I'm talking to blues musician Watermelon Slim about the myriad jobs he's had in between the release of his first album, 1973's Merry Airbrakes, and his second, 2003's Big Shoes to Fill. Those three decades found Slim working as a truck driver, a forklift operator, a collection agent, a firewood salesman, a funeral officiator, and even a watermelon farmer, the job for which The Artist Formerly Known as Bill Homans got his moniker.
During our phone interview, I ask if his experience with blue-collar employment of this sort aids in his songwriting. "Oh, it does," Slim says. And he proceeds to explain how.
Kind of.
As always, the performers at this year's IH Mississippi Valley Blues Festival will arrive with a host of awards to their names. But here's a guarantee: Albert Cummings will be the only one boasting a citation from the architectural digest Remodeling.
Alberta
Adams gained a foothold in the booming Detroit entertainment industry
as a tap dancer in the early 1940s at Club D&C. But "I always
wanted to be a singer," she said in a recent phone interview.
I've
read about Nappy Brown's energetic and ribald stage antics when he
was a big star in the 1950s. And having seen him lying on the floor
doing the "bug dance" at the 1993 Mississippi Valley Blues
Festival, I asked him what we should expect of his set with Muddy
Waters alumnus Bob Margolin at the fest this year.
"I'm not sure there's an owner's manual to this business that can truly enlighten one," says blues musician Kelly Richey, "but I did know that I was the type of artist that wasn't gonna be happy if I couldn't do it my own way."
"You
got a minute?" Drink Small asked me during our phone interview.
It's
only a slight overstatement to say that blues piano legend Henry Gray
has played with everybody who's anybody.
We
at the IH Mississippi Valley Blues Festival are proud to open the
2007 Tent Stage performances with Memphis' own Robert "Wolfman"
Belfour.
