Kerry, 7, learns drums from Travis Calvin, 19.
(Photo: Shane Hennessey)

“Hey, look at you,” says the desk manager, by way of hello. “This is the first time I’ve seen you come in on time all year.” This is no ordinary clerk, though: this is Bob Kimbrough, the accomplished blues harmonica player.

Like all the teachers here at the Blues Arts and Education Program, both men have a comfortable, Mississippi Delta accent—and a ton of talent they’re ready to share. The program started in 1986; it operates out of the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi. It’s part of an effort to keep a hallowed, American genre alive amidst the onslaught of commercial rap music.

Railway cars still run near the Delta Blues Museum,
a former freight depot.
(Photo: JosephA, via Flickr)

Calvin begins tapping out beats until his six students show up. He’s only 19, but he’s a blues prodigy who won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music. He has been playing guitar since he was eight years old; he says his mother wanted him to find something to do.

“I grew up in a bad neighborhood,” he explains. His hope is to tour as a professional musician, and then come back to Clarksdale and open up a music school.

Calvin’s students are grade-schoolers, teenagers, and a 60-year-old woman. Some of them share his story, and use the class as an ad hoc after-school center.

Robert, a seven-year-old bluesman. (Photo: Michael Perlstein)

“He’s always playing the drums,” says Teresa about her son Kerry, 7. She says she had to buy a new trash can after Kerry beat it to death with his drumsticks. “I’m really busy, and this way they come home at five o’clock all excited,” she says. “That’s all they want to know: ‘Is it class today?’”

Teresa also drops off her ten-year-old daughter, Keana, and Kerry’s friend Robert, 7.

Convenience might be a factor in shepherding kids to class. But the final effect serves as a cultural bloodline for this region’s amazing cultural gift to the world: the blues. They were birthed here in the Delta and the sound ultimately gave rise to rock-and-roll, blues rock, the British invasion and endless mutations of popular music that followed.

For the first ten minutes of class, teachers work with the students individually, giving them tips as they play. From behind his own bass guitar, Crisman directs Kerry on his drums, in the way a band member might.

The kids giggle at his jokes; sometimes they get excited and run around, banging their drum sticks on everything in sight.

“The beginning class is kind of a headache,” says Crisman, “but the headaches are worth it.”

And in fact, the cacophony magically unifies every now and then; the one-on-one jam sessions melt into one song as the students naturally pick up on each other’s looping chord progressions. Crisman is always at the mic, singing and playing guitar, while Calvin hops around on drums, piano and bass.

Christone, 10, mimics Crisman’s chord progressions, and moves his fingers quickly along with him as he breaks into a fast improvisation. Both throw their heads back. It’s a bit of joy for them both.

Jerry Fair playing with his band, the Mississippi Blues Crew. He teaches guitar licks to youngsters every week at the B.B. King Museum.
(Photo: Michael Perlstein)

This informal, master-pupil apprenticeship system is how Crisman, Calvin and their colleagues are passing on the blues torch. It’s what brought up such greats as Robert Johnson, Son House and Muddy Waters.

Down the road in Indianola, that’s how blues guitarist Jerry Fair teaches an evening guitar class at the B.B. King museum.

Poverty is rampant here; many of the downtown main streets of blues incubator towns such as Clarksdale, Cleveland, Greenwood, Greenville and Indianola are boarded up and half abandoned. A generation of youngsters would rather write rap songs than blues licks. It creates a concern that the blues are becoming a lost, or at least struggling, art form.

Baptist Town, where blues legend Robert Johnson played—and died.
Teens, in the background on the right, now listen to commercial rap music.
(Photo: Michael Perlstein)

Sylvester Hoover is a convenience store owner, tour guide, and cultural preservationist in Baptist Town, a collection of shotgun shacks just outside Greenwood. He says nearly all the young people there listen to rap music.

But here, where Robert Johnson played his last gig and then died after being poisoned, Hoover has seen a few of the teens add blues into their hip-hop, creating a hybrid he calls “blues rap.”

