While the Mississippi Blues Trail offers travelers opportunities to visit numerous locations that stand as monuments to the history of the blues, there’s one stop along the way that might bring you face-to-face with a living legend. Blue Front Café has remained an active part of the local culture and blues scene since 1948, when the sharecropper parents of Jimmy “Duck” Holmes first opened the café for business.
As he was only one year old at that time, it’s fair to say that Blue Front Café is more than just a business to Holmes; it’s his home and history, too. One of the oldest continuously operated juke joints in the Mississippi Delta Region, Blue Front Café in Bentonia once provided the community a place to get hot meals, haircuts, and, through the back door, bootleg corn liquor. While musical acts were occasionally booked in advance throughout the years to play Blue Front Café, the majority of performances were impromptu – the kind of picking party one might imagine would commence in a place so homey and welcoming. Blue Front Café allowed Holmes’s parents to send Jimmy and his 10 siblings to college – an enormous accomplishment no matter the time, but particularly remarkable for a sharecropper family in the mid-20th-century South.
Three-quarters of a century later, Blue Front Café still maintains its allure with Jimmy “Duck” Holmes at the helm. While Holmes himself played music sporadically over the years, often taking on the role of mentor and teacher, he became more serious in his practice in the early 2000s and since has accumulated accolades including a 2021 GRAMMY nomination in the category of Best Traditional Blues Album for his album Cypress Grove.
Stylistically, Holmes is from a school of blues that originated in his hometown. Known as the "Bentonia School," this unique style is distinguished by alternative tunings (E minor and open D minor), the use of haunting falsetto vocals, dark lyrical themes, and an overall eerie quality. Those curious about learning this style can find video lessons by Jimmy “Duck” Holmes published on YouTube by a devoted student. It is this sharing of knowledge, this training in the traditional style of a bygone time that Holmes values most. He plans to run Blue Front Café as long as he’s able while ensuring – by sharing the wealth of his experiences – that his legacy lives on for years to come. To learn more about Jimmy “Duck” Holmes click HERE.
.jpg)