Pensive Blues Still Ring in Yazoo County

Pensive Blues Still Ring in Yazoo County

By Johnny Langston - The Yazoo Herald - 1972

Old Juke Joint in White Station, Mississippi.

About five miles outside Bentonia, in the middle of a cotton field, is an old, white washed house that used to be Jack Owens' cafe. It was opened only on weekends, like tonight, and also, like tonight, was usually filled with the soft blues of Jack's guitar and the harmonica of his partner, Bud Spires.

The main room is now a kitchen, but the crowd of people, including those who have come to hear Jack play, bring back its old atmosphere. Along one wall is a wood stove which, as soon as it is fired up, warms the room, and Jack begins playing "Cherry Ball."

A short, stocky man whose wide grin reveals four gold teeth, Jack Owens has been playing the guitar and singing blues "ever since I was a baby crawlin' around on the floor." His harmonica accompanist, Bud Spires, has been wailing with Jack so long that "if he can pick it, I can blow it."

Together they make the kind of music that the Southern black man is famous for—a soft but hard-driving blues that speaks from the bottom of his emotions.

Mostly, he sings about love. About losing his best woman and getting drunk on Saturday night, or chasing after the younger and prettier girls.

Jack plays an ancient National guitar which is made entirely (except for the neck) of steel covered with peeling silver paint. [This guitar, a steel-bodied National, was purchased under rather dubious circumstances by  a visiting Virginia Cavalier, who paid a visit to Bentonia in the winter. Sometimes in , Owens would find himself in financial straights; he sold that National for $60 cash to one early blues tourist in the mid-1970s.]

"About 40 years ago a group of us had a band," explained Owens, "but as time went on, we went our separate ways, some died, and some got married, and I was just left with the box."

Bud Spires, Jack Owens, and Tommy Lee West 
warm up their spirits with "Catfish Blues."

Last summer a representative of Testament Records in Los Angeles, Calif., was traveling through the Delta and recorded some of Jack and Bud's blues on a record titled The Mississippi Blues of Jack Owens and Bud Spires.

Guzzling some "nerve comforter" (a half-pint of Jim Beam) Jack and Bud are just getting warmed up, but it's getting late and time to go. "When are ya'll gonna come back. Why not tomorrow. Well, before you leave, I want to play you a song off my album."

And a few minutes later, outside, on the quiet, moonlit Delta, "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl" can still be heard.

Jack Owens: Jammin' on the Box Keeps Him Happy

Jack Owens: Jammin' on the Box Keeps Him Happy 
By Lisa Nicholas
Sunday magazine of The Yazoo Daily Herald, June 11, 1978.

He puts on a hat to play. Usually it's a cowboy hat, propped up on his grey head, but this time, it's a brown straw fancy-hat, with a brown band. He likes to drink that 'medicine' while he plays, to oil his fingers, and he likes to see people dance while he plays. He doesn't dance much himself anymore. He's Jack Owens, and he plays Bentonia Blues.

Anybody can drive out to Bentonia to hear Jack play. Just jammin' on the 'box' and a little talking in between songs will keep him happy. Blues is the only music he knows. He didn't learn to play; no one can learn the blues. A singer has to be born into it, has to feel it as naturally as sitting down. There's a mystery to knowing exactly where to put those subtle pauses, those twangy, twitchy notes that catch the listener off guard, right in the middle of the back. Few people can resist the urge to jump into some dance.

Jack's eyes are just starting to blue around the edges. They look kind of fuzzy and muddy, and are just about the only way to guess at his age. He says his uncle thinks he must be about 67, but the welfare people say he must be 75. Jack just doesn't know.

His guitar is old, too. It's a dusty Yamaha, fingerworn and as soft as his singing. The strings are old, and the ends of them hang limply from the tuning heads, until he starts to play, and then they dance and jiggle as if they knew how good he can make them sound. He's been playing this box for awhile, but he doesn't remember when he got it. He used to have a national steel string, but somehow it was swapped off for the guitar he sings to now.

All the old folks in his family, on both sides, sang the blues. Listening to the blues as a child, Jack loved it and fooled around with it until he could play. He dragged his guitar around with him, playing for birthdays, schools, follies, anything else until people started to hire him. He would play joints in the area, sometimes with a guy everyone calls Bud Spires, even though Jack claims that's not really his name. With Bud on harmonica and Jack caressing his guitar, many roadside clubs could swing up into the night.