“It’s in their DNA,” Hoover says. “It’s part of their heritage even if they don’t realize it.”

A video of the program is available here.

Katie Urbaszewski is from New Orleans, where she’s a mass communication major at Loyola University.

The Noble & Cooley drum factory, built in 1872.

(Granville, Mass.) Tre Cool of the band Green Day bought his favorite snare drum for $600.

If you’re listening to him, or to Phil Collins, Paul McCartney, Sting, Billy Joel, or Van Halen, chances are you’re listening to a drum made by Noble & Cooley.

They are mythic drum-makers, and their story is a very American one.

Noble & Cooley is Jay Jones’s company. “Our drums go to tape very nicely,” he says mildly. “They are solid wood, steam-bent drum shells. Drums made from cross-ply just sound like cardboard.”

At first, the company was a small New England start-up, manufacturing in the kitchen—of Silas Noble’s house, back in 1852.

Jay Jones, drum-maker to the stars, using an 8-color printing press that is also a family heirloom.

Noble was a master mechanic. His partner, James Cooley, was Jones’s great-great-great grandfather. Cooley ran the business side. After two years of making toy drums, the partners built a proper factory in 1854. They made drums for the Union Army; these were Civil War times.

Jones himself used to trot over to the factory after school. “I was a 4th-grade pain-in-the-butt,” he admits. By the time he was 16, though, he spent his summers there, working the old machines from the 1870s that cut wood veneer, shaped metal, printed, steam bent hardwoods and mechanized assembly.

“A piece of wood that’s steam-bent has its own ring and pitch, and the pitch has real clarity,” he explains. “It takes 12 to 16 weeks and about 37 steps to build a drum from start to finish.” It takes that long because the wood needs ageing and curing before the drum is glued and assembled.

Even the weathervane on top of the factory has a drum.

Just about all drums were built this way until World War II changed all that. Needless to say, computers aren’t involved in Noble & Cooley’s manufacturing at all.

The area itself is extremely rural. Granville is a little town in the foothills of Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains, not far from Connecticut. The remains of stone walls demarking fields farmed during the Colonial Period are everywhere. The soil around here is thin and “grows rocks,” which rise to the surface after the winter freeze and thaw. The rocks were “harvested” with the help of oxen, and used to build those stone walls.

It helps a potential drummer understand why Noble and Cooley preferred to leave the agricultural life behind and turn to making drums. Like many others of their time, they could have moved to New York or Ohio, where the topsoil was deeper.

The factory: making money out of water.

Instead, like other Yankee problem-solvers, they noticed how much water flowed through the brooks and rivers, and used it for power. Water mills powered saws (as a former “pit-man” in a saw mill, I know how it feels to be covered with sawdust and sticky resin). Mills also helped grind grain, full cloth, mill snuff, and card wool. All this ingenuity helped make up for the lack of capital and people-power.

Noble & Cooley had that same spirit, and used water to power jigs and fixtures and a steam engine. By 1873, they were turning out 100,000 drums a year. In 1915, they added an electric generator. All of this equipment still works, and visitors can see it.

A printed metal sheet from the 1920s, that would have been formed into a cylinder to make a toy drum.

During World War II, Noble & Cooley made wooden reels for primer cord, and used paper and cardboard instead of metal to make their drums. When foreign competition started to heat up in the 1980s, they adjusted their business goals.

“We decided the world didn’t need another mediocre drum,” says Jay Jones. In order to pursue professional drummers, he simply refurbished the old machines from the 1880s to steam-bend the wood. They teamed up with the Avedis Zildjian Cymbal Company to create snare drums made out of their secret cymbal alloy. The very limited quantities of these drums make them very collectible.

This printed theme was for a toy drum made in the 1930s.

These days, Jones’ son, Nick, works part time at Noble & Cooley. They still make drums, and on holidays they operate as a museum, where anybody can watch how the old machines still work. No computer de-bugging is required.

Tours—and drums—are available by appointment at Noble & Cooley. On July 4th, the staff will make a toy drum in five minutes, using 15 steps.

Robert Stewart is on the board of the Society for Industrial Archaeology.

