 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2022) |
| King Biscuit Blues Festival | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Blues |
| Location(s) | Helena, Arkansas, United States |
| Coordinates | 34°31′25″N90°35′11″W / 34.5237°N 90.5865°W Coordinates: 34°31′25″N90°35′11″W / 34.5237°N 90.5865°W |
| Years active | 1986-2019, 2021- |
| Website | King Biscuit Blues Festival website |
The King Biscuit Blues Festival is an annual, multi-day blues festival, held in Helena, Arkansas, United States. [1]
The name of the festival comes from King Biscuit Time , which was the longest running radio show. Sonny Boy Williamson II and other musicians played live on KFFA every weekday, pausing for King Biscuit flour commercials and announcements of their next night time performances. Jim O'Neal, the editor of Living Blues magazine at the time and an authority on blues history, said, "The King Biscuit hour was the thing that really crystallized blues music in this area. Muddy Waters and B.B. King would come home from working in the fields every day just to listen to the King Biscuit hour. The festival was temporarily renamed Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival from 2005 to 2010 due to problems arising out of rights of the name. [2]
The festival was started in 1986 under the guidance of the "Main Street Helena" organization, which is part of the "Main Street, USA" program. Its purpose was to revitalize the downtown area of the Mississippi River port city. Lonnie Shields appeared at the inaugural festival. [3]
There was no festival in 2020.
Helena is the eastern portion of Helena–West Helena, Arkansas, a city in Phillips County, Arkansas. It was founded in 1833 by Nicholas Rightor and is named after the daughter of Sylvanus Phillips, an early settler of Phillips County and the namesake of Phillips County. As of the 2000 census, this portion of the city population was 6,323. Helena was the county seat of Phillips County until January 1, 2006, when it merged its government and city limits with neighboring West Helena.
Riley B. King, known professionally as B.B. King, was an American blues singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. He introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, shimmering vibrato and staccato picking that influenced many later blues electric guitar players. AllMusic recognized King as "the single most important electric guitarist of the last half of the 20th century".
Robert Lockwood Jr. was an American Delta blues guitarist, who recorded for Chess Records and other Chicago labels in the 1950s and 1960s. He was the only guitarist to have learned to play directly from Robert Johnson. Robert Lockwood was one of the first professional black entertainers to appear on radio in the South, on the King Biscuit Time radio show. Lockwood is known for his longtime collaboration with Sonny Boy Williamson II and for his work in the mid-1950s with Little Walter.
Alex or Aleck Miller, known later in his career as Sonny Boy Williamson, was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. He was an early and influential blues harp stylist who recorded successfully in the 1950s and 1960s. Miller used various names, including Rice Miller and Little Boy Blue, before calling himself Sonny Boy Williamson, which was also the name of a popular Chicago blues singer and harmonica player. To distinguish the two, Miller has been referred to as Sonny Boy Williamson II.
The Delta Cultural Center in downtown Helena, Arkansas, is a cultural center and museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage. It is dedicated to preserving and interpreting the culture of the Arkansas Delta. They also partner with other cultural organizations to interepret different cultural elements.
King Biscuit Time is the longest-running daily American radio broadcast in history. The program is broadcast each weekday from KFFA in Helena, Arkansas, United States, and has won the George Foster Peabody Award for broadcasting excellence. In 2018, certain selections of King Biscuit Time from 1965 were selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant."
Arkansas is a Southern state of the United States. Arkansas's musical heritage includes country music and various related styles like bluegrass and rockabilly.
Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins was an American blues pianist. He played with some of the most influential blues and rock-and-roll performers of his time and received numerous honors, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Lonnie Brooks was an American blues singer and guitarist. The musicologist Robert Palmer, writing in Rolling Stone, stated, "His music is witty, soulful and ferociously energetic, brimming with novel harmonic turnarounds, committed vocals and simply astonishing guitar work." Jon Pareles, a music critic for the New York Times, wrote, "He sings in a rowdy baritone, sliding and rasping in songs that celebrate lust, fulfilled and unfulfilled; his guitar solos are pointed and unhurried, with a tone that slices cleanly across the beat. Wearing a cowboy hat, he looks like the embodiment of a good-time bluesman." Howard Reich, a music critic for the Chicago Tribune, wrote, "...the music that thundered from Brooks' instrument and voice...shook the room. His sound was so huge and delivery so ferocious as to make everything alongside him seem a little smaller."
Helena–West Helena is the county seat of and the largest city within Phillips County, Arkansas, United States. The current city was consolidated, effective January 1, 2006, from the two Arkansas cities of Helena and West Helena. Helena is sited on lowlands between the Mississippi River and the eastern side of Crowley's Ridge. West Helena is located on the western side of Crowley's Ridge, a geographic anomaly in the typically flat Arkansas Delta. The Helena Bridge, one of Arkansas' four Mississippi River bridges, carries U.S. Route 49 across to Mississippi. The combined population of the two cities was 15,012 at the 2000 census and at the 2010 census, the official population was 12,282.
Robert Lee McCollum was an American blues musician who played and recorded under the pseudonyms Robert Lee McCoy and Robert Nighthawk. He was the father of the blues musician Sam Carr. Nighthawk was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1983.
King Biscuit may refer to:
KFFA is an American radio station licensed by the FCC to serve the community of Helena, Arkansas. The station is owned by Monte Spearman and Gentry Todd Spearman, through licensee Spearman Land and Development.
The Arkansas Delta is one of the six natural regions of the state of Arkansas. Willard B. Gatewood Jr., author of The Arkansas Delta: Land of Paradox, says that rich cotton lands of the Arkansas Delta make that area "The Deepest of the Deep South."
Larry McCray is an American blues guitarist and singer.
John William Payne, better known as "Sunshine" Sonny Payne, was an American radio host, who had presented blues music as the host of the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas from 1951 until his death. In 2010 he was nominated for induction into the Blues Hall of Fame.
Houston Stackhouse was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. He is best known for his association with Robert Nighthawk. He was not especially noted as a guitarist or singer, but Nighthawk showed gratitude to Stackhouse, his guitar teacher, by backing him on a number of recordings in the late 1960s. Apart from a brief tour in Europe, Stackhouse confined his performing to the area around the Mississippi Delta.
The Cherry Street Historic District is a historic neighborhood, commercial, and entertainment district serving as the downtown of Helena in Helena–West Helena, Arkansas. Cherry Street is located between Elm Street and the nearby Phillips County Courthouse to the north, and Porter Street to the south. The history of Cherry Street is tied to the blues heritage of the area beginning in the 1940s.
Briggs Farm Blues Festival is an annual event that takes place near Hazleton, Pennsylvania in the town of Nescopeck, Nescopeck Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania since the summer of 1998. The festival is hosted every July on the farmland owned by the Briggs family.
Lonnie Shields is an American electric blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His primary influence was B.B. King. He has released six albums to date, and one publication described his music as "bewitching, funk-influenced variations on the oldest country blues".