Jack thinks electric blues are alright. Before his daddy died in Chicago, he gave Jack an electric box—one that sat on the floor with a long cord. Jack couldn't quit his old wooden guitar, though; electric was just too much trouble.

Jack says he has never written a song in his life, but he can boast that he has made up more than he remembers. All it takes is a little hittin' on the ole box, until the music comes, and then, before he knows it, he has got a pretty good song.

He just starts picking those strings. He wears a pick on his thumb and silver picks on three fingers. The listener eases back into a rocker, and slides into the beat—slow and mellow. Jack doesn't sing loudly, but with just enough volume to tell his story. He sings songs like "Love My Cherry Bowl," "Please Give Me Your Money," "Hard Times Where I Go," and "Nothing But The Devil Can Change That Woman of Mine."

B.B. King and Lightning Hopkins are two of his favorites to listen to, but it's unclear how much of an influence the big-time blues singers have had on Jack Owens. He has got a style that's so delicate that his songs are plainly labeled as his.

Sometimes Jack must think about getting old. He says he tried to write a letter once, but found out he'd forgotten how to write. But even if he slacks off his guitar for a while, he doesn't forget how to play. His music is too much of a feeling, a state of mind, too much of his life to forget.

There used to be a lot of blues singers in Mississippi, but Jack says most of those old boys are gone. Maybe they went up North, maybe they died. Jack doesn't play around in the area much anymore, because people are too wild to be trusted. Even though he's scared to go out to play all night like he used to, people-still come to listen to him. A woman from England once interviewed him while she sought out blues singers, and somebody from California came to record him. Jack just barely remembers this.

People in Bentonia know that all they have to do to get Jack to sit and play in the living room of his house for hours on end is to just show up there. Jack will run into another room and pull out the electric fan, if it's hot, and plug it up.

He'll leave his guests sitting, listening to the goats climb all over that old beat up pickup with the rusty bedsprings on it while he hunts down his picks. He'll put on his hat and sit down in front of the wood-burning stove. His untied shoes will slap down on the tile floor—a medley of worn colors.

Those gold front teeth will show under his broad grin, and his world will begin.

He might not remember his visitors' names when they leave, but he'll be there to sing for them again. His living room always has the sound of tapping feet and slapped knees in it, out in Bentonia, under a tin roof.

Before the Blue Front

Before the Blue Front: 

Community Action Association (CAA) Sponsors Basic Education

By Photo-journalist Ken Smith - in the Yazoo (MS) Herald, March 1973

Jimmy Holmes checks the paper of his 88-year-old

student, Mrs. Ollie Little, who didn’t “miss a class" 

in an effort to upgrade her third-grade education.

The Community Action Association building in Bentonia was once a small store. It isn’t very big and facilities are sparse, but on Wednesday evenings there is a hum of activity and mood of earnest determination.

From the street it’s likely one could not correctly ascertain the number of people crammed between the walls, because there is a definite lack of automobiles in the few parking spaces in front. The people, nearly 30 most nights, do not own cars or much of anything else. They are the poor and illiterate folk who lived in Bentonia, who never got a chance for much education in Yazoo County before the 1970s.

With the help of a 24-year-old native son, the students, ranging in age from 22 to 88, are doing something about their plight.

Jimmy Holmes, a senior at Jackson State College, is leading them and from all accounts, they are most willing to follow.  An athletic looking young man--and well he should be for his major is physical education--Holmes sports a slight mustache and an Afro.  “Hopefully,” writes photo-journalist Ken Smith, “he is the ‘new breed’ of black leadership.”  He is a teacher and his 30 pupils have an average of only seven years of schooling.

Holmes dedicates his free time to helping the people of his community find a path from the darkness of ignorance. He called it teaching the “three R’s,” but technically the course was “basic education.”  Assisting him in this project were the center operators, Willie Mae Johnson and Vidine Hilderbrand.  

The students included Mattie Roberts, Ollie Little, Geneva Owens, Iola Gregory, Vernilla Wilson, Jerry Dean, Ira Hudson, Mattie Wilson, Cloritha Wilson, Georgia Hudson, Cliff Berry, Luretha Mason, Alberta Mason, Eva Margiu, Johnnie Walker, Fate Hammond, Christine Demus, Alfreda Shaffer, Lizzie Lee Hammond, Elvia Henderson, Matter Courthous, Vertistine Hubbard, Isaiah Johnson, Leslie Hudson, Flora B. Griffin, C.M. Harrelson, Josie Lee Anderson, Alma Williams and Ella Luckett.

