LEGENDS Feb/Mar '14

MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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Travel Is Glorious Once More

SM

Experience Native American, early industrial and Civil War history from the convivial decks of the American Queen on an Ohio or Tennessee River cruise.

Last Chance on 2-for-1* Spring Cruises NEW

IN 2014

Follow the trail of Lewis & Clark and sample nature’s bounty from acclaimed orchards and vineyards on an American Empress cruise through the Pacific Northwest.

call your travel agent or 888-802-5867 today! www.aqsc.com

*Offer expires March 27, 2014 and is valid on new bookings only. Not valid on Group bookings and may not be combined with other offers. The 2-for-1 offer means first passenger in cabin pays full cruise fare and second passenger pays no cruise fare when paid-in-full at time of booking. Cruise fare does not include taxes, port charges, insurance, gratuities, or airfare. Only American Queen cabin categories of C, D, E, F, G, H, and I are available for this offer and only on February and March 2014 voyage dates. Only American Empress cabin categories of C, D, and E are available for this offer and only on April or May 2014 voyage dates. Additional terms and conditions may apply – call for details.

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VISIT

VICKSBURG

Relive where American history was made and immerse yourself in the arts, antiques and architecture of Vicksburg.

Arts

Vicksburg is home to many noted art galleries, specialty shops and an incredible collection of outdoor art. The Vicksburg National Military Park, Mississippi’s Travel Attraction of the Year, features commemorative art that was created by leading artists of the last century. The Vicksburg Riverfront Murals, along the floodwall, feature depictions of the city’s history by renowned artist Robert Dafford. The Mississippi Blues Trail features five markers in the city and live music can be found throughout the city at clubs and festivals.

Antiques

Shops along Washington Street and throughout the city are filled with wonderful gift and specialty items that range from fun and funky to fantastically fashionable. You will love our historic downtown shopping and entertainment district with brick streets and gaslights. You will find a large selection of antique and consignment shops.

Architecture

For over five decades of the 1800s, Vicksburg was the center for the aristocracy whose wealth was based on cotton and lumber. A glimpse of its former glory is evidenced by the preservation of many historic churches (two containing Tiffany stained glass windows), government buildings and homes dating to the 19th Century.

Scan this QR to visit our mobile site and get your keys to Vicksburg.

www.VisitVicksburg.com MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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Calendar of

Events

January 19 | 2 and 6 p.m.

Southern Miss Department of Theatre presents National Theatre Live: Frankenstein Southern Miss Woods Theatre Hattiesburg, Miss.

February 6 | 7:30 p.m.

Southern Miss School of Music hosts Prism Concert Southern Miss Thad Cochran Center Hattiesburg, Miss.

February 24 and 25 | 7 p.m.

Southern Miss Department of Theatre presents National Theatre Live: Coriolanus Southern Miss Tatum Theatre Hattiesburg, Miss.

January 22 – March 22 Southern Miss Department of Art and Design AQUAFLORA Lauren Rogers Museum of Art - Laurel, Miss.

Oddfellows Gallery – Hattiesburg, Miss.

February 7 | 7:30 p.m.

Southern Miss School of Music hosts Symphonic Winds Concert Southern Miss Bennett Auditorium Hattiesburg, Miss.

February 27 | 7:30 p.m.

Southern Miss School of Music hosts Concert Band Concert Southern Miss Bennett Auditorium Hattiesburg, Miss.

January 24 and 25 | 7:30 p.m.

January 25 | 2 p.m.

Southern Opera and Musical Theatre Company presents Così fan tutte Saenger Theater Hattiesburg, Miss.

February 8 | 7:30 p.m.

Southern Miss School of Music hosts Wind Ensemble Concert Southern Miss Bennett Auditorium Hattiesburg, Miss.

February 28 Southern Miss Department of Dance hosts Dancing Against Substance Abuse Southern Miss Thad Cochran Center Exact location and time TBD Hattiesburg, Miss.

February 1 | 2:30 p.m.

Southern Miss School of Music hosts Guest Artist Series: Todd Waldecker, clarinet Southern Miss Bennett Auditorium Hattiesburg, Miss.

February 13 | 7:30 p.m.

Southern Miss Symphony Orchestra presents Viennese Valentines Southern Miss Bennett Auditorium Hattiesburg, Miss.

AA/EOE/ADAI

For ticket information and a complete and updated listing of arts events at Southern Miss, visit usm.edu/arts.

