OPINION

Singing the blues

Should make them go away

Business was booming as this year's King Biscuit Blues Festival got underway Oct. 4-7 deep in the heart of the Arkansas Delta at Helena-West Helena, Ark. "Oh, my word, it's just over-the-top fabulous," Munnie Jordan, who directs the festival, told our reporter Sean Clancy. "Tickets have been selling well and everything is on track. People are really excited." As they should have been, for this festival brings together the best of the Old and New, the Mountain and the Delta, South.

To know something is to know how history made it over the years. This annual festival has its roots in a radio variety show that first was aired on Nov. 21, 1941, when it starred Sonny Boy Williamson and the King Biscuit Entertainers plus assorted company. It could be heard Monday through Friday mornings as it mixed the day's farm futures with plugs for King Biscuit Flour.

Every town of any note in the various Souths surrounded by cropland must have had a similar show, for I can vaguely remember one starring an ensemble named something like Rex Sabine and his Red River Syrup Soppers that aired every weekday morning over KWKH in Shreveport as I was getting ready to be tardy as usual for school. Listeners could hear the broadcast throughout what was then dubbed the tri-state Ark-La-Tex region but by now has been expanded to Ark-La-Texoma or some such sweeping title.

Too young to put together the morning report of farm prices and my chances of getting that dangerous little motor scooter I so much wanted for next Chanukah, I did get the point of the twangy country-and-western lyrics. So did my father, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, but I never did get that speedy motorbike, which may explain why I've managed to survive till a ripe old age, for there was nothing between the rider and--splat!--the bare pavement.

As outsiders listening in, my family had its own culture and faith, thank you, but we nevertheless appreciated the mother wit of country music's all-too-true-to-life lyrics. Our store on Texas Avenue, aka U.S. Highway 80, was only a short dusty trek from Shreveport's impressive Municipal Auditorium, where I saw my first minstrel show and even then knew instinctively there was something frighteningly dehumanizing going on up there onstage. Pa and I went together into the cavernous expanse of that vast auditorium to attend any number of shows, including circuses and political rallies for the Longs' latest candidate for governor of the Gret Stet of Louisiana.

Back here in Arkansas, the annual blues festival has grown much more cosmopolitan since those now long-ago days, yet it remains essentially the same. The continuity of Southern history, however varied and cracked and augmented here and there, as during the Late Unpleasantness of 1861-65, retains its remarkable continuity. Much like the food served along with the music. As reported by our Sean Clancy, the carts lining Cherry Street in downtown Helena were serving not just standard state-fair treats like funnel cakes but Cajun dishes, barbecue and--Ole'!--hot tamales. Viva America!

It's hard to decide, taking a look at this year's program for the blues festival, whether it was designed to attract more visitors, townfolk or innocent bystanders. Why not all of the above and more? For this was the latest historical re-enactment in an ongoing tradition and transition. Those interested--and who wouldn't be?--could watch 91-year-old Sonny "Sunshine" Payne broadcast King Biscuit Time in his studio at the Delta Sounds Gallery.

There was also on this year's program a panel discussion at the Malco Theater on Cherry Street to explore the implications of the call-and-response approach to the blues. The blues, after all, are a form of the oldest of songs sung by black folk forced to work in the fields by their masters. It was a chance to pour out their hearts as they trudged through their labors, often at the point of a gun or the crack of a whip.

And yet there was a hidden hope in those songs that a day would come when freedom would arrive. Listen carefully and you can hear the triumph of a long-oppressed people coming through.

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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Editorial on 10/18/2017

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