As historically precarious a business entity as it is a culturally
essential bedrock of downtown Memphis, the Center for Southern Folklore will
celebrate its first anniversary at its latest location a little early this
week due to the return of the center’s Memphis Music and Heritage Festival.
The center, co-founded in 1972 by Bill Ferris and executive director Judy
Peiser, was forced out of its last location at 209 Beale Street in the fall of
1999 due to debt problems. With the center homeless for much of 2000, the
Music and Heritage Festival — the organization’s signature event since 1988 –
– didn’t occur last year.
But now it’s back. Arguably the finest annual celebration of
Memphis music and culture the city has, this year’s festival will retain the
three-day, multistage, multigenre format that it had before the center’s year-
long “hiatus.”
This year the festival will feature five stages along a two-block
line connecting the center in Pembroke Square to the Peabody Place
Entertainment and Retail Center. The center’s regular performance space will
be used as one festival stage, followed by: a Trolley Stop Stage right outside
the Pembroke Square doors on Main, a Main Stage in the parking lot across
Second Street from Peabody Place, a Peabody Place Stage in the mall’s large
open area, and a Tower Records Stage inside the new store. As is festival
tradition, genres will be mixed on each stage, encouraging a constant flow of
traffic along a route sprinkled with food and crafts vendors.
Peiser is particularly excited about one act new to the festival:
merengue accordion virtuoso Joaquin Diaz, a Dominican Republic native now
based in Montreal. Peiser was knocked out by a Diaz performance recently at a
Folk Alliance Conference in Vancouver and decided to bring him to the
festival. “I like the festival to present regional artists,” says
Peiser, “but I also want to bring other people in. I especially wanted to
bring something in for the Latino community in Memphis. I think that’s very
important.”
The festival itself is free, but the center will host special
events on Friday and Saturday night at 11 p.m. for a $10 cover. Friday’s late
show will be Jimbo Mathus’ Traveling Road Show, in which the ex-Squirrel Nut
Zipper and native Mississippian will be joined by vintage Sun blues artist and
recent comeback kid Rosco Gordon and center stalwarts the Fieldstones.
Saturday night’s event will be Sock Hop ‘Til You Drop, a pairing of Sun
rockabilly artist Sonny Burgess with the New Orleans band the Royal
Pendletons.
The highlight of the festival may come Sunday night on the Main
Stage, which will close with a four-act stretch of local music that would be
hard to top: The Spirit of Memphis Gospel Quartet is scheduled for 7 p.m. Jim
Dickinson and his North Mississippi Allstars progeny, who will likely play a
jug-band set, will follow. Next up will be Sun rockabilly icon Billy Lee
Riley. Closing out the night, and the festival, will be true Memphis music
royalty in the form of Rufus Thomas and his “kids,” Carla and
Marvell.
The rest of the lineup is a typically enticing mix of sounds —
blues, jazz, country, rock, and gospel, with a touch of rap and world music
thrown in. Blues stands tall, of course. One highlight in that vein could be
Johnny “Duck” Holmes, a cousin of seminal Delta bluesman Skip James.
Holmes owns and operates the Blues Front Café in Bentonia, Mississippi,
and appeared in the Robert Mugge and Robert Palmer documentary Deep
Blues. According to the center’s Andria Lisle, this will mark Holmes’
Memphis debut. Other blues highlights will be two of the city’s most highly
regarded house bands: The Hard Luck Blues Masters and the Hollywood Allstars
play before packed crowds locally at the Hard Luck Café and Wild
Bill’s, respectively, but both will be venturing outside their normal digs for
festival appearances. Also playing are the Handy Three, who recently won the
Beale Street Blues Society’s annual battle of the bands contest.
As the center approaches its one-year mark in the new location,
Peiser seems pleased with its status. Certainly, the appearance and feel of
the space have changed considerably since last fall’s opening: What at first
had the look of a college cafeteria now feels almost as funky and cozy as the
previous Beale location. The center’s experiment with lunchtime performances
has gone over well, according to Peiser, but the new, more out-of-the-way
location has had an effect on foot traffic. “I think locals still have
trouble finding us, but tourists from, say, Sweden or Switzerland know what
they’re looking for and have no problem at all,” says Peiser. “We’ve
done well with special events — Little Milton, Kate Campbell, Roy Carrier.
This may be a space where [locals] need a specific reason to come, and in the
next year we plan on giving them more reasons.”
2001 Music and Heritage Festival Schedule
Friday, August 31st
Main Stage: Papa Top’s West Coast Turnaround, 5 p.m.; J.M.
Van Eaton’s Van Jam, 6 p.m.; Susan Marshall and Jackie Johnson, 7 p.m.; the
Daddy Mack Blues Band, 8 p.m.; Rosco Gordon with Calvin Newborn and Sonny
Williams, 9 p.m.; Joaquin Diaz and his Merengue Band, 10 p.m.
Trolley Stop Stage: Melissa Dunn, 5:15 p.m.; Sid Selvidge,
6:15 p.m.; Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, 7:15 p.m.; Jimbo Mathus &
Knockdown Society, 8:15 p.m.; Ronnie Williams and Ed Finney, 9:15 p.m.
