking cotton all day, sit right on the piers down by the river with their guitars and their harmonicas and even with Jew’s harps, and they would sing the blues and make it sound like something out of Hollywood, like somebody really produced it. It was unrehearsed. It was the way these people lived. Back in the thirties and forties we had the best musicians in the world, right here in this town (qtd. in Palmer 1981, 175).

Payne’s memories of the music of his youth clarify that the blues could be frequently heard in the city well before King Biscuit’s initial broadcast. The music was therefore not only heard over the airwaves or in an occasional staged performance but was also a soundtrack to growing up in Helena. Payne’s observation that the street and levee performers would come into town from the cotton fields suggests that the music he was hearing, the music he would later spin on KFFA, was a continuation of an older musical tradition with its roots in working the landscape.

52 Payne’s recollection also points to an intriguing curiosity. If locals of the city were aware of the tradition, why did it take forty-five years to realize its potential as a marker of Helena’s unique cultural identity? Blues fans around the globe were discussing the radio show and its iconic musicians following a recognition of Robert Lockwood Jr.’s revolutionary and influential electric guitar style and the success of Sonny Boy Williamson in Chicago in the 1950s, his European tours in the 1960s, and his international fame after recording with the Yardbirds and the Animals. For locals of Helena, though, the show was still regarded as a local radio show, sponsored by a local flour company and featuring hometown performers, a musical act that had been part of the everyday local soundscape as long as most could recall. The normalcy of the blues and the familiarity of its performers therefore resulted in an indifference to the music. Because the music had always been a part of Helena, locals could neither immediately recognize its appeal nor comprehend its appeal to others. A brief look at the widespread dissemination and popularity of the blues tradition for most of the world and how this contrasts with Helena’s introduction to the music further explores reasons for Helena’s initial unresponsiveness to the music. By the end of the forties, artists such as Muddy Waters, Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson were introducing an electric blues sound to a new audience enthralled by the modern and urban sounds of rhythm and blues. Throughout the fifties, artists such as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Carl Perkins, inspired and influenced by r&b, were introducing the blues, now called rock and roll, to an unexpecting post-war youth audience, and throughout the sixties and seventies the music was once again introduced to a new generation of admiring blues fans through artists such as the Spencer Davis Group, The Yard Birds, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. These early r&b, rock and roll, and blues revival artists gave many their first introduction to the blues tradition, but locals of Helena were introduced to the back beat, the driving bass, the electric sounds, and the social realism found in the blues tradition long before they were appropriated and disseminated by the “new” sounds of rock and roll. Therefore, the “new” music that shocked and changed the world had been a constant in Helena as long as most locals could remember. A closer look at the establishment of the King Biscuit Broadcast and its many functions within Helena’s soundscape will demonstrate the initial acceptance and formation of Helena’s blues

53 tradition and the eventual transformation of the blues from the sounds of normalcy to the sounds of local identity.

Establishing and Broadcasting Tradition: King Biscuit Time and the King Biscuit Entertainers

KFFA, Helena’s oldest local radio station, like the city it serves, has long been associated with the blues tradition. Still on the air, its famed show King Biscuit Time has become a museum attraction due to its place in blues history and mythology. Although communal and tourist recognition is a more recent phenomenon, the show has long disseminated the blues to Helena, its surrounding communities, and today to the world via the Internet. Established by local school superintendent Sam Anderson, the radio station officially began broadcasting November 19th, 1941. The King Biscuit Time broadcast would follow just days later and continues to be a regular feature of the station. Therefore, the appearance of a radio station in Helena corresponds with the appearance of the blues on the airwaves.12 In an article published in the premiere Blues Festival edition of the Helena World in 1986, Sonny Payne recalls: “This was something we heard every day on the street and we took the blues for granted. I said these people are not going to go for this, but it was the best thing that ever hit this part of the country” (Harvey 1986, 18). Robert Palmer writes in Deep Blues of the initial inspiration for the radio show:

Miller and Lockwood both knew blues musicians who’d broadcasted over the radio. As early as 1935, the washboard player, blues singer, drummer, and tap dancer James “Peck” Curtis had been on the air in Blytheville, Arkansas. The show didn’t last long but Curtis later bragged about how many people he’d been able to attract to his juke joint performances by announcing them in advance over the radio. The garrulous Rice Miller, who always seemed to do most of the talking when he was with Lockwood had a

12 For a detailed discussion of the establishment and impact of the King Biscuit Time Radio broadcast, see Palmer (1981).

54 proposition for Sam Anderson: the two of them would perform on his radio station every day, if he’d let them announce where they’d be playing that night (1981, 176).

Sam Anderson was intrigued by the proposal but informed the musicians that they would first need a sponsor, sending them to Interstate Flour Company, who was marketing a new product called “King Biscuit Flour.” Palmer states: “Anderson and Moore were both impressed - like Sonny Payne, they’d been listening to the blues on the streets of Helena all their lives - and the two musicians signed contracts with Interstate, becoming the King Biscuit Entertainers” (1981, 176). Sonny Payne reiterates this story by recalling: “Interstate Grocer Co. was marketing a flour brand called King Biscuit, so the show went on the air as King Biscuit Time with Sonny Boy and Robert Lockwood Jr. as the first King Biscuit Entertainers” (Harvey, 1986 18). With a sponsor, the King Biscuit Time program was established and broadcasted daily during the lunchtime hour over a 50-mile radius throughout the Delta region. The primary interest in holding a show was two-fold. For Sam Anderson, owner and manager of the station, and Max Moore, owner of Interstate Grocery, Sonny Boy’s proposal offered a regular locally-produced show that would appeal and market to the African-American demographic which, according to Sonny Payne, made up 70% of Helena’s population in the 1940s (Harvey 1986 18). For Williamson and Lockwood, the radio show was an opportunity for self-promotion among the same black demographic. Robert Lockwood states: “We were going pretty good and getting a lotta work and jobs off the air. Mr. Moore was paying us 10 dollars a week for the shows, but we made good at night” (Harvey 1986 18). Lockwood’s’ statement suggests that the show successfully promoted the musicians’ live performances, but it also successfully marketed Interstate Flour, which is evident in the appropriation of Sonny Boy’s image from a King Biscuit Time publicity shot for a later Interstate Grocery product: Sonny Boy Corn Meal. In the radio broadcast’s promotional photo, Sonny Boy Williamson is pictured sitting in the studio holding his harmonica. In the illustration that appeared on the Sonny Boy Corn Meal packaging, Williamson’s figure has been removed from the original studio setting. His chair has been

55 replaced with a stump and his harmonica with a piece of cornbread, and the background has been transformed into a stereotypical farm, complete with open fields and a log cabin. This appropriation suggests that Interstate Grocery Company’s sponsorship of the show was an initial success and that the flour company had become directly associated with and were profiting from the musicians who had originally borrowed the product’s name. The success of this partnership also provided opportunities for Helena locals to experience the King Biscuit Entertainers first hand while further advancing the notoriety of the group’s musicians. The same image of Sonny Boy was also displayed as the logo on Interstate’s company trucks and trailers that delivered flour to area stores, as seen in Figure 3.1:

Figure 3.1. Interstate Flour Delivery Truck. Photograph by author, October 8, 2006.

The above trailer’s primary purpose was to carry and deliver flour, but it also served as a makeshift stage on which the King Biscuit Entertainers could perform at country stores, gas stations, and train depots. Palmer explains: “They would make a number of stops… just about anywhere a crowd could be expected to gather. Their

56 schedule was always announced in advance on King Biscuit Time, and audiences tended to be large and enthusiastic” (1981, 196). Over the course of the next few years, the King Biscuit Time Broadcast would remain a constant component of Helena’s soundtrack and continue to offer both live and mediated blues for the local community. Throughout the first few years of the broadcast, the musicians and the radio show continued to gain local popularity. Soon, additional members joined Williamson and Lockwood, expanding the King Biscuit Entertainers. James “Peck” Curtis on drums; Robert Dudlow Taylor, Pinetop Perkins, and Willie Love on piano; and Robert Nighthawk and Houston Stackhouse on guitar were all heard across the region’s airwaves. These musicians, who were actively broadcasting within Helena well before the majority of the world knew of their music, were extremely influential on the modernization of the Delta blues and therefore the establishment of the urban blues sound that would gain notoriety a few years later in Chicago and Memphis. Unknown to many Helena locals members of the King Biscuit Entertainers were becoming influential artists throughout the country and internationally. Palmer points out that Lockwood was the earliest blues musician to play electric guitar over the radio and the first to popularize a jazz-influenced, single-string-lead-guitar style (1981, 178). For many young Delta musicians, it was likely that Lockwood’s playing style was a source of musical inspiration. The show, heard across the Delta as far north as Memphis, TN, was heard by musicians such as McKinley Morganfield in nearby Clarksdale, Mississippi, who was first recorded by Lomax the same year as the show’s initial broadcast and who would later make his mark as “Muddy Waters” in Chicago in 1943, and by Riley King, a young blues guitarist from Itta Bena, Mississippi, who was at the formative age of 16 when the King Biscuit program first aired and would later make his mark as “BB King” in nearby Memphis, TN. BB King recalls:

Being on a plantation you had an hour off at noon. So, I would come out of the field at noon. Sonny Boy Williamson would come on about 12:15. So, we had a chance to listen to fifteen minutes of live music from one of the guys that I liked a lot, Sonny Boy Williamson. And KFFA was the only

57 station in the area at that time that played music by black people (qtd. in American Roots Music 2001).

In addition to local musicians who benefited from the success and popularity of the King Biscuit Entertainers, the show’s success also led to the formation of additional radio stations throughout the mid South. By the late 1940s, stations had developed throughout the delta regions of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas, most likely a direct result of King Biscuit Time’s broadcast. These stations included KWEM in West Memphis, Arkansas, hosted by Howlin’ Wolf; WDIA in Memphis, Tennessee, hosted by Riley King (BB King); and WROX in Clarksdale, Mississippi, hosted by Ike Turner. These shows broadcasted only to local and regional audiences; WLAC of Nashville, also influenced by King Biscuit Time, broadcasted the blues during the late night hours to over half of the country (Southern 1983, 493). As a number of radio stations that were influenced by the popularity and success of the King Biscuit broadcast were emerging throughout the mid- South and later throughout the country, the blues were being heard by both white and black audiences, setting the stage for the emergence of r&b and rock and roll. In later years, members of the King Biscuit Entertainers, especially Sonny Boy Williamson, would travel around the world introducing the Delta’s music to an even larger audience, who would eventually initiate the blues revival and return the music to its place of origin. The King Biscuit Entertainers’ widespread influence reestablished Helena and the larger Delta region as the home of the blues. Through Sonny Boy Williamson’s travels and his recordings with artists such as the Yardbirds and the Animals, he introduced the blues to a global audience and therefore influenced its transformation and its further dissemination. The opportunities offered by the original King Biscuit Time broadcasts led to the success and popularity of its musicians, which permitted success outside of Helena, Arkansas, and would eventually set the stage for the blues to achieve international recognition. Although the original King Biscuit Entertainers are often listed as a side note and overlooked by historians and blues fans who focus on more popular artists such as Muddy Waters, BB King, Eric Clapton, and the Rolling Stones, each of these musicians was directly influenced by the revolutionary guitar techniques of Robert Lockwood Jr., the

58 expressiveness of Sonny Boy Williamson’s voice and harp playing, and these musicians’ willingness to serve as mentors to up-and-coming musicians. Their appearance on King Biscuit Time offered an early taste of success, disseminated their music beyond the juke joints and Helena’s street corners, and provided them with the success, popularity, and confidence to leave Helena and to introduce the world to a modern blues sound. The King Biscuit Time broadcast and its featured band did not invent the blues. However, through their function as role models for other blues musicians, as key figures in the blues transformation from a rural to a more urban sound, and in their introduction and widespread dissemination of the blues tradition globally, their influence on the blues is unparalleled.

Realizing and Promoting Tradition: The Establishment of Helena as a Musical Place

The idea for a festival in honor of the famed radio program was the result of an attempt by members of the city’s Main Street program to revitalize Helena’s downtown area. A pamphlet published by the Delta Cultural Center titled “A Brief History of the King Biscuit Blues Festival” shares the history of the Main Street Helena Program and its initial idea of holding a blues festival:

Main Street Helena, a program founded to help revitalize downtown Helena, Arkansas, began organizing an annual community festival in the 1980s. The original event was Oktoberfest and experienced modest success. However in 1986 the festival planning committee decided they wanted an event that was identifiable with Helena, specifically a blues festival (A Brief History of the King Biscuit Blues Festival, 1).

A festival centered on the blues tradition seems like a logical choice and would soon become the primary tourist draw of the city, but the idea was not immediate. The

59 above statement suggests that as soon as locals decided to organize an event that would signify Helena’s cultural identity, the blues and a blues festival immediately came to mind. Other publications written shortly after the premiere festival suggest that local organizers initially overlooked this important musical legacy, turning instead to outside council for ideas. According to journalist Suzanne Dane, the idea for a festival centered on the King Biscuit name was first suggested by Dr. Bill Ferris, former director of the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture:

The planning committee knew they wanted a festival theme that would be singularly identifiable with Helena, but came up empty with ideas. For help they turned to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. The Center’s director, Bill Ferris told the Main Street group unhesitatingly that the King Biscuit Time radio show was the answer (Dane, 1988 1-2).

Dane’s assertion reinforces previous observations that for many locals of Helena, the significance and widespread fame of the long-running radio show was not immediately acknowledged. The sounds of King Biscuit Time had been on the airwaves for 44 years, and many of its musicians had influenced both the electric blues in Chicago and the sounds of 1950s rock and roll and were the idols of those musicians who would initiate the blues revival and the psychedelic music of the 1960s. However, to Helena’s leaders, the show was still just a lunch-time music show produced and performed by local artists for a local audience. Susanne Dane reinforces this observation:

What the Main Street Program and many Helena residents didn’t realize, however, was that King Biscuit Time and its performers were legendary, not only locally but worldwide; that their town and radio station were famous; that they were sitting on a treasure trove of musical history. The birth of the King Biscuit Blues Festival revived these legends and, unexpectedly, created a new tradition (1988, 2).

60 The first King Biscuit Blues Festival, held in 1986, therefore succeeded well beyond the committee’s and locals’ expectations with an estimated 10,000 in attendance. With the success of Helena’s première festival, volunteers were assembled, the number of performers to appear on the festival stage increased, and the town planned for similar attendance figures in 1987. To their surprise, the number of participants the next year doubled, with an estimated 20,000 in attendance. During the third festival, attendance was estimated at 30-40,000 people (Reiter, 1989 56). Throughout the years, the numbers of stages, community volunteers, and participants have continued to grow. Terry Buckalew, director of the Delta Cultural Center, estimated over 100,000 attendants during the 2008 festival. Local and state newspapers provide the estimated numbers of those in attendance, how the city embraces this temporary community, and its effect on the local economy, yet few give adequate attention to the reasons for continued attendance and how the festival is perceived by both visitors and locals alike. This information was initially shared with me in May of 2007, when I visited Bubba’s Blues Corner, the famed record store on Helena’s Cherry Street, to interview Helena local, merchant, founding member of the Sonny Boy Blues Society, original festival organizer, unofficial local blues historian, and self- proclaimed “true blues fan” Bubba Sullivan.13 During the course of my research, I spoke with several members of the host and guest communities concerning the formation and continuation of the festival. Many of those I spoke with offered the same advice: “Talk to Bubba.” For this reason, I have chosen to use Bubba Sullivan’s story as my primary case study in examining the local response to the annual festival. I am also interested in the ways in which individuals interpret and utilize the festival space as a marker of their own identity and social traditions. Therefore, Sullivan’s story, like the individual tourists’ stories told in chapter five, moves beyond the standard historical and journalistic approach to document the history of the festival by including his personal account and interpretation of the festival space and experience. During our interviews, Sullivan explained the reasons for the festival’s formation, success, and continuation. In recalling his own past and present connections to Helena’s transforming blues tradition, Sullivan unfolded the history and continuance of the King

13 For a discussion of Bubba’s Blues Corner as a tourist site, see Chapter 4 (78-81).

61 Biscuit Time Festival. His story gives detailed insight into the history of Helena’s acceptance and promotion of its blues identity and also points to the festival’s significance in the lives of both local and festival communities. Because of his multiple positions as festival organizer, merchant, local resident, and blues fan, Sullivan’s story serves as a multifaceted case study of reasons for the formation, continuance of, and participation in the annual festival. In addition, his story suggests the many ways the festival space and activities are interpreted by participants. An analysis of Sullivan’s recollection of Helena’s historic and present blues identity and his multiple roles within the time and space of the festival weekend demonstrates parallels between local and tourist experiences, further blurring the line between host and guest communities and their festival experiences. I first met Bubba Sullivan while browsing through CDs and LPs and admiring the blues memorabilia that adorned the Bubba’s Blues Corner walls during my first festival experience in 2003. Sullivan stood by watching, eager to share a blues story and to recommend CDs that any true blues fan must hear. My initial interaction with Sullivan was merely a hello and a brief discussion about his opinion on the best Robert Lockwood Jr. album to add to my blues collection, but it was immediately obvious that this man lived and loved the blues. I did not know at the time of his significance in the festival’s formation and continuation. During each of my visits to Helena, both inside and outside of the festival, Bubba’s has been a regular destination. With each visit, I have learned more about the blues, Sullivan, the city, and the festival. My first official interview with Bubba Sullivan was not until May 22, 2007, when he agreed to talk with me in his record store. It was during this interview that I came to fully understand the importance of the festival to locals, musicians, and the blues fan. As a Helena local, Sullivan reinforced earlier observations that long before the city embraced its blues identity, the music was a constant in Helena’s soundtrack. Referring to the first time he heard the blues, Sullivan stated:

The first time I heard the blues was hearing Sonny Boy when they came around. You know some of the guys, one of the guys that worked for Dad, he had a guitar, and they would play. I didn’t really know what it was called back then, but I knew I liked it.

62 He continued by recalling an early experience with witnessing music in a rural juke joint in 1953:

I guess it was just called “Mr. Albert’s Place.” I don’t even know if it had a name, but Mr. Albert was a white gentleman who had retired out of the navy, tough as a boot, and had a big black guy that worked for him named Big Jim, and they took an old shotgun house. It was about six or seven miles outside of Wabash and about 20 out of Helena…. Some of the King Biscuit Entertainers would go out there and play, and they just had an old shotgun house with, like, a long bar… Well, you called it a bar, but it was just a big piece of wood down through the middle. If you were black or white and played the music, the band could be mixed. The white people danced over here, the bar was there, and in some places there was nothing there but air, and the blacks would dance over here. We’re talking about probably 1953, but you think about ‘53 with integration and segregation and all that shit. But when you’re having a good time, a lot of times color doesn’t make a damn, you know. It might the next morning, but it doesn’t that day.

The above recollection suggests that the blues have always been a part of Sullivan’s personal soundscape. The music was not merely witnessed through an occasional performance or over the airwaves but rather through a constant soundtrack of growing up in Helena. In our conversation, Sullivan’s connection between the music and his memories of everyday life became increasingly clear, and his recollection of the music frequently evoked memories of the Helena of his childhood years. Sullivan’s statements further illustrate the close relationship between Helena’s landscape and soundscape. After we discussed his early music encounters, Sullivan described his memories of Helena’s vibrancy when he visited the city as a small boy:

All I can say is that when I was a kid - I lived in Wabash - my dad would bring us up here on Saturday night. Every store on this street was full. You

63 couldn’t get up and down the streets. Stores stayed open until 12 o’clock. They had two movie theaters, they had seven restaurants, they had two motels. Robert Lockwood told me this used to be little Chicago. It was wide open.…This was a happening place….I am thankful I got to grow up in this area. Over where Oliver’s is now, that was….Nick’s Café. Well, the trains used to come in here where the depot is now, and the engineers stayed upstairs over there. She stayed open 24 hours. You could go in there at 3 o’clock in the morning and there were people in there. This was a thriving, booming town.

Throughout our interview, Bubba Sullivan’s memories of the music were frequently accompanied by a description of the landscape and the social interactions that occurred within the city space. For example, when I mentioned Helena’s historic role as a music center, Sullivan recalled witnessing the city’s past first-hand. As we discussed the festival and the contrast between Helena’s past and its present reality, Sullivan speculated on reasons for the city’s recent decline, including the closing of factories, the modernization of agriculture, and the migration of many of Helena’s locals to larger cities for increased work opportunities:

When all of the farming became mechanized, and that way the tractors took place of the cotton choppers and the cotton pickers and all that stuff, and there was a lot of money to be made up North, and there were factories and everything, and a lot of people went from here to up North. I like what Honeyboy Edwards always said. He said, “Hell, ya'll didn’t have any music up here until we brought it down from the South.” But I have been blessed musically in this town, and being connected to the festival and everything. But it really breaks your heart to see the way things are now and the way it is being controlled by bankers and folks like that and politicians. If we can make some things happen, we can turn this around and make this the show place it should be.

64 Sullivan’s comment points toward an interesting relationship between Helena’s present, its past, and hopes for its future. Sullivan suggests that the loss of farmers is a primary reason for the city’s decline. With modernization came less need for physical bodies, and with the loss of population, Helena began its rapid decline. However, his next statement once again connected Helena’s music to city life, and our conversation returned to the blues tradition. By including blues icon Honeyboy Edwards in his thoughts on the blues and migration, Sullivan also highlights the impact those who left Helena had on the city’s famed musical traditions. In other words, the locals who worked the land also made the music and the city, and the two therefore cannot be separated. Sullivan follows this statement with contrasting sentiments of pride, sadness, and hope. “I have been blessed in this town” points toward his focus on the city’s past and his loving memories of the city. This observation is solidified through his statement “It really breaks your heart to see the way things are now,” which illustrates discontent with the city’s present state. He then offers hope for the city: “We can turn this around.” For Bubba Sullivan, remembering the music of the past also recalls his own past in Helena, which stands in stark contrast with the city’s present. Remembrance therefore inspires the desire to act. Sullivan, like other participants in Helena’s annual production, is not attempting to recreate a tradition but rather to develop a “new” tradition that rivals his memories of the soundscape, landscape, and socialscape of his beloved city. The local desire to reclaim a tradition and revitalize the city led to an acknowledgment of the city’s blues identity by the formation of the initial King Biscuit Blues Festival. While several news sources suggest that the idea to hold a blues festival was first introduced by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Bubba Sullivan remembers it differently:

Well, you know, we had a bunch of guys who would sit around and listen to music, and we all knew who Sonny Boy Williamson was and King Biscuit Time, and all that. Some of the guys here in town would go down to the radio station on their lunch break, you know, and hear King Biscuit Time. I went to school up at Elaine, and I lived at Wabash, but my dad worked for

65 Howe Lumber company, and I worked at the store there, and on Saturdays, all the King Biscuit Entertainers would come around, and they’d play at these different country stores about an hour or something like that out of the back of a flat bed truck, and they would get… advertising - KB flour and Sonny Boy Meal - cause there was a lot of country stores then. And Interstate grocer Mr. Max Moore, he knew that a lot of people bought flour and meal back in those days. So [those are] some of the early memories of how we kind of got into music….One thing led to another, and after we got older we’d sit around and listen to music and…I think about ‘85 or something like that we said, “Well, maybe we ought to start a blues festival here,” you know. We found out all these guys were from this area.

Later in our conversation, Sullivan gave credit to the Center for the Study for the Southern Culture for helping with the festival and creating its first festival poster. However, according to Sullivan, motivations for the festival did not originate with outsiders but rather with a group of local music fans who had first discovered the blues growing up in Helena and later re-discovered the music through a communal act of listening. His description points to a sense of ownership of the music and its discovery that is directly connected to the memories of those who experienced the music first hand. Sullivan’s description of the motivations for the first festival does not include an historical account of important figures and their influence, but instead includes personal memories of visiting King Biscuit Time and hearing the King Biscuit Entertainers as they traveled and performed in the small communities around Helena. Although in recent years the festival has transformed into a major musical production with multiple stages and hundreds of visiting blues artists, according to Bubba, the initial idea was to host a homecoming to celebrate the artists who shaped and were shaped by Helena’s musical traditions. Bubba recalls the performers who appeared during the first festival:

I think the first festival we borrowed a little old stage out here from a preacher, and, hell, it wasn’t as big as anything, but we brought Johnny Shine back home. We brought Pinetop, Robert Lockwood, and Sam

66 Meyers… and Frank Frost and Sam Carr. CeDell Davis was the first guy to ever play on the festival.

Regardless of who can be credited with initiating the first festival, its realization was based on a need to revitalize the city through a long-overdue homage to the artists who had made Helena and its radio station famous. The artists who performed at the first annual festival are all from Helena or hail from nearby cities and began their careers on the streets of Helena and over its airwaves, illustrating the early festival’s focus on locality and regional traditions, suggesting that the festival was created to revitalize the present through reclamation of the past. Festival attendants who enter the tourist space expect a performance of Helena at its best and attain this through a temporary revival of Helena as a musical city and as a bustling community. For many of the festival organizers, including Bubba Sullivan, their interest lies not only in profiting from the festival but also in improving the city. Therefore, promotion of the city is not a mere replication of Helena’s past glory but also an optimistic performance of its present and future. For the tourist the past is imagined, but for locals the past is recalled in a new Helena based on the locals’ recollections of the way it was and the way it could be. When I asked him if the city transformed during the festival weekend, Sullivan replied by describing the euphoric atmosphere:

Oh it does. That week it completely changes. Everything completely changes. And the good thing, no matter whether you like the music or whatever, I think if you ask most of the fans that come here, they would tell you that the majority of people speak to them. You know, it’s real laid back, it’s real friendly. They walk up to you and say, “What do you need? Can I help you? Come to my house.” It’s just like a big family reunion, and the city changes for a whole week. It’s a homecoming for the people and all the people that you know, and we have never let politics get involved with this festival, which is good here, because for one week out of the year we don’t have to put up with the bullshit. It’s just all about music and people.

