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.

"You can expect everything from me!" he said. "I'm gonna pull off my clothes on the stage. I'm a lemon-squeezing daddy - I have to pull them clothes off. I won't have nothin' on but my shorts!" Nappy laughs with a big, deep-throated guffaw.

"You got a minute?" Drink Small asked me during our phone interview.

"Yeah," I said.

"All right," he said. The bluesman left the phone. A television was audible in the background.

After a few seconds, the man who for 35 years has called himself the "Blues Doctor" returned with his guitar and played a song about the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival - how he wants to the meet the mayor of Davenport, how he played the event 10 or 12 years ago. "I can do the same thing," sang Small, who returns to the festival this weekend, "but I can do it better at the age of 74."

Welcome, blues fans!

You would think that we would be used to this by now - the months and months of hard work by dedicated Mississippi Valley Blues Society volunteers, the nonstop struggle to keep things moving forward. But it's always amazing when the fest is finally here!

Robert Belfour, 5 p.m.

We at the IH Mississippi Valley Blues Festival are proud to open the 2007 Tent Stage performances with Memphis' own Robert "Wolfman" Belfour.