Helena, Ark., home of the blues and the Delta Cultural Center

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Helena, Ark., home of the blues and the Delta Cultural Center
August 16, 2009
By JOHN WORTHE
dallasnews.com

HELENA, Ark. – You can feel the blues in your bones, some old-timers in the Mississippi Delta say.

The Delta Cultural Center in Helena, Ark., is rich with information about the history of blues music. Instruments used by blues musicians are among the exhibits.

You feel them on the fading end of a muggy June breeze.

You feel them while cruising the pockmarked roads of eastern Arkansas, past fertile bottom-land soil, retired plantations and makeshift juke joints.

You feel them as the muddy Mississippi River rolls toward the Gulf of Mexico, bending around sagging cypress trees and winding around shacks whose shingles are so loose that daylight bleeds through.

Blues music began around the late 19th century in the gritty Delta regions of Arkansas and Mississippi as an interpretation of shouts, work songs and spiritual chants that were popular among African-American slaves.

Musicians built around these themes and eventually created their own unique sounds.

To fully understand blues music and its cultural history, a visit to the Delta is a must.

Like proud parents, two cities here, Clarksdale, Miss., and Helena, Ark., share the unofficial "birthplace of the blues" title.

While Mississippi has become synonymous with blues music through the years, blues experts are quick to note that Helena (pop. 5,817) has had just as much influence on musicians as its counterpart across the mighty river.

Terry Buckalew, assistant director of the Delta Cultural Center on Cherry Street in downtown Helena, says the city is just as crucial to "the blues story because Helena is where, as much as anywhere, acoustic Delta blues became modern amplified blues that later became the Memphis and Chicago style."

For decades, the callused streets of this Delta city have inspired raspy lyrics and jagged melodies about everything from heartbreak to prison.

Helena grew into a major blues hub during Prohibition because libations of all sorts could be enjoyed here without fear of government intervention, Buckalew says.

Dozens of top blues musicians from Arkansas and neighboring Mississippi played juke joints in this area during the 1920s and 1930s, enjoying liquor, women and all-night jam sessions.

Names such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, James Cotton and Robert Johnson were synonymous with the blues scene here in early 20th century.

"This really was the place to be if you were a blues musician," Buckalew says.

Each year, thousands of blues enthusiasts from all over the world visit Helena to soak in the deep spirit of the Delta.

A few visitors even trudge over Helena's levee to swirl their fingers in the Mississippi River. The river's water, some believe, holds the magic of the blues in its depths.

"We have had people come and ask us if they can take water from the Mississippi back with them," Buckalew says. "Of course we can't tell them no. They take it back to their native countries, and people act like it's holy water."

The cultural center chronicles the life and history of the blues. Like its counterpart in Clarksdale, the Delta Blues Museum, the cultural center's guest registry reads like a jet-setter's passport. Visitors from Germany, Holland, France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand have scribbled their names down and browsed through the memorabilia.

The registry also includes signatures from B.B. King and Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant, who has publicly credited blues music as one of his inspirations for becoming a musician.

Inside the center, handsome displays representing blues greats such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Lockwood Jr., Robert Nighthawk and Louis Johnson greet visitors. There's also an exhibit on son of Helena Harold Jenkins, who, before transforming into country superstar Conway Twitty, played blues and rockabilly-style music throughout eastern Arkansas.

After getting my blues name, "Hambone," from a computer kiosk at the museum's entrance – just type in your name, and you'll be given a blues interpretation of it – I'm off to immerse myself in blues culture.

Buckalew says he designed the exhibits so visitors would feel as though they're walking through narrow back alleys searching for one of the many juke joints that were once plentiful around Helena.

The juke joint was to blues music in the early and middle 20th century what grand palaces were to opera during the eras of Mozart and Puccini.

Though few exist today, juke joints were nothing more than sharecroppers' shacks on dusty back roads or hollowed out downtown buildings converted into music clubs.

A replica juke-joint-era storefront is the focal point of the center's main exhibit hall. Buckalew says the faux facade is part of his goal to offer an authentic look.

"I really wanted to give people a sense of what blues music is when they visit," Buckalew says. "This is such a special time in history, such a rich cultural time, and I think we give our visitors a dose of that here."

The highlight of my visit is a tour of the KFFA-AM (1360) radio studios by a man known as the "Voice of the Blues," Sunshine Sonny Payne.

Payne, 83, is host of the longest continually running blues radio program in the world, King Biscuit Time, which began broadcasting from the center about a decade ago, although the show is older.

At 12:15 p.m. Monday through Friday, he fires up his microphone and belts out the same line to listeners: "Pass the biscuits, 'cause it's King Biscuit Time on KFFA radio!"

Buckalew says KFFA is one of the most significant reasons blues music became a successful genre.

"KFFA radio brought the blues from the fields to the airwaves, paving the way for blues music to become the world's music." he says. "King Biscuit Time and other KFFA programs were influential to B.B. King and other bluesmen within radio range."

Payne began hosting the program in 1950 (the radio show's first broadcast was in 1941) and continues to spin records and CDs from legends such as King, who has made appearances at the cultural center, as well as local and regional blues artists.

Visitors are allowed inside the studio and can watch and listen as he produces his 30-minute show, which is broadcast worldwide via the King Biscuit Time podcast (www.kffa.com).

"I like to make everyone feel like they are a part of my program," says Payne, who might invite you to say a word or two on the air during your visit.

"I want everyone to know about the blues because they represent something really special. They're about feelings, about life. And they live here in Helena."

John Worthen is a freelance writer in Arkansas.

When you go

When to go

Consider visiting during the Arkansas Blues & Heritage Festival (www.bluesandheritagefest.com), planned Oct. 8-10 in downtown Helena. It's one of the largest blues festivals in the world.

Getting there

Helena is about 435 miles from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Follow Interstate 30 into Little Rock, then take Interstate 40 east to Brinkley. Take exit 216 and follow U.S. 49 into downtown Helena. The Delta Cultural Center is at 141 Cherry St., downtown.

The center and more

• The cultural center is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and on national Monday holidays. It's closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Contact: 1-800-358-0972; www.deltaculturalcenter.com

• If you want to learn more about the history of Helena and the Delta, visit the Depot, a restored train station filled with artifacts dating to the Civil War. It's part of the cultural center and is just around the corner at 95 Missouri St.