Visitors come for music even more colorful than the stained-glass light.

The choir has sung, a five-member band has played, and the preacher has risen from his high-backed leather chair. And now, after the organist delivers a single, gut-quaking chord, the Reverend Al Green, 63, enters and approaches the pulpit. He wears a red-trimmed black bishop’s robe and flashes the electric, toothy smile that once caused female fans to swoon at his steamy soul concerts.

He screams into the microphone before turning to his seat at the front of the choir. The crowd is jolted to its collective feet. This may be church, but Rev. Green is still a masterful showman, and this is one of his last appearances before the dreaded slow-cook of summer arrives.

The man who left the top of the soul and pop music charts more than three decades ago after being badly scalded by a bitter and love-sick girlfriend still has every bit of voice he had during his superstar years. And today, 32 years since he founded his own church in south Memphis, Green still flaunts the charisma he had during his heyday.

Come for the spirit, stay for the singing.

“He’s an excellent speaker,” says Earline Reynolds, an elderly longtime church member. “But above all, his singing keeps me coming around.”

The band ratchets up the intensity. Green gets up and screams soulfully. He does it again. People in the pews start swaying, clapping and dancing. Congregants shout “amen” and “praise the Lord” with each surge of music and emotion. A woman in the front row convulses in a rapture bordering on hysteria, tears streaming down her face.

The organist blasts another chord and holds it as the guitar and drums riff rhythmically. Green jumps back to the pulpit, pounding his fist to the beat.

It's called rapture.

“Go ahead sister. Let God have his way,” he screams. “Forget about what’s in the church program. I feel something in this house today. I feel the Lord in this house.”

Green plays. He toys. He teases. He preaches the word of God. He sings “I Saw the Light” by country great Hank Williams, but not straight through. Every few bars he interrupts himself by incongruously belting out, “Yee-haw.”

“You’re in the South now,” he says in a sing-song voice. “This is the only church in America where you’ll hear yee-haw. You see, we can do whatever God wants. When you own your own church, you can do what you want.”

The Full Gospel Tabernacle Church stands about mile down Hale Road in a neighborhood just five minutes from Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion. The magnolias on Hale are in full bloom and the aroma of Sunday barbeque fills the air. Jesus is waiting.

The Rev. Al Green, baptizing and blessing. (Photo: Garrett Cleland)

Part church service, part gospel concert, Green turns over the stage to his rousing choir and a succession of female soloists. He gives a nod to his band as they kick up the energy. “Give them a hand. I know they’re expensive, but God deserves the best.”

Just as the room seems ready to explode, Green turns down the temperature and introduces Sister Edith Wilkins, who reads the announcements: Vanetra Macklin will graduate from Whitehaven High School. Anyone wishing to donate to the food bank can contact Sister Josephine. The juvenile court ministry meets every third Saturday except for May. It’s a reminder that the Full Gospel Tabernacle—despite being led by a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member—is a neighborhood church.

The service is Evangelical, but leans toward Pentecostal. Church elders place golden collection plates on a wooden platform in front of the pulpit and greet those who make offerings. There is a laying of hands as a young man in a white t-shirt is baptized and his mom is blessed. But there are plenty of casual touches, too. Green asks guests in the pews where they’re from. Today, there are visitors from Denver, Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans.

Green’s one-hour sermon veers from untethered emotion, to humor, to an intense stage whisper. He intermittently breaks into song, and the church band launches into melody at the first sign of Green’s characteristic, honey-dipped falsetto. But it’s more of a tease than a true display of the pipes that created chart-toppers such as “Let’s Stay Together,” “Call Me,” and “Take Me To The River.” Still, his voice tickles the soul like a feather. The entire sensory and spiritual effect is over the top.

Earline Reynolds, the longtime church member who comes mainly for the singing, dances throughout the entire service.

Steve Heath is a recent graduate of Loyola University in New Orleans. This is his second story for NewsPlink. His first was on juke joints of the Mississippi Delta.

Photography by Michael Perlstein except where noted otherwise.

