Page 56 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2019

Po' Monkey's Juke Joint near Merigold, MS, was founded in 1961 and is one of the last The Jackson Rooming House was Tampa’s only boarding house for African Americans
rural juke joints in the Mississippi Delta. during segregation. Photo by TampAGS, for AGS Media
Photo by bobpalez (https://commons.wikimedia.org) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
houses. In these locations, you’d find music, food, gambling, nicknames utilized by bluesmen were prevalent during the years
liquor and just about everything one would desire. There were of the first Migration through WWII. The same focus on location
also places like the boarding house called The Cedar Street Cafe was also ever-present in song titles and lyrics. At the time of this
that bluesman Billy Jones Bluez grew up in. Located in North Little geographical explosion, bluesmen and women were presenting
Rock, AR, the cafe was owned by his grandfather. Places like lifestyles and travels that represented the African American
this made lodging and performing suitable for blues musicians communities they were from or visited. To quote R.A. Lawson from
because they were located in the immediate proximity of local his book titled Jim Crow’s Counterculture: The Blues and Black
juke joints. Southerners, 1890-1945, he says, “The traveling bluesman and
Alas, juke joints are another part of blues history that is his music created something of a public message board allowing
remembered with an unrealistic nostalgia. The reality is, juke joints members of the southern Black underclass to communicate and
were extremely dangerous, and in some cases operated illegally. share their individual experience of migration.” This confirms
However, they too housed bluesmen and women. We can’t forget that the stories shared in blues lyrics – like its predecessor, Negro
about places like the Jackson Rooming House in Tampa, FL, where spirituals – were coded messages of travel and life beyond the
Black performers of the “Chitlin Circuit” would stay. In some cases, confines of the oppressive and segregated Jim Crow South.
the venue hosting the musicians had rooms upstairs for them to Eventually, blues music became popular enough to birth other
sleep – of course, that was if the venue was owned and operated genres of commercially successful music that are enjoyed today.
by African Americans. However, African American musicians (and citizens) still face
On my Jack Dappa Blues Podcast, Grammy-winning blues discrimination and difficulties with travel. Though discriminative
legend Bobby Rush not only shares the difficulties and secrets of actions against African American travelers may not be as blatant
travel, he also states the conditions of performing. He explains how as in the Jim Crow era, many blues musicians still rely on that old
there were times he had to perform behind a curtain, because the tradition of notifying and staying with kinfolk for a good night’s
audience wanted to hear him, not see him. He also shares how, in rest. Furthermore, now that all these lovely hotels and restaurants
some cases, he was directed to broom closets with no lights as a are integrated, they may not be affordable to the working
dressing room, similar to the movie scene in Green Book. bluesman, so we have to keep a couple tricks up our sleeves to
Songsters – traveling instrumentalists who mastered many ensure safe travels, lodging and eating. More importantly, we
genres – had been traveling since the Emancipation. From the continue to express gratitude for our forefathers and mothers that
Reconstruction Era to Jim Crow, these songsters figured out and faced an extremely harsh environment in order to perform, paving
mapped routes of travel, and shared them with fellow musicians. the way for the bluesmen and blueswomen who followed!
During what’s said to be the first Great Migration, which started
in 1914, a lot of the songsters evolved into bluesmen. They, Lamont Jack Pearley is an award-winning bluesman, applied
and other Black blues musicians, began taking on the names of folklorist and African American traditional music historian. He’s
different highways, signifying the travel and routes they utilized as the host and producer of Jack Dappa Blues Radio, and executive
they journeyed throughout the South. director of Jack Dappa Blues Heritage Preservation Foundation.
This is also evident in African American newspapers of the day. Twitter @JackPearley / Instagram: JackDappaBluesRadio /
Ethnomusicologist Dave Evans’ research suggests that the highway www.JackDappaBluesRadio.tv

54 Blues Festival Guide 2019