67 Sullivan’s description parallels similar statements made by festival visitors. Throughout the course of my research, I have repeatedly been told that the city is a location for “homecoming.” Helena serves as a theatrical space for the performance of community and the realization of a brief but very real kinship among other festival participants. Many sources insist on a staunch distinction between host and guest communities and between festival participants and organizers. However, Sullivan’s statements throughout the course of our interview suggest that while he is a festival organizer and the owner of a local shop that relies on tourism for its survival, his association with the festival is also rooted in desires that are similar to those of the tourists: belonging, communal camaraderie, and a love for the music:

If you talk to most of the musicians that play on this festival, there’s just a little something. Well, a lot of them are coming back home, the ones that are still living. And…a lot of the people that I talk to felt like when they come here, some of the musicians they have met over the year, it’s like a damn family reunion, you know? There was a guy that lives in Iowa named Nappy Niles….He use to write articles, and I remember him saying one time that “I get into town like on Tuesday or Wednesday and go to the Blues Corner cause that’s ground zero, that’s where everybody’s going to be and people you haven’t seen since last year and whatever.” I think it’s like a family affair. I think it really is.

Sullivan’s statement suggests that while there are obvious differences between the tourist and the festival organizer, both meet in a liminal space during the course of the weekend. The blues festival, created out of a need to revitalize the city, was also created out of a love for the city, its musical heritage, and its cultural uniqueness. After sharing the early motivations for the first festival, Sullivan recounted the moment he knew that the festival would be a success and an ongoing event:

I remember Jerry Pill and I were standing out there, first festival you know, and, uh, pretty good crowd out there for the first festival. Jerry and I

68 overheard this guy talking and he had an accent, and we said, “Hey Man, where you from?” And he said, “I’m from London, England.” We said, “What’re you doing in Helena, AR?” He said, “Well this is where it all happened; this is where it all started.” And I kind of looked at Jerry and said, “We might be on to something good.” And, of course, it was a really good day, and I don’t know how many people were here, but it was a pretty good crowd.

The blues had been a constant for Sullivan growing up in Helena, but he didn’t realize the uniqueness of his musical experiences until this moment at the first festival. Sullivan recalls his surprise upon learning that his Helena, its local performers, and its music were known worldwide:

I opened this store in ‘87, the year after the first festival, and if anyone would have told me that the Blues Corner or the King Biscuit Blues Festival would be as big as it is, I would have just told them that they were crazy.

The first festival was centered on Helena’s musical legacy and was intended to be a local celebration of its unique musical identity. The original idea for the festival occurred only months before the premiere event and was met with skepticism by community members. For most Helena locals, the idea that a festival celebrating a local blues tradition would attract outside interest seemed unfathomable. Referring to the initial response of host and guest communities, Sullivan recalled:

I think they (the locals) were pretty skeptical, as you would be with anything. Like I said, I don’t remember having many local people here, but we had a lot of people from out of town, more people from out of town than we had local people. The people around the world are more excited than the people of Helena are. When you talk about the King Biscuit Blues Festival, you’re talking about the King Biscuit Time Show, you know. Well, who wants to go down and hear all those old blacks play? Cause a lot of people’s

69 impression of the blues was just a guy sitting on the porch with a guitar. There’s a lot more than that.

Much research on tourism suggests that festival organizers commonly construct the tourist site based on the visitor’s preconceived notions of the site. However, in the case of the King Biscuit Festival’s creation and continuance, the guest community is the true developer of the festival’s current identity. For example, the initial idea for the festival predated the establishment of the Delta Cultural Center, the revival of several local juke joints and local stores, which rely on tourism, and the creation of a permanent festival stage built by the state of Arkansas. Each of these landmarks, which are perceived as markers of blues authenticity, were developed as Helena accepted its musical identity and recognized its tourist potential. It was the realization that people would come to the festival that provided the local community with a sense of hometown and cultural pride and resulted in the realization and construction of a touristic musical landscape. Referring to the festival’s impact on the community, Sullivan states:

If this festival hadn’t been successful, and there was nothing that was very successful in this town at that time, it would not be, it just would not have happened. The state would have never built the Delta Cultural Center here without things to build on. And the festival was the catalyst for all that stuff.

The establishment of a festival was the result of a city’s searching through its past as a way to revitalize its present. At the time, the local committees who accepted this mission did not know what this revitalization entailed. The town had been in constant decline since the 1960s and continues to this day to lose people, industry, and agriculture. The original goal to revitalize the downtown area by holding a festival was therefore not initiated as a campaign to bill Helena as the “Main Street of the Blues,” a site that would attract thousands of tourists from around the world. Instead, planners hoped to revitalize the actual main streets of Helena by attracting business, commerce, and locals back to the rapidly declining area. Bubba’s recollection of the initial festival illustrates the importance of blues fans on Helena’s current identity but also reveals his initial surprise that they

70 would even attend. He suggests that the festival’s success was the catalyst for the realization and construction of several current landmarks within the community. However, these were not built to meet the initial demands of the tourist but rather in response to continued tourist attendance. The revival of the city and its musical heritage was initiated by locals but realized through the development and performance of those visiting the site.

Performing Tradition: Mutual Performances of Blues Authenticity

For Helena’s guest and host communities, the festival is a weekend of escapism, a way to remove one’s self from the reality of everyday life. This escape is realized by host and guest communities in different, although related, ways. For tourists, the festival is an opportunity to perform notions of community, local tradition, and ideas of small-town America through a musical form that resonates with all three. For the host community, the festival weekend and its effect on the community year-round lead to local pride, success, and rejuvenation through the revival of their own music tradition and city. The contrast between the vibrancy of the festival and the reality of everyday life is clear when one visits the city outside of the festival weekend, when the reality of Helena’s economic hardship is not masked by the hypereality of the festival weekend. The contrast between Helena during and outside of the festival weekend suggests that while the city hosts the festival, the blues fans make it a reality. Local organizers spend a large majority of the year booking artists, fundraising, and organizing local volunteers to make the festival possible. However, it is the fan who, during the time and space of the festival, recreates the city, suggesting that rather than being modified to make them more attractive to the tourist, local traditions are instead performed, realized, and constructed by the tourist, which in turn makes these traditions and the city more attractive to the local. Helena’s guest community’s desire to visit and interact with the city resulted in the success of the first annual King Biscuit Blues Festival and its continuance for the past 23 years. The tourist has an important role in the construction and realization of the festival space. Throughout our interview, Sullivan was eager to recount his encounters with tourists and what the festival means to them, further suggesting that Helena’s identity

71 as a center for the blues is largely due to the fans and that the site is validated through their presence. Referring to reasons that tourists visit the site, Sullivan states:

I think the basic thing is to come to find out where the music started. Japan, Australia, Poland, wherever you’re from, I think it’s all about, “We want to go to the Arkansas/Mississippi Delta and find out where this music started, where it all came from, where the musicians that carried it from Clarksdale and Helena to Chicago are from.” They wanted to experience that.

Sullivan points to music fans’ desire to experience history first hand in the place of its creation and continuance. According to Sullivan, the city is a gold mine that needs to be explored. Like the tourists who visit Helena to witness, experience, and perform history, Sullivan’s passion for the city and the music has also resulted in a desire to both preserve and promote all musical traditions of the region. Although my interview questions were primarily concerned with the blues tradition, Sullivan illustrates his love for music and his role as a music historian through a detailed account of the many musicians who have roots in Helena:

There was a lot of music that came out of here. I mean, it’s blues related, like WS Holland, who played with Carl Perkins for 10 years, played on “Blue Suede Shoes,” and played with Johnny Cash for 25 years. He told me that the first gig he ever played was at the Helena football field over here, and that was back when he and Carl Perkins played together….. You have Max Self: he’s in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. And we got Sonny Burgess and Billy D. Reilly, which is from Arkansas, up the road. And we got Louis Jordan out of Brinkley, first guy that was probably doing rap with a big band. Then you have Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who was probably the first female to ever play a guitar in church. Then you have Levon Helm, who went on to be one of the biggest rock people ever, you know, with The Band, probably one of the greatest bands ever. Then you have Harold Jenkins, who changed his name to Conway Twitty. He grew up here. And

72 then you have Ronnie Hawkins, who was from Fayetteville but spent some time in Helena and went on, and see how big he is in Canada now. Music, from country music to opera to whatever that came out of this area, so, you think about that, and then you throw the history of the blues into there, and you take people from around the world that study music, and they know all this stuff, and…they kind of feel like they’re walking on hallowed ground.

The notion that visitors to the city perceive Helena as hallowed ground points to yet another reason tourists make the trip to Helena and also their influence on the establishment of the city as a tourist site. In addition to the sacred music, the landscape is also an important component in a pilgrimage to Helena. Abandoned buildings throughout the Delta, KFFA’s still-operating studio, and the landscape itself are everyday sites for Helena’s residents, but for many tourists, viewing these sites is considered an interaction with the home of the blues and an opportunity to experience its musical legacy first hand. Therefore, like Helena’s soundscape, its landscape and important historical sites became locations of tourist pilgrimage only when tourists repeatedly visited the sites, establishing their credibility as historical and cultural markers. Sullivan shared with me two specific memories of visitors to Helena and the importance they placed on the site:

(There was) this guy from Australia who said, “I know you can’t tell cause you’re from here, but I can feel that music bubbling under my feet.” Now this is a guy that was born in Israel and now lives in Australia. Now you put all that together and then you have those people. A guy told me from Holland one time, “Do you know what we call Helena in Holland? The Blues Holy Land.” And I’ve had people come here from Switzerland and other places that went and washed their hands in the Mississippi River just like people go to do that in the Jordan River.

These stories illustrate how visitors perceive Helena as a center for blues pilgrimage. Each of the tourists associated the Delta’s landscape with the music, illustrating that while the music is the initial reason for visiting Helena, the blues

73 pilgrimage is only fully realized through the performative acts of placing one’s hands in the Mississippi, walking the streets of Helena, visiting the tombstones of legendary but long forgotten musicians, watching a broadcast of King Biscuit Time, or simply hearing and feeling the music in the landscape in which it was first performed. The sites of tourist interaction and performance that are revered as sacred to many blues fans are signifiers of normalcy for the city’s residents and therefore were not originally conceived of as tourist sites. As Sullivan states: “Now you tell that to a lot of people, they say you’re crazy as hell, but unless you sit and experience it, unless you look into people’s eyes and know that it’s the real deal…” Sullivan recounted other stories of meeting tourists in his shop, pausing abruptly with a sense of pride for his beloved city and stating: “You know, people are just amazed about what went on here. They’re just fascinated.” Bubba Sullivan’s stated reasons for establishing the first festival, like the tourists’ reasons for attendance, are rooted in a remembrance and re-discovery of the music and the landscape from which it evolved. Those who recall the music from their childhood and those who were introduced to the music through secondary sources have contrasting knowledge and experiences; however, the importance of history, tradition, and secular transcendence is shared among them. Such a realization, a direct result of the festival’s establishment by the host community, was only fully realized with the validation of the site and music by the guest community, illustrating a bilateral dialogue between host and guest communities concerning the festival’s overall meaning. The shared discovery, recognition, creation, and performance of Helena’s soundscape and landscape have therefore resulted in a mutual desire for preservation among tourists and locals alike. The desire to save and preserve the music may be rooted in contrasting motivations, yet each is similarly grounded in a performance of tradition that is in stark contrast with everyday life. Like the tourists who have become self-appointed advocates for the festival and the music, Sullivan’s life as a blues fan and festival organizer has resulted in a desire to give back to the music and artists who have shaped his life and home. In addition to running a famed record store, organizing a yearly festival, and announcing each artist from the main stage during the festival, Sullivan is also a founding member of “Blues Aid,” an organization dedicated to providing services to aging blues musicians. Sullivan describes the organization and its many good deeds:

74 I was one of the founders of Blues Aid. We found out that when these musicians got sick, they couldn’t get any medicine or anything, and then we had to put up some headstones for some people, and when you have to build a headstone for Frank Frost and Robert Nighthawk and Sonny Boy’s sister and some of those people, you know you’re doing some good. And what really pisses you off about the whole deal is that you got corporations out there that don’t give a shit, and I really feel good that we helped Frank and helped some of the other people. But the one that probably meant a lot, I really helped with Jimmy Rodgers. Trying to get a headstone placed for him, and not because of what I did, but because his wife believed in me and called me. And I kind of made some things happen on my own that they had the headstone built, but they weren’t going to put it in the cemetery until they got a check. The balance was like, 900-and-something dollars. I just told ‘em, “Hey man, the check is good and it’s in the mail. You make sure that he gets the headstone.”

Sullivan’s recollection demonstrates a desire to give back to the blues community and a feeling of personal responsibility for the musicians who have become associated with the city and his chosen career. He also points to a distrust of and disgust with the corporate entities that he suggests are not truly connected to the music or the community. Sullivan is outspoken regarding their unwillingness to help, but he also points out that the absence of a corporate presence is one of the most appealing components of the annual festival:

One of the main reasons that people come to this festival [is that] this is not a corporate festival. This is not Clear Channel telling you what you can do. This is not a corporation telling you what you can do. Three, four, or five days, listening to a lot of good music, all different kinds. Rub shoulders with the people, not be intimidated, and they’ll take pictures with you. I think its just part of the small town, the small people in this world. They feel like this is one week where they can just tell the corporations to kiss their ass; they’re going to have a good time.

75 Sullivan and the many visitors who make an annual pilgrimage to the site share reasons for participating in the annual production. Sullivan points toward history, community, family reunion, personal experiences, memories, the landscape as a place of secular transcendence, and an accepted responsibility for the tradition’s continuation and well being as reasons for both the festival’s formation and the motivation for tourist attendance. Although the months leading up to the festival are perceived very differently by locals, tourists, and the performance artists, all participants of the annual performance are united during the brief liminal space and time of the festival weekend. Many times tourists are viewed as outsiders with no real connection to or investment in host communities, but in Helena for three days a year the revitalization and realization of the city is a direct result of their attendance. The festival becomes a site not only for musical interaction but also for social interaction with others who have also returned. It is a homecoming for blues fans from around the globe who, along with the locals who attend, are united through an admiration and passion for the host city and the blues, as well as the shared experience of being a “true blues fan.” According to Sullivan, his reasons for helping to initiate the festival and his dedication to the festival and the host city stem from his respect and love for the music. Sullivan clearly described this shared identity and dedication to the blues. When I asked which was his favorite festival year, he shared a memorable experience that occurred during the 14th annual festival in 1999, the last performance by legendary blues local Frank Frost:

A lot of people will never forget that Saturday. Frank Frost passed away on a Tuesday, but this was 1999, and you know it was raining that year, and Frank lived ‘round the corner, and I remember, they went around and picked him up. And, low and behold, he would have to have been in his late eighties then, who wheeled him out to the stage? Pinetop. That’s very unique when you have a guy like that. Of course they get Frank on stage, and there’s just nothing there. He just can’t blow his harp, and I think that was the telling part of him.

76 Shortly after Frank Frost’s death, Reba Russell wrote and recorded “Heaven Came to Helena,” which recalls her experience seeing Frank Frost’s final performance. A closer look at the lyrics will illustrate the close bond between artists, locals, and guest communities that is created and maintained within the festival space. Russell sings:

October came and so did the rain Came down with the blues on the Arkansas plain Crops past ruin from summers back When the tears from Heaven arrived at last

Healing the earth, healing our soul, well the sky opened up But the music kept flowing Heaven came to Helena Heaven came to Helena14

From the opening verse and bridge of the song, Reba Russell sets the stage for the recollection of a shared experience during the 14th annual festival. She recalls the rain and the music that filled the air of the festival space that day. By delaying the introduction of the pronoun “I,” which emphasizes a personal experience, Russell describes the shared experience, inviting all those who were in attendance to join in her recollection. She continues:

I saw people dancing in the mud Rejoicing in the holy mud I saw Sonny Boy’s spirit on Frank’s face When the waters long prayed for covered the place

In this second verse, Russell references the very people who, through her song, are recalling their own experiences. Her choice of the words “rejoicing,” “holy,” “prayed,” and “spirit” suggests that this performance constituted a religious experience, a miracle, which

14 Lyrics approved with permission from Reba Russell.

77 was shared by all blues fans, including herself. This sense of shared sacredness and camaraderie among a group of like-minded blues fans is solidified in the song’s chorus, which musically transforms from a slow blues to a celebratory gospel tune complete with a driving rhythm section, a passionate vocal line, and a call and response between Russell and a featured gospel choir. She sings:

We were one united crowd Keeping the blues deep down Delta proud One voice together, skyward bound, While the clouds grew darker west of town.

The sacredness of this particular experience is reinforced through Russell’s choice of music and also points toward a bond between all participants in the festival: artists, organizers, and tourists. The previous verse shared her personal observations of those in the crowd: “I saw people dancing in the mud.” In the chorus, through Russell’s use of the pronoun “we,” listeners are reminded that Russell was not observing as a performer from the stage but, like them, as a fan from the audience. Therefore, for that moment, she is not a blues star, but rather a blues fan united with other fans through a shared voice, love, and respect for the music. Her dedication to Frank Frost is clearly heard in the song’s harmonica solo, Frost’s instrument of choice and expertise. At this point, the listener is brought back through a sonic unfolding to that previous festival experience and to the reasons participants were collectively rejoicing. Following this musical reminder, Russell sings the third verse:

When I heard the news, I closed my eyes I said a prayer by the candlelight Cause I knew that God’s almighty hand had touched us all where we made our stand He gave us the rain and another day And then God, he took Frank Frost away

78 In this verse, Russell shares her memories of the days following the festival that caused her to re-visit the moment and inspired her to write the song. We are reminded of Frost’s death but also of a communal happening among all those present who collectively shared the unique experience of witnessing Frost’s last performance. Before she sings of Frank Frost’s death, Russell once again reiterates that this was not only a personal experience but also a shared experience among all participants: “Cause I knew that God’s almighty hand had touched us all where we made our stand.” Following the reference to Frost’s death, Russell once again returns to a gospel-like chorus, reminding the listener of the sacredness of the experience. However, in the final chorus, there is no mention of celebration, no mention of the blues fan, only the alternating lines “Heaven came to Helena” and “The devil let him go,” reminding listeners of the truly spiritual moment they had collectively witnessed. Bubba Sullivan’s and Reba Russell’s recollections of their shared moment during the 14th annual festival are noteworthy in that they do not include memories of capitalizing as a merchant or performer at the festival or of their own involvement on the festival stage. Their memories are rooted in seeing, among other blues fans, a respected musician and friend in his time of need. Sullivan and Russell are not reminiscing as festival organizers, merchants, or performers, but as fans and friends of the music and the artists. Their memories point to a bond between all festival participants, suggesting that reasons for performance, formation, and tourist attendance are united through a love for the music and are collectively realized through the shared act of being a “true blues fan.” Like the locals and performers who participate in the festival experience, visitors to Helena’s annual festival consider themselves to be true blues fans and are there initially for the music. However, upon arrival, their reasons also include communal gathering and the creation and preservation of their own personal traditions within the site. Helena is promoted and interpreted as a place of creation, the birthplace of the blues, inspired by the landscape and life experiences of those who call it home; as a place of production, where the music was produced and disseminated to audiences across the country; and as a place of performance, where the musicians who have made Helena famous learned their skills and where one can still experience the blues first hand. But the city also provides a chance for tourists and locals alike to create their own musical and social traditions that, within the

79 tourist space, compliment the social and cultural environment within which the music originated. Therefore, Helena is also a performative space for the creation, production, and performance of collective ideas of community within the landscape and soundscape of the blues.

Conclusion

The story of Helena’s recognition, creation, and later revival of a blues tradition illustrates the way in which the local community identified its blues identity and endorsed the city as a musical place through the promotion of a lineage of historic and current blues traditions. Although the blues as a musical and performative genre was part of Helena’s soundscape throughout the twentieth century, the music would not be fully accepted as a marker of local identity until it was validated by visitors’ interest in and interaction with the site. This observation brings up interesting questions concerning the role of the tourist in the production and promotion of a musical place. The common rhetoric concerning the development and realization of a tourist site suggests a unilateral production in which the heritage industry models the site based on the demands of the guest community. As Dean MacCannell states: “Local traditions are modified to make them more attractive to tourists” (1976, 384). And as Chhabra states: “An attempt is made to copy the original; then the copy is modified to meet the needs of the modern community” (2003, 704). The above theories fail to address the performative nature of the tourist and how these performances are interpreted by the host community. The local tourist industry modifies the city to meet the desires of the guest community, but visitors and their performance of the festival space also modify the city to meet the desires of the host community. Through this bilateral production, romanticized notions of Helena and the larger Delta region are realized by both host and guest communities. For tourists, locals serve as actors in a performance of Helena, reinforcing notions of the Delta and small town America. For locals, tourists serve as actors in a performance of Helena, reinforcing the vibrancy of the city’s past while calling attention to Helena’s present blues identity.

80 Notions of the tourist space, interpreted differently by longtime and temporary community members, therefore come alive through a bilateral presentation of Helena’s imagined past, further blurring the line between host and guest communities. Within this dialogue, host and guest communities meet through a shared desire for and a collective performance of the past, the way it “used to be.” The local heritage industry establishes a sense of history for visitors through an annual performance of the sites and sounds of the Delta. History is also realized by the local community through the tourists’ acceptance and performance of the production. The festival experience therefore represents a collective experience of pastness that is only fully realized through an observation and interaction with the other community in the present and through a shared love for the blues. A closer look at the ways in which the festival space is collectively promoted and performed will further illustrate the close and often blurred relationship between longtime and temporary communities.

81

CHAPTER FOUR

PERFORMING AND PRESERVING THE BISCUIT: TOURISM AS THEATRICS OF THE FESTIVAL SPACE

It has been said that, at its best, preservation engages the past in a conversation with the present over a mutual concern for the future (Murtagh 1988).

Performing the Biscuit

Heritage sites and heritage-themed festivals are often described as an attempt at a reproduction or as a simulation of the historic site or event that initially drew the tourist to the specific destination. I concur that the tourist’s experience is validated through the opportunity to observe signifiers of genuineness such as various cultural objects, iconic performers, and the landscape, but I also suggest that the festival experience is unique from other cultural exhibits in that it offers a distinctive opportunity to actively interact with such signifiers in the present and in their alleged space of creation and continuance. The guest community is offered a level of interaction and immersion not obtainable through a mere visit to a museum or a passive visit to a constructed cultural site. Although the attractions that initially lure tourists to the King Biscuit Festival are, like museum objects, rooted in Helena’s past, opportunities for social and spatial interaction during the festival also validate the present by transforming the tourist’s role from passive observer to active performer in the annual cultural production. This transformation is largely due to the way that Helena’s past and present are simultaneously presented by the heritage and tourism industries. Helena’s past is promoted as a key component of the festival experience, but the unique chance to experience and

82 perform Helena in the present is equally important. An examination of Helena’s tourism advertisements will illustrate this relationship further. In a 1968 Helena tourism advertisement, a visit to the city is presented as an opportunity to step back into history (Arkansas Tour Guide 1968, 15). Images of the Mississippi River, along with antebellum architecture and period-dressed interpreters, promote the historical significance of the city while inviting tourists not only to visit and observe the destination but also to collectively perform it. Landmarks and cultural artifacts such as antebellum homes, Civil War sites, and Native American relics are highlighted alongside outdoor recreational activities such as fishing and hunting, suggesting an interaction with and performance on the historical landscape. In the slogan “No trip to the South is complete without visiting historical Helena-West Helena,” the tourist is informed that to truly experience the romance and charm of the American South, one must visit, interact with, and perform Helena, a city that has preserved its historical charm, not through a mere museum display, but through the present, democratic performance of everyday life in small-town America. An advertisement from 1991 similarly emphasizes the city’s history (Arkansas Tour Guide 1991, 21). However, in this advertisement, the blues are promoted as a crucial marker of the Delta’s cultural past and present, illustrating the influence of the annual festival on the local tourism industry and Helena’s recent self-promoted image as the “Main Street of the Blues.” Printed only five years after the premiere festival in 1986, it is obvious that the city’s blues identity has replaced the antebellum South as the city’s key draw. Although Civil War history and romantic notions of Helena are still included in the 1991 advertisement, the primary tourist attraction is now the music, evident from the advertisement’s slogan “Colorful History, Definitive Blues.” A similar emphasis is seen in a 1992 advertisement, which states: “Once a year, we paint the town blue” (Arkansas Tour Guide 1992, 94). As in the advertisement printed in 1991, the annual blues festival is not only included but has become the center of Helena’s tourism industry. Both of these advertisements highlight the significance of the musical genre to the history and current promotion of the city, suggesting that a trip to Helena is the only way to genuinely experience the Delta, the landscape, and its accompanying soundtrack. The following description of the city from a 2000 tourist brochure further

83 supports this argument: “Helena is as beautiful as ever and rich in old South history and romance. Steer our way for Civil War history… classic Antebellum and Victorian architecture…and the best blues jammin’ in the country during our King Biscuit Blues Festival…Chart a course for Helena, Arkansas’ Mississippi River town where long ago is not so far away” (Arkansas Tour Guide 2000, 119). In the advertisement, romantic notions of Helena’s past are highlighted alongside the current blues festival. The statement “Long ago is not so far away” reinforces the notion that a trip to Helena is more than a trip to a museum or a theatrical production of Helena’s past. A trip to Helena is instead a step into the Delta, where one can experience, participate in, and interact with an idealized America through the present theatrics of a city that defies modern society by preserving and continuing local and regional identity. The blues as a signifier of historical importance is a major draw to the city. In the above advertisements, visitors are consistently reminded of continued musical traditions that are rooted in the historical and iconic blues but realized through their continuance in the present. The slogans “the best blues jammin…during our King Biscuit Blues Festival,” “Colorful history, definite blues,” and “Once a year we paint the town blue,” suggest that Helena is both a historical marker and a stage where American traditions are both preserved and performed in the present. The recurring emphasis on present experiences suggests that the realization of an authentic festival is not rooted entirely in a replication of Helena’s famed blues tradition but also in the creation of new traditions which occur during the King Biscuit Festival. Therefore, while the annual festival is arguably a simulation, it is a replica of previous festivals, rather than the Helena that tourists believe they are celebrating. The festival therefore exists in the hyperreal rather than the reality of Helena’s present state or its past. This realization highlights that, for many tourists, the crucial element in the validation of a tourist’s experience is not an accurate recreation of history, but instead a performance of individual notions of history, expectations of the Delta, and newly formed traditions within the festival space. The touristic performance at and of the festival site results in a cultural production where distinctions between reality and fabrication and between history and perceptions of history cannot be easily determined. This production is largely due to a constructed past

84 and anticipated present created and realized through the visitor’s imagination and subsequent performance. The city of Helena, local merchants, and festival organizers reinforce these notions through a recurring emphasis on small town America. This emphasis is clearly seen in the historical markers lining Helena’s famed Cherry Street, as seen in figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1. Experience Helena. Photograph taken by author, May 7, 2006.

