His unassuming Mississippi Delta nightspot is one of the last of its kind, giving blues musicians a welcoming venue and lately drawing visitors from around the world.
The Clarksdale, Mississippi native tells GW how he and Fender blended their ideas – deviating from 70s orthodoxy at times – to create his stylish and powerful new signature model
The Great Migration In Reverse
In the early 1990s, I often took a cheap Southwest Airlines flight from my native Dayton, Ohio to Chicago in search of down-home blues venues like Lee’s Unleaded and Rosa’s. Then, in 1995, my advertising career moved me to St. Louis. A year later, I was sitting in Junior’s Place a rural juke joint in Chulahoma, Mississippi, a.k.a. the middle of nowhere. And my life was changed.
Old bluesmen, young bluesmen. Folk art on the walls, moonshine in plastic jugs. And a local African American audience bursting from an ancient structure clearly built without the aid of an architect. That was Junior’s (which burned down in 2000).