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Mississippi bluesman may be the most unlikely Grammy nominee
Last Updated Mar 12, 2021 7:15 PM EST
About 2,000 miles from Los Angeles, where the red carpet turns to dust, we found this year s most unlikely Grammy nominee. Every day, 73-year-old Jimmy Duck Holmes welcomes customers to his Blue Front Cafe and juke joint in Bentonia, Mississippi.
Holmes doesn t read music. He doesn t write music. He doesn t write lyrics. Yet he s up for a Grammy Award. I mean, I guess it s a divine thing. I don t know, Holmes said.
Holmes is the last of the old Bentonia bluesmen a brand of blues known for its haunting, hypnotic style. For decades he has played mostly at Blue Front Cafe at events like the annual Bentonia Blues Festival. But a couple years ago, his friend and manager planned a trip to Tennessee, for what Holmes thought was a sightseeing tour.
By: Associated Press
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Bluesman Jimmy Duck Holmes plays a quick ditty at the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, Miss., Jan. 21, 2021. Holmes
With callused hands, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes plucks an old acoustic guitar at the juke joint his parents started more than 70 years ago. He checks the cafe’s inventory: jars of pickled eggs, beef jerky, pork hocks. He tends to the wood-burning stove, made from an oil-field pipe. And every morning, he eventually settles in on a stool behind the counter, waiting hoping that someone who wants to hear him play will drop in.
Holmes, 73, is the last Bentonia bluesman, the carrier of a dying musical and oral storytelling tradition born in this Mississippi town of less than 500 people. And now, he’s a Grammy-nominated artist, with a recent nod in the Best Traditional Blues Album category for Cypress Grove, a record he hopes will help preserve the Bentonia blues long after he�
BENTONIA, Miss. - With callused hands, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes plucks an old acoustic guitar at the juke joint his parents started more than 70 years ago. H.
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