The above marker informs the visitor that Helena is a preserved American main street. However, the sign goes beyond merely informing the tourist by also inviting him/her to participate in the city’s safeguarding. Reading from left to right and from top to bottom, the first word one reads is “Experience,” an open invitation to participate in and perform an idealized America, which is reinforced through the alliteration of “The Ridge, The River, The Romance.” The combination of geographical markers with the word “romance” suggests the specificity of Helena while alluding to its legend and how we as visitors should feel about both. The promised experience of Main Street Helena is therefore realized through the collective preservation of both the city and ideas of the city, a point clearly made in the final statement on the marker: “Preserve America.” In addition to

85 Helena’s claim as a preserved Main Street Community, a classification given to the city in 1984 by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Committee, the Main Street moniker has also been associated with Helena’s blues tradition through the Delta Cultural Center’s exhibit “Helena Arkansas: The Main Street of the Blues.” The Delta Cultural Center’s website describes the exhibit as follows:

In less than a lifetime, blues music emerged from the rural South and became the world's music. Helena, Arkansas: Main Street of the Blues focuses on the important part Helena played in the evolvement of blues music. For blues musicians in the 1930s and 1940s, Helena was the place to be. Cherry Street and Walnut Street served as Helena's main daytime business district. But at night, the business was entertainment. With saloons, cafes, billiard halls, gambling parlors and juke joints, Helena was a wide- open river town and blues music filled the air (Delta Cultural Center 2004).

In the above description, the importance of Helena’s past and its relationship to place is clearly illustrated. The description ends with a list of establishments that are connected to the blues in both reality and in the popular imagination, such as juke joints and gambling parlors. These physical venues are then placed within the larger landscape: a “wide-open river town” accompanied by the blues. The museum focuses on Helena’s past and the city’s importance to the development of the blues tradition. Visiting the exhibit during the festival weekend serves more than an educational purpose; it also validates the tourist experience that is simultaneously occurring outside the museum walls. The exhibit showcases a past Helena where the streets were alive with music and social activity. If one visits the museum outside of the festival weekend, the exhibit ends abruptly when one exits the museum and comes face-to-face with the stark contrast between Helena’s romanticized past and its twenty-first century reality. However, during the festival, the museum exhibit is extended into the present through the festival performance that is visible outside as soon as one exits the museum. Rather than an empty street that reinforces the uniqueness of Helena’s history, tourists are immediately immersed into a communal performance that extends the

86 historical exhibit into the present, reinforcing the illusion of Helena as a thriving Mississippi River town while simultaneously validating the tourist experience. Therefore, Helena as an iconic blues city is reinforced through the thousands of blues lovers filling the streets and the music from the main stage filling the air and serving as an accompaniment to all those who participate. The presentation of Helena as a historical and continued manifestation of Main Street America suggests both a remembrance of the past and a continued emphasis on the present. Here, blues fans can witness and perform an idealized America through a city and accompanying music tradition that is believed to stand in opposition to the increasing homogeneity of modern America. The performative nature of the tourist is highlighted in the transformation of the city each October, as evidenced by a comparison of photographs outside of and during the festival weekend. The following photograph of Cherry Street in downtown Helena was taken on July 12, 2007 (fig. 4.2). However, the image could have been taken on any of the 362 days outside of the festival weekend.

Figure 4.2. Helena’s Cherry Street. Photograph by author. July 12, 2007.

87 With a decreasing population due to the closing of factories and businesses, Helena, like many downtown areas throughout the country, has continued to decline. Stores have closed their doors and people have migrated, leaving a skeleton of the former city. For most tourists, a visit to Helena outside the festival weekend would likely be a disappointment. Their expectations of the festive atmosphere and thriving community are not based on reality but rather a 21st-century hyperreal performance of the city. Such a construction is manifested during the festival, as seen in figure 4.3.

Figure 4.3. Helena’s Cherry Street. Photograph by author. October 5, 2007.

The above photograph, taken during the 22nd annual festival, illustrates the transformation of the city from its present reality to a staging of its imagined past and present. Because there is no confined festival space, the entire city of Helena and the Delta region more broadly become the stage for both witnessing and collectively participating in a performance of perceived cultural and historical authenticity. The inclusiveness of the festival space is a unique attribute of the King Biscuit experience. Many festivals throughout the country are held in confined festival spaces

88 (examples include the Chicago Blues Festival, Beale Street Music Festival, and New Orleans Jazz Festival). The King Biscuit Blues Festival takes place throughout the entire downtown area of Helena. Therefore, the city does not hold a festival but rather becomes the festival, encouraging tourists to interact with both the performers and the city itself, which are both promoted as attractions during the annual event. Stores that are closed the rest of the year are occupied by local church and civic groups, who set up shop selling baked goods and crafts. Other abandoned stores become sites for community garage sales, which raise money for local schools, churches, and civic organizations. The streets, which are almost abandoned for the majority of the year, are transformed by food vendors, craft tents, and street musicians, as seen in figure 4.4.

Figure 4.4. Festival vendors and their customers. Photograph by author. October 10, 2008.

Because of the tourist’s desire to interact with and experience the “real” Helena, locals of Helena become signifiers and cultural representations of “realness” while visitors become the locals in an imagined and temporary community. It is within this

89 transformation that the Delta’s past and present, both real and imagined, move beyond the walls of a museum, allowing tourists to realize through performance their own perceptions of what constitutes authenticity in the Delta. Within this performance, the blues move beyond a musical genre rooted in the romanticized past. The blues become a signifier of tradition realized through participation in the present. Tourist participation brings to question the very notion of the tourist’s quest for the authentic. Although there are many academic sources that address questions of authenticity, most are concerned with either preserving or deconstructing the concept of authenticity and the term’s application to cultural manifestations such as food, music, and crafts. These elements are key reasons for a pilgrimage to a specific site, but the engagement with the site is also crucial to a tourist’s experience. For many tourists, notions of authenticity are therefore rooted not only in notions of the past but also in the present act of participation, which manifests for the tourist, as for the ethnographer, in a perceived role of preservation. In an increasingly homogeneous society, the idea of small-town America and its musical and cultural traditions is increasingly perceived as a rarity. Therefore, festival participation is an attempt at preserving not only the blues but also America’s idealized past, to which all attendants in some romanticized way can relate.

Preserving the Biscuit

The pilgrimage to, performance of, and collective and individual experiences obtained at and during the festival are key markers of what is perceived by many blues fans to be an “authentic” Delta experience. Recent threats to the festival’s legacy, locality, and continuance have transformed the role of festival attendant from spectator to preservationist and festival experiences from acts of escapism to acts of philanthropy. Because of the King Biscuit Blues Festival’s status as a free event, the responsibility of preservation is allocated to Helena’s visitors who, through their passion for the blues, purchases of festival souvenirs, support of local businesses, and annual festival attendance, are given both the responsibility for and the unique experience of keeping the festival alive. This transfer of responsibility blurs clear distinctions between host and guest

90 communities, bestowing the role of philanthropist upon festival attendants while providing them with a sense of ownership of the blues, the local culture, and American identity more broadly. The role of activist assigned to and accepted by tourists is crucial to the success, well being, and continuation of the King Biscuit legacy, the annual festival, local merchants, and Helena’s overall economy. The appointed agency also gives tourists a sense of cultural and social capital, through which visitors gain inside knowledge of and responsibility for the festival, the host city, and the performance of the annual celebration and are therefore assigned a heightened eminence within the festival community. No longer are tourists outsiders looking in at a foreign and exotic culture, but rather key figures in its performance and continuation. Their newly allocated roles, therefore, provide the illusion of locality, ownership, and inside knowledge and become a key source for validating their belief that their experiences in the Delta during the festival weekend are both genuine and momentous. The festival’s emphasis on traditional music, locality, history, culture, and tourist ownership and responsibility presents a festival experience that is believed to be both more sincere and unique when compared with other music festivals throughout the country. Lew Jetton, of the blues band HWY 61, speaks from a performer’s perspective of the uniqueness of the King Biscuit Blues Festival:

I've played at many Blues festivals and been to many others. There's something about Helena. Perhaps it's the rhythm of the Delta and the Mississippi River just a few feet away. Hearing the Blues in that small Delta town, from those greats who often live just down the road, is very special. It's just so real and genuine. That's why so many of us go back every year. In some ways, it's like a pilgrimage, while in others; it's like a family reunion. The feeling is there (Jetton 2009).

Jetton’s brief description of the event alludes to many of the reasons for attending the festival: tradition, history, place, cultural and performative authenticity, community, belonging, pilgrimage, and secular transcendence. Each of these reasons is noted and in return commodified, marketed, and promoted by the tourism industry as authentic tourist

91 attractions. However, they are only fully realized when they are performed and subsequently preserved through the act of visiting and interacting with Helena during the real time and space of the festival weekend. It is through this performance that the act of tourism, most commonly associated with pleasure and recreation, moves beyond mere escapism and becomes travel with a moral purpose. By visiting and performing Helena, individuals become part of a larger social network that acquires the task of saving the music, the festival, the city, the region, and notions of community and their “authentic” selves. A closer look at the tourist performance during the festival weekend will further elucidate the perceived transformation of the blues fan from festival attendant to festival performer through the attainment of what is perceived as inside knowledge. During the festival weekend, knowledge is shared among tourists through social and spatial interactions with the festival space, the landscape, local residents, merchants, musicians, and fellow visitors. Through these interactions, the visited site becomes a theatrical stage for observing and performing notions of cultural, communal, and individual authenticity. As Tim Edensor states:

(The touristic performance) reconstitutes the symbolic values of sites and reproduces them as dramaturgical spaces. Situated in the relationship between the tourist and site, performances map out individual and group identities, and allude to wider imagined geographies which the stage is part of and may even symbolize (2000, 326).

The tourism and recording industries’ representations of the visited site and resulting symbolism are largely responsible for the ways in which visitors interpret and interact with Helena. However, notions of the land and soundscape as well as the tourist’s placement within the space and sound of the festival are constantly shifting through his/her interactions with and participation in the festival space and community. Therefore, notions of the blues tradition may be influenced by our preconceived ideas, but our individual and collective experiences obtained during the festival establish a perceived social status within the community and result in a complete festival experience. For visitors to the King Biscuit

92 Blues Festival, a heightened status is achieved through their perceived responsibility, as “true blues fans,” to save Helena’s cultural history and its continuance through their attendance at and participation in its annual celebration. Jim Butcher uses the term “New Moral Tourism” to describe the phenomenon in which the tourist desires the preservation of the tourist site and host culture rather than the mere consumption of a hyperreal mass production. In contrast with mass tourism, where tourists blindly accept the productions outlined and presented by the industry for tourist amusement and consumption, a new moral tourism is characterized by self-discovery through a search for enlightenment in other places and a desire to preserve these places in the name of cultural diversity and environmental conservation (Butcher 2003, 6-8). The fulfillment of this desire during the King Biscuit Blues Festival is manifested in the guest community’s allocated and accepted roles in preserving the festival and Helena’s musical and cultural traditions. This responsibility leads to a heightened tourist experience that is perceived by fans to be more genuine than the staged production that initially drew them to the festival space. Acts of preservation, ranging from the support for local businesses to the collection of monetary contributions to provide medical insurance for aging blues artists, prevail throughout the festival weekend and enhance the festival experience by providing opportunities for the guest culture to claim ownership for the festival and agency for its safeguarding. However, the realization of a moral tourist experience also stems from the visitor’s self-discovery and cultural unearthing of the blues tradition, community, and their own perceived self within the festival space. From the Delta Cultural Center, which provides exhibits on blues history, to the landscape’s geographical and cultural history, to encounters with local musicians and street performers who represent the blues tradition in its most unadulterated form, opportunities for gaining insight into the host culture are abundant, providing a didactic component to the festival experience. Acts of preservation ensure the continuation of the festival, and opportunities for education and touristic enlightenment provide a theatrical space for performing illusions of individuality and community. These opportunities are often dismissed as staged intimacy, or hyperreal, experiential tourist attractions. However, it is through these inclusive experiences that tourists connect to and become part of Helena’s multifaceted blues tradition.

93 Becoming a “True Blues Fan”

The King Biscuit Blues Festival is a mass-produced and consumed event, where detailed schedules outline community events and musical performances and regulate most aspects of the festival experience, yet many tourists perceive their visit as a homecoming and believe their actions have a significant impact on the host culture, the continuance of the festival, and their own cultural development. It is within this perceived impact that tourists realize and define their own notions of both the blues and what it means to be a “true” blues fan. For many, therefore, a visit to the festival is perceived to be a responsibility, an obligation, a mission, and a pilgrimage rather than a mere opportunity to gaze at cultural otherness. The newly-accepted role within the festival culture reinforces one’s illusion of belonging to and holding responsibly for the site and performance, evoking the feeling that without one’s attendance, participation, and performance, Helena, its soundtrack, and its cultural legacy would cease to exist. The responsibility for and perceived role within Helena’s culture is clearly seen in visitors’ recollections of their own actions and interactions within the festival space rather than only the actions of the iconic musicians featured on the main stage. Past and present blues icons such as Pinetop Perkins, Bobby Blue Bland, Bobby Rush, and Robert Lockwood Jr. bring both recognition and tourists to the Delta, but many attendants consider their performances as staged events for the tourist, something that is not unique to the Delta or the festival experience. This became evident when I interviewed Hayley Cummins, a regular attendee to the festival who spends much of her time in the festival campground rather than at the festival’s designated stages. Referring to the festival’s main stage and featured artists, she states: “That’s all music that you can go and you can buy a CD of. People know who Bobby Rush is, but there are people in this campground that people don’t know, and you get to hear amazing music coming from your average Joe” (Cummins 2008). Mike Miller, a long time attendee to the annual festival, reiterates this point: “We go from campfire to campfire. Randy is over there; he’s got his mandolin. His buddy got his banjo. Kent’s got some harps. There is a guy over there with a piccolo. You know, someone built their own drum. You never know what you’re going to find” (Miller 2008). The above statements

94 make it clear that while they are avid blues fans, both Hayley and Mike realize a genuine blues experience and claim ownership and agency for the festival not through an encounter with the music and artists that initially drew them to the space or the scheduled events that provide both spectacle and predictability during the festival weekend, but rather through the unknown ordinary happenings that occur unplanned among the newly formed festival community and within Helena’s backstage areas. The possibility of hearing, seeing, or interacting with something genuine among other festival participants provides one opportunity for a unique and meaningful encounter during the festival weekend. Meaningful experiences also manifest through “authentic” interactions with the space, people, and music of local Helena. Through intimate encounters with locals, tourists undergo a transformative process in which, through an increase in cultural and social capital, the roles assigned to and adopted by the visitors are reinforced, allowing tourists to become locals of the festival and therefore temporarily of the host culture. A closer look at the theatrical performance of these encounters will further illustrate the transformative process. Through a conscious effort, the host community, which includes local merchants, community residents, and festival organizers, invites the guest culture not only to gaze at the local but also to become part of it. The inclusiveness of the festival performance reinforces notions of belonging to the tourist site and provides a theatrical space for performing perceptions of one’s perceived self. The pilgrimage to and experiences during the festival are often rooted in the need to escape the regularity of everyday life. However, I suggest that the tourist performance goes beyond “letting your hair down.” The annual celebration certainly offers a chance to put aside everyday responsibilities, yet duty is not abandoned but instead transferred through the tourist role in the performance. The purposeful inclusion of tourists into the local social network provides not only an “authentic” encounter with the blues but also a legitimate opportunity to save “authentic” culture and an idealized way of life. Therefore, in the suspended time and space of the annual festival, the touristic duty transfers from corporate and commercial America to saving a portrait of a romanticized America that is the exact opposite of the rationalized and structured lives they are temporally escaping. George Ritzner refers to the standardization of modern life as the

95 “McDonaldization of Society.” He defines this concept as “the process by which the principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the World” (2000, 1). According to Ritzner, the primary components of this process are efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control through non-human technology. Ritzner’s model can easily be applied to many aspects of our everyday lives, but it cannot be applied to the total experiences within the liminal community of the King Biscuit Blues Festival. The staged performances on the main levee stage mirror everyday life by adhering to the principles outlined by Ritzner, but the unplanned, inclusive events that result in the realization of an authentic experience are found in the unpredictable and unregulated events that occur unrehearsed within the festival space.

Interacting With and Becoming the Local

Inclusive experiences often consist of an interaction with local merchants, musicians, or residents who are willing to open their doors and welcome the temporary community into their homes and establishments or the unearthing of unpredictable opportunities through a self exploration of and interaction with Helena’s back streets and everyday life while strolling through the city during the festival weekend. Local and intimately-perceived experiences reinforce the tourist’s belief that what he/she is interacting with was never intended for the tourist but is only experienced by the “true” blues fan who, through an increase in cultural capital, has become part of the host culture. Borrowing from Erving Goffman’s differentiation of front and back regions (1959), sociologist Dean MacCannell suggests that an interaction with a supposed back region, or real life, in the chosen destination provides the tourist with an “authentic experience” which is believed to be unique, intimate, and behind the scenes of the spectacle being presented to the tourist (1976, 105). The opportunity, therefore, to participate in and witness the sites, sounds, and experiences that are believed to be out of the tourist gaze results in the unique illusion of momentarily belonging to and understanding the host

96 culture. In return, tourists become part of the host culture through a performance of one’s self within the theatrical space of the festival weekend. In Helena’s case, the entire city becomes the festival space and, in turn, a living museum of both Helena’s past and present as seen through both the local and tourist gaze. Throughout the city, illusions of backstage experiences provide the tourist with a sense of existential authenticity in which his/her participation is both presented and realized as genuine, unique, and crucial to the festival’s and culture’s well being. Those responsible for planning and organizing the festival, as well as local merchants who receive a large portion of their yearly income during the festival weekend, realize the desire of the tourist to belong and therefore reinforce the illusion of locality through a performance of tourist expectations within the theatrical space of Helena’s backstage areas. Such a performance validates the authenticity of Helena as a musical place and legitimizes the tourist experience by presenting the seemingly ordinary as its own unique tourist attraction. Helena’s presentation ensures an authentic attraction and experience. It is not, however, the product of a unilateral construction by the local for the visitor, but instead relies on a bilateral performance by both host and guest cultures. The collective performance that occurs during the festival weekend is the result of what Darya Maoz refers to as a mutual gaze, a dialogue on expected roles between the host and guest culture (2005, 225). Within this dialogue, the performance of each individual group directs the performance of the other. Through the host culture’s performance of the tourist attraction, the theatrical space is established for the tourist to perform the role of the local and preservationist, which in return ensures the well being and continuation of the festival, the host culture, and the tourist attraction. This antiphonal performance is most evident in the promotion and performance of local businesses during the festival weekend and the desire and obligation of the tourist to both visit and support these institutions. Local merchants throughout Helena, like festival organizers and city officials, post signs that welcome blues fans into their establishments, many of which have created permanent signs that adorn the store walls both during and outside of the festival weekend. These displays suggest to those visiting that their support of the local merchant is crucial to the establishment’s well being year round. Welcoming facades signify the importance of the tourist community to the host culture by transferring the responsibility of its

97 continuance to the guest culture. They also serve as an expedient chance for tourists to interact with the real Helena, a backstage experience with the locals that further signifies the uniqueness of the King Biscuit Blues Festival, provides tourists with a sense of both ownership and cultural capital of the culture on display, and enhances their experiences of authenticity that validate the pilgrimage to, interaction with, and performance of the entire tourist space. My own touristic desires and experiences during the festival support this observation. Although well-read in tourist theory and well aware of the ways the tourism and retail industries capitalize on the illusion of belonging, I was still drawn to local sites and experiences where I felt obligated to interact with the locals and a responsibility as both tourist and researcher to give local businesses my monetary support. My need to support the locals who welcomed me to their home and invited me to visit and take part in their cultural heritage far surpassed my realization of the hyperreal experience that I was witnessing and participating in. Like many visitors to the festival, I was made aware of backstage areas by fellow travelers who were happy to demonstrate their tourist expertise through the exchange of intimate and unique stories of their own festival experiences. For the uninitiated, this exchange provides a means of increasing cultural and social capital through the obtainment of privileged insider knowledge of the places to go and ways to further engage authentically with the host culture, its landscape, and soundtrack. For “experienced” blues fans, this exchange of cultural knowledge provides an occasion to demonstrate their own inside knowledge, revealing that they are not merely visiting Helena for the spectacle of the festival but have become fully immersed into the festival culture. One example of this occurred in 2004 during my first visit to the King Biscuit Blues Festival. The first day, I spent much of my time exploring the city. Not sure exactly where I was or what I should be seeing, I aimlessly wandered the streets of Helena observing the festivities while trying to find my place within the festival community. The festival’s hospitable atmosphere soon provided opportunities for social interaction with other festival visitors and locals, who upon learning that this was my first festival experience, seemed obligated to provide tips for engaging and interacting with the festival and host culture. Inside knowledge included physical structures, local establishments, and

98 unique festival experiences. As I would years later show my own traveling companions, my new acquaintances showed me abandoned but historic buildings which had served as the home of the King Biscuit Time broadcasts, legendary blues clubs known for the iconic musicians who frequently played there, former homes of musicians who brought fame to the region, local cemeteries where many of these musicians were buried, and present day juke joints where the “real” blues could still be heard. In addition to physical places, my new acquaintances also advised me on other experiences. I was told not to miss the live broadcast of King Biscuit Time from the Delta Cultural Center, the “real” blues artists who were to be featured on the Heritage Blues Stage, or the possibility of seeing an unexpected performance at the after parties held at juke joints throughout the region. I was ensured that these experiences would be both genuine and unpredictable. I was encouraged to interact with and support local businesses. I was advised to visit J.B.’s Liquor store for my purchases of festival spirits, Gist Music and Bubba’s Blues Corner for a true taste of local musical culture, and the many non-profit and church-sponsored food and rummage sales. I left the first day of the festival with a list of places to see, events to experience, and the sense that if I followed these guidelines, I would soon be fully immersed in the festival space and a “real” part of the festival community. During the second day of the festival, I visited many of the suggested sites. By the end of the second day, I felt as if I belonged. The music from the main stage provided further evidence that I was in the heart of the Delta and the home of the blues, but it was my encounter with the seemingly ordinary that facilitated my transition from tourist to festival participant and allowed me to fully engage with both the local and festival cultures. Although I was only a few feet from the concert stage, I felt obligated not only to visit the local sites that had been recommended by fellow travelers but also to preserve my experience through photographs (fig. 4.5).

99

Figure 4.5. Visiting J.B.’s Spirit Shop. Photograph taken at the request of the author, October 8, 2004.

The need to preserve this “inside” experience through a snapshot of myself in front of the liquor store suggests that my interaction with local merchants in a space that has no obvious connections with the commercial aspect of the festival’s front regions became an important part of my tourist experience. Its local flare and perceived presence outside of the time and space of the festival weekend provided a chance to interact with a back region of Helena where the seemingly ordinary became its own type of tourist attraction. A similar experience was obtained while visiting Bubba’s Blues Corner. The store’s appeal is immediately evident upon entering. The record store is housed in the side room of an antique shop, which immediately suggests notions of the past and of the quaintness of this local establishment on Helena’s famed Cherry Street. Spending a few hours digging through the CDs and LPs, surrounded by autographed posters, photographs, and artifacts from Helena’s most well known musicians, is not just a shopping experience but an encounter with a time before mp3s, when the blues were at the top of the charts and physical objects disseminated the sounds (figure 4.6).

100

Figure 4.6. Bubba’s Blues Corner. Photograph taken by author. October 8, 2004.

Named for and owned by Bubba Sullivan, who was introduced in chapter three, the store stocks an exceptional collection of blues recordings with special sections devoted to musicians who will appear on the concert stage and to local musicians who have brought international fame to Helena. It is not uncommon to be met at the door by Bubba Sullivan himself, who is always happy to point fans in the right direction, talk about the festival, or share his own personal experiences and encounters with the festival, the musicians, and his beloved Helena. Spend a few minutes with Bubba, and it becomes obvious that his goals are not merely to make money but also to preserve and educate. His connection to the city is perceived by many to be priceless, and his willingness to share his expertise provides tourists with an insider’s perspective and knowledge unavailable in a guidebook. Steve Cheseborough’s description of the establishment in his tour book The Holy Sites of the Delta Blues says it best:

Bubba Sullivan operates not just a record store but Helena’s blues information center from the corner of a large antique store run by his wife.

101 An Arkansas native who has been a blues fan for a long time Sullivan is happy to discuss local history, the King Biscuit Festival, 1930s blues legends or the latest hits (2004, 62).

The store’s inclusion in a guidebook of must-see Delta blues sites demonstrates its draw as a tourist attraction. It is unlikely that one will leave Bubba’s empty-handed. but the uniqueness of the record store is not in the purchased product but in the process of finding it. The experience is rooted in notions of history and in the opportunity to find and take home a piece of the music culture in which one is participating. Recordings of the musicians on the main stage are also sold at merchandise tents located next to the stage, but Bubba’s Blues Corner provides a unique blues experience, the chance to interact with a site and a local who is not temporary but rather a staple of the community and the blues year round. The interaction with and support of local business becomes part of what is perceived to be a genuine festival experience in the present. Roaming the streets of Helena in search of evidence of the city’s past is also perceived as interaction with Helena’s back region and further provides the illusion of belonging. Abandoned buildings provide the tourist with the impression that he/she is not only interacting with the festival space but also Helena’s famed and mythical past. Local establishments such as J.B.’s Spirit Shop and Bubba’s Blues Corner provide evidence that the city is alive. Overgrown buildings and boarded storefronts reinforce desired stereotypical depictions of the Delta region and provide a visual representation of the need for the tourist’s support of the city (figs. 4.7, 4.8).

