(Originally published July 8, 2009)
1985, Age 13. “Voodoo Child,” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, from Electric Ladyland.
Once in a while, as a listener, you have those experiences that help crystallize your love of music. Sometimes they happen when you are listening to a record, but more often, it seems, they happen while you are listening to someone create music live. Philosophers in music education refer to these as "peak experiences" and they believe that these are central in creating a real love of music in the listener or performer.
I have had many of these in the course of my life and I would guess that you have, too, especially if you are anything other than a casual fan of music. My first peak experiences with live music probably happened at church, though I don't really remember. I can remember a very important formative experience playing with the marching band for the very first time in 7th grade. I'm sure that our musicianship was far from flawless, yet it had a deep emotional impact with me. That's one of the interesting things about music. You can listen to a technically flawless performance sometimes and be left cold, while inexpert renditions can, on occasion, be intensely moving. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s true.
I guess that most of the vacations I take are in search of these peak musical experiences. They tend to be quite successful, which is why I keep coming back for more. Some of the most memorable over the years include hearing a “cultural troop” perform on Aran Isle, watching Carmen in Prague, and several shows by the Soul Rebels in New Orleans. My most recent vacation has certainly been focused on this search. We arrived by plane in New Orleans, then drove to Memphis and back, traveling through the Mississippi Delta on renowned Highway 61, including a one night stay in Clarksdale, MS. On this trip, we heard funky brass music in New Orleans (including the Soul Rebels and Big Sam’s Funky Nation); blues on Memphis’ Beale St. and in Clarksdale; New Orleans’ blues legend Little Freddie King; and performances at the Essence music festival by John Legend, Salt N Pepa, En Vogue, Beyoncé, Teena Marie and Al Green. It has been an exceptional time listening to music.
Sometimes the most memorable moments are quite unexpected. You go into a club or stop by some street performers not expecting much and you get totally blown away. Or maybe you just see something really surprising, but the effect is the same. I had one of those moments on this trip. If you stop in Clarksdale, MS, there might not appear to be much going on. It’s a slow-moving Delta town with a population under 20,000. There are no crowds downtown. Most of the town, in fact, seems to be a museum to the music that was born here. You can visit the birthplaces of Ike Turner, Sam Cooke and W.C. Handy. You can see the spot where Muddy Waters was “discovered” in 1943. You can drive by (or even stay) at the hotel where Bessie Smith died after a car accident (Ike Turner supposedly rehearsed the seminal rock-and-roll song “Rocket 88” in the basement of the hotel before going to Sam Phillips’ studio in Memphis to record it). Then there is the infamous crossroads of Highways 61 and 49, where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the Devil (it’s actually Highway 161 now, but does that really matter?). And no visit would be complete without a stop at the Delta Blues Museum, which houses the cabin Muddy Waters lived in on Stovall Plantation, along with lots of other blues paraphernalia.
If you want to be close to downtown, there aren’t many options about where to spend the night. Most of the chain hotels lie on the highway outside of town. One option you have is to spend the night at Ground Zero Blues Club. Ground Zero is a club owned by Morgan Freeman and it looks like a more authentic version of House of Blues. The building itself is a former cotton house and the word that most readily comes to mind when you see it is “ramshackle.” They have apartments above the club that you can rent nightly, which are really convenient if you don’t want to risk a post-midnight trip by the crossroads after the club closes. We stayed there on a Thursday night, which is especially convenient as the club has about the only show in town on most Thursdays. The night we were there, they were hosting an open mic, emceed by one “Razorblade,” a Clarksdale resident who came complete with pin-stripe suit, pork-pie hat and two-tone shoes. He sang a full set with the house band (all of whom seemed like they might attend Clarksdale High School). As the club gradually filled to near-capacity of about 150, we heard not just blues, but soul, country, southern rock – the whole fare from the region. Several of the performers seemed like “characters,” not just Razorblade. There was the enormous cowboy in a black hat who sang Alan Jackson songs. There was an older British man who was doing his very best to look and sound like Eric Clapton. There was a man named Tater who sang in a manner very reminiscent of Clark Terry’s “Mumbles,” though after hearing him speak afterward, it was apparent that that was his normal diction. Then there was John Holmes.
We had noticed this man earlier, maybe just a little younger than us, making his way around the club with a sort-of gimpy shuffle, not so much a gangster lean as a grandpa in house slippers. He had long hair which was pulled back into a bun (!), two-tone shoes (apparently the most popular footwear in Clarksdale), khaki pants and a greenish-yellow long sleeve shirt. He also kept the earbuds of his iPod in his ears, even as the band played. After the first break, he made his way to the stage; he was apparently the first name on the open mic sign-up. The first real sign of something going on was when he asked the sound man to tune his guitar for him.
When the break was over, Razorblade mounted the stage, took the microphone and said, “We’re gonna let this gentleman play for you – for just a little while. Maybe five minutes. Please welcome: John.” I suppose I thought this was an unusual way to introduce him, but then I guessed that perhaps there was a five minute limit on each of the performers. After that introduction, the man removed the earbuds from his ears, took his red Ibanez electric in hand and walked to the microphone.
