In the second episode of Beyond Beale's inaugural season, we learn about the specifics of the Memphis Country Blues Festival from the experts. Warning: there are curse words in this episode that are uncensored.
This podcast features interviews from, in order of appearance, Chris Wimmer, Jimmy Crosthwait, Augusta Palmer, Henry Nelson, and Robert Gordon. "Pretty Much Pure Gospel" explores the history of the Memphis Country Blues Festival, drawing on the historical context of "Diabolical and Revolutionary" to give a full picture of the festival itself.
Emma Jane Hopper: Hello, and welcome back to Beyond Beale, a Memphis music history podcast produced in collaboration with the Mike Curb Institute at Rhodes College. I’m your host, Emma Jane Hopper. This is the second episode of our series covering the Memphis Country Blues Festival, which was held at the Levitt Shell in Overton Park from 1966 through 1970. In our previous episode we discussed the historical context of the festival: the political and social unrest in America and what life was like for Memphians during the 60s. Today we’ll be talking more about the people who started the Memphis Country Blues Society, the musicians who played at the festival, and the nature of the festival itself.
Beyond Beale Theme by Cam Napier
Emma Jane Hopper: Before they were renting space at the Shell, many of the founding members of the Memphis Country Blues Society were musicians and performers. Chris Wimmer recalled that what initially brought the founders together was a shared interest in folk music.
Chris Wimmer: Well, it was a pretty loose knit group of players involved, Bill Barth. Probably was the primary person…. he and the guitar player named John Fahey had to come to Memphis. Barth, Fahey, and a guy named Henry vestine, who played in a band called Canned Heat had discovered Skip James, who was an old player just that year. And anyway, they had come to Memphis…. there was a club called the Bitter Lemon that was on Poplar. That was just a coffeehouse. Sold no liquor. But it it was kind of the focal point of that folk and blues scene in Memphis at the time. And so they played there. Nancy Jeffries played there. We brought some of the old guys there, Furry and Bukka.
Emma Jane Hopper: Most of the founders had already played together in different bands, according to Jimmy Crosthwait.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ….I think I had seen Barth perform with a group called the Solip Singers. Which had they had come over from Arkansas, I think around Little Rock, where Bob Palmer lived. Bob Palmer was a clarinet player, horn player. And he and Nancy Jeffries and Bill Barth made up a little. trio called the Solips Singers, and later, by 68 or so, they had become or actually in 67 they became the insect trust that had more musicians. But Bob Palmer, Bill Barth, Nancy Jeffries were kind of the initial three…. So that was kind of lets you know, who those people were…. Bill Barth is the one that got me to the emcee the 68 Memphis Country Blues Festival….
Emma Jane Hopper: Travelling between Memphis and New York, the future Memphis Country Blues Society started kicking around the idea of putting on a festival. Mr. Wimmer already knew the place to do it.
Chris Wimmer: ….In 63 I was working with a guy named Jim Dickinson, who was a Memphis music player, producer, performer…. At the end, in the summer of 63, we did a show at Overton Park Shell, folk music…. And found out that we can rent the shell for fifty dollars. And so when Barth started talking about wanting to do a festival. We thought, well, the Overton Park Shell might be just the place for it….
Emma Jane Hopper: On the underground scene, the Memphis Country Blues Festival gained notoriety quickly. Here’s Augusta Palmer.
Augusta Palmer ...a lot of the people that were involved in it were living kind of half the year Memphis and half the year in New York….So they would really do a lot of like trying to publicize the festival in the time they were in New York.
Emma Jane Hopper: Getting a lineup of musicians to play the event was relatively easy. The organizers were already familiar with many Memphis country blues legends such as Furry Lewis, Reverend Robert Wilkins, and Booker T. Washington White. Mr. White was credited as “Bukka” on all of his records but he preferred that people call him Booker.
Chris Wimmer: ...A bunch of all the old guys we knew personally. You know, we had been to their house and most of them had played at one time of another at the Bitter Lemon or, there was another coffee house called the Oso here that some had played. When we saw, when we would pick a day for their show, then we would go around and visit, you know, we go and talk to Furry Lewis….
Emma Jane Hopper: That was Mr. Wimmer. Dr. Palmer wasn’t there herself, but has spent a lot of time with footage of the festival and interviewing the musicians still with us for her upcoming documentary.