102

Figure 4.7. Abandoned lot. Photograph by author, October 9, 2004.

Figure 4.8. Gist Music. Photograph by author. October 9, 2004.

103 During the festival, each of the physical sites discussed above comes alive to its soundtrack. In addition to music from the main stage, which fills the air of the festival space, street performers line Helena’s Cherry Street, allowing tourists to hear impromptu blues in an intimate and perceivably authentic setting. The festival stages present a homecoming of musicians who began their careers in the area or those returning to the home of the blues to show support for both the city and artists who influenced their musical careers. Amateur performers playing on makeshift stages suggest that the city is musically alive. Like the abandoned buildings discovered in backstage areas, such performances reinforce notions of the “real” Delta. A closer look at the conclusion of the Delta Cultural Center’s description of historic Helena will further illustrate how these performances reinforce the authenticity of the festival space: “Helena was a wide-open river town and blues music filled the air” (Delta Cultural Center 2004). As in many of the guidebooks for exploring the Delta, the Delta Cultural Center’s guide reinforces the sounds of the blues when discussing the city’s landscape and history. The inclusion of the Delta’s soundscape suggests to visitors that the true, legendary Delta is a place of constant music, not only from the loud speakers that line the levee but also from shifting musical performances that line the city’s streets. The street performers come from various places and have contrasting repertoires. Most focus on the traditional music of the Delta region, reinforcing the tourist industry’s description and the tourists’ preconception of a historical blues city with a music-filled landscape. When walking down Cherry Street, one hears a shifting soundscape. Tourists are regularly drawn into new musical sounds that reinforce and enhance their recent discoveries of the physical landmarks that now serve as the backdrop for musical performances. Therefore, the unknown artists and their music, combined with physical sites of historical and cultural authenticity, reinforce the notion that the city is not only associated with the music and landmarks presented on the festival schedule but also with the impromptu musical happenings that occur unexpected within the backstage regions of this musical city.

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Figure 4.9. Bill Abel performing. Photograph by author, October 6, 2007

A closer examination of the above photograph further illustrates the close connection between the Delta’s physical sites and its soundscape. In this image, Bill Abel, a regular street performer during the festival weekend, plays his impressive one-man band routine in front of the King Biscuit Time Studio. His chosen performance space allows tourists not only to watch Bill but also to gaze through the studio window at plaques and museum exhibits celebrating the history of the blues and the very studio space from which Sonny Payne still broadcasts the historic King Biscuit Time radio program. Overlooking Abel’s performance is the image of Louis Jordan, an Arkansas native. From a poster taped to the studio door, Jordan seems to look with approval at the audience while participating in both the performance and its observation. The audience’s experience therefore contains both a performance within the time and space of the festival weekend and musical and physical signifiers of Helena’s real and imagined geographical and musical past. Through this dialogue, Helena’s past and present are concurrently validated. The present-day music validates the historical and cultural authenticity of the physical site; the historical site authenticates the tourist’s musical experience in the present.

105 Becoming the Tradition: Past Participation as a Tourist Attraction

Helena’s physical sites, accompanied by its living soundtrack, provide the iconography, sounds, and theatrical spaces in which tourists encounter, interact with, and perform experiences of both Helena’s local culture and imagined notions of ownership and locality. The illusion of belonging in the present is also reinforced through shared memories of their participation in past festivals. These memories of both the music and seemingly unconnected happenings serve as a form of tourist capital that is traded among participants, uniting the temporary community while validating their continued role in the current festival through evidence of past participation. In 2005, the first year that the festival adopted the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival moniker, tension over the name change was high. There seemed to be a genuine fear among organizers, locals, and visitors for the festival’s future and whether attendance would be affected by the name change. The festival weekend was met with heavy storms that enhanced organizers’ fears while also providing a unique festival experience for participants that separated the true blues fans from the amateurs. On Saturday afternoon, as the rains ceased, the festival also came to a stop as visitors, including myself, gleefully snapped pictures of a double rainbow that appeared above the river levee (fig. 4.10).

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Figure 4.10. Double rainbow. Photograph by author, October 8, 2005.

The appearance of the double rainbow was unexpected, an out-of-the ordinary occurrence in contrast to the scheduled musical acts and events we were observing and participating in. The rainbow seemed to serve as a reminder of the unique experiences the festival space provided and a sense of promise for continued experiences among all participants. The appearance of a double rainbow was exclusive to that specific festival moment and provided a communal experience among festival attendants while simultaneously evoking the illusion of intimacy among all individuals. For many who witnessed the natural phenomenon that year, remembering and sharing the story now goes beyond the uniqueness of that specific festival moment; it also serves as evidence of an allegiance to the festival and Helena’s cultural past, present, and future. My knowledge of that specific moment verifies that, despite bad weather and the name change, I was in Helena supporting the continuation of the festival. Like those who joined me on the river levee, I was a “true blues fan.” My remembrance and photographs therefore serve as evidence of my participation and as souvenirs of my personal and collective tourist experience.

107 When talking to other festival participants about past festivals, I find that the 2005 festival is often remembered through this seemingly unconnected natural event. Familiarity with the musicians who played the stage are often recalled as evidence of tourist participation. The 2005 festival, by contrast, most commonly evokes memories of the rainbow and of being lucky enough to witness it. The fondness for this specific moment illustrates a shared communal experience of the landscape and festival participation. During my interview at the 2008 festival with Dean and Hayley Cummins, a married couple who met at the festival and whose story will be told in detail in the following chapter, I found that our common experience of seeing the rainbow connected our own personal and communal experiences of the 2005 festival.

Dean: We met at the same festival that there was a double rainbow. Robbie: I remember that festival. I was actually by the stage. Hayley: Well, that was the year when we met. Dean: Yeah! There was a double rainbow. There were two side-by-side and later on that day or the next day they had another rainbow. Hayley: It was the same day. Robbie: What year was that? Do you know? Hayley: That was three years ago, so 2005. Robbie: I was here. I remember taking pictures of it. Hayley: I have a great picture of the mayor on the Mississippi River side where the whole rainbow is in his hand. Dean: That’s when we met.

This particular discussion with Dean and Hayley occurred the first time I met the couple, and we immediately felt connected. A personal account of their relationship followed this brief dialogue. However, it was this shared experience that provided a point of reference through which all three us were immediately linked. On the surface we were strangers, but we were all present for the 2005 festival, and our shared knowledge illustrated that, unknowingly, we were connected through a community and a shared obligation to preserve it.

108 The above event seems to have little connection to the music of the festival, yet similar events of importance recalled by tourists are directly related to the blues tradition and the musicians who are responsible for its legacy. Festival performers range from amateurs on the emerging artist stage to today’s most popular and profitable blues musicians on the main stage. Special attention is given to the fathers of the tradition, those musicians who are considered to be blues legends and the last surviving musicians of a past era, many of whom were born and began their careers in the place that the festival celebrates. Their music and careers are iconic, but for many participants the chance to see artists such as Robert Lockwood Jr., Sam Carr, Pinetop Perkins, CeDell Davis, and Honeyboy Edwards is not only a celebration of their music but also an opportunity to thank and show continued support for the musicians who are responsible for the celebration in which they are participating. The “true blues fan,” therefore, feels not only the desire to watch these blues legends but also the responsibility of attending their performances. For many, therefore, it is the memory of these specific performances that distinguishes the casual weekend festival attendant from the “true blues fan.” Like the story of the rainbow that is retold among blues fans each year, specific performances stand out among blues fans as momentous occasions, unplanned events, and markers of a true “King Biscuit experience.” From my own attendance to and participation in the festival, two performances stand out. The first occurred in 2005 on the Heritage acoustic stage. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I was thrilled to watch the legendary CeDell Davis play his distinctive form of the blues, a style of slide guitar played with a kitchen knife, a necessity due to a severe case of polio when he was ten which left him incapable of playing with a standard slide. Several friends and fellow festival attendants had told me about the extraordinary and almost eerie sound that Davis produced on the guitar and had advised me that this was a unique opportunity not to be missed because of Davis’s declining health. As he was rolled out in his wheel chair and began his initial preparation for the set, it was obvious that Davis’s health was deteriorating. His body defied his attempts at playing his instrument while his mind defied his attempts at recalling his own song lyrics. His bass player time after time set the guitar in Davis’s lap and placed his fragile hands on the frets with no success. As his guitar slid away from his hands and off of his lap, and as

109 he repeatedly attempted, with little success, to recall the lyrics to his songs, his frustration became both audible and visible (fig. 4.11).

Figure 4.11. “CeDell Davis at the Heritage Stage. Photograph by author, October 7, 2005.

As Davis struggled on the stage, family and band members approached the elderly musician, offering assistance and words of encouragement, while fans, despite the absence of the anticipated music, shouted and cheered words of support and love for the legendary musician. I stood in awe of his struggle, both amazed and touched by the dedication of those attending his performance. In the thirty minutes that Davis wrestled with his instrument and his body, not once did I hear a sigh of frustration or words of disappointment or witness audience members desert the stage to view the more polished performance on the nearby main stage. Instead, the number of attendants increased, as if the word was out that CeDell needed their help. Fans stood with applause, moved towards the front of the stage, and spoke words of encouragement. For as long as CeDell Davis attempted to coerce his

110 uncooperative body, fans demonstrated a level of support that I have never witnessed at any other live performance. The set ended abruptly and with very little memorable music, yet the communal experience of supporting an iconic musician in his time of embarrassment, frustration, illness, and need far surpassed the other musical events I witnessed. I vaguely recall other performances at the 2005 festival, but this event is engrained in my memory and is vividly recalled and shared with other blues fans who were also there to witness this truly authentic and unique blues experience. Lew Jetton of the blues band Highway 61 states:

CeDell was in bad health. I had seen him the year before and he was fantastic. This year, he didn't feel good. He was having trouble remembering the words to songs and was not playing like his usual self. He finally had to cut the set short. With a lot of performers, they might be booed by the fans who gathered, but instead, he was met with rousing applause and people yelling, “We love you CeDell." Everyone knew what CeDell had gone through his whole life and what he was going through now, but even with that adversity, he gave everything he had for his fans who had come from all over to see him. What started out as an awkward moment, turned into a moment of sincere appreciation for the man and his contributions to the Blues world. CeDell Davis wasn't able to do the kind of show he wanted, as his health is not well right now, but we all told him we loved him anyway (2009).

The uniqueness of Davis' performance was an immediately memorable experience which other attendants and I recall to this day. Other performances are taken for granted, their significance realized only later. A perfect example of this type of performance and one of the most memorable of my festival experiences is Robert Lockwood Jr.’s performance at the 2006 festival. Along with Pinetop Perkins, Robert Lockwood Jr. was one of the last two surviving members of the King Biscuit Entertainers, the band led by Sonny Boy Williamson and featured on the original King Biscuit Time broadcasts. Since the festival’s establishment in

111 1986, Robert Lockwood Jr. has performed at every King Biscuit Blues Festival. Because of the regularity of his performances, the chance to see Robert Lockwood perform was an expected and anticipated event of the festival weekend. Although this was my third time to see the legendary performer on stage, I still felt the obligation to show up and offer my support for a musician with such iconic status. Under the impression that I would see him again the next year, like many other fans, I took his performance for granted, knowing that whatever I missed I would be able to make up for during his subsequent appearance. About a month after the festival, Robert Lockwood Jr. unexpectedly died, making the blues legend’s final performance at the festival a memorable and unique experience shared among the blues fans who were fortunate enough to have witnessed it. Shortly after Lockwood’s death, Dorothy Hill wrote the following description of his performance:

Robert Lockwood, Jr., who suffered a stroke on November 3rd after returning home, left us on this day with another memorable reminder of how deep the well is in those who have influenced the American form of music called the blues. Awe- inspiring is the only description for Mr. Robert Lockwood, Jr. and his demise is indeed the end of an era (2006).

Memories of Lockwood’s final performance are reinforced through the very fact that we, the festival community, were there to witness this historic event. The following photograph was taken during Lockwood’s final King Biscuit Blues Festival performance: (fig 4.12)

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Figure 4.12. Robert Lockwood Jr.’s final performance at the Biscuit. Photograph by author. October 7, 2006.

Robert Lockwood Jr. was a staple of the festival and his performances had become an expected event during the annual weekend celebration, so his absence at the 2007 festival reminded attendants of his greatness, his connections to Helena, and the great privilege we, the festival community, had in being present to offer our support for the musician, his home, and his music during his final performance. Each of the previously discussed backstage experiences at the King Biscuit Festival are reinforced and enhanced through the inclusiveness of the festival space. A closer look at the King Biscuit Blues Festival, the city of Helena, and the many tourist opportunities that they provide further explains the tourist’s sense of responsibility for the festival’s well being and how the act of preservation and touristic activism is in itself a manifestation of existential authenticity.

113 Saving our Biscuit: Tourists and the Performance of Preservation

Helena is promoted as an exhibit of small town Southern America, but the contrast between Helena’s reality during and outside of the festival weekend suggests that the intimate nature of the festival experience is in many cases an example of staged intimacy. However, since the city is recreated to satisfy the desires of those visiting, Helena goes beyond inviting tourists to witness and experience local culture; they are also invited to become the local culture. The festival site is unique in that it encompasses the entire city and Delta region more broadly. Rather than containing a festival ground that is separate from the city’s everyday reality, Helena becomes the theatrical setting for the weekend performance. It is through the city’s transformation that the tourist is transformed from a mere spectator to a key performer in the production and is thereby provided agency for the success and continuance of the festival and the host city. Therefore, the inclusion of local businesses and the backstreets of Helena provide tourists with an intimate experience unobtainable at many cultural festivals throughout the country, where the festival is roped off and clear distinctions are made between real and fabricated, front and back, and host and guest. The absence of a dichotomy further enhances the illusion that those visiting the festival site are more than spectators; their participation is believed to be crucial to the festival and the many things it represents. Tourists therefore have a sense of ownership of the festival and take responsibility for its continuance. Through the act of travel, tourists believe they can indeed preserve the past, perform the present, and ensure the future. The role of tourist as activist has become increasingly prevalent with the change of the name from “King Biscuit Blues Festival’ to “The Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival.” The change occurred in 2005, when the New York-based corporation King Biscuit Entertainment, who currently owns the King Biscuit moniker because of KFFA’s failure to copyright the name, demanded an annual fifteen-thousand-dollar fee for Helena’s continued use of the name. Rather than paying the fee, the organizers opted to keep the festival free and change the name. Since 2005, The King Biscuit Entertainment Group has leased out the original name to Performa Entertainment, a Memphis promoter and real estate agency that plans to hold a blues festival in the near future called the “King Biscuit

114 Music Festival” in Memphis, Tennessee, during the same weekend as the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival, a move felt by many to be a means of capitalizing upon and erasing Helena’s historical connection to the King Biscuit Time heritage. A closer look at an article from the Memphis Commercial Appeal titled “Beale will get King Biscuit” illustrates both Performa Entertainment and the King Biscuit Entertainment Group’s plans for the King Biscuit moniker and suggests reasons for a communal response to it. The article states:

Beale Street is ready to serve up a heaping helping of King Biscuit food and entertainment. Beale Street developer and landlord Performa Entertainment Real Estate Inc. has reached an agreement with New York based King Biscuit Entertainment Group Inc to host a fall music festival—tentatively titled the King Biscuit Festival.…Performa and King Biscuit Entertainment are also cooking up a café that will operate on Beale under the King Biscuit banner and would like the King Biscuit Flour Hour radio show to broadcast from Beale as well (Makai 2005, A.1).

King Biscuit Entertainment Group and Performa Entertainment obviously intend to appropriate and capitalize upon the King Biscuit moniker. John Elkington, an executive of Performa, states: “Our objective is to make sure we are always concerned with the music, history and culture of what made Beale Street and Memphis special” (qtd. in Makai, 2005, A.1). However, the moniker and the history and culture it signifies are in no way connected to Memphis or Beale Street. For many visiting “the home of the blues,” the name change will go unnoticed. The King Biscuit Festival, radio broadcast, and restaurant will just become three more threads in Memphis’ rich fabric of music history and tourist attractions. But for those fans who annually attend the Arkansas festival and through their shared experiences and memories claim ownership and agency for the festival and host culture, this transformation is seen as a commercial appropriation of an event and culture that is directly connected to a specific place, sound, and cultural experience. The Arkansas festival emphasizes the local, paying respect to the culture, history, musicians, landscape, and soundscape of Helena and the

115 surrounding Delta region. The Memphis festival aims to appropriate Helena’s tradition, history, culture, and authenticity to bring in more commercial and popular artists, thereby making the festival a larger and more profitable event. George Alexandrou of King Biscuit Entertainment states: “The only way to make it bigger is to bring more people here. There's a definite need to bring a contemporary artist into the mix" (qtd in Makai 2005, A.1). Referring to this appropriation, Wayne Andrews, former president of the Sonny Boy Blues Society and director of Helena’s festival states: "They are targeting the October date so that people will tie it in to the Helena event and they're trying to use the good will we've built into the name to support their event in Memphis” (qtd in Makai 2005, A.1). The name “King Biscuit” and its current appeal can be appropriated and commodified into the fabric of Memphis’ musical tourism industry, but Helena’s claim to tradition, history, place, and cultural and performative authenticity cannot be replicated. I have suggested that for many festival participants the music is secondary, and their real reasons for attending lie in experiential attractions that cannot be realized outside of Helena’s festival grounds. For those “true blues fans” who share inside knowledge of Helena, memories of festivals past, and anticipations for its future, such a transformation is thought of as cultural and historical thievery. The conscious inclusiveness of the festival space presents the illusion of belonging and ownership, resulting in an authentic tourist experience, but it also creates a collective body of like-minded blues fans who, through their agency for and allegiance to the festival and host culture, both desire and are obligated to stand up for and save the festival’s legacy and continuance. The appropriation of Helena’s musical identity and the blatant disregard for the locality and history of the King Biscuit legacy has resulted in increased attendance and an enhanced solidarity among blues fans around the globe. Whether they have personally attended the festival or merely heard of its existence through blues lore, these fans have joined forces to “save the Biscuit.” An examination of a petition circulating online provides evidence of solidarity through a communal desire to preserve the festival (figure 4.13):

116 To: Performa Entertainment, King Biscuit Entertainment I support the history of music. The blues was born in the Delta. This unique music influenced other popular forms of music, broke racial barriers as the African American artist were played on radio stations, and influenced the literary history and the language of the Delta.

The King Biscuit name is unique in that it is tied to important moments and artists in music that influenced not only American music, but the world. It is important that the name, regardless of ownership, continue to be tied to the historical location where history was made, and music created. 

King Biscuit Time, King Biscuit Flower Hour and the former King Biscuit Blues Festival each pay tribute to this history. 

I understand that King Biscuit Flower Hour “owns” the trademark, but the value of your trademark was being enhanced at no cost by King Biscuit Time and the Blues Festival. What has the King Biscuit Flower Hour been doing with the name these last few years but selling re-issues of concerts that were recorded years ago, and replaying those same concerts on syndicated radio. King Biscuit Time and the Blues Festival in Helena kept the roots of the name alive. 

Now that you see the value in the name you want to take it away from those that have nurtured it for the past years. The value of the name is in its history from the old style flour sacks, the 14,000 broadcast by Sunshine Sonny Payne, the folk art of the blues festival, and the live music at each festival. Good business sense would tell you not to turn away the 100,000 fans who support the festival, or the thousands that have heard Sonny Payne over the year. 

117 Therefore I pledge: 

To support the artist that have made the music that influenced the world.

To purchase music from independent labels that work to support artists. 

To attend and support music festivals that are about the music such as the  Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival, which is presented free. 

I will not: Purchase music from corporations that are attempting to “cash in” on a name Attend a festival that is based on taking the name from anther festival, and trying to confuse music fans by holding it at the same time Support the sponsors of any such event. Enter a bar, restaurant or establishment which is attempting to “cash in” on the cultural history of a region without supporting the area. Tour Beale Street, or Farrish Street.

Please allow The "King Biscuit" name to be used by the Sonny Boy Blues Society. Keep "King Biscuit Time" on KFFA in Helena, where it has broadcast from for over six decades.

Figure 4.13. “Petition to Save the Biscuit,” reprinted from PetitionOnline.com, http://new.PetitionOnline.com/Biscuit/petition.html

The above petition, signed by over 4,300 participants, highlights many of the themes that are being threatened as well as the issues that initially drew tourists to the destination. History, tradition, cultural legacy, musical authenticity, and locality are clearly stated as reasons for saving the festival’s local identity. Although not specifically mentioned, it is also evident that saving the festival is an attempt at preserving attendees’ past, present, and future experiences at the festival site. The petition offers both an oath of tourist alliance to local traditions and small town America and a clear defiance against corporate America and its appropriation and exploitation of the traditional blues. This allegiance is clearly seen in the oath to avoid visits to the famous Beale and Farris Streets,

118 and in the oath to support independent record companies and boycott those with connections to the King Biscuit Entertainment Group. References to Helena’s contributions and evidence of touristic alliance to the blues were also abundant during the 2006, 2007, and 2008 festivals. Festival organizers appeared between each musical set promoting concert t-shirts and posters, making clear that the purchase of festival souvenirs insured a continued free festival. These statements were intertwined with references to the King Biscuit name and comments by both organizers and musicians that defied corporate outsiders who are set to profit from Helena’s historical and continued traditions. At the 2006 festival, Northern Blues Recording artist Watermelon Slim started his set on the main stage openly defiant of the appropriation of the King Biscuit moniker by stating simply that “the Biscuit will always be in Helena.” His comment created an uproar among the spectators who, like the performer, felt a sincere connection to the festival and its continuance. Much of the defiant rhetoric from the concert stage associated attendance, participation, and monetary exchange through the purchasing of festival souvenirs and CDs with acts of philanthropy and activism. These souvenirs therefore became more than mere items used to relive or revisit a tourist experience but also markers of the tourists’ continued support of the festival’s legacy and their role in its preservation. The following t- shirt proudly displayed by two festival attendants illustrates the fans’ support (Figs 4.14, 4.15).

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Figures 4.14. and 4.15. The Biscuit will always be in Helena. Photographs by author, October 8, 2006.

120 The logo on the front of the t-shirt, “The Biscuit will always be in Helena, Arkansas,” is a clear statement of support for the locality of the festival and defiance of the festival’s appropriation by corporate America. This statement further reinforces the importance of place in the realization of a tourist experience and the desire of the tourist to preserve notions of small town America and regional identity. The souvenir shirt will likely provide a centerpiece for discussions of past tourist experiences, and it is also a souvenir of individual and collective roles in the attempted preservation of the festival. Souvenirs evoke memories of visiting and interacting with a specific destination; souvenirs of tourist allegiance, defiance, and activism also evoke the act of philanthropy. These mementos of good deeds serve to validate the tourist experience once visitors leave the tourist site and re-enter the regularity of their everyday lives. During the festival, they serve as markers of inside knowledge of Helena’s backstage areas and the participant’s newly-gained social capital, which places him/her at a higher status within the festival community. These seemingly ordinary souvenirs become the official festival regalia through which “true blues fans” proudly show their support for the festival while also suggesting to other visitors that they are attending for more than the spectacle; they are active members of a community taking responsibility for the festival and the music’s continuance.

Conclusion

The King Biscuit Blues Festival is realized through a shared dialogue among all festival participants concerning ownership, meaning, and agency within the King Biscuit phenomenon. The local tourist industry and festival organizers provide a theatrical space for the tourist experience to unfold. However, the touristic realization of these experiences also shapes Helena’s historical and present identity. This dialogue suggests that the creation and continuance of a musical place, like the music the city represents, is the result of a complex negotiation between the local and temporary communities that reside within the festival space. The realization of the annual festival is therefore the result of a

121 multifaceted performance by temporary and longtime residents that are dependent on one another. As Darya Maoz suggests:

The gaze does not belong to the tourists alone….The host and guest cultures both gaze at each other. The former acts according to the tourist gaze, while the latter acts according to the local gaze and to what is expected of them by the host, who manipulates them. The mutual gaze makes both sides seem like puppets on a string, since it regulates their behavior (2005, 225).

The mutual gaze has resulted in a local community that performs the touristic notion of small town America and cultural authenticity and a tourist community that performs the role of preservationist thorough attendance and monetary support, ensuring the continuance of both the annual festival and the city year round. The heightened eminence assigned to tourists during the festival weekend has resulted in a tourist experience that goes well beyond a weekend of escapism. Tourists are also given the responsibly to save the festival, the music, and the host culture, which has resulted in a type of moral tourism, surpassing the standard tourist experience. As Jim Butcher argues: “(In New Moral Tourism), the holiday is re-presented as an arena for ethical behavior to the benefit of other peoples and the environment, leading to a holiday that is deemed to be far superior” (2003, 13). The result is an entrenched connection to the Delta in which tourists feel both a desire and responsibility for the well being of the blues tradition. Tourists are often described as a hegemonic force that transforms the tourist space to meet its own desires without any real concern for the host city. Conversely, those visiting Helena are concerned and feel that their participation in the annual festival goes beyond mere sightseeing. They are preserving a tradition by becoming part of it. A closer look at a t-shirt proudly displayed by a festival participant illustrates this connection (fig. 4.16):

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Figure 4.16. Keeping the Blues Alive. Photograph by author, October 8, 2006.

The slogan “Keeping the Blues Alive” illustrates both the fan’s love for the blues and his responsibility for its preservation, a duty further supported by the words above the slogan that simply state “Official Partner.” The John Weston quote at the bottom of the shirt also suggests a perceived and desired connection to the blues: “The blues is the only color that you feel.” “Keeping the Blues Alive” serves as a personal statement of responsibility for and allegiance to the festival, Helena, and the music. Weston’s quote also reminds all participants of their significant role in its continuation. When combined, these words authenticate the tourist experience while validating the tourist’s desire to both perform and preserve it. Regardless of ethnicity, nationality, or economic status, the ownership of and agency for the blues tradition becomes the property of and responsibility of all participants in the annual production. Notions of traditional music, legendary performers, and authentic performance spaces are most commonly listed as key reasons for saving the festival. The additional importance of the visitor’s becoming part of the temporary community suggests that the need to preserve goes beyond physical and sonic objects; it is also a chance to perform, memorialize, and create perceptions of one’s self. A

123 closer look at the festival experiences of Mike Miller, Dean and Hayley Cummins, and Mary Rodgers will further support this assertion.

