(theme music playing) - [Walt] Coming up on Mississippi Roads, we explore the blues in Mississippi as we talk and listen to some blues music with Terry "Harmonica" Bean, visit the 100 Man Hall in Bay Saint Louis and tour the Gateway to the Blues Museum.

All that coming up now on Mississippi Roads.

♪ Down Mississippi roads... ♪ ♪ Mississippi Roads.

♪ Hi, welcome to Mississippi Roads.

I'm Walt Grayson.

Mississippi is the birthplace of the blues.

That's why we've done so many episodes about blues in the past.

But when you live in a place like Mississippi with so many musicians and so much music, you can't help but find new stories that you want to share, which is what we're doing in this show.

We're at Hal & Mal's in downtown Jackson, because this is where the Central Mississippi Blues Society meets.

And we'll hear more from them in just a minute.

But first, let's start back at the beginning.

Let's go back to the Delta with Hill Country blues artist Terry Harmonica being.

Terry was an outstanding athlete in high school.

He could have had a sports career ahead of him, but by a twist of fate, he became a traveling blues star.

(harmonica music) ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Whatever you told me, Terry ♪ - "Harmonica" Bean.

"Harmonica" is my stage name.

Terry Wayne Bean is my regular name, but every blues man-- every blues man, or blues woman had to have a stage name.

"Harmonica" Bean.

It means that I'm a harmonica man.

'Yeah, but you play guitar,' like you asked me earlier.

Yeah, but my main thing is the harmonica.

I just play the guitar for another reason.

When I don't have a band, then I play the blues like when it was started: Guitar.

♪ Call me the one ♪ ♪ and only "Harmonica" Bean.

♪ Pontotoc, Mississippi!

♪♪ My grandfather also played acoustic guitar.

My daddy played electric guitar.

I'm from northeast Mississippi.

And this is the area, that Howlin' Wolf roamed.

Other bluesmen, even before him, Leroy Foster from right out here in Algoma.

He was the first drummer for Muddy Waters.

But back in the day, 'fore I come along, many a blues people all up on these hills in northeast Mississippi.

Blues guys was everywhere.

Man, I know places where juke joints-- they're torn down now, but where they used to be as a little boy in the '60's when I was coming up.

They were everywhere around here and my father, man, he would call his friends up and they would have a blues party right here in the yard.

People would line up on the road down there.

I picked the blues up from being around them ♪♪ Terry "Harmonica" Bean the Mississippi Blues Museum of Terry "Harmonica" Bean.

A lot of history out here, his life.

Man, I've been around the globe a couple of times.

Israel, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Spain.

This crew went with me when I was in Egypt.

I was a big attraction over there, man.

Aw man!

They thought I was talking about Egypt, Mississippi.

No, I've been there.

too.

But I'm talking about the real Egypt.

I played at the pyramids and a lot of people-- that place was so packed with people, they had to turn them around at the door They couldn't get in.

I had a big following over there, man, in Egypt.

Yeah.

Cairo, Egypt.

Yes, sir.

♪♪ ♪♪ - We are in downtown West Point for the 43rd Annual Prairie Arts Festival with arts and crafts, juried fine arts and music around every corner.

Terry "Harmonica" Bean has been playing at the festival for years.

He's a staple.

We couldn't have the festival without him.

He brings such a draw to the festival busking on the sidewalk and playing the blues.

♪♪ (applause) - ["Harmonica"] Oh, how you doin' there?

All right, then!

My favorite thing is this.

I can sit forever when I'm playin' that.

Don't make no difference where, people come around me.

They stop there.

And my granddad put it this way, "Boy, if you can sit down "and play by yourself "and pull a crowd of people around you, "you're doing something, son.

You got something going on."

♪♪ ♪ Don't do me so wrong, baby.

♪ I always loved to play baseball.

But where I went to school over here at the city school and baseball, man, we were the New York Yankees in this area.

We won the state championship in 1980.

I can throw the ball way off left-handed and right-handed.

Yeah, I would switch hands sometime in the middle of a game.

Some guys, I can see them now.

They didn't believe that I could do that And they still standing there.

Three strikes, you're out.

I had got banged up in an accident... cost me a career, too.