Augusta Palmer: ...how can you not love Furry Lewis? I just defy anyone to see footage of Furry Lewis and not fall in love him. There's something wrong with you if that happens. But also Bukka White. Both Reverend Wilkins, very sad that we just lost the younger Reverend John Wilkins, who is a really wonderful guy and gave me a nice interview.
Emma Jane Hopper: Everyone we spoke to had something to say about the music. Here’s Mr. Crosthwait again.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ….Everybody was just wonderful. Reverend Robert Wilkins was all pretty much pure gospel….
Emma Jane Hopper: The festival attracted a variety of people, including young music lovers such as Henry Nelson.
Henry Nelson: I was 15, so I was going to Woodstock and I was actually headed in the wrong direction. So I went back to Memphis and I had relatives that lived in South Memphis and I. I've been hearing about Overton Park. I've been hearing about this culture that gathered in this park, and so at 15 I decided I was going to go and I started hitchhiking.
Emma Jane Hopper: Mr. Nelson attended the festival as a teenager in 1969.
Henry Nelson: ….I remember lying under a tree, which I think is still there behind the brooks, listening to the airplanes going over. And I remember seeing Furry Lewis on stage, so I'm 15, 16 then…. and but after that, seeing Big Sam Clark…
Emma Jane Hopper: According to Dr. Palmer, the turnout for the first festival caught the attention of the local newspapers.
Augusta Palmer: ...the commercial appeal and other newspapers from the 60s were reporting even the first festival attracted like one or two thousand people. So that's that's pretty impressive. And then sixty nine attracted more people. And I think the presence of people like Johnny Winter, who had a bigger name, attracted even more people.
Emma Jane Hopper: The festival started out as a way to showcase local talent that had gone underappreciated. It increased in scale with each subsequent year.
Augusta Palmer: ...I think they always attracted more people and than they thought that they would attract.
Emma Jane Hopper: Most of the audience was made up of hippies and beatniks, just like the founders. Mr. Crosthwait still remembers it more than 50 years later.
Jimmy Crosthwait: Well. It was mostly young. Not altogether, hippies. There were people that were more or less great looking that were still. Oh, maybe middle class, white kids, I say kids they would have been anywhere from eighteen to twenty five. And maybe even some that were 30 or 35 that were. What you would think of as folk audiences….
Emma Jane Hopper: But what really made the festival unique was its integrated audience, especially considering the context. This festival took place at the height of the civil rights era, and Memphis was a particularly infamous example of segregation and racism. Despite that, folks of any color could find a spot on the Shell’s lawn.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ….So it would be maybe a row of black folks and two or three rows of white folks and then some more black folks peppered throughout the white faces or whatever, but it wasn't like all clumped know, just blacks in one corner and the rest white. It was more or less spread out because as people came in, they got their seats, you know. And depending on when you came would determine more or less where you sat and the Shell was pretty close to filled up. I don't know exactly how many people it would hold, but it seemed like it was a big crowd….
Emma Jane Hopper: Mr. Nelson attributed that integration to hippie culture.
Henry Nelson: ….everyone there, black and white, were on one accord. And and I'd even say some people, especially of African-Americans who had never been to Overton Park, were there because the few that that knew of the culture of a country blues and blues itself…. there was not an audience outside of the culture. I'll put it that way. And by the culture, I meant the hippie culture. So everybody that was there was there for that reason.
Emma Jane Hopper: The organization of the festival itself was relaxed. In fact, the line between festival organizer and performer was often blurred, according to Dr. Palmer.
Augusta Palmer: And, you know, I think on the other side, too, is like a very hectic thing, so the images I see of like the organizers, they're like running around like crazy because a lot of them were in a band called The Insect Trust, which also played at the festivals.
Emma Jane Hopper: The Insect Trust included Nancy Jeffries, Luke Faust, Robert Palmer, Trevor Koehler, and Bill Barth.
Augusta Palmer: ….So it's kind of a chaotic hippie happening with a little bit of organization.
Emma Jane Hopper: The audience also contributed to the atmosphere. Mr. Nelson remembered the fest fondly.
Henry Nelson: ….The festival itself was, I have to tell you, it didn't seem very eventful. It was it was very. loose, it was, which I kind of loved. I remember. They used to be at on the stage, especially at that time, there was a pit, an orchestra pit. And I remember people sitting on the orchestra pit. Wondering if they were going to fall in, because I knew they were smoking pot and there were people in and there were people sitting mostly I was kind of roaming….