Center For Southern Folklore Stage: Charlie Wood, 11:30
a.m.; Ross Rice, 12:30 p.m.; Brother Love Blues Band, 1:30 p.m.; Little Albert
Jazz Orchestra, 2:30 p.m.; the Chiselers, 3:30 p.m.; Los Cantadores, 4:30
p.m.; Jim Skinner and Devin Miller, 5:30 p.m.; Old Man Johnson and the Cooter
River Band, 6:30 p.m.; Jeff Huddleston and Blue Bossa, 7:30 p.m.; Sandy
Carroll, 8:30 p.m.; the Hard Luck Blues Masters, 9:30 p.m.
Peabody Place Stage: Memphis James, 11:30 p.m.; Cory
Branan, 12:30 p.m.; Darrel Petteis & Strength and Praise, 6:30 p.m.;
Exodus, 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, September 1st
Main Stage: Melvin Rogers Big Band, 2 p.m.; Herman Green
and the Green Machine, 3 p.m.; Di Anne Price and her Boyfriends, 4 p.m.; the
Bluff City Backsliders, 5 p.m.; Moloch, 6 p.m.; Kate Campbell, 7 p.m.; Sonny
Burgess and the Pacers with Paul Burlison, 8 p.m.; Joaquin Diaz and his
Merengue Band, 9 p.m.; Reba Russell, 10 p.m.
Trolley Stop Stage: Global Warming, 2:15 p.m.; Jason
Freeman, 3:15 p.m.; Poetic Outlet with I.Q.’s 7 ‘Strophes, 4:15 p.m.; Jimmy
Crosthwait, 5:15 p.m.; Smoochy Smith, 6:15 p.m.; the Royal Pendletons, 7:15
p.m.; the True Gospel Travelers, 8:15 p.m.; the Kattawar Brothers, 9:15
p.m.
Center For Southern Folklore Stage: Children’s Theatre, 1
p.m.; Gatemouth Moore, 2:30 p.m.; Eddie Bond, 3:30 p.m.; Shelby Bryant, 4:30
p.m.; Nancy Apple’s Songwriters in the Round, 5:30 p.m.; the Hollywood
Allstars, 6:30 p.m.; Alonzo Pennington, 7:30 p.m.; Brown Sugar, 8:30 p.m.; Ace
Cannon, 9:30 p.m.
Peabody Place Stage: Stax Music Academy Rhythm Section,
11:30 a.m.; Jimmy Crosthwait, 1:30 p.m.; Salute to the Wonders Exhibition
“Eternal Egypt,” 4:30 p.m.; the Obys, 6:30 p.m.; the Daddy Mack
Blues Band, 8:30 p.m.
Tower Records Stage: The Layman Quartet, 2 p.m.; MC
Honcho, Lost Innocence, and Jewel Sanchez, 3 p.m.; Greg Hisky Band, 4 p.m.;
Hank and Becc, 5 p.m.; FreeWorld, 6 p.m.; Roy Harper and Johnny Bellar, 7
p.m.; Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, 8 p.m.; Billy Gibson, 9 p.m.
Sunday, September 2nd
Main Stage: American Deathray Music, 2 p.m.; the
Fieldstones with Barbara Blue, 3 p.m.; the Memphis Klezmer Revue, 4 p.m.;
Angelic Voices of Faith, 5 p.m.; Billy Gibson with Mose Vinson, 6 p.m.; the
Spirit of Memphis Gospel Quartet, 7 p.m.; Jim Dickinson and Sons, 8 p.m.;
Billy Lee Riley, 9 p.m.; Rufus, Carla, and Marvell Thomas, 10 p.m.
Trolley Stop Stage: Alonzo Pennington, 2:15 p.m.; David
Evans, 3:15 p.m.; I.Q. and Fathom 9: Double Exposure, 4:15 p.m.; the Gamble
Brothers, 5:15 p.m.; Randall Morton, 6:15 p.m.; the Porch Ghouls, 7:15 p.m.;
Richard Graham Samba Group with Patricia Reis, 8:15 p.m.; Blind Mississippi
Morris, 9:15 p.m.
Center For Southern Folklore Stage: The Handy Three, 2:30
p.m.; Roy Harper and Johnny Bellar, 3:30 p.m.; the Vance Ensemble, 4:30 p.m.;
the Gospel Jubilees, 5 p.m.; the Jollyaires, 5:30 p.m.; the Neal Brothers, 6
p.m.; Smoochy Smith, 6:30 p.m.; the Subteens, 7:30 p.m.; the Last Chance Jug
Band, 8:30 p.m.; Lucero, 9:30 p.m.
Peabody Place Stage: Kate Campbell, 12:30 p.m.; New
Memphis Hepcats, 4:30 p.m.; Tropix, 6:30 p.m.; Joaquin Diaz and his Merengue
Band, 8:30 p.m.
Tower Records Stage: The Ron Franklin Entertainers, 2
p.m.; Cooley’s House, 3 p.m.; Carol Plunk, 4 p.m.; the Great Depression, 5
p.m.; the Lost Sounds, 6 p.m.; Teresa Pate, 7 p.m.; Perfection, 8 p.m.; Eighty
Katie, 9 p.m.