In 1983, I got called to the Cincinnati Reds.

There's a camp down in Greenville and had a car wreck going to that, so... My granddad said, "I told you "that baseball ain't for you, son.

You play the blues, it'll do something for you."

♪ Well you told me you love me ♪ ♪ Girl you know you were telling me a lie ♪ ♪ You told me you love me, honey.

♪ ♪ Girl you know you were telling me a lie.

♪ ♪ You're just trying to set me up to save your soul ♪ ♪ So they could take old "Harmonica" Bean ♪ ♪ for another ride.

♪ ♪ Yeah.

♪ (harmonica music) Playin' the blues done carried me around the world.

I don't make the money that I would have in baseball.

But I'll tell you this.

I'm a world-- WORLD-known personality from this.

And I've been out around it.

It is amazing.

I'm tickled to death over it and I wouldn't trade it in for nothing.

(laughing) (harmonica music) ♪ Park your car baby.

♪ - We associate blues more with the Delta than any other part of the state.

But actually blues exists everywhere in Mississippi.

Let's go down to the Gulf Coast, to Bay St. Louis, to 100 Men Hall and check out its blues history and find out the significance it has today.

(blues guitar music) ♪♪ ♪ Well, I've been here to my baby house, ♪ ♪ and I lay down on her step.

♪ - Live music is sacred to this place.

It should be about music.

♪♪ This 100 Man Hall is one of the few standing Mississippi blues trail buildings and one of the rare African-American landmarks that are still standing.

In 1894, 12 civic-minded African-American men who lived in Bay St. Louis.

They wanted to found a DBA, a Death and Burial Association, which is common in black communities in the South during Jim Crow and segregation.

The community would pull together to form a kitty so that they could pay for medical expenses and burial.

And it was called the 100 Members Debating Benevolent Association.

This was a community- supported endeavor in the black community.

And then it just met with a whole different burgeoning time.

And it was the burgeoning of this American sound that came from the blues, became R&B, etc.

and it was all happening in these back roads and in these back places like the 100 Men Hall.

During the time the hall was built, it was built in 1922, and then you get to like the 30's and 40's you're starting to get these black musicians who are traveling the South, who can't play any of the establishments except these old juke joints.

And so the hall was attracting those black musicians who are traveling through.

They're going to get fed from the kitchen and they're going to get to play their music and do what they want to do.

So these were safe havens, these juke joints were safe havens.

Pretty soon we're on a circuit with New Orleans.

So the blues that have become very popular here are jump blues.

They have a New Orleans sound much more danceable.

That's why you see most people talk about the hall when they were dancing.

- We had Bo and Dee, Irma Thomas and Harry Backer and them too.

Ernie Cato, just people from New Orleans to Gulfport and Biloxi, they would come in and entertain.

And my aunt, she was a dancer.

So she was always dancing on stage with the groups and stuff.

And that was very entertaining, too.

- When the pandemic hit in March, we canceled all of the events for the year and we had something scheduled every month and some two in a month.

But we are using the tin shed and the porch to be a stage outside and we've been able to do socially distanced tables and then plan to come back inside, post-pandemic, post-Zader remediation and open the doors for Booker Fest.

It's a very live sound.

I mean, if you clap your hands when you walk in here, you hear it because it's a very live wooden building and it has a lot of its own sound.

And then it's married with the sounds of the ancestors.

I have not encountered a musician who hasn't gotten on that stage, and one actually said they could feel the sound in the walls.

They feel the vibe of the ancestors, of the people who played music here before.

One guy who was playing the drums said he could envision Etta James walking on stage.

- It just gives you the presence of people that's been here before.

It gives you that, you know, the presence you feel the presence of them being here.

♪ Life can be so hard hard, yeah yeah ♪ - People would drive by The 100 Men Hall or be at the depot area and not even know what this building was.

And so we had Wendo Bruniess and his partner JoLean Barkley did the mural on the outside of the hall, and it represents locals who actually played the hall.

The only famous person on there is Etta James.

The rest are local musicians and people who were part of the hall.

So now you're standing at the depot and you really look over here because it's a real eye-catcher.

Well, we wanted public art.

It's like a gift to the city.