Emma Jane Hopper: The 68 festival took place only three months after Martin Luther King’s assassanation. Racial tensions were at an all time high, yet the festival continued to serve as a safe, integrated space.
Jimmy Crosthwait: It was great. It was very mellow. Everybody was well behaved. And the audience was more white than black. But there were a lot of black people in the audience that would be primarily like family members or cousins or whatever. You know, Bukka and Furry and Reverend Robert Wilkins and Reverend Robert Wilkins played with his whole family. His son, John Wilkins. Reverend John Wilkins plays to this day. He at that time was 17 years old. Now, he looked at me and some of the white people with a bit of suspicion, you know, and with good reason because Martin Luther King had been killed. And he was way more aware of that than, say, I was. But like I said, now years later, I did a double take on that. It's almost like, you know, I had to let time go by just to look back on my life to see and sort of be aware of what happened.
Emma Jane Hopper: That was Mr. Crosthwait again. For Mr. Nelson, the festival and the culture it represented felt like home.
Henry Nelson: Yeah, well, you know, and that's the thing about Overton Park and that culture at that time. When I discovered that group or that, that space in 68, I felt like I had found my tribe. So in 69 and from 69 on, that was really my safe place. It was my place of belonging and it was my place of where where peace was the thing. There was no conflict there….
Henry Nelson: ….One of the reasons I felt at home and with my tribe is because there were so many African-Americans there who were, considered themselves cool and hippies, and that was that was part of it. But also the fact that everybody got along and there was never an incident that I recall from all the years I've gone to to that tribe.
Emma Jane Hopper: This starkly contrasted the turmoil brought on by recent events. Faced with a lot of bad PR, the city government finally took notice of the festival, deciding to co-opt it as its own, according to Dr. Palmer.
Augusta Palmer: So there was a lot of very bad publicity for Memphis. Obviously, after the assassination of Martin Luther King… And so I do think that that's definitely a reason why this why the city wanted to get more involved. And then it was also. Sixty nine was Memphis, sesquicentennial.
Emma Jane Hopper: The city gained interest as the festival began gathering more attention on the counterculture scene.
Augusta Palmer: And Mike Vernin from Blue Horizon Records in the U.K. were coming to record a record. So they're getting a little bit of national attention right then by sixty nine. They get, you know, this TV coverage from public television, which is national. And that's that's really huge. And you can follow in different counterculture newspapers like the Great Speckled Bird was the Atlanta one. And had like. I think three stories about the 1969 festival. So and then it's featured at Rolling Stone magazine. More familiar to people as a counterculture kind of publication. Right. So I think that sort of shows you that it wasn't on the front page of The New York Times or or something like that.
Emma Jane Hopper: It did make national television when it was featured on Steve Allen’s PBS show Sounds of Summer, though, according to Mr. Crosthwait.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ….He was a jazz musician, Steve Allen. He had his own sort of show on TV at some point. But in this instance, he was emceeing a PBS show. I think either covering like festivals or just music in general. And for that episode, they were covering the Memphis Country Blues Festival. And were getting footage by way of the Goodyear blimp. And they had a crew on the ground…. I'm pretty sure it was 69. But that's when the city really jumped in with both feet, wanting to, put the Chamber of Commerce sign or whatever up in the back of the Shell…
Emma Jane Hopper: By 1969, the Memphis Country Blues Society and the city were finally working together on the festival, but the city was often in direct conflict with what the society wanted. Mr. Wimmer recalls an incident involving Reverend Wilkins and the Rolling Stones that could have resulted in a benefit concert if the city hadn’t been so apprehensive.
Chris Wimmer: ...We were over talking to Reverend Wilkins about his sixty nine show, we'd been over at his house a couple of times. Here was a real gentleman. Real, real nice, easygoing, polite guy… And we'd gone over there to talk him about the 69 show. And to also let him know that the Rolling Stones had recorded his song on Beggars Banquet album and not given him writer's.
Emma Jane Hopper: The song in question was The Prodigal Son, originally written by Reverend Wilkins. It was covered by the Rolling Stones in a guitar and vocal arrangement similar to Wilkins’ version.