Why not a Jungle Room? (Photo: Elle Maloney)

There is the so-called “Jungle Room,” with shag carpeting setting off the foliage and thickly carved furniture. Elvis’ TV room has three television sets, so he could watch each of the major networks. The racquetball court is now a two-story shrine to his dozens of gold and platinum albums.

It’s not clear that Graceland is enduring a graceful middle age into modern times. Most middle-class families in America have three TVs nowadays. And every garden-variety rocker or athlete builds a personal bowling alley, tennis court or basketball gym to suit their workout dreams.

Graceland is, at its essence, a vastly over-glorified McMansion. Yet the man’s home has been turned into a cash turnstile of excess, making public his most private sanctuaries, possessions and keepsakes. The surrounding restaurants, exhibits, and countless souvenir shops offer Elvis newsletters, and deals for hundreds of dollars off of the next visit. The gift shops sell mugs, shirts, clocks, ashtrays, snow globes, refrigerator magnets, playing cards, purses, lamps—all bearing likenesses of Elvis and his famous mansion. What must all those Chinese factory workers think as they produce this schlock?

People come to gawk in droves. Typically, they wait for an hour or more for their number to be called, and then they are herded onto vans to see the inner sanctum. They are outfitted with audio tour headphones and they smile for a souvenir photo in front of a photo mock-up of Graceland’s front gate. All the while, they are barraged by satellite attractions designed to pluck a few more dollars from the purses of the King’s most loyal worshippers.

Why the pilgrimage to blingdom? What is it about Elvis, a talented but flawed mortal, that drives millions from around the globe to happily pay a minimum of $28 per person just to look at his stuff? And pay more to see such things as Elvis’ his and hers airplanes?

At the time, state-of-the-art. (Photo: Elle Maloney)

“He was inventive,” said Jerry from Mexico. According to Jerry, Mexican Elvis fans have such reverence for the King that entertainers who cover his songs refrain from translating his lyrics into their own languages; they preserve the tunes the way their hero originally emoted them.

Anita, from Bulgaria, was in Memphis celebrating a friend’s birthday. She carved out time for a visit to Graceland.

“I’m still in love with him,” she confessed. When asked exactly what Elvis had done to achieve his legend, she echoed Jerry from Mexico: Elvis was great, he was inventive, he was the King.

For dining on peanut butter sandwiches? (Photo: Elle Maloney)

Plenty of other rock stars, from the Beatles to the Ramones to James Brown, have been inventive. But there aren’t many other dead music celebrities with a cult of followers who insist their long-dead idol is still alive and living under cover. Even a disillusioned tourist, appalled by all the commercialism, is easily moved, even speechless, while standing at Elvis’ gravesite, gazing at the eternal flame.

“I don’t know much about the American mind, you know,” confided a Frenchman. “But to me, Elvis, he’s religion. Elvis is religion here.”

Lord have mercy, one might say.

Sean McNamara is a rock guitarist from Connecticut, currently in his junior year at Loyola University in New Orleans. His major is Music Industry Studies.

Elle Maloney is a photojournalism major in her junior year at Loyola University in New Orleans. She is from Connecticut and aspires to live in both Tokyo and New York City.

Reverence with headphones on. (Photo: Shane Hennessey)

(Photo: Shane Hennessey)

Poor Monkey’s

The whole place is shaking. Literally. If it weren’t for the R&B and hip hop music drowning out the creaks of the plywood floors, you might think the entire joint was about to collapse.

“It doesn’t take much in the Delta,” says one man crushed between two extra-friendly women in glittering dresses.

He’s referring to the Mississippi Delta. The soil here is so fertile it has nourished not just miles of moonlit soybean fields, but the very roots of blues and rock and roll music.

This particular spot is called the Po’ Monkey—or Poor Monkey’s, depending on which sign you’re reading. It’s a juke joint deep in the countryside, a mile down a dirt road off Highway 61 in Merigold, Mississippi. Juke joints, where laborers and sharecroppers could enjoy a drink and a dance, are disappearing. Poor Monkey’s looks like it could vanish at any time.

