Page 64 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2018

Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom, “There in the
stable, dependable center of America was a pathway of
phenomenal energy, a dynamic river that grew only stronger
as it approached the gulf. From St. Louis south, music would
manifest itself alongside it.”
Scott Lunsford, the Associate Director of the Pryor Center for
Arkansas Oral and Visual History at the University of Arkansas,
describes pre-war Helena as a vital port city and the hotspot.
“Morse Gist’s dad got the first juke box concession in Helena. If
a juke box broke down in the middle of the night, he went out
and fixed it ’cause the juke joints were still going strong at two or
three o’clock in the morning. Gist used to sell worn-out juke box
blues records. They started out black, and by the time they came
out of the juke box they were literally white, and he could take
those worn out records and sell them on the corner, they were
so popular.”
Since 1986, the annual King Biscuit Blues Festival has
brought the Arkansas blues legacy into the 21 century.
st
Sterling Billingsley, a Helena native and leader of his own
blues band, books the festival. “We’ve helped cultivate a lot
of people’s careers here, and they’ll be the first to tell ya,
‘That’s where I became somebody, at the King Biscuit.’ To the
real diehard blues players, this is the Holy Grail, not Chicago
or New Orleans.”
Bubba Sullivan is the one of the founders and unofficial
Godfather of the Biscuit. “In 2013 when Greg Allman played
here, and they asked him, ‘Do you know where you’re playing?
Do you know the significance of you being on stage?’ He said, Robert Lockwood Jr., performing here at the 2006 King Biscuit Blues Festival, was
among the original performers of King Biscuit Time. Photo by © Eric Gorder 2006
‘Yes, I understand the importance of being on this stage where
the music of all these musicians we copy is played.’” ancestry, the ghost, everything remains there. That whole part of
The 2017 Blues Grammy winner Bobby Rush and Memphis- the country is just filled with the spirit of pain. Nothing has ever
based blues singer Reba Russell are two artists who call the made me feel like that place makes me feel, nowhere that I’ve
Biscuit their second home. ever gone.”
Bobby Rush: “The people here let me cross over. They accept Artists born in Arkansas include King Biscuit entertainers
me for who I am. I have crossed over to a white audience that Sonny Boy Williamson (II), Robert Lockwood Jr., Frank Frost, Sam
follows Bobby Rush, but I haven’t crossed off the black audience. Carr and James “Beck” Curtis.
I have come from the middle road.” Other Arkansas natives whose influence has been felt in
Reba Russell: “I totally think there is something that rises popular music around the world include: the Godmother of
up from that river and that dirt at King Biscuit. I think that the Rock 'n Roll, Sister Rosetta Tharpe; Chicago blues giants Luther
Allison, James Cotton and Son Seals; The Band founder Levon
Helm; country giants Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty and Glenn
Campbell; early rockabilly pioneers Ronnie Hawkins, Billy Lee
Riley and Sonny Burgess; Stax soul star Johnnie Taylor; blues
rocker Roy Buchanan; Ernie and Earl Cate; Lonnie Shields; and
Cedell Davis. Most of them have played the Biscuit.

Don Wilcock will host his eighth annual Call and Response
Seminar on October 7, 2018 at the King Biscuit Blues Festival.
His interviews with several of the artists mentioned in this
article are available at the University of Arkansas Pryor Center,
Projects, Helena, Arkansas web page. He writes for several
blues websites and magazines and can be reached at
donwilcock@msn.com.

62 Blues Festival Guide 2018