Chris Wimmer: They'd claimed Jagger/Richards as writers… we went over to see Reverend Wilkins, and Barth asked him if he could use his phone…. And Barth explained to Jagger that we were at Robert Wilkins house. And, you know, the problem with the writer's and Jagger immediately recognized the problem and admitted that that was wrong…. And that's when Barth came out on the porch where we were sitting and said, Reverend Wilkins. Mick Jagger would like to talk to you. And Reverend Wilkins said, well, tell the boy I'll talk to him in person... And that's when they started talking about wanting to come and play a benefit in Memphis.
Emma Jane Hopper: To Mr. Wimmer’s disappointment, the society couldn’t persuade the city representative that they were working with to help make it happen.
Chris Wimmer: ….the idea of having to deal with the Rolling Stones coming to Memphis just sort of freaked him out and he didn't want any part of it. So that's when we kind of parted ways with the city… And so we politely told the city, well you go ahead and do your show. They wanted to do an evening show at the Coliseum and we'll do our show at the Shell. And good luck….
Emma Jane Hopper: Robert Gordon summed up the city’s attitude when handling the festival.
Robert Gordeon: ….By 70, I think the city has taken it over. Right. They've said, fuck you, hippies. This is ours. Right…. In sixty nine, the city had already gotten their mitts on it and were doing things like putting Johnny Winter on the bill. Well, Johnny Winter was a cool white Texas blues musician who was experiencing a moment of extreme popularity. But he was not. You know, he was not part of the Memphis country blues and the city's involvement was immediately diluting the festival and skewing its direction. So…. city involvement was not necessarily welcome….
Emma Jane Hopper: Mr. Crosthwait told us what went wrong in brief.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ….by the time the city was in on it, they were just screwing it up…
Emma Jane Hopper: Once again, the city failed to recognize the cultural significance of the local country blues scene, instead putting their efforts toward capitalizing on Elvis’s success, according to Mr. Wimmer.
Chris Wimmer: ...We never could get any interest, you know, financial or otherwise, out of the city. And the city, just... Whether it was because these were just old black guy that they just kind of brushed off, or if they were just ignorant and had no concept of the history and the blues and, you know, evolving into modern rock n roll or exactly what it was. But we we never got any help or interest from the city. And the city's only concept of Memphis music was Elvis…. And there was so much music coming out of Memphis other than Elvis….
Emma Jane Hopper: Mr. Gordon said the city continued to ignore the greater part of its musical heritage, but the festival did give the country blues musicians access to a wider audience.
Robert Gordon: Well, yeah. You know, a thousand. I think to the Shell couldn't hold but a thousand or maybe twelve hundred or something like that. So you basically have a full house. Right. For people who are normally playing in a coffeehouse of 30. You know, playing to the afternoon at the festival when it's half full and it's 500 or 400. That's a big audience. Then playing at night when it's a thousand or more. It's a huge audience….
Emma Jane Hopper: It was a big crowd, considering how some of the artists were relatively unknown in the music business.
Robert Gordon: ...for someone like Nathan Beauregard in particular, you mentioned. He had never recorded. You know, he was just a guy who liked to play… So the heyday for Beauregarde is at the festival itself….
Emma Jane Hopper: The festival wasn’t all that special, but the respect that an integrated audience indicated for musicians who often had to use the backdoor when playing white joints, meant something.
Augusta Palmer: ….I think for the gigging musicians, a lot of them, it was like just just another just another gig. So, I mean, for Furry Lewis and Bukka White and stuff like that, they expressed some happiness that they're being able to play in their own city and being honored in their own city, which hadn't happened all that much for them, you know.
Emma Jane Hopper: That’s Dr. Palmer. This respect, while in retrospect was the bare minimum these musicians deserved, was a change of pace compared to the norm. Black country blues musicians at this time were either used by white musicians as uncredited inspiration or exploited by white owned recording companies. Either way, they rarely got a spot in the limelight.
Augusta Palmer: Black artists were often, you know, didn't even benefit so much from. This exposure that they got because they weren't necessarily getting their royalties. It was great that Reverend Wilkins did get royalties, but a lot of a lot of artists didn't.
Emma Jane Hopper: Mr. Nelson watched it happen when he worked in radio.
Henry Nelson: ….what I discovered years, a few years later about the country blues artists and blues artists in general and to some extent even contemporary blues artists. Rhythm and blues artists, is that the music industry is vicious, and these artists, especially the country blues artists, who are poor, a lot of them, and some became famous like Albert King and. But these artists were, it was was they were never paid their due in regards financially or publicity wise….
Emma Jane Hopper: Racism, institutional or otherwise, kept many country blues musicians in obscurity and poverty.