“Some people call me selfish,” he said with a smile. “Some people call me strange. Some people call me ‘Mr. Holmes.’ Other people don’t call me at all.” I began to sense that we were in for something really special. “If you think I suck,” he continued, “just watch my muscles flex.”
At this point, John Holmes took off his dress shirt to reveal a gray undershirt of the “wife-beater” variety. His biceps and forearms were tattooed and he was indeed, rather muscular. He hung the shirt on the back of a chair placed center-stage and then sat in the chair. Though the other performers of the night would opt to perform with the house band, John would be performing solo.
When he began playing, it was without any discernible sense of pulse. The guitar’s tone was cleaner than is typical for electric blues and Mr. Holmes’ technique was not what one would call “practiced.” Upon hearing him, in fact, one might have guessed that he had been playing for about one week, practicing maybe twenty minutes a day. He wandered around the fret board of the instrument, through several keys, executing patterns that seemed familiar to neither the audience nor the performer. There were no scales, no arpeggios, no familiar blues licks that every adolescent guitarist learns within an hour of first touching the instrument. At one point during the improvisation, for I am assuming that is what it was, there was a very brief quote of the lead riff from “Voodoo Child,” inexpertly executed but clearly discernible, the only real suggestion that the guitarist had even a passing familiarity with the blues canon. John Holmes continued in this manner for perhaps three minutes, ending as inauspiciously as he had begun, concluding with neither a grand pause nor a cadence typical of any known style of music.
What was most striking about the performance, however, indeed the thing that rescued it from being anything other than a bizarre joke, was John Holmes’ utter dedication as a performer. It was clear that however strange his phrasing, however unusual his melodic choices, he was committed to this moment. One could easily imagine that this was, perhaps, an exercise by a Zen master who was dedicated to unlearning what he had known about music. Far from another studied and predictable rendition of “Mustang Sally,” Mr. Holmes played with a freshness and exuberance that one hears on Muddy Waters’ early recordings done on Stovall Plantation. He kept his eyes closed throughout and bobbed his head in accompaniment to the guitar.
When he had concluded, applause rippled through the room, from politeness or habit it was difficult to tell, and John Holmes walked again to the microphone.
“I’m sorry if I wasted your precious time, I’ll give it right back to you one of these days,” he said, misquoting Hendrix for the second time that evening.
“One more thing,” John Holmes said as he looked out again with that mischievous smile.
“Rick Springfield – eat your heart out!”
Eat your heart out, indeed.
1985, Age 13. “Voodoo Child,” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, from Electric Ladyland.
Once in a while, as a listener, you have those experiences that help crystallize your love of music. Sometimes they happen when you are listening to a record, but more often, it seems, they happen while you are listening to someone create music live. Philosophers in music education refer to these as "peak experiences" and they believe that these are central in creating a real love of music in the listener or performer.
I have had many of these in the course of my life and I would guess that you have, too, especially if you are anything other than a casual fan of music. My first peak experiences with live music probably happened at church, though I don't really remember. I can remember a very important formative experience playing with the marching band for the very first time in 7th grade. I'm sure that our musicianship was far from flawless, yet it had a deep emotional impact with me. That's one of the interesting things about music. You can listen to a technically flawless performance sometimes and be left cold, while inexpert renditions can, on occasion, be intensely moving. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s true.
I guess that most of the vacations I take are in search of these peak musical experiences. They tend to be quite successful, which is why I keep coming back for more. Some of the most memorable over the years include hearing a “cultural troop” perform on Aran Isle, watching Carmen in Prague, and several shows by the Soul Rebels in New Orleans. My most recent vacation has certainly been focused on this search. We arrived by plane in New Orleans, then drove to Memphis and back, traveling through the Mississippi Delta on renowned Highway 61, including a one night stay in Clarksdale, MS. On this trip, we heard funky brass music in New Orleans (including the Soul Rebels and Big Sam’s Funky Nation); blues on Memphis’ Beale St. and in Clarksdale; New Orleans’ blues legend Little Freddie King; and performances at the Essence music festival by John Legend, Salt N Pepa, En Vogue, Beyoncé, Teena Marie and Al Green. It has been an exceptional time listening to music.
Sometimes the most memorable moments are quite unexpected. You go into a club or stop by some street performers not expecting much and you get totally blown away. Or maybe you just see something really surprising, but the effect is the same. I had one of those moments on this trip. If you stop in Clarksdale, MS, there might not appear to be much going on. It’s a slow-moving Delta town with a population under 20,000. There are no crowds downtown. Most of the town, in fact, seems to be a museum to the music that was born here. You can visit the birthplaces of Ike Turner, Sam Cooke and W.C. Handy. You can see the spot where Muddy Waters was “discovered” in 1943. You can drive by (or even stay) at the hotel where Bessie Smith died after a car accident (Ike Turner supposedly rehearsed the seminal rock-and-roll song “Rocket 88” in the basement of the hotel before going to Sam Phillips’ studio in Memphis to record it). Then there is the infamous crossroads of Highways 61 and 49, where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the Devil (it’s actually Highway 161 now, but does that really matter?). And no visit would be complete without a stop at the Delta Blues Museum, which houses the cabin Muddy Waters lived in on Stovall Plantation, along with lots of other blues paraphernalia.