From the outside, it’s an impossibly small, mutated shack of plywood and sheet metal with ancient, randomly protruding air-conditioning units. A sign on the door notifies guests of the three rules: no beer is to be brought inside, no dope smoking is allowed, and no loud music can be played outside the bar.

Inside, the dance floor looks like an arcade prize depot. Dolls and stuffed animals cover the entire ceiling, illuminated by flashing Christmas lights and a giant disco ball.

Locals and college-age visitors grind and gyrate to the bass-heavy blaring of Deejay Doctor Tissue. A skinny old man in a straw hat dances with nearly every girl in the joint. During the fast songs he rolls on the floor, or balances on one foot. During the slow songs, he pulls the girls in close—real close.

“I’m a bad man,” he says over the shoulder of a twenty-something college girl.

By the pool table, a man cools his exposed belly with his dripping wet beer. The table sits on a noticeable slant that worsens depending on which end of the room has the most people standing on it. A patron named T-Mac sets up his next shot, paying little mind to how the pool balls are visibly shaking from the music.

Steve Heath recently graduated from the School of Mass Communication at Loyola University, New Orleans.

Poor Monkey's: a wealth of Delta culture. (Photo: Michael Perlstein)

Wild Bill’s Social Club

Wild Bill’s sits next to a liquor store in a working class neighborhood of North Memphis, Tennessee. Graffiti adorns the front of the liquor store and bleeds onto Wild Bills’ façade. Newspapers and scraps of trash blow in swirls in front of the club.

Vocalist Miss Nicky (Photo: Michael Perlstein)

It’s 1 a.m. and the The Memphis Soul Survivors are jamming inside the packed club. There is no stage, but enough red lights that patrons seem to glow. Miss Nicky, a vocalist, joins the band and belts out that she’s looking for a “Cooooowboy to ride my pony!”

With encouragement from women in the crowd, she points to one man and sings directly at him while patting the side of her ample behind.

Kim is a regular at Wild Bill's.
(Photo: Michael Perlstein)

The air reeks of booze and plastic ash trays full of cigarette butts. A lone string of Christmas lights hangs above a wall of snapshots of previous wild nights at the club. Bartender Gail Kearney says it’s been hard to keep the club open during the recession but people still come because “Wild Bill’s feels like home.”

Older black gentlemen in tuxedos and suits dance and sway along with white hipsters in tight jeans. Nearly everyone is tipsy. A woman bangs along with the beat by rapping her cigarette lighter against a 40-ounce beer bottle. With all the clapping and foot-stomping, the place is too loud for conversation.

Playing the blues at Wild Bill's with fingers...
(Photo: Shane Hennessey)

“Leave your troubles behind,” implores Miss Nicky. Playing keyboard is the famous Archie Turner, who has been a session man for the likes of Al Green, Syl Johnson, Otis Clay and Ann Peebles.

During a break, Turner predicts that if the recession continues to deepen, places like Wild Bill’s will enjoy a strong comeback. He can’t see paying for a high-priced mega-concert when anyone can mingle with living legends for a $10 cover charge.

Or with feet...
(Photo: Sean David Hobbs)

Many big acts pay homage to the blues while passing through Memphis by joining a set at Wild Bill’s on a Friday or Saturday night. “Everyone comes for jam sessions,” Turner says. “The Stones came. So did Lenny Kravitz.”

But the lack of interest in the blues among youngsters worries him. He and most other bluesmen tour Europe to make ends meet. Still, Turner says he will continue playing in local joints to keep the culture alive.

Or with teeth, as Chris Pitts does here.
(Photo: Shane Hennessey)

“Man, it’s inexpressible the feeling I get when I am playing,” Turner says. At 3:30 a.m., the band is still cutting loose, albeit to a now-dwindling crowd.

Sean David Hobbs is a New Orleans-based writer and avid traveler originally from Wisconsin, who spent several years in Istanbul.

Bassist Melvin Lee (Photo: Shane Hennessey)

Front page photo of musician Chris Pitts by Shane Hennessey.