Henry Nelson: I think a lot of the the white. Record companies or producers or whoever was handling, if you will, these artists, they prospered to more greater than the artists did. If they had been white, yeah. I don't see how they could have had the talent, actually. You know, I think this was I would even wonder today, how are the how how prosperous country blues artists really are?...
Emma Jane Hopper: Mr. Crosthwait recalled a visit to guitarist Sleepy John Estes’ house that showcased the destitution some of these musicians experienced.
Jimmy Crosthwait: ….we got to go into Sleepy John's house and Sleepy John was so poor that he kept a chain and padlock around the refrigerator so that people couldn't get in and eat any food in between meals….
Emma Jane Hopper: The festival did slightly improve the musicians’ financial standing, according to Mr. Wimmer.
Chris Wimmer: ….we had no. You know, really grand esoteric concepts of the festivals. We did the festivals to A) try to get the old guys a few bucks, and that we did. Nobody, none of the workers got paid. None of the people that put the festival together got paid. I never got one dime from doing any work with any of the, any of the festivals. The white musicians that worked there, that played there, the performers, oftentimes would get paid in hashish. Which suited them fine. They weren't in this looking for the money anyway. That was just the little bonus. But any money that we made after paying for the Shell and the posters and a few incidental expenses. Like getting Furry's guitar out of the pawn shop. All went to the old guys and it wasn't a lot of money. But for, you know, one night gig, if we could get them a couple hundred dollars or three hundred dollars. That was a lot of money back then. You know, I mean, my rent in the mid 60s in methods was fifty dollars a month. So if you could give somebody two hundred or three hundred dollars, you... That was a lot of money back then….
Emma Jane Hopper: But when the festival ended, it was back to the status quo. 100 bucks doesn’t last forever. The festival did introduce a new generation to the country blues. These new blues fans weren’t contained to Memphis, and Dr. Palmer commented on the wider outreach of the festival.
Augusta Palmer: but it did go from kind of hippie happening to this event that the music industry was taking note of, as well as the the count, the wider counterculture, not just the Memphis tiny counterculture.
Emma Jane Hopper: The festival was a big part of Memphis music history. Mr. Nelson said the city government hasn’t always owned that, or other historic, black contributions to American music.
Henry Nelson: ….At that time, I don't think. A lot of people in Memphis or even the work, well, I won't say that, but a lot of people in Memphis didn't know the value of the Memphis music heritage and the richness of it. And I would say only about 15 years ago that we began to own that 20 years ago. And it's always been part of the rich culture, the music, the people, the food has always been there. So my first record I bought was the Bar-Kays' soul singer. And, you know, I mean, Otis Redding recorded here, you know, he may as well have been from Memphis. So when you talk about music heritage, that is my generation.
Emma Jane Hopper: The festival’s goal was to showcase a part of American music culture that often goes unrecognized. It did just that. There weren’t any overreaching, esoteric goals, though. Mr. Wimmer said once they got tired of it, the Memphis Country Blues Society just moved on.
Chris WImmer: ….we weren't in it to do it forever. We weren't in it to do, to make a million dollars and have four hundred thousand people show up at our Blues Woodstock or anything. We did it. We did it four years and. We thought that it, that was just that. Everybody kind of went. Separate ways, although many of us stayed in touch…. People just, things change, y'know?
Emma Jane Hopper: The festival’s end didn’t mean all of the musicians had been signed to major labels, made a million bucks, or went on world tour. It meant the founders went in other directions. The issues that country blues musicians faced in the 60s persisted, and still affect musicians of color today. In the next episode, we explore how the festival, the Levitt Shell, and country blues music is still relevant to the current political moment.
Beyond Beale Theme by Cam Napier
Emma Jane Hopper: Thank you so much for tuning in to Beyond Beale, the Mike Curb Institute’s Memphis music history podcast. Thank you to the interviewees featured in today’s program, in order of appearance, Chris Wimmer, Jimmy Crosthwait, Augusta Palmer, Henry Nelson, Robert Gordon. Today’s episode was written and produced by myself and Elijah Matlock with help from our faculty advisor Dr. J. Tyler Fritts. Elijah is also our audio engineer. The original music for today’s program was created by Cam Napier. Thank you to Betsy John and Shaliz Barzani for our gorgeous cover art. I’m your host, Emma Jane Hopper, see you soon and stay safe.