Late bluesman Willie King remembered at festival

/Home/Blues Artists/Bluesmen/Legendary Blues Men

Late bluesman Willie King remembered at festival
June 1, 2009
By Cory Pennington
Tuscaloosanews.com

OLD MEMPHIS - From a dirt road in Pickens County, hidden among countless acres of farm land, the sound of the blues rose through the dense summer air.

An estimated 550 people flocked to a field 10 miles outside of Aliceville for the 12th annual Freedom Creek Blues Festival. This year’s festival was the first since the death of it’s founder, Willie King.

In the crowd, fans of the late blues artist wore T-shirts emblazoned with his face and held up pictures of him in the crowd. At the front of the stage, where a large photograph of King sat, almost every artist played a tribute song to him.

Jock Webb is a harmonica player from Birmingham. He met King in the early nineties. He said King took him under his wing and inspired him to play music.

Webb said King woke up one morning and told him about a dream he had the night before. He wanted to start a blues festival to bring attention to the needs of the people of Pickens County and to bring money to the area.

“He wanted the people to know that he was with [the people of the area] through their struggles,” Webb said. “There is a void, a gap, that will never be replaced. But as he taught me, we can carry on the torch by teaching anyone who has a heart and an ear for [the blues]. We aren’t just talking about the music, we are talking about the culture, and that goes farther than any instrument can take it.”

When the artists were not on stage, they shared stories of King’s influence on the community and in their music.

Shar-baby Newport moved from Indiana to Alabama four years ago after meeting King and playing at the Freedom Creek Festival. This is her fourth year to play the festival. Newport, who plays traditional and delta blues, said this was the best place in the country for her to be for her music.

“It’s just a loving atmosphere out here,” she said, “and I love performing here. I feel happy inside [at this year’s event], but I feel a little vacant. I miss Willie.”

Rick Asherson planned the festival with King before his death last year. Asherson said King’s vision for the festival was to bring people together, of all ethnicities and social backgrounds, to a place where they could share the blues. He said the festival’s location is what makes the festival special because it is in the land where the blues was born, in the rural south.

“When [people who enjoy the blues] get down here you can see they feel at home,” he said. “The roots of the blues is right here, and it permeates the atmosphere. He loved to see the mixture here, at his home in the woods.”

This year’s festival was organized by King’s former band mates along with the Rural Members Association, a non-profit organization he started to celebrate the blues in Pickens County. Debbie Bond, co-founder of The Alabama Blues Project, said the festival is known all around the world, but is also a bit of a secret because of it’s word-of-mouth advertising and rural location.

“It’s almost like a third-world country out here in a way because of a lack of jobs and a lack of money all around,” she said. “One of the rich things that came out of this area was the blues, and Willie was a product of the blues culture here.”

In between sets Saturday afternoon, King’s former drummer, Willie Williams, took the microphone and spoke to the audience.

“Willie King is still alive,” he said.

The crowd cheered loudly and the sun set behind the trees. When the next band stepped on stage, before they played their first song, they announced “this one is for our friend Willie King.”