124

CHAPTER FIVE

WE ARE THE TRADITION: INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNAL PERFORMANCES OF THE BLUES

To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change (Cooley 1902, 249).

Helena’s cultural, geographical, and musical legacies are often noted by participants, organizers, and performers as key incentives for attending and saving the annual festival. However, for many participants, reasons for attending and participating in the event are rooted much deeper than in the festival’s mythological landscape and its accompanying soundtrack. They are also rooted in the creation and preservation of a communal stage that both permits and encourages individual and collective performances of creation, preservation, and remembrance and the memorializing of personal and communal experiences, social interactions, and newly formed traditions. Through an analysis of interviews with regular festival participants Mike Miller, Dean and Hayley Cummins, and Mary Rodgers, I will speculate on several reasons for attending and saving the festival that go beyond the sights and sounds intended for tourist consumption. Although each of the following case studies provides unique and contrasting reasons for attending, performing, and preserving the King Biscuit Blues Festival, each is rooted in perceived personal connections to and participation within notions of tradition that are collectively realized through the annual performance of the space and sounds of the King Biscuit Blues Festival.

125 “Who’s Your Mayor?”: Mayor Mike and the Performance of Tent City

Touristic authenticity is often realized through a perceived experience of communal belonging rather than a mere encounter with the sights, sounds, and objects intended for tourist display. Existential authenticity is therefore achieved through the realization of what Victor Turner would refer to as “communitas,” a body of individuals who collectively enter liminality or “any condition outside of or on the peripheries of everyday life” (Turner [1969] 1974, 47). Within this liminal state, societal markers of success such as economic and social class are temporarily replaced by a shared love for traditional music and a collective desire for a euphoric way of life. Borrowing from Turner, Ming Wang states: “Communitas occurs as an unmediated, pure, interpersonal relationship between pilgrims who confront one another as social equals based on their common humanity” (Wang 1999, 69). For many festival participants, their pilgrimage is to the Delta. However, the Delta represents more than the landscape displayed in travel guides, on album covers, and in the popular imagination. It is also a theatrical space where all participants, for a brief period and despite their everyday lives, are joined through the performance of community and a shared love for the blues and notions of tradition. This sense of communitas is annually performed in the provisional camping community known as “Tent City USA,” which sets up each October at the festival site. Within the campgrounds, thousands of blues lovers establish and collectively participate in their own living tradition, providing a theatrical space for performing individual and collective notions of an idealized community reinforced by the blues, which serves as the soundtrack to newly established social traditions (figs. 5.1-5.4).

126

Figure 5.1. The beginning of a blues community. Photograph by author, October 9, 2008.

Figure 5.2. Tent City USA. Photograph by author. October 10, 2008

127

Figure 5.3. Ghost Town. Photograph by author. October 10, 2008.

Figure 5.4. Photograph of the author performing in Tent City. Photograph at the request of the author. October 10, 2008.

128 My own personal experiences within Tent City reinforce the campsite as a social space. Although I have attended the festival for six years, my participation within Tent City USA first occurred in 2007. During the previous years, I spent my days at the festival, leaving at the conclusion of the headliner’s act to return to a hotel, often miles from the festival space and completely disconnected from the festival’s activities and other participants. I knew of the campsite, but I thought of it as merely an inexpensive place to sleep, oblivious to its importance among its residents and the overall festival experience. Engaged in what, at the time, I believed to be the complete King Biscuit experience, I ignored the campsite and its residents and went on with my participation, observation, and documentation of the annual musical event on display. In 2007, I borrowed a family member’s camper and decided it might be fun to spend both my days and nights immersed in the festival atmosphere. I arrived a day before the festival began and found the campground already full of an array of sounds, sights, and smells that delighted my tourist senses. As I struggled for what felt like hours with setting up the antiquated camper, I could hear blues and other genres of American folk music emerging from the already established campsites, the smells of campfires and BBQ lingering throughout the air, and the sights of other campers who, like myself, were eagerly claiming their space within the steadily-expanding community. Excited to re-visit Helena, I set up my temporary residence as quickly as possible and made my way to the river levee walk that connects the campground to the official festival space. I spent much of the day re-visiting the sites, sounds, and historical landmarks that had originally brought me to the festival space five years earlier. I walked the back streets of Helena, visited the Delta Cultural Center, attended a broadcast of King Biscuit Time, shopped for the perfect blues harp at Gist’s Music Store, browsed through LPs and CDs at Bubba’s Blues Corner, and visited J.B.’s Liquor for some late-night refreshment. After a day of sightseeing, I headed back to the campsite to find that the community had expanded from a few campers and tents to a full-blown traveling community. As I walked through the campsite to reclaim my space, I was greeted by other campers, music, and the collective sounds of celebration drifting throughout the provisional city. The 22nd annual festival would officially begin the following morning.

129 However, for many campers, their annual tradition, the very reason they returned year after year, had already begun. Although I knew very few people, I was not only invited to observe but was also welcomed and encouraged to participate within the camping experience. Later that night, as I sat anticipating the festival, highlighting in my program the performers I would see during each day of the festival weekend, long-time residents of Tent City stopped by to welcome me to the community and to offer open invitations to visit their campfires for music, food, drink, and camaraderie. As the weekend progressed, I found myself frequently leaving the main stage and returning to the campsite with the hopes that there would be a jam session, a campfire gathering, or the possibility for personal interaction with others residing in the provisional community. By the end of the weekend, I was spending much of my time separated from the hordes of tourists decorating the river levee with their lawn chairs, straw hats, and festival regalia. Rather than participating in the intended festival tradition, I was creating what would become my own tradition, meeting new friends and sharing music, stories, food, and friendship. I could hear the music from the main stage drifting through the small wooded area that separates the campsite from the festival’s levee stage, but the iconic performers that I had highlighted a few nights before as must sees for the festival weekend were becoming less important, replaced by my increasing urge to participate, celebrate, and perform within a community of like-minded individuals. The blues were becoming more than a mere musical form; they were also becoming an ideology that for a brief period provided a shared reason for a temporary but very “real” communal experience. The blues tradition was providing both the soundtrack and the theatrical space for participating in and performing an idealized way of life. For five years I had been researching the King Biscuit story. Speaking to residents, performers, entertainers, organizers, and spectators, I always felt like an outsider, a fan and scholar of the music with no real connection to the place or story that was being told and celebrated. I had previously ignored the festival campgrounds with the impression that the action was only in the official festival space. However, within three short days of residing and participating in my newly discovered community, I realized that the Tent City experience is an integral component of the festival, and for the first time I felt that the story

130 I was telling was not merely an observation and documentation of the “other” but also of myself. It was during this initial camping experience that I first met Mike Miller, the Mayor of Tent City, who has traveled from Ohio to camp at the site since Helena’s fire department first established the campground during the fifth annual festival in 1991 (fig.5.5).

Figure 5.5. Mike Miller, Mayor of Tent City USA. Photograph by author. October 10, 2008.

Mike was eager to share stories and memories of past festivals, jokes, and humorous songs on political and social issues. Throughout the weekend, I spent hours at the Tent City communal campfire with the mayor and other key figures in the Tent City community, attended a wedding in the campground, played music, shared food and camaraderie, and engaged in a collective celebration of the blues and everything the music represented. My initial ideas about the space as a place to merely rejuvenate were passing, replaced with my

131 own and others’ shared personal accounts of the campground and what it meant to those of us who, for four days a year, call Tent City home. As I made plans for the 2008 festival, I was as excited about seeing the campground’s temporary residents as I was about hearing the artists appearing on the concert stage. Weeks before, I emailed Mike to request an official interview. Eager to share his stories, Mike generously agreed to talk with me. On the second day of the 23rd annual festival, I sat with Mike once again near the Tent City USA campfire, where for almost two hours Mike shared his memories of his beloved community and its importance for his and other’s lives. During this initial interview, the Mayor made clear the reasons for the formation of Tent City and its believed purpose within the social fabric of the festival space. When asked about the idea behind the community and the reasons for its establishment, Mike began by sharing memories of his earliest festival experience and why he was first drawn to attend Helena’s blues festival:

I started coming down here because I had family in the area who told me that this town was going to start having an annual blues festival, and since it was here on the Delta, I thought it sounded like a great thing, all of the potential to be a great blues festival because it is in the Delta and Sonny Boy Williamson.

From Mike’s statement, it becomes evident that, like many others who attend the annual event, it was the legendary performers and notions of place and the Delta’s cultural tradition that initially attracted Mike to Helena’s annual festival. However, the sense of community discovered among other visitors would soon become his primary attraction. His detailed discussion of the formation of Tent City clearly illustrates the importance of a collective experience with and subsequent solidarity among other visitors within the performative space of the festival weekend:

I think about the fifth annual King Biscuit Blues Festival. They had this campground created, so we came over here. Now we are in a campground situation where you’re not just a spectator watching a stage; you are

132 actually here spending your days and nights with a bunch of strangers. My perception of when Tent City really got formed was the night, right here, when we got a big fire going and lots of people that I met before were here from Little Rock and other places. One of them starts talking about “nigger” this and “nigger” that. I just moved away and walked to the other side of the campfire. But it became this issue of, “Hey, man, look. You need to understand that you are in the South, and that’s the way we talk down here.” I said, “I understand that, but what you need to understand is that this is my campfire, and you can’t talk that way around my campfire. I don’t want to debate this with you, but this is my campfire, and I came a long way to be warmed by it, and I am not going to listen to that shit while I am here.” And so one thing led to another. As the years went by, they [people who shared Mike’s beliefs] kept coming back, and the circle of people who came around were more and more evolved into this thing that we are now, which is like a family reunion, and it pretty much encompasses this whole place.

With this brief explanation of Tent City’s communal formation, it becomes evident that reasons for forming and participating within the provisional community, like Mike’s initial reasons for visiting the festival space, are rooted in notions of tradition. However, tradition is realized not solely through the landscape and soundscape being presented and performed in the designated festival space but also in the performance of social interaction that occurs within the newly formed provisional community. The formation of Tent City, therefore, resulted not only from the desire to visit the festival space and to gaze at the cultural artifacts on display but also from the desire to belong to and engage with the social fabric of the festival weekend. As Mike stated, the creation of a campground allowed tourists to live among other music lovers rather than be mere spectators who are separated at the festival’s conclusion. This desire for and realization of a community of like-minded individuals has become its own tradition, which parallels and compliments the musical and cultural traditions celebrated on the festival’s main stage. The music being played on the concert stage can be heard in the campground, which is situated in a field behind the river levee, but the music and communal interaction

133 occurring in Tent City can only be observed and heard by those participating in the provisional community. This sonic and physical reality provides residents of Tent City a complex and unique sonic experience that leads to a sense of ownership of and agency for the campground and the unique experiences that occur within it. During my interviews with Mike, he shared several stories about unwelcome campers and how members of Tent City, whom he repeatedly referred to as “mature blues fans,” outlasted other groups who were momentarily part of but not fully engaged with the community:

There used to be a time when a lot of college kids would come from the University of Arkansas, Ole Miss, want to be in here and break bottles and act rowdy and all that stuff. We outlasted them. This is not where you do that. This is a mature crowd of blues fans who take music very seriously and enjoy it as seriously, so Tent City is sort of a codification of that ideal.

The pride of outlasting partiers illustrates a strong connection to the temporary community. There are some who use the campground solely as a place to sleep during the festival weekend, but for those who claim a place in the social network of Tent City, the campground is much more. It is a space for communal gathering, reunion, and pilgrimage. This sense of ownership for the space became increasingly clear as Mike continued to explain how the “mature blues fans” outlasted “the beer-bottle-breaking college crowd” that had no sincere engagement with or investment in the Tent City community.

I think what happened was there was a period of time about 5 or 6 years ago, it had rained out every single year. It became sort of a joke. “Are you going to Helena?” “Yeah and it better rain. I’m not paying 700 dollars to fly down there and trump around in the dust. I want my fucking mud when I get to Helena, and if we don’t get any mud, we will turn on that fire hydrant over there and soak that place down, so we have some mud we can swamp around in.” So I think that wet season after wet season sort of separated us from those beer-bottle-breaking college kids that were looking for a good place to go party. So, I think that had a lot to do with the crowd in here

134 becoming what it is now. It’s a more mature crowd. There are absolutely younger people in here, but they’re not obnoxious drunks; they’re good neighbors and people that we love.

A sense of pride accompanied Mike’s story of outlasting the partiers. It is important to note, however, that participation within the community is not limited to long-time members but rather to anyone with a love for the blues who is willing to follow a short set of rules listed on the community’s website, tentcityusa.com:

1. Never Violence: Loud arguments can mess up a perfectly good tune. 2. Express Yourself: Show people who you are not what you think they want to see. 3. Keep an open mind: Just because people are different, doesn’t mean they are wrong. 4. Keep it acoustic: Enough said. 5. Embrace Cultural Diversity: All cultures can teach us something about love. 6. Keep it simple: We are all here to have fun.

A closer reading of the above six rules of camping etiquette provides an excellent introduction to the Tent City community, which is described by participants as “inclusive, expanding, musical camping: What the world wants to be when it grows up.” Although many members of Tent City USA were initially drawn to the festival because of Helena’s legendary connection to the blues tradition, the above rules illustrate a desire for participating in a broader concept of tradition and belonging to an idealized community that far surpasses the need to preserve a specific musical genre or its iconic performers. Mike repeatedly referred to members of Tent City as “mature blues fans,” but when I asked him how important the blues were to the festival experience, he replied:

It’s not so much the blues as it is folk, [the] blues will work fine. Bluegrass, blues is pretty much the same thing; it’s cultural music that comes from

135 poverty, the soul; its storytelling, and that is, I think, what folk music is, so I lump them all together. If you watch people dance to bluegrass, it tends to be in the neck. They want to move their necks a lot when they listen to bluegrass, and the blues they want to move their lower backs. I like the lower back people better than the neck people.

Mike’s keen observation of each genre’s dance moves illustrates a preference for the blues over other traditional musical forms, but his delineation between folk and popular music suggests that the specific musical genre and its canonic musicians are far less important that the collective performance of and participation in a community that uses traditional musical forms and festival spaces as an accompaniment and backdrop for their annual gathering and performance. I asked Mike if the communal gathering was more important than the music being featured during the festival weekend. He stated: “It is for me. Yeah I’d say generally that there are a lot of people that come just to be in here.” Expanding on the communal experience of Tent City, Mayor Mike stated:

People can get tearful when they talk about how much they love coming here and how much they love this crowd of people. So yeah, I would say for the most part it’s almost tribal. I like to compare it to when I read about the pre-history human beings, you know, who would have gatherings each spring to trade stories and mingle so that they did not inbreed with their own tribe and have these tribal gatherings. That is the way it feels to me. When I come here once a year, it’s like that. It’s sharing food, sharing music and pictures from last year, and “How’s your kid?” And it’s grown into a family reunion in every way….You couldn’t convince me that most people in here don’t feel that way.

The shared desire for the communal and tribal experiences that occur within the campsite suggests that although there are many elements that enhance the tourist experience, it is the social interaction and the collective performance of an idealized way

136 of life occurring within the festival space that has become the key draw for many of its longtime participants. Tent City USA has therefore become its own tradition which, like the blues tradition being celebrated on the nearby main stage, celebrates an idealized notion of tradition that is in opposition to “real” life outside of the time and space of the festival weekend. Mayor Mike was clear to point out the unique social fabric of the festival space through a comparison with the most well-known and mythological music festival in pop- culture history, Woodstock:

This is the closest thing to Woodstock. Everybody coming together to celebrate music, and that’s what this is all about. This is the closest I will ever get to Woodstock probably. That kind of feeling you see in the old movie: peace, love, and music. That’s what we do in here. You know it’s not happening all of the time cause we have to sleep and eat, but generally speaking this is not a sports festival, this is not a veterans’ reunion, this is a music festival, and the people here are about the music. It’s religious.

Mike’s comparison confirmed many of my own observations concerning the festival’s demographics. Attendees to the King Biscuit Blues Festival are not exclusively of the baby boomer generation, but a large number of participants are old enough to have participated in or to have lived in the shadow of the counter culture. When I asked Mike about the ages of those who participate in Tent City, he stated: “Its all across the board.” When I asked if a majority of participants were involved in the counter culture, he replied simply: “ Yes. No need to elaborate, for sure.” Mike followed this declaration by sharing with me his exclusion from the counter culture in the sixties and seventies:

I was completely out of that culture because we had the draft then, and I had to go. I had to go or desert, you know, and so I didn’t get to do that with all of the flower children. I was the one they didn’t like. I was a “baby killer” to them, and if you research that you will probably get real sad about the way they treated us when we came home.

137 Mike’s statement makes apparent that the campground is a stage for belonging to and performing a euphoric and idealized community. In our conversations Mike suggested that Tent City was the closest thing to Woodstock that he would experience and that a large number of participants were of the counter culture era, but he was also clear to point out that he was completely disconnected from this culture and felt mistreated by those involved. However, within the liminal space of the King Biscuit Blues Festival, removed from history and real life, both anti-war activists and Vietnam veterans of the sixties come together for an annual pilgrimage. For Mike, the Tent City community represents the idea of Woodstock: peace, love, and music, a festival community that, due to the draft, was unavailable for him to experience in his youth. The communal aspect of Tent City is therefore an opportunity for Mike to belong to and participate within an imagined community that shunned him forty years earlier. Angus Gillespie suggests that the “folknik,” an archetype of the festival community who places more importance on communal aspects than the music, is often drawn to folk music and the folk festival due to its vague association with left-wing politics: “The seasoned folknik may have antiwar background and may have been involved in forms of social protest ranging from grape boycotts to nuclear plant sit ins” (1987, 157). Gillespie’s statement suggests that the folk music festival is a space for communal discontent and is reserved for those people who have a history of or are currently involved in social protest. Although this archetype certainly fits many of the participants who attend and regularly perform the tourist space, the inclusiveness of the campground invites all people regardless of race, gender, age, or political affiliation to become part of the idealized community. Tent City, therefore, is not merely a stage for left-wing politics but rather a stage that invites and encourages political and social discourse among participants who may disagree on a host of topics but are united through their love for the music and their idea of utopia. The campground as a space for political and social dialogue was clearly evident during the 2008 festival, which took place a month before the American presidential election. Throughout the campsite, flags were displayed supporting campers’ presidential candidates of choice. Campaign t-shirts were proudly worn within the campground and sold at merchant tents on the main festival thoroughfare. Discussions were held around campfires, and campers showed allegiance to their favored candidate while openly

138 listening to others’ opinions and choices. Songs were composed on the spot that, like traditional folk music, improvised on the political and social issues of the day. The constant dialogue concerning who should be the next President illustrated a connectedness to real-world issues, suggesting that even in the liminal space of the festival, some topics could not be ignored. The inclusiveness of the campfire dialogue and the ability of campers not only to share their political ideas but also to respectfully listen to others was unique, a far cry from the almost militant discussions seen on news networks such as Fox News and MSNBC in the months leading up to election night. Tent City served not as a stage for reliving past social causes, as Gillespie suggests, but instead as a communal space for sharing ideas and attentively listening to others. The first three rules listed on the Tent City website clearly define this ideology, which is realized within the temporary and liminal space of the festival weekend: “1. Never Violence: Loud arguments can mess up a perfectly good tune, 2. Express Yourself: Show people who you are not what you think they want to see, and 3. Keep an open mind: Just because people are different, doesn’t mean they are wrong.” On the third night of the 2008 festival, I wandered the campsite seeking a jam session, the perfect ending to my most recent festival experience. Following the sounds of amateur music making, I eventually found the campfire and, like before, was invited to sit down, listen, and share a few tunes. I was singing a few Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy tunes, which seemed appropriate for the performance setting, when Mayor Mike approached the campfire wearing a “Mike Miller for President” t-shirt, guitar in hand, and a newly-composed song which shared his thoughts on the possibility of having Sarah Palin for Vice President. He sang the following lyrics to a tune reminiscent of “Turkey in the Straw”:

Sarah Palin, she’s got the touch. Sarah Palin, we love that girl so much. She can skin a moose, if that’s not enough, She’s got five kids, but only three are fucked up. So if we vote John Wayne McCain with one foot in the grave, We’ll get Saran Palin, Oh happy day!

139 We’ll never have to worry about nuclear war, Cause she can see Russia from her front door! We didn’t know her Sunday; by Tuesday she’s a saint. We don’t care who she is, and we don’t see who she ain’t. She looked right in the camera with that evil wink.

Mike was interested in sharing his humorous political song with a new audience. He also needed help coming up with a final line for his song. Not knowing the political beliefs of those around me, I was a bit apprehensive about the crowd’s reaction. As Mike completed the first stanza of the song, an intoxicated gentleman vocally disagreed with him. Mike paused and explained to the gentleman that the campfire was a place to share ideas and, as a Vietnam veteran, he had every right to express his views. Following this brief confrontation, the drunk camper joined in with the other campers who, despite contrasting political beliefs, collaborated with Mike on the song, eventually agreeing on the line: “She don’t know how to talk, and she don’t know how to think.” Like the music, food, and general camaraderie shared around the campfire, political views and statements on the state and future of the nation were collectively exchanged through song. The inclusiveness of the festival space and its contrast with real-world social relations has resulted in a performance of political parody in which long-time members of Tent City USA are assigned roles during the festival weekend. Mike informed me that in addition to his role as Mayor, there is also a Vice Mayor, Ambassador of Goodwill, High Sherriff, King, Queen, Duchess, Fashion Consultant, Animal Control Department, and a one-member Village Council. This political performance, like the touristic interaction with the nearby-designated festival space, provides a means of escaping the realization of everyday life through a hyperreal touristic performance of an ideal community. In his essay “Travels in Hyperreality,” Umberto Eco argues that our society is “…obsessed with realism, where, if a reconstruction is to be credible, it must be absolutely iconic… a ‘real’ copy of the reality being represented” (1986, 4). Political parody within the campsite suggests an attempt at replicating real life through a performance of social structure and interaction. It also suggests a performance that attempts to improve on the very thing it is believed to be replicating. Marjorie Esman explains: “It is by now well

140 known that festivals, like other kinds of public rituals, reflect and reinforce the social order and the important values of their host communities” (1982, 199). In the case of the formation and collective performance of the Tent City community, Esman's observation raises interesting questions and further supports the idea of the campground as both a liminal and hyperreal theatrical space. For instance, who is the host community? The city of Helena provides the space, but the campground demographic is made up a transient community including people from diverse backgrounds and locations. The city’s fire department both manages and profits from the space, yet it is the members of Tent City who claim ownership for the grounds and believe they have agency in how they are operated. Interested in the political parody of Tent City and its true role within the festival space, I asked Mike how he became Mayor. He replied:

People say, “How did you get to be the mayor?” I said, “I don’t know. No one knows.” “Were you, like, elected?” “Nobody knows!” “So you were appointed?” “Nobody knows!” “So were you self-appointed?” “Look man, nobody knows, but I am beginning to wonder why you are so concerned.”

Mike was clear to point out that the appointed titles were all in fun. He was also eager to share several stories of his “real” role within the community, such as his relationship with the Helena Fire Department:

We have a history of them working with us and making rules. Like, I think they were not aware that it’s not a good idea to let generators run all night. We had a death not long ago in Indiana at a campsite. Somebody’s generator was exhausting through a hose. Somebody kicked the hose and the exhaust ended up being right under the camper where the couple was sleeping and they died in the middle of the night. And it keeps people up all night. Generators are the bane of music festival camping. They worked with us on that….One time they let me tell them when it was full, because it was real wet and there was not any room to put people. It was real wet, and if they tried to pull off that road they would get stuck. We suggested to not let

141 anyone else in. They let us have some influence in the way the campground is run.

These stories suggest that the official administration of the space listens to the communal members. Other stories suggest an even more direct role in the campground’s management:

One year there was some kind of altercation over [in] downtown. I think someone hit someone else with a beer bottle, but the state highway patrol helicopter came and was using his searchlight to work this bayou over here between us and the stage. They couldn’t find him, evidently, but since they were here they started having fun with the helicopter, messing with us here at the campground. You know, you can’t talk. These people, you know, I figured they were, you know, voyeurs. They were just really obnoxious, and people kept hollerin’ at me “Mayor, Mayor, do something! You’re the mayor. Can’t you do something about that?” So I walked down to the fire chief. I said, “Chief, can you do something, man? We’re not deserving all of this noise. He got on the phone and called the Mayor of Helena. The Mayor of Helena called the State Highway Patrol Department and asked them to move that chopper off of the campers. So, as I was walking back into the camp area and the chopper was pulling away, I began to strut, “Who’s Your Mayor?”

The appointed and accepted roles of Tent City’s social structure, while a parody, have real-life consequences within the social space where the distinction between the real and hyperreal, and the local and tourist, are often blurred beyond recognition. Participants of Tent City USA are therefore simultaneously both the host and guest cultures of a liminal space that takes on a physical and spatial reality through the annual performance of the campground. Therefore, Esman’s observation that the festival space is a reflection of the social order and important values of the host community is accurate. In the case of Tent

142 City USA, the host community is not made up of those who call Helena home year round but rather a group of pilgrims who call the space home for only one week. This sense of belonging to, participating in, and managing their own tribal community was solidified by Mike’s recollection of two instances in which the community had to take justice into their own hands:

One year, I remember there was a rowdy group in here, and someone swiped one of Marcella’s turkey legs. She feeds everybody, and they help her out with donations, and we saw him do it. This kid comes walking through here, probably in his early 20s, saw that turkey leg, she had a stack of them up there getting ready to eat ‘em up, and he just grabbed one and kept walking. We saw him do it. He went over with the people he was camping out with and we went over and got him and brought him back here and put him in the middle and made him explain why he stole Marcella’s turkey leg. You know, she was getting three bucks a piece for them, and he said, “Well, I don’t have any money.” “How much do you want for that turkey leg Marcella?” “One dollar.” “Man, you better get one dollar out of your pocket right now, give it to Marcella and disappear, or things are going to get worse for you!” But that’s what happens with a thief. Just handle it, I think, with swift fairness.