But we also wanted people to see a visual storyboard of what the hall's history is.

So we start with Harry Fairconnetue, who was a local bandleader and musician.

We move to Guitar Bo, who, Bo and Dee were legendary.

They were an iconic duo that played all up and down the Gulf Coast.

And then we have Etta James, who we love because she's Etta James, and that she came here one time and then we have three of the young girls who grew up here and they were performing for a Mardi Gras ball.

And then we end with Lucious Spiller almost like a today.

Lucious is a blues player in Clarksdale.

And we anticipate that Lucious will always be coming back here.

And so he's sort of a "now" part of the visual storyboard.

♪ It can be so hard, hard ♪ I feel like this place was built by and for the Black Community, and it was built during different times.

There were different times where there was no place for the Black Community, so it was either church or here and the church is right behind us.

So it was church and here.

This is where people came to feel comfortable, to live their lives, to not be self-conscious, to be who they were.

- The presence of just the people knowing that they could relax in here.

And it was just amazing how you feel, you know, once you have a few little drinks and then you oh, yeah, my grandmother was here.

My dad was here.

And, you know, look at their pictures on the wall, and say I remember that, you know, and I was this like a little girl, that was just awesome.

- This was a story that is a more nuanced story than the stories you hear about Mississippi outside of Mississippi.

It's a story of black self-reliance, resilience and how to find joy amidst very dark forces.

And this building tells that story.

♪ It's hard to stay cool.

♪ ♪ Sometimes it's hard.

♪ ♪ It's hard to stay cool.

♪ Well, if you ever discover you need a weekly fix of the blues, then come where we are right now, every Monday night to Hal & Mal's in downtown Jackson and sit in with The Central Mississippi Blues Society.

You'll be watching a live performance that shared all over the world.

- All right.

(blues music begins) ♪♪ - Well, I've been a Blues Society member for about the last 15 years, since they started.

Started down at a place called the Mardi Gras down on State Street.

And then we moved here about two years after that.

It was started to really just promote the blues, because some of us felt that it was just kind of dying out.

♪ Stop trippin, baby.

♪ ♪ Girl, I just want to love you.

♪ ♪ Stop tripping, Baby.

♪ ♪ Girl, I just want to love you.

♪ ♪ I do everything you ask me to.

♪ ♪ Girl, I do it all for you.

♪ - In our bylaws, the primary goal is to promote blues music.

Promote the culture of the blues, promote live performances, and support blues artists in central Mississippi.

We also knew that we had to go beyond just having a live performance on Monday night.

We decided to incorporate the technology by livestreaming.

It is gone around the world.

We have members in Seoul, Korea, Osaka, Japan, France, England, Belgium, Italy, South America, Rio, Colombia.

We even have people across this country on Monday night who have blues parties at their home.

And so they tune us in and they listen to some of the best blues, live blues that you can find anywhere in the world.

- This Blues Society is well known throughout the world, actually, at this point in time.

It's taken a while to build it, but that's been my experience with it.

I certainly get feedback through my social media.

They've seen somebody perform, want to know more about them, and they'll start investigating it.

- When I've gone to the International Blues Challenge or gone to the Blues Music Awards, people will say, Well, I see that your Blues Society does Blue Monday at Hal & Mal's and I really want to come to that.

The pictures look great.

I said, the pictures are great, but what happens there is even greater because it is a coming together, people from all walks of life but all ages and all races.

And we come together and the commonality of this music that's got this wonderful beat that just kind of gets into your soul.

How could you not like it?

And it's live.

The core band starts off and does several songs, and then Dennis, who is our emcee, gets up and starts calling people from the audience up.

And that's based on who has signed up on the sign-up sheet.

- It's electric, you know, for a lot of people, you know, they really enjoy coming in.

Whether they plan to make a career out of it or not, as long as they've got the courage to get up there, we give them the opportunity.

Even the church goers.

We have some of them that come in and play some time just to get a relief, you know, playing something different.

you know, some people call that straddling the fence, but I don't call it that.

I don't think God didn't intend for us not to enjoy ourselves.

