MY LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE AT THE BEALE STREET MUSIC FESTIVAL

 

Beale Street Music Festival

While I've often referred to the concert we witnessed in the early 90's as Memphis in May, it was actually the Beale Street Music Festival.

Memphis in May is much more than music with several other activities, such as the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, the Great River Run and the Beal Street Music Festival.

And, the Beale Street Music Festival does not primarily feature the blues.  The year we attended the Black Crowes were featured on the main stage, but we avoided that, instead going to the Traditional Delta Blues Stage a good distance away.

In recent years, blues music has been relegated to the Coca Cola Blues Tent.

Just an observation about the audience at the Traditional Delta Blues Stage: While the City of Memphis is predominantly Black, about 65%, the audience we joined at the blues stage, numbering maybe two or three hundred, was majority white, from all over the U.S. and even Europe.  We met a man from Norway.

The Blacks in attendance seemed to be mostly family of the musicians with extreme familiarity with the music.  The whites resembled RGV bird watchers, elderly, holding expensive cameras with long lenses.  

As the music started, a very short black lady, with a wide-brimmed straw hat, tapped me on the shoulder from behind, asking if she could move in front of me.

"Yeah, sure!" I said, and spent the next two hours peering over her hat at the performers.

B.B. King's Last Ride Down Beale Street

It should be noted that B.B. King was not treated as just another performer in Memphis, but like an icon.  As he took the stage about a dozen or so from the Memphis Police Department set up around the stage in a protective stance.

Seeing the police move in, the Black lady on my left quickly got Mr. King's attention.  He looked right back at her.

"Hey B.B.!!  What's all this?  Ain't nobody want your 300 lb ass!!"

Robert Lockwood

One performer who "never escaped my mind" was commonly called Robert "Junior" Lockwood, born in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas in 1915. The nickname "Junior" referred to the legend that he was the son of Robert Johnson, the bluesman who made a deal with the devil at the Crossroads.  I read that Mr. Lockwood hated the name "Junior."

Actually, Johnson moved in with the Lockwood's mother after his birth, mentoring him in the blues, but was not his biological father. 

He was nearing 80 when I saw him, taking the stage with his elderly wife, who was directed to a chair on the stage, facing the audience. 

Lockwood, as he took the stage, shouted out:  "This is a Hell of a way to make a living!"

He then took the chair meant for him next to his wife, turned it around, sitting with his back to the audience the entire performance.

No telling what induced Lockwood to appear seemingly against his will, but I did notice other blues performers, who'd already finished their set, joining the audience.

During Lockwood's set, one bluesman in the audience kept yelling out for a particular song, not once, but several times.

Finally, Lockwood, visibly annoyed, stood up and, staring right at the man, calling him by name, shouted:  "Gawdammit!  I'm not retuning my guitar for one stupid song!"

According to his bio, Lockwood played piano in church at the age of 8, then, turned professional at the age of 15, taking his blues to fish fries, jute joints and clubs in and around Clarksdale, Mississippi.

He was one of the first black entertainers on Southern radio, appearing on the King Biscuit Hour in the 50's after making his first record in 1941.

At the age of 60, he took up a new instrument, the 12 string guitar, having a custom one made by Japanese stringed instrument makers Moony Omote and Age Sumi.  That guitar is on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.

I found this video of Robert Lockwood on YouTube playing at the age of 91, just before his death: