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Alvin Youngblood Hart and William Lee Ellis & Billy Gibson added to lineup of "Mother's Best"
February 23, 2007
HELENA-WEST HELENA--HELENA-WEST HELENA – Alvin Youngblood Hart has been added to the lineup for the Second Annual Mother’s Best Music Fest on Saturday, June 16, in historic downtown Helena at the Cherry Street Pavilion and inside the Delta Visitors Center on Cherry Street.
Also newly-added to the lineup is a duo performance by William Lee Ellis & Billy Gibson.
“The lineup for Mother’s Best just gets better and better,” said DCC Assistant Director Terry Buckalew, who heads up the festival’s organization. “Alvin Youngblood Hart is a simply stunning guitarist, and Bill Ellis and Billy Gibson bring their own unique sounds to the blues.”
Among performers announced earlier to perform at the 2007 event are Jimbo Mathus, Sam Carr with Dave Riley, Spoonfed Blues featuring Bob “Mississippi Spoonman” Rowell and Carla Robinson, Terry “Big T” Williams and Wesley Jefferson, and acclaimed Memphis cigar box guitarist John Lowe.
The festival begins at 10 a.m. and will continue well into the evening. Admission is free and the public is encouraged to attend. Delta Cultural Center events are to be held rain or shine.
Mother's Best Music Fest’s eclectic take on the variety of music produced throughout the Delta -- from its blues to its rockabilly, country, and Americana sounds -- is inspired by a 1940s radio show on station KFFA 1360-AM that featured musical innovators from throughout the Delta region, including Doctor Isaiah Ross.
“This is a young festival – one we believe will grow as music fans become aware of the variety of performances we’re bringing to the stage,” Buckalew said.
Hart, who has been called a “musician’s musician,” “The Cosmic American Love Child of Howlin’ Wolf and Link Wray,” and the “era’s most diverse bluesman,” is no easy talent to describe. Since his 1996 debut, the all-acoustic “Big Mama’s Door,” and his subsequent W.C. Handy Award for Best New Artist, Hart has done his best to stymie critics, purists, and prognosticators.
His second album, “Territory,” ran a gambit from country swing to blues to reggae to rock; 200’s “Start With the Soul” displayed the roaring rock and R&B of a power trio, with all of the grit captured by legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson. Two years later, Hart was back – Dickinson again at the controls – and stunned listeners again, this time with a dozen obscure acoustic blues covers by Son House, Leadbelly, Charley Patton, Odetta, Skip James, and others, accompanying himself on six-string guitar, banjo, and mandolin. Lest anyone jump to the conclusion he’d returned to the security of country blues, Hart again charged into the fray with an electric trio on 2005’s “Motivational Speaker,” mixing strong originals with unconventional covers of Otis Redding, Paul Rodgers, and Johnny Paycheck, as well as the traditional “In My Time of Dying.”
Hart also won a 2004 Grammy as a contributor to “Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster,” the year’s winner for Traditional Folk Album.
William Lee Ellis also knows something about defying expectations. The son of an acclaimed bluegrass fiddle player Tony Ellis, and named for his godfather, Bill Monroe, William Lee Ellis first spent much a decade studying classical guitar and earning a master’s degree in classical performance at the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music. Then he became a bluesman.
Ironically, Ellis’ love for acoustic blues bloomed during his conservatory days when he became aware of the finger-picking “Piedmont” style of gospel blues great the Rev. Gary Davis, and later of Blind Willie Johnson, Willie McTell, Lonnie Johnson, and Blind Blake. As his love of the music grew, so did Ellis’ own unique style which melded the acoustic finger-picking techniques of the great acoustic bluesmen with his classical training and the bluegrass world of his childhood.
Ellis’ third album, “The Full Catastrophe,” drew considerable attention upon its release in 2000, displaying his talents on a collection of self-penned songs embodying the musical, emotional, and spiritual themes that intrigue him. Traditional blues fans were once again drawn in by Ellis’ acclaimed “Conqueroo” in 2002 and “God’s Tattoos” in 2006.
Born in Clinton, harmonica player Gibson felt the calling of the blues at a young age, and began performing regularly in Clarksdale following high school. Soon he had heeded the migratory call to Memphis, and staked out a claim on Beale Street where he became known for his rollicking regular gigs at Rum Boogie Café. His album’s include “Nearness of You” (2001), the live “In a Memphis Tone” (2004), “The Billy Gibson Band” (2005), and the newly-released “Southern Livin’.”
Clarksdale’s Mathus is an acclaimed singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who has released a variety of well-received solo discs. He is also a guitarist and founding member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, the band with the hot jazz sound which rose to prominence in the early 1990s.
Drummer Carr, a founding member of the Jelly Roll Kings with Frank Frost and Big Jack Johnson, is a legendary instrumentalist among blues musicians and fans. His performance at the 2007 Mother’s Best will pair him again with blues vocalist and guitarist Riley, with whom Carr cut 2001’s “Whiskey, Money & Women” on the Fedora label.
Riley, a native of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, turned away from a blues career in 1973 to raise his son, working the next 25 years as a guard at Joiliet State Penitentiary. He began entertaining again in 1996. His albums also include the autobiographical “Living on Borrowed Time” and “Blues Across America.”
For more information, interested persons can contact the Delta Cultural Center at (870) 338-4350 or (800) 358-0972.
The Delta Cultural Center shares the vision of all seven agencies of the Department of Arkansas Heritage – to preserve and promote Arkansas heritage as a source of pride and satisfaction. Other agencies within the department are the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Old State House Museum, the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, the Arkansas Arts Council, and the Natural Heritage Commission.
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