If you want to be close to downtown, there aren’t many options about where to spend the night. Most of the chain hotels lie on the highway outside of town. One option you have is to spend the night at Ground Zero Blues Club. Ground Zero is a club owned by Morgan Freeman and it looks like a more authentic version of House of Blues. The building itself is a former cotton house and the word that most readily comes to mind when you see it is “ramshackle.” They have apartments above the club that you can rent nightly, which are really convenient if you don’t want to risk a post-midnight trip by the crossroads after the club closes. We stayed there on a Thursday night, which is especially convenient as the club has about the only show in town on most Thursdays. The night we were there, they were hosting an open mic, emceed by one “Razorblade,” a Clarksdale resident who came complete with pin-stripe suit, pork-pie hat and two-tone shoes. He sang a full set with the house band (all of whom seemed like they might attend Clarksdale High School). As the club gradually filled to near-capacity of about 150, we heard not just blues, but soul, country, southern rock – the whole fare from the region. Several of the performers seemed like “characters,” not just Razorblade. There was the enormous cowboy in a black hat who sang Alan Jackson songs. There was an older British man who was doing his very best to look and sound like Eric Clapton. There was a man named Tater who sang in a manner very reminiscent of Clark Terry’s “Mumbles,” though after hearing him speak afterward, it was apparent that that was his normal diction. Then there was John Holmes.
We had noticed this man earlier, maybe just a little younger than us, making his way around the club with a sort-of gimpy shuffle, not so much a gangster lean as a grandpa in house slippers. He had long hair which was pulled back into a bun (!), two-tone shoes (apparently the most popular footwear in Clarksdale), khaki pants and a greenish-yellow long sleeve shirt. He also kept the earbuds of his iPod in his ears, even as the band played. After the first break, he made his way to the stage; he was apparently the first name on the open mic sign-up. The first real sign of something going on was when he asked the sound man to tune his guitar for him.
When the break was over, Razorblade mounted the stage, took the microphone and said, “We’re gonna let this gentleman play for you – for just a little while. Maybe five minutes. Please welcome: John.” I suppose I thought this was an unusual way to introduce him, but then I guessed that perhaps there was a five minute limit on each of the performers. After that introduction, the man removed the earbuds from his ears, took his red Ibanez electric in hand and walked to the microphone.
“Some people call me selfish,” he said with a smile. “Some people call me strange. Some people call me ‘Mr. Holmes.’ Other people don’t call me at all.” I began to sense that we were in for something really special. “If you think I suck,” he continued, “just watch my muscles flex.”
At this point, John Holmes took off his dress shirt to reveal a gray undershirt of the “wife-beater” variety. His biceps and forearms were tattooed and he was indeed, rather muscular. He hung the shirt on the back of a chair placed center-stage and then sat in the chair. Though the other performers of the night would opt to perform with the house band, John would be performing solo.
When he began playing, it was without any discernible sense of pulse. The guitar’s tone was cleaner than is typical for electric blues and Mr. Holmes’ technique was not what one would call “practiced.” Upon hearing him, in fact, one might have guessed that he had been playing for about one week, practicing maybe twenty minutes a day. He wandered around the fret board of the instrument, through several keys, executing patterns that seemed familiar to neither the audience nor the performer. There were no scales, no arpeggios, no familiar blues licks that every adolescent guitarist learns within an hour of first touching the instrument. At one point during the improvisation, for I am assuming that is what it was, there was a very brief quote of the lead riff from “Voodoo Child,” inexpertly executed but clearly discernible, the only real suggestion that the guitarist had even a passing familiarity with the blues canon. John Holmes continued in this manner for perhaps three minutes, ending as inauspiciously as he had begun, concluding with neither a grand pause nor a cadence typical of any known style of music.
What was most striking about the performance, however, indeed the thing that rescued it from being anything other than a bizarre joke, was John Holmes’ utter dedication as a performer. It was clear that however strange his phrasing, however unusual his melodic choices, he was committed to this moment. One could easily imagine that this was, perhaps, an exercise by a Zen master who was dedicated to unlearning what he had known about music. Far from another studied and predictable rendition of “Mustang Sally,” Mr. Holmes played with a freshness and exuberance that one hears on Muddy Waters’ early recordings done on Stovall Plantation. He kept his eyes closed throughout and bobbed his head in accompaniment to the guitar.
When he had concluded, applause rippled through the room, from politeness or habit it was difficult to tell, and John Holmes walked again to the microphone.
“I’m sorry if I wasted your precious time, I’ll give it right back to you one of these days,” he said, misquoting Hendrix for the second time that evening.
“One more thing,” John Holmes said as he looked out again with that mischievous smile.
“Rick Springfield – eat your heart out!”
Eat your heart out, indeed.
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