Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and the Bentonia Blues

The following is taken from an interview on April 2, 2008, at Delta State University.

Hear audio clips from the interviews below.

Click here to download the entire transcript of the interview.

Student: What was your childhood like?
Holmes: Oh, man. No TV, no radio, no inside plumbing, no air conditioning, no electric or gas stove, walked to school, no inside plumbing at school, no lunch room at school, no running water. When I was going to school you had to walk about, probably about 4 miles, carried my lunch and water that I would need all day. My school year was only probably about 5 or 6 months a year because I grew up on a farm, and the state allowed for farm kids to help plant the crop in the spring, and gather in the fall of the year. My school year didn’t start until probably late October, early November. And this time of year [4/2/08] we would be ready to go half a day to get the crop planted. Probably 6 months at most we went to school.

Student: So how did you learn the Blues?
Holmes: Through a guy called Jack Owens. And I had no intention, they were playing, just sitting around playing.

Student: So, what is your opinion about Blues?
Holmes: Well, my opinion about Blues —listen to me real carefully. Blues is the only music—listen to me carefully now—Blues is the only music that was originated out of America. All other music migrated from other countries. Blues is American born music … so my thing is, Blues is part of your heritage if you’re from America. It’s where it was born—you can’t deny that. And for some reason, everybody think, well not everybody, a lot of people think that Blues is associated with hard times, but not really. People sing the Blues about the good times.

Student: Can you tell us about the Blues Front Café?
Holmes: The Blue Front Café? The Blue Front Café is the oldest, still running juke joint in the state of Mississippi and one of the oldest in America … I’ve been running it for 38 years, before y’all—probably before your parents were born. It’s been in my family for 60 years, I’ve been running it 38.

Student: Who are some of the Blues musicians you remember seeing perform at the Blue Front Café?
Holmes: I can tell you: Skip James, Henry Stuckey, Jack Owens, uh … Muddy Waters, Jacob Stuckey, Connie West, a guy called Sonny Boy Williams, the list goes on. I was a little kid, there are probably some I forgot. A lot of them went on to be professionals, some are still by the riverside.

Student: How did you get your nickname?
Holmes: My momma—when I was a little kid I stayed bow-legged for 4 or 5 years,
walking like a duck.

Student: Is it rewarding to play the Blues?
Holmes: Well, at one time, see, a guitar was pretty much your only musical entertainment that country people had. There were no juke boxes, there was no big bands, so a guy could pick cotton all the week, or all the month, and go buy him a ten dollar guitar from the nickel and dime store, and he could sit around and play at parties and sit his hat down and they would throw coins in the hat and that’s how he got paid.

Student: Do you write your own songs?
Holmes: No, and I’ll tell you the reason why. The guy that taught me, the guy I learned from, he was illiterate. You know what that means right? He couldn’t read or write. So what they did, whatever they thought of, the words they thought of for a song, they had to have a photostatic memory to be able to rehearse it the next day. If they thought of it laying in bed at night they wouldn’t have to get up and get a pencil and paper and jot it down, they’d have to remember. So that is what I try to do.