- Blues music basically tells stories like any other song, but it conveys a feeling that, you know, if you haven't been to a black church on a Sunday morning and felt that, then it's like, okay, you're missing something, because the gospel music on Sunday mornings that's played in most black churches is the same music that was played on Saturday night.

Only the words change.

On Saturday night, it's "Oh Baby."

On Sunday morning, it's "Oh Lord."

- Thank you.

- Well, our last story takes us full circle, right back to where we started up in the Delta to The Gateway to the Blues Museum in Tunica.

(slow blues music) ♪♪ - The Blues originated right here in the Mississippi Delta.

And the Gateway to the Blues Museum is really the first stop along the Blues Trail in historic Highway 61 that people coming to the Mississippi Delta on their Blues Pilgrimage will stop.

Therefore, The Gateway.

We thought it was a perfect name, not only for the collection that we have here, but also for the sense of arrival coming into Mississippi and the Mississippi Delta.

My organization, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, was established in 1997, and we opened a basic visitors center that was a nice, new brick building welcome center.

In 1999, Mississippi commissioned a Mississippi Blues Study, and they came throughout the Delta and really across Mississippi, looking at historical places related to the blues.

And in the secret shopping of that survey, they came in and made a recommendation to us that our staff was great.

The information that we provided was great, but the Delta needed a true sense-of-place arrival area.

It took several years for it to come to fruition.

In 1996, when Binion's opened the Horseshoe Casino, Jack Binion commissioned a group of people out of Memphis who were interested in the blues to collect artifacts related to the blues.

And he opened a small museum inside The Horseshoe called Bluesville.

Harrah's Casino came in and bought Horseshoe from Jack Binion.

And when they did that, they redesigned the property, and the blues collection ended up in storage.

My organization, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, worked with Harrah's, and then Caesars Entertainment, which bought Harrah's, to keep that collection here in Tunica.

And they gave me a couple of demands that had to take place.

One is that it had to stay in Tunica and all be kept together and insured.

So they donated the property.

When they did that, I then had to come up with an overall plan of how we would develop a blues experience here in Tunica.

And it just so happened that one Sunday afternoon I was riding the Delta roads with a farmer friend of mine and we came across a dilapidated old train depot that was on the side of the road.

And I noticed that, and it just stuck in the back of my mind.

And I asked myself, I wonder who owns that?

And the next day I went and did some research and found out that the Hood family here in Tunica owned the train depot.

And I contacted Son Hood and gave him the plan that I'd been working with Caesar's Entertainment and The Blues, and that I thought that would be a great building to go along Highway 61, to be the entrance to the Mississippi Delta and the blues experience that could be found here.

He came back and said the building's yours.

♪♪ When you arrive here at The Gateway to the Blues, you'll come through the entrance of the 1895 historic train depot that we have kept in its state.

You can see the handwriting signs on the wall.

None of that was made up is exactly as it was when we found it back in the early 2000s.

You come through the gift shop and museum.

The gift shop is where you can buy any type of blues artifacts that we have for sale.

We have books, we have t-shirts and any Tunica trinkets that you might want to take back.

You then walk through a brief lobby and you go back to the museum.

And inside the museum, whether you are a blues aficionado and historian or whether you're just a regular tourist that's coming through and does not know much about the music, that's what this museum is designed for.

It is to give you an overall sense of what is the blues music?

Why did it originate here in the Mississippi Delta?

Who is famous?

What are the names that we might recognize or may not recognize?

And then the effects about blues having on all music that we listen to today.

We've got a recording studio where Memphis Jones, who plays nightly on Beale Street, just up the road in Memphis, will walk you through how to create your own blues song.

And you can record it in our studio and email it to yourself and you'll have it on your phone before you leave.

The future is so bright and us telling our story about who we are and the gifts that we as Mississippi have given the world.

We're known all over because of the Mississippi River, the artists, musicians.

Now it's time to not just be known, but for people to come and experience our sense of place here in Mississippi.

- Well, that's all the time we have for this show.

If you'd like information about anything you've seen, contact us at MPBonline.org/MississippiRoads or check out the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Facebook page and check the Mississippi Roads Facebook page while you're at it.

Till next time, I'm Walt Grayson and I'll be seeing you on Mississippi Roads.

♪♪