One of these students, Mrs. Ollie Little, is 88 years old, “but she never misses a class” said Mrs. Johnson. The students have a thirst for knowledge, for the education they missed, Walking a few blocks—or a few miles—to get to the one room school house isn't too much, and they are grateful for the opportunity.

The Yazoo Herald, Mar 15, 1973.

The Legend of Blues Artist Sam Myers

Music Makes Money for Man Afflicted with Cataracts

By Denise Estes - 1980

Sam Myers has been in the entertainment business for a long time. He has worked hard and invested a lot of time to make something of his talents. At 44, he may not have reached the biggest of the big times, but, to him, "everyday brings a change when you're climbing up the ladder."

"I had a great struggle when I started out," he said. "Opportunities didn't come on a silver platter. You had to really put some hard work and time into it. I've been stranded in a lot of places trying to make a buck to get back home. But you've got to get that experience to really know how it is," said Myers, a local blues singer and musician.

Myers, who has suffered a cataract condition since age 14 that makes him almost blind, started in music at 10. As early as 14, he was spending his summers away from school on stage with established Chicago musicians and looking for work.

Although born in Mobile, Ala., he considers himself a Jacksonian be-cause he attended Piney Woods as a youngster. Piney Woods where he first became interested in music, was once located in Mobile, but later moved to Jackson.

"One day while at school I heard a band playing," he said. "I asked Jonas Brown, who, even though I didn't know at the time, had been placed with me to find out my interests, where the music was coming from. He told me that it was the band playing and asked me if I wanted to go and watch. I said yes, and from there I went off into music. It was some-thing that really inspired me to stay in school," he said.

In the meantime, Brown, now a minister in Jackson, went back to tell the principal of Piney Woods that he had finally found out what Myers was interested in, said Myers.

"At first," said Myers, "I kept saying to myself 'I'm going to run away from this place.' but after becoming interested in music. I never wanted to leave the school when my mother would come to get me."

During school he learned to play the drums, trumpet and trombone. He played with the marching band, swing band and sang with the choir.

"The swinging band was really something then." he said.

Myers, who recently returned from a tour of Europe has been performing around Jackson for the past 20 years. His fans are always' yelling. "Sing it Sam." And those that hear him for the first time after an ear of Sam's smooth blues, become loyal fans.

In Northeast Jackson, he has per-formed at the Lamar Emporium, George Street Upstairs, C.W. Goodnight and recently performed at the Sheraton's Pyramid Lounge.

Myers has written three albums and two singles. His three albums are on the T.J. Records label out of San Francisco. One of the singles was done on an ACE label and the other on the FIRE label of New York.

In 1957, he recorded a single. "Sleeping in the Ground" and "My Love is Here to Stay" under the ACE label. In 1959, he recorded, "You Don't Have To Go" and "Sad, Sad Lonesome Day," a single under the FIRE label.

While playing at Richard's Playhouse on Farish Street one night in 1978, an agent from T.J. Associates offered him a five-year contract with the company.

"It sounded good to me so I signed," said Myers.

Under his present contract he has recorded three albums, "Down Home Mississippi," his biggest seller, "Sam Myers Sings the Blues." and his latest release "The Worlds Wonder."

Myers has been in and out of recording studios and has traveled with popular musicians since he got into the music business. He has played and recorded with Muddy Water and other Chicago_ musicians.

"At that time it was hard for me to get off into nightclubs as a solo performer,” he said.

A lot of musicians have influenced Myers music. He has worked with Jimmy Smith an organist. and Charles Brown. a blues and jazz musician, both great artists of the 40s. "They influenced me to hang in there.' He also has also worked with Elmore James, a famous jazz guitarist and was also inspired by the music of trumpet player Broff Davis of Jackson State University, he said.

After retiring from the road for a while, Myers started working full-time in a factory at the Mississippi Industry for the Blind and has worked there for the past 14 years.

“But,” he said, “up until then I had always been able to make a living in the music business."

Outside of entertaining, the work at the Industries for the Blind was the only other job he has ever had.

"In fact, it was the first time ever having a Social Security card," he said.

For 10 of his years at his new job, Myers was out of the music business, but he never got it out of his blood.

He said, “It wasn't fun living out of a suitcase, doing one-righters, but when the guys (musicians) would come to town and I'd chat with them and ask them how it had been going and they'd tell me it was 'OK man' or when they'd get on the bus and leave. I’d get homesick.”