Last year there was a guy in here who got real drunk and started wanting to touch one of our teenage girls inappropriately. I had to take him back where he came from, the people he was camping with, and tell them, “He’s not allowed around our campsite, and this is why.” Maybe that’s unpleasant; maybe through this he will get some help or something, but we’re not going to put up with it. “Here he is back to you. We let him finish ordering his meal, he got something to eat, but don’t show his face around us.” So that kind of thing is about as unpleasant as it gets.

143 This type of tribal-like justice raises the question, if Tent City USA is a replication of something real, what is it? The concept of hyperreality is most commonly applied to those sights and social structures that are modeled on real-life counterparts. Tent City offers an example of a heightened hyperreality that is modeled not on real life but on a romanticized idea that is far better than the real thing. Referring to the Palace of Living Arts, a wax museum in Los Angeles, Umberto Eco states: “The Palace’s philosophy is not ‘We are giving you the reproduction so that you will want the original,’ but rather, ‘we are giving you the reproduction so you will no longer feel any need for the original’” (1986, 19). In the case of Tent City, the original is real life and its social structure, but it is also modeled on campers’ romanticized notions of how life should be. It is a utopia, an annual performance of community that is in contrast with the fast-paced monotony of everyday life. For those participating, it is an annual pilgrimage that offers a moment of rejuvenation, an opportunity to escape and to perform communal tradition and individual existential authenticity. Evidence of Tent City’s complex and often ambiguous role within the festival weekend occurred in 2008 when Mayor Mike was invited to officially open the 23rd annual King Biscuit Blues Festival. It was an interesting choice, considering that Mike is not an area local, an organizer of the festival, or a featured performer, but rather a blues fan, whose traditional role within the festivity is one of observation and monetary support. When I asked Mike about the relationship between the local community of Helena and Tent City, he stated: “They love us! They love us coming here because we do what they want us to do. We come here and spend money and tell other people about it.” This statement suggests that members of the Tent City community recognize their role in the larger social fabric of the festival space. By spending money and informing others of the event, Helena’s visitors serve as agents and revivalists for the festival’s success and continuation. Mike and other campers feel a dedication to and a responsibility for the continuation of the festival tradition, promoting the event through participation and post- festival social interaction. They are equally interested in sharing and continuing the Tent City ideology. The following transcript from Mike’s 2008 opening of the 23rd annual festival illustrates the dual emphasis:

144 Twenty years. I remember when the festival used to be, “Remember when the stage was over here, long time ago?” Since then, I have had the pleasure of watching this thing grow into the most beautiful thing. I cannot stay away from here! But I want everybody to know about Tent City; we have a website: tentcityusa.com, and our motto is “We are an expanding, inclusive, musical camping community. What the world wants to be when it grows up.” And in my own personal opinion, music is probably the thing that can save the world easiest, and this venue, it couldn’t be better. It is an honor to kick off the 23rd annual “King Biscuit Blues Festival,” so everybody have a good time and come over to Tent City and sing some songs with us.

Mike begins his introduction with a brief moment of remembrance and observation of the festival’s past, continuation, and transformation, followed by his personal declaration of allegiance to the festival. His opening statement validates him as a long-time festival participant and overseer, while providing a sense of solidarity between him and the entire festival community. Noting and promoting the festival tradition, he is also eager to share with the audience his own communal tradition occurring simultaneously in the nearby campground. By sharing the Tent City motto and the community’s website with other festival participants, he is in effect inviting all festival attendants to join the Tent City community. His invitation is solidified in his final statement “Come over to Tent City and sing some songs with us.” Therefore, in his introduction Mike alludes to three traditions that are revived and performed during the festival weekend 1) The festival itself, to which he refers, to the crowd’s delight, as the King Biscuit Festival, 2) The music, which he promotes as an agent for saving the world, and 3) The Tent City communal tradition, which he offers as an example of an ideal community, “what the world wants to be when it grows up.” For Mike, as for many other festival participants, tradition is defined and realized in various ways. Tradition is not defined solely by the cultural manifestations that are the official features of the festival weekend, but also through new traditions that are created, revived, and celebrated within the space and sounds of the festival. Mike’s feeling of

145 responsibility for rescuing and passing the Tent City tradition on to others was reinforced during our interview. Referring to his invitation to open the festival, Mike explained:

I think it’s like attrition. If you sling enough shit on the wall, eventually some of it’s going to stick. I felt like it had to happen eventually; somebody was going to say, “You ought to put that guy up on stage.” So, I thought about it a little bit, but mostly I said what we do here and directed people to the website, so I am hoping that the whole Tent City concept can be something that people can pick up on and use to form sort of, I guess, a traveling community, you know?

Mike’s interview responses suggest a sense of ownership of and agency for the Tent City community. His hope that Tent City, as a concept, would be picked up by others who, in return, would form their own communities suggests that while the realization of Tent City is a clear example of a hyperreal touristic performance, it is also the realization of a euphoric way of life and social interaction that can and does exist, at least temporarily. Although the music and the tourist space can be described as “staged,” the social interactions that occur among festival participants and within the festival space cannot. They are “real” interactions with real people that occur within the theatrical space of the festival weekend. Therefore, authenticity is not realized through the staged events but through “real” interactions within them. The stories that festival attendants constantly retell as the most memorable festival occurrences are those of unplanned musical and social interaction that occur within the “authentic” social setting of the festival weekend. One final story Mike shared reinforces the campsite and the camper’s experience as markers of authenticity:

I saw a miracle one night. This girl was here; her boyfriend asked me to sing this song. He said, “Would you sing that song you do for my girlfriend?” I said, “Sure,” but there was a lot of music going on around the campfire. I said, “We have to walk away from this because I cannot compete with that.” We walked over out between some cars. I had a guitar

146 and I sang the song, she liked it, and then he said, “Now, would you let her sing her song for you?” I said, “Absolutely.” “Can we use your guitar?” He started playing, I think it was a Stevie Nicks song, and this girl started singing with this voice that I won’t even begin to try to start to describe other than say it was angelic, and I stopped her in mid sentence. I said, “Hold it. Will you come over to my campfire and sing that song for us?” and she said, “Yes.” We came back over here, they sat down, and he started playing, and she started singing, and in five minutes, I think half of the people in this campground had gravitated over here. They started coming like single file. I stood off and watched them come and start stacking in, and I don’t think she was singing loud enough for them to hear her from where they were coming from. It was some movement kind of thing that went through this place, and Maurry and I were watching it together, and he said, “I am counting 80 people.” I said, “I’m counting 100.” He said “120,” and it just kept going and going until maybe everybody in the campground was over here, peeking over each other’s shoulders to try to get a glimpse of this girl who was singing these beautiful songs with that beautiful voice. I think she was seventeen years old. I don’t know her name. I’ve never heard anything about her, saw her again, but I saw a miracle happen, I swear I did. And I have seen other musicians here that just stun you. Then they just go away, and that’s okay. That’s part of it, too. That’s what you might miss if you go across the levee to see the show.

147 “We’re Getting Hitched in Helena”: Dean and Hayley and the Performance of an Intimate Tradition

Newly formed rituals derived from pre-existing traditions manifest in various ways throughout the festival space.15 In fact, every aspect of the festival can be described as a derivative of previous cultural and musical manifestations, creating a lineage of traditions that coexist while continuing to influence the creation of new traditions today. For example, The King Biscuit Broadcast is an institution based on a rich Delta musical tradition that far outdates the show’s initial broadcast in 1941; the festival, which began in 1986, is an annual festive tradition that celebrates the history and legacy of the radio show; the campground community and other examples of social interaction are newly formed traditions which occur within and out of the creation of the festival; and individuals within these newly formed communities are continuing to create their own personal traditions within the collective tradition of the festival weekend. Over the years, I have met many participants who have created and maintained their own personal traditions during the time and space of the festival. These include designated spots at the main stage and in the campground where participants reunite every year for the festival experience; annual pilgrimages to local juke joints where attendants momentarily leave the festival space to witness the “real” blues; annual trips to nearby sights such as the legendary crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi, or the casinos in nearby Tunica; and the formation of smaller communities who reside within the larger social system of the festival space. Although every tourist’s tradition would provide an informative case study on the individual and communal construction of meaning during the festival weekend, the newly formed tradition created and maintained by Dean and Hayley Cummins provides an excellent example of how new traditions are regularly constructed within the social fabric of the festival weekend. Their story also points to individuals’ shared desire to claim a unique experience within the larger community through a performance of one’s idyllic self.

15 Neil Rosenberg discusses newly-formed traditions that are based on pre-existing rituals as a “transformation of traditions” (1993).

148 In 2005, long-time attendants of the King Biscuit Blues Festival Dean Cummins and Hayley Marchetti met at the communal campfire of Tent City. In 2006, Dean proposed to Hayley at the campsite, and in 2007, the couple were married at the campground in a ceremony conducted by Mike and Kent, Mayor and Vice Mayor of Tent City. Like Tent City’s communal campfires, which are open for everyone to attend and share in a collective experience, Dean and Hayley’s wedding ceremony was a festive celebration that included the entire Tent City community (figs. 5.6-5.8).

Figure 5.6. Dean and Hayley Cummins, Photograph given to author by Dean and Hayley Cummins.

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Figure 5.7. Dean and Hayley Cummin’s Wedding Invitation. Given to author by the couple.

Figure 5.8. Dean and Hayley’s Wedding. Photograph by the author. October 6, 2007.

150 Although I was not invited to the wedding with a traditional paper invitation, I was camping at the Tent City campground and was therefore part of the community that was invited to witness and participate in the event. On the third day of the 22nd annual festival, I woke up and took my regular morning stroll around the campsite and stumbled upon the preparations for the wedding to be held later that afternoon. Curious, I spoke with the groom, who was franticly making sure everything was in order. He agreed to talk to me later and encouraged me to attend the ceremony. Later in the day, I walked to the ceremonial space and stood in the 100-degree Delta heat watching the ceremony, which I had chosen to attend instead of the scheduled musical acts appearing on the festival stage. I was somewhat apprehensive about intruding on what I considered a very personal event. I soon noted, however, that the crowd surrounding me contained not only relatives and long-time friends of the couple, but also those residents of the Tent City community with whom I had shared music, drink, and camaraderie the night before. With little time to talk to the couple in 2007, I set up an official interview during the 23rd annual festival in 2008. Both Dean and Hayley were thrilled to share their story about why the festival space is such an important part of their life as a couple. Hayley began our conversation by recalling how they first met:

We met on Thursday night. I was sitting over here by the campfire, and I turn around, and he was standing behind me, and he had a guitar…I saw the guitar, and I was like “How come you’re not playing?” And he said, “Well, I don’t know this song.” And I said, “Aren’t you paying attention?”….So I was like, “I want to hear you play because I have heard all of these people play.” So he said, “My friend’s campsite is right across the way. You want to come and sit, and I will play some music for you?” I was like, “Yeah!” So we kind of walked over there. He sat down and played “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton, and I was kind of like “Woo!” I kind of melted! And we really hung out all of that night into the next day.

151 From Hayley’s recollection, it is obvious that music played a crucial role in the couple’s initial meeting, even though they did not meet at the festival main stage but rather through the communal performance of Tent City. Hayley admits that she felt an initial physical attraction to Dean, but it was the invitation to his claimed festival space and his dedicated rendition of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” that, according to Hayley, “sealed the deal.” Like the longtime friendships created within the Tent City community, Dean and Hayley’s relationship was initiated in a communal space and through a shared musical experience. The start of their relationship was therefore the result of a series of traditions that coexist and influence each other. Their initial meeting occurred because of a music that influenced the creation of a festival that led to the realization of a community, which provided the opportunity for the couple to meet and, unknown to them at the time, begin their own continuing tradition within the social fabric of the festival space. Hayley next shared how their relationship progressed for the remainder of the 22nd annual festival and over the following months:

So we just kind of kept hanging out, and then when the weekend ended, I gave him all my contact information because he has friends in Memphis, and that’s where I lived at the time. “Well,” I said, “If you’re coming to Memphis and you’re going to play music, I would like to come see you play. Here is my information, you know, give me a call.” He was like, “I just want you to know that I might not call you!” I said, “What makes you think I am going to be sitting around waiting on your call, Jackass?” So I went on my merry way, and I got back to work on Monday, and there was an email in my inbox, and it said, “This is what I know. In the time I spent with you I saw two rainbows and two shooting stars, and you were beautiful!” So we got to kind of talking on the phone…and he was like, “I want to see you again.” But my car was broke down, so I said, “I don’t know when I will be able to come see you.” So he said, “I will get you a rental car.” So he rented me a car, and I drove up to Heber Springs to meet with him, and we just kind of clicked, and we started dating long distance.

152 After this brief explanation of how their relationship progressed after the conclusion of the festival, Dean spoke up and brought the story back to the festival space: “I proposed to her at the next blues fest down here.” The development of their relationship also occurred outside of the time and space of the festival weekend, but their eagerness to tell their story through a series of social snapshots that occurred within Tent City points to the importance of the communal festival space to their relationship. Of course, for their relationship to be successful, it had to continue outside of the festival weekend. However, it was their remembrance and the continuation of their time in Helena that told and continues to represent their relationship together, a relationship that through the temporary space of the festival weekend has become an annual tradition that, like the other festival activities, relies on a lineage of cultural and social traditions. As Ning Wang suggests:

From most tourists’ personal point of view a holiday is a chance for a primary tourist group, such as the family, to achieve or reinforce a sense of authentic togetherness and an authentic “we-relationship”…. In recreational travel, people not only gain pleasure from seeing sights, events or performances, but also simultaneously experience intensely authentic, natural, and emotional bonds, and real intimacy in family relationships (1999, 69).

Travel, regardless of the destination, commonly provides a moment of escape, allowing for the performance of intimacy and the revival of family bonds. For Dean and Hayley, their annual pilgrimage to the festival space is not only an opportunity to slow life down and authenticate their family relationship but is also the time to remember and celebrate the communal utopia and music that led to their meeting, engagement, and marriage in the first place. For Dean and Hayley, the festival is not only a perfomative space but is also integral to the remembrance, celebration, and continuation of their personal tradition. As Dean and Hayley continued their story, next recalling the events of their second annual ritual together, their reliance on and the importance of the festival space and its soundtrack on their past, present, and future relationship became increasingly apparent:

153 Hayley: We were not at the Tent City campfire; we were at our own campfire. Dean: You could hear the blues playing, though, and I think it was “nah, nah, nah.” Dean and Hayley: “A how, how, how.” Dean: It was either a ZZ Top, I don’t think it was ZZ top, I think it was “a bang bang bang, a boom boom boom.” Robbie: That John Lee Hooker song? Hayley: Yes it was John Lee Hooker cause that’s who was playing. Dean: They wouldn’t have been covering ZZ Top down there, I don’t think. Hayley: We had just been talking how that was the classic blues riff, and he proposed, and after he proposed all of a sudden you could hear music coming through the campground. It was like, “A how how how.” Dean: We stay at the site now. When I first started coming, my friends and I would go down to the shows, and now we just hang out here more where you can still hear the blues coming from over there in the background, and that was what was going on when I proposed to her. We could hear that coming from the main stage, the John Lee Hooker song.

As with their initial meeting in 2005, the couple recalled the marriage proposal through the landscape and soundsacpe of the festival. For their initial meeting, it was Dean’s campsite, his personal space within the festival, and his rendition of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” that recalled the moment. For their engagement, it was the campsite’s proximity to the main stage and John Lee Hooker’s song “Boom Boom Boom” that initiated their recollection of that moment. Dean and Hayley’s past relationship is marked off like the festival itself through a recollection of past musical and social experiences that occurred within the landscape of the festival site. The music, both by amateurs around the campfire and by music from professional musicians on the main stage, provides specific moments in which the past unfolds and allows for the recollection and the replaying of their actions during that

154 specific moment. Hayley continued to share with me their initial reasons for holding the wedding at the Tent City campgrounds:

We talked about a lot of different places to get married, and we decided that we wanted to bring it full circle since this is where we met and this is where he proposed, and we called Mayor Mike up, and we asked him if he would be willing to get licensed in the state of Arkansas and marry us, and he said he would, and then he was like, “What kind of ceremony do you want?” So I said, “I will tell you what. We are really wanting to do a music theme, a blues theme, cause it’s going to be at the blues fest, so the guys are going to wear blue, the invitations are all printed in blue, and they had music notes on them.” I said, “We are going to do something with a music theme.” I designed his wedding ring and these are the music notes that were on our wedding invitation…I designed the program and the invitations and everything. The invitations, you know, it had a music note with a heart instead of the circle part of the note wrapped around it that said “Dean and Hayley are Getting Hitched in Helena,” and on the back of the invitation it had all of the blues festival information and for camping and everything like that. We’re like, “Come celebrate the whole weekend with us,” and we included little coupons in our invitation because in lieu of wedding gifts we asked that people donate money to the fire department because we felt like they played a vital part in our meeting by having this amazing campsite. Then Mike and Kent, the Mayor and the Vice Mayor, they, you know, called us up and said, “We think that we want to do a blues brothers thing. Are you okay with that?” I said, “Yeah! I’m good with that!”

Hayley’s description of the planning stage for the wedding, like her recollection of the couple’s meeting and engagement, illustrates a firm connection and dedication to several pre-existing traditions that are maintained during the festival weekend. Clearly, the musical tradition that is the center of the festival was also crucial to their personal experience. In addition to specific songs that unfold memories of specific moments during

155 their courtship, the idea of the music and its importance to the festival as a whole became a crucial element of their wedding ceremony, to which Hayley clearly alluded in her initial ideas for the wedding. The blues theme was also crucial, evidenced by their choice of blue bow ties for the groom and groomsmen, blue ink for the programs, music notes on Dean’s wedding band, and Mike and Kent’s idea to conduct the ceremony dressed as the blues brothers, complete with the iconic briefcase holding the couple’s vows. In addition to the festival’s musical traditions and communal traditions of Tent City and its host organizers, the Helena Fire Department was also central to the ceremony. The inclusion of camping and festival information on the back of the invitation, which encouraged guests to attend and participate both in the ceremony and in the festival, the inclusion of the Mayor and Vice Mayor of Tent City as officiates of the ceremony, and the couple’s request for donations for the campsite’s organizers in lieu of wedding gifts points to a ceremony that was not merely conducted in the campground but rather intended to be an integral component of the communal experience. Such intent also suggests the affection for and importance of the community to their married life. Hayley stated:

We come here every year. We have both been coming for a long time now. I mean, I am on my 13th year and I think he is on at least his 10th, and it’s kind of turned into like a family reunion, and you see the same people once a year, and you camp together, and you bond. Funny things happen. And my family lives far away in California, and a lot of them couldn’t make it, so I figured the closet thing I’ve got to family are the people in this campground, so this is where we decided to get married. We erected a chapel….

Dean: That was the thing about it! We didn’t have to really worry about a reception or anything afterward cause we were already at the biggest party.

Hayley: We got a keg for everybody, and he doesn’t drink, and I don’t really drink that much, but we bought a bunch of alcohol for everybody, got a big giant cake, said, “Hey man, party down.” And Central BBQ, they do

156 the BBQ contest every year, they catered our rehearsal dinner, as it were. They brought a butt load of food down into this camp, brought pretty much the whole camp food.

Hayley’s description reinforces Mayor Mike’s statement concerning the development of community spirit among tourists within the festival space. Dean and Hayley’s decision to include the entire camping community into their celebration illustrates their involvement in and dedication to the Tent City community. Their reference to other campers as “family” illustrates a community that is symbolic of a communal utopia. During our interview, Hayley’s love for and determination to regularly attend the festival became increasingly apparent. She stated:

I’ve had to quit a job to come here because they wouldn’t let me have the time off. I’ve delayed taking a job. I told a job that I couldn’t get hired if they wanted me to start. I was like, “I have a vacation this week every year!” And pretty much the only thing that would ever keep me from coming here was if I had to go to my mother’s funeral. Literally. I can’t imagine anything else ever keeping me from coming here. That and maybe labor….Yeah. I started out as the Welcome Wagon. My job was to go around and welcome people to Tent City and say, “Hey, there’s a big campfire over here and good music at night and lots of friends and good food and come on down.” The big joke was, “Warm your ass by our campfire.” And then I elaborated on it every year. I started carrying around a little squirt bottle so when it was hot, I could squirt some people down. “Can I offer you a refreshing spritz?” “How much is it?” “It just costs a smile.” So I got upgraded from the Welcome Wagon to the Ambassador of Goodwill. So I run errands for people and go and do happy things for people, express goodwill to others.

157 Her appointed and accepted role as “Ambassador of Goodwill” within the festival community points toward the very reasons why the Tent City community is such an important part of her life. For Hayley, the campgrounds are transformed into a euphoric communal space that fosters and encourages festive acts of reunion, kinship, and goodwill. Hayley was thrilled to share with me her role as the Ambassador of Goodwill, but she was also clear to point out that the communal utopia was not unilateral but rather realized through the community’s shared belief system. This belief system provided further reasons for the couple’s decision to erect a wedding chapel within the communal campgrounds. Hayley explains:

To have strangers take you in, “Hey what’s your name?” or “We forgot our condiments” and “Hey, does anyone got some ketchup?” You’ve got ketchup. If you forget something, you’re okay! Usually you go camping, if you forget something, you’re screwed, you know. Here it’s not so much. And I’ve seen people fall asleep by the fire and, you know, they’ve got a blanket on them within 30 minutes cause somebody is going to take care of you. Somebody always takes care of you. They all take care of each other and that’s the wonderful thing. A lot of the outside world, it’s all about me and what you can do to satisfy yourself right then and people don’t pay attention to the needs of others. That’s why the world has gone to shit, you know. And here everybody takes care of everybody else. It’s a four-day utopia. You have a want, it’s taken care of. You have a problem, somebody will help you. It’s like a little utopia for just a little short period of time.

Dean and Hayley’s euphoric views of the festival are therefore rooted both in the communal and in their personal experiences obtained within the festival space. Their decision to erect a wedding chapel in Tent City stems from their personal relationship within and their longtime dedication to the larger communal tradition. As sociologists David Piccard and Mike Robinson argue:

158 All types of festivity seem to involve some form of social concentration and connectivity. In its most simple form, this occurs at the individual level when at least two individuals meet and exchange a form of interaction. At the macro level, this occurs when one or several groups of individuals meet in a single time-space frame (2006, 10).

For Dean and Hayley, social connectivity is realized on both the micro and macro levels of interaction. Their involvement with and dedication to the Tent City community led to their meeting and social connectivity at an individual level. However, this intimate social concentration occurred within the larger community, or at the macro level of interaction. In other words, their personal social tradition was a direct result of their communal social tradition and therefore the two cannot be separated. For Dean and Hayley, the communal space of Tent City is not just a physical space where they have celebrated important moments of their relationship, but a single time-space frame in which their relationship is annually performed and authenticated. Their relationship, like the community that influenced its formation, is based on a euphoric ideal. This ideal is performed throughout the year but only fully realized within the space and community of the annual festival. The way other campers treated Hayley during the wedding preparations reinforces this point:

Yeah, I got assigned a personal assistant, and they went and picked up my cake and everything like that, and you know every woman wants to be treated like a princess on their wedding day, and I got so far beyond that. I was treated like a queen by every single person in this campground, and everybody wanted to help, and it was so important to everybody that it go off without a hitch and that it be as perfect and wonderful as possible. It made me realize that, you know, I may only see them once a year, and they might not be blood related, but this is my family, and I was so happy they were there to celebrate what was the most important day of my whole life.

159 Hayley’s treatment by the Tent City community illustrates the importance of family among the community’s residents. Although the family, like the space itself, is temporary and dependent upon the production of the annual festival, it is obvious that for Dean and Hayley, it is an “authentic” relationship. In addition to the recollection of how the community enhanced their experience, the couple was also eager to share how the ceremony affected other campers who were present for the wedding ceremony:

Hayley: It turned out to be a major event in a lot of these people’s lives, cause I’ve had people come up to me all weekend wishing me a happy anniversary. “Hey, you’re the one that got married!” Cause we invited the entire campground. “Hey come and celebrate. It’s all about love and being good to each other. So come help us celebrate this by just being there.” And a bunch of people came, and a bunch of people said it was like the highlight of their entire year. I know it was for me! They’re like, “Man that was just awesome.” You know, a lot of people would have thought it wasn’t anything special, but if you were there, it was the best fucking time anyone’s ever had.

Dean: I’ve had at least two people approach me about it! If I’m talking to somebody, and I’m thinking I might have met them before, I mention the wedding, and they say, “Ok. I know.” You know what I mean?

I sensed the couple’s pride as they shared their experience and how it has become, like the festival, the communal campfire, and the unplanned events within the festival space, an event that is recalled by all who were there to witness the ceremony. Unlike many weddings that are captured on film and video recordings, stored in a closet, and forgotten by all those except the bride and groom, the annual festival provides a theatrical space to relive a significant moment of their tradition with others who were there with them when they met, when Dean proposed, and when they were married. However, like the musical, cultural, and communal traditions that co-exist and compliment their personal tradition, the space is not merely for remembrance and nostalgia but also for continuation.

160 As I sat with the couple during the 23rd annual festival, they were thrilled to share with me the history of their relationship and the importance of the larger festival community. They were also clear to point out that 2008 represented their fourth annual ritual, their first anniversary. Hayley stated: “A lot of people start to forget their anniversary after years and years of marriage, and we don’t have to make any plans. We always have the most kick-ass anniversary party there is.” For all participants, the King Biscuit Blues Festival serves as a stage for communal and personal traditions. For many, the tradition is an annual event that is shelved with the lawn chairs, tents, and beer coolers until the following year. For Dean and Hayley, the festival tradition led to a transformed personal tradition that has significantly altered their lives in and outside of the festival weekend. The annual festival is centered on Helena’s musical heritage, but it is also a touristic stage that permits and encourages the formation and continuation of new and real relationships. Dean and Hayley’s personal tradition has a music theme, but the music has become secondary, background music to their own personal tradition. Hayley recalls:

I’ve always had great memories of the festival, but I can honestly say that it totally changed my life, and I don’t know a lot of people that it actually changes their life in a completely different direction, because it did. You know, I just bought my house not but two years earlier, and I sold my house, picked up, and moved to a little-ass town where my degrees didn’t mean nothing! And I was a really social person, and now I live in a tiny town where I don’t see that many people. And it doesn’t bother me. None of it bothers me because it’s all worth it! There is something special about it, there really is. There’s something very special about it and, like I said, it’s something about this specific group of people that comes here. I don’t know, cause we’ve been to a lot of music festivals, a lot, all over the country, but they’re not the same.

