Jimmy "Duck" Holmes
| Jimmy "Duck" Holmes | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Jimmy Charles Holmes |
| Born |
July 28, 1947 Bentonia, Mississippi, United States |
| Genres | Bentonia School, blues |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter, cafe proprietor |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar |
| Years active | 1970s–present |
| Labels | Broke and Hungry Records, Blue Front Records |
Jimmy "Duck" Holmes (born July 28, 1947) is an American blues musician and proprietor of the Blue Front Cafe on the Mississippi Blues Trail, the oldest surviving juke joint in Mississippi. Holmes is known as the last of the Bentonia bluesmen, as he is the last blues musician to play the Bentonia School. Like Skip James and Jack Owens and other blues musicians from Bentonia, Mississippi, Holmes learned to play the blues from Henry Stuckey, the originator of the Bentonia blues. Holmes' music is based in the Bentonia tuning utilizing open E-minor, open D-minor and a down tuned variant, and is noted for its haunting, ethereal, rhythmic and hypnotic qualities. His eighth and most current album, It Is What It Is, on Blue Front Records has been praised by fans and music critics who have called it: "addictive" and "obsession worthy," "as gritty, stark and raw as one could imagine" and "absolutely hypnotic," and "an essential modern recording."
Jimmy Charles Holmes was born in Yazoo County, Mississippi, United States, to Carey and Mary Holmes at their home in Bentonia, Mississippi. Holmes' parents were sharecroppers, who opened the Blue Front Cafe in 1948, the year after he was born. They had ten children, but also raised four grandchildren when one of their daughters died.
Holmes' was first taught how to play the Bentonia School by Henry Stuckey, the man who created the unique style of blues after he returned to Bentonia, Mississippi after World War I. Stuckey moved next door to Holmes and the young Holmes would hear Stuckey playing on his front porch. Around 1957, Holmes picked up Stuckey's guitar and started to learn.
Carey Holmes bought Jimmy his first guitar, a yellow and black plastic toy guitar for Christmas. While Holmes would occasionally play with an uncle's electric guitar when he visited his uncle in New York City in the 1960s, it was not until the 1970s that Holmes bought his first guitar, a small acoustic guitar from Radio Shack. That original guitar is on permanent display at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. During the 1970s, Bentonia blues musicians, Jack Owens, Cornelius Bright, Tommy West, Adam Slater, Dodd Stuckey (Henry Stuckey's brother), and Jacob Stuckey, (Henry Stuckey's cousin), came to the Blue Front Cafe to play. Slater, Bright and West initially started to teach Holmes how to play, but it took the arrival of Jack Owens at the Blue Front Cafe on a regular basis in the 1980s, before Holmes fully grasped the style.
...
Wikipedia