161 Who is Tom Rodgers? The Blues Buddies and the Performance of Remembrance

For many participants, the campground is the center of their festival experiences. For other blues fans, the levee at the main stage is the chosen site to participate in the festival and to commemorate both the blues and their own musical and social traditions. For Mary and Tom Rodgers, the festival was all about the blues featured on the main festival stage. From 1993 to 2005, the couple sat together in the same place atop the levee listening to their favorite blues artists while sharing their annual tradition with longtime but often temporary friends. In 2006, three months before the twenty-first annual festival, Tom died after a year-long battle with esophageal cancer. Mary still attends the festival and even placed a monument and spread some of Tom’s ashes in his festival seating area to honor and memorialize her husband’s love for the blues and his experiences among friends at the festival. For the last three festivals, Mary has reunited with her blues family, sitting atop Tom’s memorial stone and participating in a continued tradition of the blues and communal camaraderie while establishing a new tradition of personal remembrance (fig. 5.9-5.11).

Figure 5.9. Mary Rodgers at her home. Photograph by author. August 4, 2009.

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Figure 5.10. Blues Buddies. Photograph given to author by Mary Rodgers.

Figure 5.11. Memorial for a fan. Photograph by author. July 15, 2007.

163 My first personal encounter with Mary occurred during the 2008 festival. A year and a half earlier, during one of my many visits to Helena outside of the festival weekend, Terry Buckalew, director of the Delta Cultural Center, told me that if I really wanted to see what the festival meant to attendants, I should take a walk on the levee and look for a stone that had been placed in remembrance of a fan. Not knowing exactly what I was looking for, I took my camera and my notepad and begin to walk atop the river levee in search of the monument. When I finally found the stone, I spent some time taking photographs and contemplating its uniqueness and significance among other monuments around the city. I was in a space full of historical markers and monuments. A walk through the streets of Helena reveals markers celebrating and memorializing musicians, the blues tradition, radio broadcasts, Civil War battles, and the Trail of Tears. Like many cities that rely on tourism as a key source of annual income, monuments and memorial markers serve to validate the space as one of historical and cultural significance. This monument was different. Rather than a marker of Helena’s history and culture, it validated Helena as a space for personal and social experience and interaction. Helena’s monuments suggest that the city has influenced the region’s and nation’s culture and history. The monument to Tom Rodgers suggests that Helena, as a festival space, has also influenced individual lives. Most people who stumble upon the marker will never be familiar with the story of Tom and Mary Rodgers, but they will certainly recognize that the stone signifies Helena as a place of personal importance. If someone cared this much about this place, then the festival must be of ultimate value. Although the marker is not listed in tourist literature, and therefore is not a must-see site on the standard tour of Helena, its discovery by visitors is an unplanned interaction with a monument that commemorates an individual’s dedication to and love for the festival and illustrates the importance of the entire festival community to the city of Helena. This was the first time that I had encountered a memorial dedicated to a fan, a visitor, or a tourist. I was touched by the monument, but wondered who Tom Rodgers was. What was his story? Why would someone go to all the trouble to make and erect a monument in a space that is only visited three days a year? I left Helena that weekend with a few pictures of the monument but no answers to these questions. Throughout the

164 following months, I looked at the photograph, shared it with friends and colleagues, and contemplated how or if I would ever uncover this specific festival story. A year and a half later, during the first day of the 23rd annual festival, I was eager to show Helena’s must see sights to a friend who had joined me for the annual event. After giving him a guided tour of the city and pointing out Helena’s historical and cultural importance, I guided him to the levee, where I was eager to see his reaction to the engraved stone. After a few minutes of searching, I found the stone, but to my dismay, someone had placed her lawn chair atop the monument and was watching and listening to the musicians on the festival stage. With a little effort, we were able to make out the carvings on the stone. As we stood there discussing the uniqueness of the monument and its possible origin and purpose, the lady turned around and looked at me. Afraid that I had interrupted her festival experience, I immediately apologized and pointed out that we were just trying to read the stone beneath her chair. She politely moved her chair so that we could see, and then explained that Tom Rodgers was her deceased husband. She told us her name and explained that she and Tom’s friends had placed the stone there two years earlier in honor of Tom’s festival experiences. Thrilled that I had met the person responsible for the monument and that I would soon be provided with answers to the questions that I had been contemplating since I first saw the marker, I explained that I was researching the festival and would like to include her story in my dissertation. She seemed eager to help. After a brief meeting with her between musical acts, I realized her dedication to the music and did not ask her to leave the festival levee to talk to me. Throughout the weekend, I visited Mary between sets and wrote down her email address with plans to contact and possibly meet her at a later time. We kept in contact via email until the next year, when I finally had the opportunity to meet with Mary and document her story. On August 4, 2009, Mary welcomed me into her home in Hillsdale, Michigan, where she immediately offered me coffee and muffins while pointing out a picture of Pinetop Perkins on the refrigerator, a King Biscuit throw blanket on the recliner, and a menu she had taken as a souvenir from Ground Zero, Morgan Freeman’s blues club in Clarksdale, Mississippi. After a few moments of becoming reacquainted, Mary invited me to her den, which she referred to as the “blues room.” As I followed her downstairs, she

165 pointed out official posters from the last 15 years of the festival; autographed pictures of legendary blues musicians, many photographed with Tom; and a quilt she had made out of Tom’s University of Michigan and King Biscuit T-shirts, two of his favorite things (figs. 5.12-5.15).

Figure 5.12. King Biscuit Souvenir. Photograph by author. August 4, 2009.

166

Figure 5.13. Memories of Festivals Past. Photograph by author. August 4, 2009.

Figure 5.14. Tom’s “Blues” Quilt. Photograph by author. August 4, 2009.

167

Figure 5.15. Tom, Red, and Pinetop Perkins. Photograph by author. August 4, 2009.

We sat on the couch. In front of me was a coffee table stacked with photographs of past festivals and behind me was a wall full of blues LPs and CDs. Mary had told me in an email “We bleed blue.” Her statement suggests a true passion for the blues tradition. Sitting in Tom and Mary’s blues room reinforced this affection and also suggested that this was a space for preserving not only the music but also their personal memories of King Biscuit. Mary immediately began to show me pictures of herself, Tom, and a host of other individuals whom she rapidly referred to as the “blues buddies,” pointing out that they were from places all across the country, including Arkansas, Tennessee, Michigan, Louisiana, California, and Texas. She stated:

168 These are the first core people. Red, he’s from California, and he just heard of the festival by accident. He was originally from Missouri and had an old hippie VW van, but when he and Tom met, they both started talking artists. It was an immediate, you know, they just knew. They were meant for each other. And O Doug there in the background, he’s a biker. He’s from Benton, and Sandy’s from Little Rock, and we’ve been sitting with them for fifteen years.

We all just kind of sat in the same area. We have a big core of people. There’s a retired prison guard from Texas, and he and his wife sit by us, and Tennessee, which I didn’t know his name for probably two years. We just called him “Tennessee,” cause he was from Tennessee. His name is Richard Hagger. And then we picked up a couple of guys, Skip and another guy. Skip is from Louisiana, but I am not sure about the other fellow. You know, you just recognize the same people that you sit by every year. There is a whole group of people that sit together.

Mary returned throughout the interview to photographs and stories of the many friends who were captured in the snapshots, as if the memories of this specific group and the traditions formed among them were a way of both remembering Tom and coping with his untimely death. For Mary, her blues buddies have become festival companions who truly understand her and Tom’s love for the blues and the festival. Of course, Mary and Tom had a life outside of the festival weekend, but the solidarity shared among their blues buddies, while temporary, was an integral part of their life together, and continues to be a part of Mary’s remembrance of her late husband. Therefore, the cultural production of sitting in the same place atop the river levee listening to the blues has continued and been enhanced by a newly created tradition of remembrance of their longtime blues buddy, Tom Rodgers. When I asked Mary if she would be willing to share her and Tom’s story with me, she began by recalling their earliest festival experiences:

169 Tom went in 1990…but the first year I went down there, 1993, it was supposed to be for my birthday…We stopped in Memphis and went to Beale Street, went to BB King’s, did all that stuff and headed down there, and when we drove in, this is before motor homes, you know, we camped in the back of my van. We pulled in going toward the festival, and I’m looking around at all these ramshackle houses, and I’m like, “Where are you taking me?” Cause I had never been anywhere like that before. I was pretty green as far as something like that went…So 93, when I first went down there, you know, it was just the two of us. We really didn’t know anybody else. Nobody else went down, and the next year another couple went down, and we had about as much fun camping down at the tourist information [center], hanging out there, and we met people there, too. That’s always been the thing. It’s just been fun seeing other people that have the same musical interest as you do. And I remember standing in line at the Little Pig's antiques there and people talking about going to the Slippery Noodle in Indianapolis and stuff. So it’s so cool to hear people talking about the same kind of music. You don’t get that at home.

Mary’s remembrance of the festival illustrates a love for the music but also the chance to interact with others who shared this passion. She begins by listing must-see sights on any “real” blues tour, Beale Street and BB King’s, but shortly after points out that the solidarity among like-minded individuals was as important as the music and sights within the tourist space. For Mary, the camaraderie and the communal solidarity that is formulated around a shared love for the music and the festival is a chance to interact with and perform a euphoric sense of community that is not available in her everyday life. Her annual tourist performance is therefore realized within the liminal space of the festival community. For Mary, the festival permits the opportunity to momentarily escape her everyday life and to fully engage with the music and people she loves. Her statement “You don’t get that at home” reinforces that the festival space is indeed unique and offers opportunities to experience individual authenticity and communal solidarity through a shared passion for the blues. Mary reiterated this point when I asked if the music or the

170 community was more important: “I think it’s got to be the people and the music, too. It’s a great combination. Good friends, and the music brings them together.” Mary’s inability or unwillingness to separate the music and festival community suggests that indeed Helena’s landscape and soundscape are the primary narrative connecting individuals of her small festival community. Their gathering is the result of a pilgrimage to hear the blues in its place of creation and continuation. As Mary describes Tom’s passion for the blues: “He liked the Delta blues the best. That was his favorite, and he liked all of it, but that was his very favorite. And you get down there to the Delta; that’s where it all started.” Tom and Mary’s pilgrimage to the Delta is both narrated and realized through the music featured on the stage. Their communal gathering, their blues family, is connected through a musical tradition that provides a sonic space for individual and communal performances of celebration, camaraderie, and remembrance. Music cannot be separated from the community, because the music, in this setting, has never been without the community. Mary explains: “It’s all about listening to the music with your buds. That’s what the blues is about.” Mary returned to her photographs, reminiscing about specific people and festival experiences. She explained that Red always brings smelly cigars, Sharon always brings odd hats to wear at the festival, and Bear looks like Santa Claus. She continued to point to people whose names she could not recall but who were still part of the festival community: “This fellow’s from Georgia. There’s a couple from Texas. They’re so much fun!” Mary and her community of music fans sit at the festival levee every year for three days from noon until the conclusion of the day’s final act listening to favorite artists, being introduced to artists who will soon become favorites, and vocalizing distaste for those artists who do not adequately represent their notion of the “true” blues tradition. Throughout our interview, Mary recounted her memories of Tom, her blues buddies, specific festival experiences, and her admiration and passion for the artists on stage, illustrating an unavoidable connectedness between music, community, and past and present experiences:

171 You hate to miss [the festival]. You see who’s playing. I would just be panicking in the morning, you know, “We got to get around, we got to get there, we got to get our chairs up,” you know. “We got to get our spots. Don’t be goofing off, you guys, let’s go so we can get up by noon when the first act started.” You don’t want to miss anything! The acoustic stage is also really great. And, you know, Tom got to talk to a lot of the people he really liked. That was kind of cool. He loved Sam Carr. The Jelly Roll Kings were his favorite, just his favorite. And one year, they all played but not together. You know, Sam Carr played but with somebody else. Big Jack Johnson played, but they didn’t play together. Frank Frost played. He was sure that this was going to be it. They were going to play together.

From the above recollection of festival participation, it is obvious that the line up of musicians featured on the main stage is an integral component to Mary’s festival experience. The previous case studies suggest that the iconic performers are secondary to the communal traditions that are built instead around the ideology of the blues and the festival grounds as a theatrical space for performing notions of communal tradition. For Mary and her blues buddies, the festival line up is paramount in creating communal traditions. Other interview subjects were clear to point out that they rarely left the campsite, preferring to participate in music making rather than observing the scheduled performances. For Mary and her blues family, notions of community are realized through a shared love for the artists appearing on the stage. Our continued conversation further illustrated Mary’s love for the music and the artists and how they both serve as a device for unfolding memories of her love for the festival and her late husband. Mary showed me two autographed photographs of Tom, one with legendary drummer Sam Carr and another with harp player Paul Delay, pointing out that although the photographs were taken in different years, Tom was wearing the same t- shirt that featured the crossroads. As I stood up to take a closer look at the photographs, Mary shifted my attention to the official festival posters on the wall, stating, “He loved these posters.” As Mary conducted a tour of her and Tom’s festival memorabilia, we shared memories of featured

172 performers, including Charlie Musslewhite, Pinetop Perkins, Robert Lockwood Jr., The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and Bobby Rush. Her discussion of the musicians suggested a dedication to and admiration for both the artists and the traditional blues. Referring to Sam Carr, she stated:

I know that one year on the t-shirts, they had a list of all the performers on the back, and it said “Sarah Carr,” and Tom was so mad. He said, “Here this guy is from here and you don’t even know who he is! You can’t even put his name on there right.” Oh, he was furious! He said, “This is stupid!”

She went on to share a story of how they met legendary pianist Pinetop Perkins:

We got to hang out with Pinetop, too. He was at the museum, and we just missed him playing. He was over in the performance part there in Clarksdale. We just missed him, and he was actually staying at the run- down, little crummy hotel we always stay in, right in downtown Clarksdale. It’s called the “Down Towner.” That’s where we stay all the time. We don’t go out on the strip, and Pinetop was staying there, too, and we chatted with him, got his picture, and that night when we got over to the club the girl that had been taking care of him, driving him around and stuff, she said, “Oh, he liked you. He said he liked a woman with a little meat on her bones.”

Referring to the festival, she stated: “The music is always so good, and there’s always so much of it. And you get back and, you know, [you think] who played? Your mind is so full you can’t even pick one player out.” Dedication to the artists and the Delta’s musical and cultural heritage can also be seen in Mary’s opinion about the festival name change from the “King Biscuit Blues Festival” to the “Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival” in 2005:

I was just furious. I just wanted to contact those people and say, you know, “What is wrong with you? This is the heritage. This is where it came from!

173 How could you take something away from the people that started it? You know, for money!” Ethically, it’s ridiculous. And this is the part we liked, the history.

Mary’s love for the blues is apparent, yet each mention of King Biscuit includes memories and stories about her late husband and their shared experiences while attending the festival, suggesting that her continued attendance is as much about remembrance as it is about the music. When discussing her love for the blues, her stories are almost always complimented by a story about Tom and his shared passion for the music:

Tom just loved the blues, so much. And there’s two radio programs on up here and they’re both on Sunday nights, of course, and he and [his friend] Dale swap music back and forth all the time, and they’re always looking for new stuff.

Mary paused reminiscing and, with tears in her eyes, pointed out the record collection behind the couch, which served as a monument to Tom’s passion for the blues. She continued:

He was really a fan…. As far as being musically inclined, he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, and he liked to dance, but he wasn’t the best dancer, but it was all in his heart. It was all right there, and he was a very good judge of what was good and what wasn’t. He and Dale liked to compare notes and find new people, and he got the blues magazines and was always looking for new CDs. He’d sit down here and put his headphones on and sit and listen to music all the time.

As we continued to talk about the blues, artists, and specific festival memories, I asked Mary what the festival meant to Tom and to her and Tom as a couple. She told me that they were almost married at the festival in 1993, but because a friend was joining them for the trip, they decided to postpone the wedding until they returned home:

174 Well, we almost got married down there. Except for the year we got married, we took a friend with us, and Tom said, “I’m not taking someone on my honeymoon with me.” I had looked into it. I had gotten on and called the courthouse down there and checked into it. I thought that would have been cool to do that, but we ended up getting married a couple of months after we got back. So that almost happened for us, but this friend of his decided he wanted to go down, too.

Although she laughed when recounting this story, Mary’s mood soon changed. With great emotion and uncontrollable tears she then shared with me a dream Tom had dreamt a few days before he died:

2005 was his last year. And I’ll tell you, this is hard for me. He dreamt that he could go to the festival but he was sick. He got to sit up by the stage. He said he woke up one morning and that was what he dreamt. That’s how much it meant to him. But yeah, when he said that I thought, “That’s how much it meant.” And when we went in 2005, he had just found out that he had the cancer. He had esophageal cancer, so it wasn’t good to start with, but he battled really hard. He was a fighter, so we didn’t tell anybody. Nobody knew. So then I had to tell everybody that I would be coming but without Tom. He died three weeks before the festival.

From 1993 to 2005 Tom and Mary attended the festival together. Their dedication to the festival was not only a communal or musical tradition but also an integral part of their personal life together. Mary pointed out that thoughts of the festival unfolded memories not only of the blues but also of Tom and their life together. Although they frequently traveled to other locations, this was the one event that they never missed. When I asked Mary if she had missed any of the festivals she stated: “No, never missed.” She continued:

175 We travelled a lot and did a lot of things, but this is one thing we had to do every year. This is a standard. We like to go different places but this is one constant, and for a while we were like, “We can’t go this year because of this,” but at the last moment, “Oh we have to go, so and so is playing. I got to go see him,” and we would. So I finally said, “Will you just stop saying we’re not going? Just plan on it, regardless, cause you know you’re going to end up going anyway. We might as well just plan ahead better.”

Tom and Mary’s dedication to the festival as an annual ritual of camaraderie and personal traditions was reiterated when she told me that they missed several family weddings because of the festival and that she insisted that her son reschedule his wedding because it conflicted with the festival weekend:

When he told me, I think it must have been like in July or whatever, he said, “We’re going to get married.” I said, “No, you’re not!” I said, “We can’t miss the festival. You have to change your wedding date.” A couple of years ago [Tom’s] nephew got married, and Janna said, “They’re getting married.” I said, “I won’t be there. I’ll be at the festival.” I missed that. The other nephew, the first time he got married, we didn’t make it. We were at the festival. For that one week, by golly. You know, we can change other things. That you can’t change. It’s set in stone.

For Mary and Tom, the festival was about the music, but it was also about new friends, camaraderie, and a celebration of their life together. Every story Mary told about the festival included Tom. Even the festivals after Tom’s passing were imbedded with memories of Tom and the people who were still present at the festival site. Therefore, Mary’s festival experience points to several traditions that occur simultaneously through her festival participation. Tom and Mary loved the blues. It was this love for the music that first brought them to the festival. Until 2006, Tom had always accompanied Mary. Therefore, for Mary the festival also represents their life together and specific memories of living as a couple.

176 Over their years of attendance, the couple met other blues fans who would become lifetime friends and would be a primary support system for Mary in the weeks, months, and years following Tom’s death. This sense of camaraderie, so important to Mary and Tom, and the close bonds made with other blues fans has resulted in Mary’s continued festival participation and has led to the creation of her most recent tradition: one of remembrance. In 2006, three weeks after Tom’s death, Mary called her friends and shared the sad news. In the short time between his death and the 21st annual festival, Mary contacted an engraver in Illinois and ordered the stone to honor Tom’s love for the blues and the festival. Mary shared with me her reasons for creating the monument:

It was a kind of a spur of the moment thing, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get it, and I was worried that I wasn’t going to get it in time, cause I ordered it from somewhere in Illinois, but it was here. They got it to me pretty quick. And the wording - I had a hard time trying to figure out what to make it say, just simple and, you know, with his blues buddies, that’s the important part…He sat there enjoying the music with his blues buddies, and that was the important part, the reconnection that you make every year when you go down there with all these people. Then with music. I was compelled. I had to do something. I could not do nothing. So I had to do that….I took a bag of concrete. And John put it in his GPS so if the grass grew up over it we would be able to find it, and they all helped me dig it out, and we had a little ceremony. Tennessee said a little spill, and we all just sat there, and I think we did a little toast. It was in between sets. We went down and mixed up the concrete, and I brought some ashes with me. We sprinkled that and put the stone in, and John put it in his GPS so we wouldn’t lose it. It was just something I had to do. He’s such a big fan.

I asked Mary how the festival experience had changed since Tom’s passing. She explained: “I feel compelled to go see all my friends, and it’s not the same, of course, but the music is still as good as ever…everything changes from year to year anyway, but it’s not the same, cause he’s not there.”

177 In 2007, around the same time that I first came across the monument, Michelle Page from the Helena World published two articles about the monument. The first article was published on the front page of the paper after Deb Smith, manager of Historic Properties at the Delta Cultural Center, stumbled upon the stone. In the article, Page seeks answers about the monument and its origins: “Most in town know that a majority of festival goers are hardened blues fans but to find an actual artifact testifying to the legend of the Biscuit is exciting” (Mar. 7, 2007, 1). Before her follow-up article, Page contacted Mary and this second article includes Tom’s story and states that it “may be the story of the greatest blues fan" (Mar. 20, 2007, 1). Page’s assertion that the monument is a testimony to the festival’s legend is problematic. It is not the festival that is memorialized but rather an individual life who used the festival space to perform notions of community, family, and love and to listen to the blues, a musical genre that bridges all three notions together. The monument illustrates the importance of the festival experience in an individual life, but it also reminds the city of the participant’s importance in the continuation of the festival and the city’s well being. In the same article, Page quotes Rayne Gordon, President of the Sonny Boy Blues Society: “It would be a reminder of the festival all year round” (Mar. 20, 2007, 1). Gordon’s statement reinforces the importance of the fan. The stage, the music, and the Delta’s landscape are constant reminders of the festival, but these are only small fragments of the complete festival experience. While the monument “may be the story of the greatest blues fan,” it is also the story of a group of friends, a shared love for the music, and a couple who marked every year of their relationship with an annual trip to the King Biscuit Blues Festival. Therefore, it is not only the festival tradition that is testified to but also the communal tradition of the blues buddies and a personal tradition rooted in love and admiration for a man who loved the blues. At the interview’s conclusion, Mary once again returned to her photographs and recalled memories of past festivals. She pointed to a photo of the blues buddies posing on the levee next to their lawn chairs and Tom’s monument: “That’s where we sit. That’s where we sit every year. That’s our spot.”

178 Conclusion

The King Biscuit Blues Festival is centered on Helena’s musical and cultural heritage. For Mayor Mike, Dean and Hayley, and Mary Rodgers, a trip to Helena also provides a theatrical space to perform their own notions of tradition, individuality, family, and community more broadly. As Tim Edensor suggests:

One of the effects of tourism is to mark out time, that of the extraordinary from the time of the mundane, a period of relaxation and play which marks release from work and duty. These temporal conceptions of tourism involve notions about pleasurable activity and performance: The idea of letting go so as to reveal a more authentic self, the desire to realize a different, undeveloped side of one’s personality or to take on a new role in a context where no one will make you conform to expectations about yourself. (Edensor 2000, 325)

The realization of one’s “authentic” self during the festival manifests in individual ways, yet each is based on the creation and continuation of newly formed traditions within the larger social structure of the festival space. For Mayor Mike, The festival is about participation in an idealized community. For Dean and Hayley, the festival has become a physical place to relive memories of their relationship and to create personal memories and celebrations within the festival space. For Mary, the festival offers an opportunity to remember and pay tribute to her husband through the memorializing of Tom and her continued participation with their longtime friends and fellow music enthusiasts. As David Picard and Mike Robinson explain:

Festivals utilize, create, and transform social spaces. While certain spaces can be specifically recognized and reserved for periodic festivity, it is more usual for general spaces to be transformed by festive acts in which they are imbued with the meaning and power of the occasion. (2006, 11)

179 Attendees of the King Biscuit Blues Festival find a Helena that is transformed through both its presentation as a music place and the opportunities that the festival space provides for social interaction, personal experiences, and remembrance. Therefore, The King Biscuit Blues Festival is perceived as both a collective space to celebrate the blues and an individual space for celebrating personal conceptions of what the blues mean. For many festival participants, therefore, reasons for annual attendance go beyond preserving the Delta’s musical and cultural heritage. Through participation, they are also preserving personal experiences and perceptions of their authentic selves within the festival space. The importance placed on personal experience within the festival space brings to question the very notion of the tourist’s quest for the authentic. There are many sources that address questions of authenticity and the blues. Most are concerned with either preserving or deconstructing the concept of authenticity and the term’s application to the blues tradition. These sources provide insight into the quest for authenticity and how this is both constructed and realized by tourists, organizers, and locals. However, many fail to take into account that for blues fans at the King Biscuit Blues Festival, notions of authenticity are rooted not only in the past but also in the continuation of a living tradition. For the majority of those who attend the festival each year, their only knowledge of Helena is through the performance of the festival that began in 1986 and through their own personal experiences and newly-formed traditions obtained while attending. Therefore, the perception of authenticity is not only entrenched in a specific musical tradition or place but also in shared communal experiences, personal memories, and perceived ideals of themselves. Reasons for saving the Biscuit therefore go beyond preservation of the Delta’s musical and cultural heritage; they are also rooted in one’s personal heritage, which is manifested through remembrance, tradition, and communal participation. By preserving the Biscuit, participants in the King Biscuit Festival are, in return, preserving themselves.

180

CONCLUSION

RETURNING HOME TO THE DELTA

As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own (Mead 1928, 131).

I attended the 2008 festival with a new appreciation for the music and the artists appearing on the stage and a better understanding of the social and personal relevancy of the tourist site. My initial festival experience six years earlier had been approached with a sense of eagerness for documenting the King Biscuit Time Broadcast and the resulting King Biscuit Blues Festival. I initially experienced the space with contrasting emotions of belonging and being a complete outsider. I was from Arkansas, a researcher of the blues and festivals, and yet I felt out of place, disconnected from the festival experience. During my first festival experience, I slowly came to terms with my role as both researcher and subject of my research. However, it would take multiple trips to Helena during and outside the festival to fully find my personal place within the festivity and to uncover this story. Through a series of observations, participation, and case studies pulled from interviews with tourists, locals, and musicians, I have attempted to document and speculate on the music festival as a space for the performance of pastness, otherness, and existential authenticity in the present. I illustrated that although the concept of authenticity is problematic when applied to the validation of specific musical and/or cultural forms, it is both necessary and crucial when discussing a festival space as a sight for the creation and realization of meaning, agency, and ownership among its participants. While attendees of the King Biscuit Blues Festival frequently share their thoughts on the quality of the music

181 performed on stage, they more frequently apply the concept of authenticity when discussing the realness of their experiences within the tourist space. This experiential authenticity is not uniformly realized through the cultural objects and music featured on the stage but rather through individual and communal interpretation of the site and the resulting transformative process that occurs among individuals and the community during the three day festival. Attending the festival is a pilgrimage to witness and interact with the sounds of the blues, the landscape of the Delta, and the cultural relics that verify the presence of iconic musicians. It is also a pilgrimage for both host and guest communities to a space that invites the performance of an idyllic community and one’s authentic self in the setting of a revitalized American city. Almost everyone I spoke with shared with me this transformative experience, how the festival had become an important part of his or her life and, for many, an event that has been completely life changing. Through the discovery of individual and communal meanings and through the observation of such transformative processes, I too have been transformed. I initially approached the research project as an outsider with intentions of documenting the festival through an objective approach. Before long, I was drawn into the production and soon became a festival participant, the very person I was researching. My dual roles within the festival space illustrate the outdated notions of emic/etic dichotomies and point toward the transformative process from spectator to participant which occurs through the act of ethnography. My first introduction to the King Biscuit Time broadcasts and the accompanying festival was through the PBS Documentary American Roots Music (2001). Astonished that as a musicologist and an Arkansas native I was unaware of this musical legacy, I sought further information, eventually finding Robert Palmer’s landmark book Deep Blues (1981), which provided a detailed history of Helena’s connection to the blues tradition. With this knowledge, I approached the festival for the first time with what I believed to be a thorough understanding of Helena’s connection to the blues. However, upon arrival I met people who would become friends, fellow campers, and informants throughout the course of this dissertation. I met locals who shared with me what the blues and the festival meant to the local and transient community. I also met hundreds of tourists who were eager to share their own personal and meaningful

182 experiences that occurred within the festival space and, in so doing, share their own personal reasons for attending the festival. As the years passed, my bond with these informants and the festival space grew stronger. Although I had previously considered myself a blues fan, my appreciation for the music increased when I was among others who shared this passion. I began to note my desire to share my own unique experiences that occurred within the festival space and among other fans and, like many of those around me, I eventually felt obligated to act as a voice for the music, the musicians, the city, and the festival itself. Therefore, like many of the attendees I have met, I initially attended the festival because of its historic connections to the blues and the Delta and to hear its famed performers. The history of the festival and its location in the heart of the Arkansas Mississippi Delta seemed convincingly “authentic.” The music has remained a festival constant while my understanding of the concept of authenticity has continually been transformed through my own experiences among other blues fans and, most currently, through my participation in the preservation of the festival. Like many other blues fans, my initial draw to the festival was the music and the idea of history as an attraction. However, through my repeat attendance, personal experiences, and social interaction, the festival has become one weekend a year where I can perform notions of who I want to be, who I should be, and who I hope to become in a city that represents the best that American culture has to offer. The festival has transformed during each year of my participation, adding and removing stages, increasing the number of artists and festival attendants, and even changing its name, yet participating in the festival has become a constant in my life, allowing a performance of otherness and pastness in a landscape that has come to represent familiarity and a sense of home. With each passing year, I have become more of a local and, therefore, returning to Helena becomes more and more a homecoming, a reunion, and a kind of secular transcendence. The music has increasingly become only one motive for my yearly attendance and performance of the festival space. I also attend to reunite with old friends and for the possibility of establishing new friendships. I attend because of the inclusiveness of the space and the unique opportunities for the formation and continuation

183 of my own traditions, both individual and collective. Most importantly, I attend out of an allegiance to the festival and my touristic role in its preservation and continuation. My reasons for attendance, like the festival space itself, have transformed and modified over my six years of participation, but the music is always present as a soundtrack to the Delta’s landscape and to each festival experience. I have focused on what the festival means to all participants, including those performers who consider performing on the King Biscuit stage a validation of their careers by linking their music to a larger blues tradition; locals who recall their memories of Helena’s past; and tourists who initially attend for Helena’s blues legacy but leave the space with newly-formed traditions. There are differences between each group’s interpretation and performance of the festival space, but each is rooted in the realization, revitalization, creation, and preservation of tradition. Although the blues as a musical form remains a tradition worthy of continuation, I suggest that for many participants, the blues have come to represent a much broader concept of tradition that permits a performance of perceived authenticity. Within this performance, locals, performers, and tourists meet in a liminal space that creates and celebrates the blues, Helena’s musical identity, and, most importantly, notions of existential authenticity. Many studies have suggested that a tourist experience is determined by the industry’s modes of production and promotion, suggesting a unilateral production and reception of the tourist space (Chhabra 2003) and (MacCannell 1973, 1976). More recent studies have argued that the tourists themselves often construct the tourist experience. As Kim and Jamal point out: “Tourists subjectively construct their experience by activity negotiating meanings - toured objects being a related but secondary factor” (2005, 182). This observation suggests that an “authentic” tourist experience is only fully realized when one becomes an active performer of the tourist space. I would add that, in the case of Helena’s annual festival, organizers, tourists, and locals meet in a shared performance space removed from the time and space of everyday life, suggesting that meaning is not unilateral, but rather bilateral, a negotiation between all participants of the festival which results in a shared realization and performance of existential authenticity. Ning Wang defines existential authenticity as follows:

184 …[it] compromises personal or intersubjective feelings that are activated by the liminal process of tourist behaviors. In such liminal experiences, people feel that they are themselves more authentic and more freely expressed than they are in everyday life, not because the toured objects are authentic, but rather because they are engaging in non-everyday activities, free from the constrains of everyday life. (Wang 2000, 49-50)

I have clearly alluded to this type of authentic social and spatial interaction. For tourists, the blues and the festival space represent a piece of American culture and an identifiable marker of American identity that allows and encourages social interaction and performance with a group of like-minded individuals who unite through their love and allegiance to the blues. As Mary Rodgers explains:

It’s just been fun seeing other people that have the same musical interest as you do….So it’s so cool to hear people talking about the same kind of music. You don’t get that at home.

Throughout this study, almost every person I talked to reiterated the importance of social camaraderie and personal experiences within the festival space, often suggesting that while the music was the initial draw, it had become secondary to new personal traditions created and maintained within the festival space. Therefore, the realization of touristic authenticity during the King Biscuit Blues Festival is only in part reliant on the music and the cultural landmarks on display. It is also reliant on individual and communal interaction within and among the festival space. This observation questions previous scholarship on the construction and reception of a tourist site yet also illustrates the importance of Helena’s visitors on the city’s blues identity and on locals’ reception of the site. Wang’s discussion of existential authenticity is concerned primarily with the tourist experience. However, his observation also applies to the locals who experience a revitalization of their city during the course of the weekend. The locals and the host city provide a performative space for the discovery and negotiation of touristic authenticity which is in opposition to their everyday life, and the tourist’s presence allows locals a

185 performative space to act out notions of their memories of the city which contrast with their everyday life. This negotiation between host and guest communities blurs the clear dichotomy between insiders and outsiders. The shared performance also suggests a bilateral agency in the formation, realization, and continuation of the festival weekend. Therefore, contrary to the findings of previous studies, I have found that the tourist has agency in the construction and realization of the festival space. Without the host culture there would never have been a King Biscuit Festival; without tourists there would have been only one. According to John Urry, the realization of a tourist site is achieved through the “tourist gaze” or how the site or experience is different from the norm:

The tourist gaze… is constructed in relationship to its opposite, to non tourist forms of social experience and consciousness. What makes a particular tourist gaze depends upon what it is contrasted with; what the forms of non-touristic experiences happen to be. The gaze therefore presupposes a system of social activities and signs which locate the particular tourist practices, not in terms of intrinsic characteristics, but through the contrasts implied with non –tourist social practices, particularly those based within the home and paid work. (2002, 1-2)

On the surface, the tourist gaze is obvious in the contrast between work and play, between responsibility and vacation. However, it manifests much deeper. For Mayor Mike Miller, contrast with real life is represented through a performance of an idyllic community. For Dean and Hayley Cummins, contrast is represented in a performative space used to create and recall personal traditions. For Mary Rodgers, the festival space represents contrast by offering a space and a group of longtime friends who have helped Mary to cope with Tom’s death, to memorialize his love for the blues, and to recall specific memories of being together. Each of the case studies explored in chapter five further demonstrates the complex meanings that are evoked through festival participation and suggests that the problematic concept of authenticity not only applies but also is crucial to participants’ festival

186 experience. For the “true blues fan,” authenticity is realized through participation and a shared love for the music. Negotiation of meaning can also be applied to many of the locals and musicians who also take part in the festival experience. Like the tourists, for Bubba Sullivan the festival’s meaning is rooted in a notion of existential authenticity realized through the contrast of the festival experience with everyday life. Although Sullivan recalled the festival through an unfolding of musical memories, he was also eager to comment on specific festival experiences, the transformation of Helena during the festival weekend, and his role in its occurrence and preservation. Like the tourist who sees the festival weekend and the resulting experiences as a contrast with his/her everyday life, Sullivan’s distinction between everyday Helena and the city during the festival illustrates a contrast with his everyday life as well. Like Mayor Mike’s idyllic campground space, Sullivan’s recollection illustrates the idyllic nature of the city that for three days a year becomes the festival site. Borrowing from Urry, Darya Maoz introduces the term “local gaze” to identify the agency and the power of the locals in the production of a tourist site and experience. Urry’s term points to the influence of the tourist on the tourist destination and the locals of that destination; Maoz’s term “local gaze” points to the influence of the local on the site and those visiting it. Maoz suggests that the realization and the interpretation of the site are the result of a negotiation between hosts and locals, which Maoz refers to as a “mutual gaze”: “Where both the tourist and local gazes exist, affecting and feeding each other” (2006, 222). This seems like a logical framework for discussing the King Biscuit Blues Festival, but it also leads to several questions. While there is a negotiation between locals and tourists, between everyday life and the festival weekend, between fans and musicians, Maoz seems to suggest that the local gaze and the tourist gaze are contrasting interpretations that are only realized through a mutual agreement. Through my research it has become increasingly apparent that while the motivations to participate in the festival vary, during the festival Helena and the festival experience are understood the same way: as a performance of pastness and otherness through the realization of both revitalized and new traditions.

187 During my most recent King Biscuit Blues Festival attendance in 2008, I felt at home. No longer did I feel the mixed emotions of belonging and alienation. I had found my place within the festival community. As I pulled up to the campsite, I was met by familiar faces welcoming me home to the temporary community. As I walked the river levee, I was greeted by the same festival participants I had seen in previous years, and I recognized others whom I did not know personally but who had become part of the festival landscape. I visited Bubba’s Blues Corner to say hello, visited J.B.s Liquor for refreshments, and began to make my way through the now-familiar streets of Helena, tipping street performers sitting in the same places they had occupied for the past six years. The effect was similar to that described by Hayley Cummins:

Even though a whole year passes, and you only see them once a year, it’s like no time passed at all. It’s just like you picked up just where you left off. And that’s why I guess this has become more important to me than the music has.

The list of artists changes each year, but the festival atmosphere and the people who attend remain constant. It is this familiarity that has become a key draw to the city during the festival. It is a homecoming, a family reunion, and a space for the creation and memorializing of personal and collective tradition. The research for this project was conducted between the 18th and 23rd annual blues festivals. The 2009 festival marked a key transformation in the festival and points to reasons for further research. Due to the loss of sponsors and the overall poor economy, for the first time the festival charged a fee for admittance to the main levee. As a researcher and as a regular participant of the festival, I have several questions and concerns and am eager to see how such a transformation will alter the tourist experience. In my interview with Mary Rodgers, we discussed how the new fee would change the festival. Mary stated simply, “That’s going to mess things up.” However, she followed that comment by saying, “If charging thirty bucks will keep it going, I am sure everyone will be willing to pay.” Mary’s statement solidifies the blues fans’ dedication to the space. The festival will be different, but it will still be “The Biscuit,” a place for family reunion, communal performance, and the revitalization of a host of traditions that all occur within the space.

188 Individual and communal experiences will, like the festival, have to transform to meet new demands, and new traditions within the space will likely continue to be created. Mike Miller described the space as a “family reunion.” Hayley Cummins referred to the people as “my family,” and Bubba Sullivan stated, “It’s like a family affair.” I agree, and like any family, despite all odds, it will continue for years to come. It’s far too important not to.

189

APPENDIX A

LIST OF INTERVIEWS

During my research on the King Biscuit Festival, I was honored to meet and talk with festival organizers, performers, blues scholars, locals of Helena, and members of the tourist community. Their memories, interpretations, and experiences form the core of this dissertation. Many of these discussions were informal, occurring in communal spaces at the campsite and the festival stages. Tourists, performers, and locals alike were eager to share memories of the past, interpretations of the present, and speculations on the future of both the blues and Helena’s annual festival. It was during these shared moments that I met many of the tourists and locals whose stories serve as the case studies in this dissertation. Because this research is concerned with an annual festival that occurs for only three days a year, I was able to reunite with many of the same people year after year, forming relationships and documenting their experience through a continued discussion, multiple interviews, observations, and shared experiences. In addition to the formal interviews listed below, this dissertation was also shaped by informal consultations with many participants during the King Biscuit Festival and our continued discussions outside of the festival weekend through phone calls, emails, social networking sites, and invited visits.

Terry Buckalew. Director of the Delta Cultural Center. Formal and informal consultations between 2003 and 2010. Interviews 8 October 2003; 12 July 2007.

Dean Cummins. Tourist. Formal and informal consultations between 2007 and 2010. Interviews 9-10 October 2008.

190 Hayley Cummins. Tourist. Formal and informal consultations between 2007 and 2010. Interviews 9-10 October 2008.

Lew Jetton. Performer. Email Consultations June 2009.

Mike Miller. Mayor of Tent City USA. Formal and informal consultations between 2007 and 2010. Interviews 10 -11 October 2008.

Mary Rodgers. Tourist. Formal and informal consultations between 2008 and 2010. Interview 4 August 2009.

Bobby Rush. Performer. Interview 4 August 2008.

Bubba Sullivan. Helena local, owner of Bubba’s Blues Corner, and festival organizer. Formal and informal consultations between 2003 and 2009. Interview 22 May 2007.

191

APPENDIX B

ORAL HISTORY DOCUMENTATION

192

APPENDIX C

COPYRIGHT PERMISSION

193

APPENDIX D

PLANNING YOUR TRIP

During my research for this dissertation, I have visited several blues destinations throughout the Delta, each of which claims agency for the preservation and presentation of the “authentic blues” and ensures a genuine and memorable experience for the “true blues fan.” While the majority of this dissertation is focused on one specific group of people participating in one festival in one musical place, I observed similar experiences at other locations in the South while conducting my own quest for the “real blues.” During this quest, I have experienced the joy of traveling, seeing new places, meeting new people, and hearing great music. It is my hope that the dissertation has provided insight into the ways blues fans interact with and influence musical places and how places provide a theatrical space for the performance of newly-formed traditions within the Delta’s landscape. However, to fully experience and comprehend the blues tradition, one must attend the festivals, visit blues cities, listen to the music, and perform his or her own notions of tradition among a group of like-minded individuals. Therefore, I hope this dissertation has also inspired its readers to plan their own pilgrimages to the Delta, in order to truly experience the multifaceted blues tradition. The following pages provide a list of links and sources on blues tourism, music festivals, blues museums, and several key blues archives, providing valuable resources for one’s preparation for an initial immersion into and interaction with the landscape and soundscape of the blues.

194 General Web Sites on Blues Traveling

Visit the Delta This Web site is dedicated to promoting the Delta as tourist attraction and to providing visitors with valuable tourist information. Included are geographical and cultural sketches of the Delta’s communities, suggested travel itineraries, a list of cultural and historical sites, and a calendar of events. http://www.visitthedelta.com

Mississippi Blues Trail This site promotes touring the Mississippi Blues Trail, a driving itinerary that traces the history and development of the blues in the Mississippi Delta through a series of historical and cultural markers. Included is a map of all markers, links to additional information on the history and continuation of the blues tradition, links to regional blues museums and attractions, and a calendar of events. http://www.msbluestrail.org/

Memphis, TN, Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock and Roll This site is dedicated to the promotion of Memphis, Tennessee as a tourist destination. Included is general information on music sites, travel accommodations and amenities, a calendar of events, and links to planned itineraries focused on Memphis’ music history and continuing traditions. http://www.memphistravel.com/

Clarksdale, Mississippi This site is dedicated to Clarksdale, Mississippi, the promoted birthplace of the blues. Included is a history of the city and its musical connections, lists of travel accommodations and amenities, planned itineraries, a calendar of events, and a list of blues sites in and around the city. http://www.clarksdaletourism.com/

195 Phillips County, Arkansas, Chamber of Commerce This site provides detailed information on Helena-West Helena, Arkansas, and the surrounding cities. The site includes regional and city maps, a calendar of events, lists of travel accommodations and amenities, and general information on living in or visiting Helena. http://www.phillipscountychamber.org/

State of Arkansas Tourism This site is dedicated to tourism in the state of Arkansas. Included are planned itineraries, a calendar of events, travel accommodations and amenities, maps, descriptions of cities throughout the state, and a detailed list of attractions. http://www.arkansas.com/

Chicago Blues Guide Although Chicago is not located in the Delta, the sounds of the Delta can certainly be heard there. This site is dedicated to the promotion of the rich blues tradition and its continuation in Chicago. Included is a calendar of events, a list of blues clubs, links to blues record labels, must-see music sites, and reviews of recent and released recordings, films, publications, and live performances. http://www.chicagobluesguide.com/

Online Guides to Blues Festivals:

The growing popularity of the blues and the blues festival experience has resulted in an abundance of blues festivals both in the US and abroad. The following links provide calendars of blues festivals held throughout the year:

196 Blues Festivals This site provides a search engine for finding blues festivals both in the United States and abroad. http://www.bluesfestivals.com/

Blues Festival Guide This site is maintained and operated by Blues Festival Guide, an annual publication that provides a list of and information on blues festivals around the world. Included is a regularly updated list of blues festivals, a list of blues links, a brief history of the blues, and regular news updates on the blues. http://www.bluesfestivalguide.com/

Festival Finder This site is dedicated to all types of music festivals in North America. Included is a search engine for locating specific festivals and a current listing of festivals that can be explored by location, date, name, or genre. http://www.festivalfinder.com/

Electric Blues Club This site is dedicated to the blues tradition in the United Kingdom. It includes links to festivals held in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; jam sessions in the UK; and local blues societies and venues. http://www.electricbluesclub.co.uk/blues_festivals.html

Festivals in the Delta

Blues festivals are held throughout the year in a variety of locations. Most blues fans place a heightened importance on those festivals located in what is believed by many to be the “home of the blues”: the Mississippi Delta. The following list is a selection of festivals where one can fully experience the landscape and soundscape of the Delta:

197 Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival: October. Helena, Arkansas http://www.bluesandheritagefest.com/

Juke Joint Festival: April. Clarksdale, Mississippi http://www.jukejointfestival.com/

Highway 61 Blues Festival: June. Leland, Mississippi http://www.highway61blues.org/festival_page_1.htm

Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival: August. Clarksdale, Mississippi http://www.sunflowerfest.org/

Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival: September. Greenville, Mississippi http://www.deltablues.org/

Blues Museums

In addition to the abundance of festivals and the many cultural sites and historical markers located throughout the Delta, two museums in the Delta region are dedicated to the preservation and presentation of the history and continuation of the blues:

Delta Cultural Center (Helena, Arkansas) The Center is dedicated to the cultural history of the Arkansas Delta. The museum offers educational programs, archives, and permanent and temporary exhibits and is the location for the continued radio broadcasts of King Biscuit Time. http://www.deltaculturalcenter.com/

198 Delta Blues Museum (Clarksdale, Mississippi) This museum is dedicated to the history and continuation of the blues tradition. The museum features educational programs, archives, permanent and temporary exhibits, and sponsored yearly lectures, workshops, and symposiums on the blues. http://www.deltabluesmuseum.org/

Archives

The history and continuation of the blues in the Mississippi Delta can be obtained through visits to and interaction with the many landmarks and blues sites throughout the region. In addition, several archival collections maintain recordings, video footage, promotional material, publications, and memorabilia. The following collections were crucial to this dissertation, and provide valuable source material for any project on the blues and its dedicated fan base:

Chicago Blues Archives (Chicago Library) The collection includes blues recordings, videos, promotional materials, artifacts, and an extensive collection of publications on the blues.

Center for Black Music Research Archive and Library (Chicago) This collection includes publications, recordings, sheet music, manuscripts, archival material, photographs, and video footage of music related to all idioms of black music in the US and the Africa diaspora.

Blues Archive (University of Mississippi) This collection includes sound recordings, photographs, videos, periodicals, archival material, memorabilia, and an extensive collection of blues publications. Of special interest are the Trumpet Records Collection, The Sheldon Harris Collection, the Percy Mayfield collection, and BB King’s personal record collection.

199 Center for Popular Music (MTSU) The Center is dedicated to the study of American popular music. Its collection includes sheet music, recordings, photographs, playbills and programs, publications, periodicals, music trade catalogs, and videos. Also included is a significant collection of the blues and related genres.

Blues Tour Guides in Print

The majority of travel guides on the Delta and music festivals are dated, but there are several published since 2000 that are valuable resources for planning a trip to and touring the Delta. The following sources were of great help for this dissertation and will provide helpful information for any tourist or researcher interested in visiting the home of the blues:

Steve Cheseborough, Blues Traveling: The Holy Sites of Delta Blues, third edition (Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 2009)

Tom Downs, Lonely Planet Road Trip: Blues and BBQ (New York: Lonely Planet, 2005)

Jon Pruett and Mike McGuirk, The Music Festival Guide: For Music Lovers and Musicians (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004)

Richard Knight, The Blues Highway: New Orleans to Chicago, second edition (London: Trailblazer Publications, 2003)

Christine Bird, The Da Capo Jazz and Blues Lover’s Guide to the United States (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2001)

200

APPENDIX E

MEMORIES OF THE FESTIVAL

During multiple visits to the King Biscuit Blues Festival, I have collected photographs of Helena, musicians, fans, and historical landmarks. These photographs serve as souvenirs of my tourist experiences. They are also devices for recalling specific memories of past festivals and personal and communal experiences obtained while participating in the annual event. On multiple occasions, the sharing of a photograph has resulted in a collective memory of a specific festival experience and has provided an initial opening to form relationships with the musicians, fans, and locals whose stories were told in the previous pages. The following images recall many of the people, places, and experiences that have formed the core of this dissertation. I hope that these photographs initiate conversation about and memories of the King Biscuit Festival and will encourage others to make the trip to Helena to fully experience the continuing and transforming King Biscuit Tradition.

Figure A.1. The author on King Biscuit. Photograph by author. July 24, 2006.

201

Figure A.2. King Bisquit Time Show 15,570. Photograph by author. October, 10 2008.

Figure A.3. Claiming a spot on the levee. Photograph by author. October 6, 2006

202

Figure A.4: Lockwood Heritage Stage. Photograph by author. October 11, 2008.

Figure A.5. Sonny Boy Williamson Main Stage. Photograph by author. October 8, 2005.

203

Figure A.6. Dancing his blues away. Photograph by author. October, 7 2006.

Figure A.7. Dancing to the blues, October 7, 2006.

204

Figure A.8. We are the blues. Photograph by author. October 8, 2006

Figure A.9. Street performer on Cherry Street. Photograph by author. October 7, 2005.

205

Figure A.10 Never too young to play the blues. Photograph by author. October 8, 2005.

Figure A.11 Street performers in front of the King Biscuit Festival gift shop. Photograph by author. October 7, 2005

206

Figure A.12 Pinetop Perkins. Photograph by author. October 8, 2005.

Figure A.13 Bobby Rush. Photograph by author. Ocotber 7, 2005.

207

Figure A.14. Watermelon Slim. Photograph by author. October 8, 2005.

Figure A.15. Honeyboy Edwards. Photograph by author. October 8, 2005

208

Figure A.16. The late Sam Carr. Photograph by author. October, 7 2005.

Figure A.17. Sunshine Sonny Payne and the late Robert Lockwood Jr. Photograph by the author. October 8, 2005.

209

Figure A.18. The late Sam Myers. Photograph by author. October 7, 2005.

Figure A.19. Terry Buckalew and James Cotton. Photograph by author. October 8, 2005

210

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Robert W. Fry II earned a Bachelor of Music Education with a focus in choral music at Henderson State University. After teaching high school for two years, Robert returned to college to pursue a Masters in Musicology at Ohio University, where he taught courses in popular music, music theory, and the Western art music tradition. Upon completing his Masters degree, Robert began his doctorate studies in Ethnomusicology at Florida State University, where he taught courses in the history of popular music, American roots music, world music cultures, and the Western art music tradition. In addition to teaching, Robert also served as the student representative for the Southeast and Caribbean Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, chair of the Musicology Graduate Student Lecture Committee, and chair of the Society for Ethnomusicology Student Concern Committee. Robert currently lives in Nashville, TN, where he is a senior lecturer of music history and literature at Vanderbilt University.

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