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PUBLISHER AND PRESIDENT ��������������������Marianne Todd CO-PUBLISHER AND DIRECTOR OF MARKETING ���������������������������������Ken Flynt

CREATIVE DIRECTOR / LEAD DESIGNER ���������������������� Shawn T. King

WEBSITE DESIGNER ���������������������������Sally Durkin DESIGNER �����������������������Jason Cooper

ASSISTANT TO THE PUBLISHER ����������������������������Chris Banks

ADVERTISING SALES

CONTENTS FEBRUARY / MARCH 2014

Jeff Martin, Memphis - 901-834-9111 Jeff@ReadLegends.com Cindy Thompson - Jackson, Hattiesburg, Meridian, Vicksburg - 601-479-6202 Cindy@ReadLegends.com David Battaglia - Jackson, Vicksburg - 601-421-8654 David@ReadLegends.com Carol Ann Riley - Natchez, Louisiana - 601-431-8000 Carol@ReadLegends.com

MUSIC 18

From New Orleans to Colorado, With Love

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That Rockin’ Sound of Boogaloo Blues

Marketing - 601-479-3351 Ken@ReadLegends.com

Contributing photographers: James Edward Bates, Michael Barrett LEGENDS welcomes your calendar submissions. Submissions are posted free of charge on our website at www.ReadLegends.com. Calendar submissions for consideration in LEGENDS’ print calendar may be sent to Chris@ReadLegends.com.

Copyright 2013. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or reprinted without express permission from the publisher. The opinions and views expressed by our contributors, writers and editors are their own. Various views from other professionals may also be expressed. Neither LEGENDS nor Blue South Publishing Corporation is endorsing or guaranteeing the products or quality of services expressed in advertisements. All advertisers assume liability for all content (including text representation and illustration) of advertisements printed and assume responsibility for any resulting claims against LEGENDS or its affiliates. Materials, photographs and written pieces to be considered for inclusion in LEGENDS may be sent to P.O. Box 3663, Meridian, MS 39303. Unsolicited materials will not be returned. LEGENDS is sold on bookstore shelves from New Orleans to Chicago and Austin to Atlanta. Blue South Publishing Corporation provides 10,000 free copies in its coverage area to tourism offices, welcome centers, hotels, restaurants, theaters, museums, galleries, coffee shops, casinos and institutions of higher learning. If your business, agency or industry would like to be considered as a LEGENDS distribution point, or for a list of retailers, please contact us at Editor@MississippiLegends.com.

For more information, write to Editor@MississippiLegends.com. More information, including a comprehensive, up-to-date calendar, may be found at www.ReadLegends.com

ABOUT OUR COVER John Ruskey is perhaps the nation’s leading Mississippi river guide and outfitter. Having been baptized on his first trip on a homemade raft that broke apart and washed him ashore on Cat Island, he’s paddled thousands of miles since and encourages others to do the same while sharing the history and adventure of one of the most feared rivers in North America.

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The music of Miss Eden Brent

FEATURES

Editorial - 601-604-2963 Editor@ReadLegends.com Contributing writers: Chris Staudinger, Kara Martinez Bachman, Joe Lee, Stephen Corbett

NOLA musicians raise money for Colorado flood victims

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LEGENDS’ Guide to the Great River Road

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Cover story: Living in Harmony

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A Great American Adventure

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Rivercentric

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Luxury at the Eola

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Masters of the Art

The man and the Mississippi

The American Queen sails under a constellation of stars

The art, architecture and antiques of beloved Vicksburg Charming River views and old world history at Natchez’ famed hotel A Gallery for Fine Photography, New Orleans

CULINARY 8 55

Jackson’s Mainstay Music Hall is Back!

The Iron Horse Grill

Round Table Dining and Family at Vicksburg’s Walnut Hills restaurant

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LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

Dear Readers, “I’d rather drink muddy water and sleep in a hollow log,” so says Jimmie Rodgers. I wonder if he, too, had seen the Mississippi River from the vantage point of a canoe. The muddy waters of that river left me with a wide smile despite having weathered 28 degree temperatures in a tent, on an island, in the middle of the river.

But if there’s one thing John Ruskey’s able crew is capable of, it’s making one feel at home on bitter winter days. Before I could get myself out of the row boat in which we traveled, they had ignited the beginnings of what would be a large and welcomed fire. After the stew and herb biscuits were eaten, sleep wasn’t far off. “Wild animals like to roam in the camp at night,” said guide Braxton Barden. “If they’re sniffing around your tent, just bat it. They’ll run off.” I’m still not certain if he was joking. No matter. Relax and enjoy the trip from the comfort of an easy chair – then pencil Ruskey’s number on your bucket list. Wild animals or not, this one is a must-do.

Peace,

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Women of Ireland Friday, February 21, 2014, 7:30 p.m.

Traditional Irish dancing and singing storm the stage in this energetic, full-stage concert production titled “Women of Ireland.”

The country’s top female musical performers, along with a troupe of phenomenal dancers, share the purest qualities of Irish music in an exciting, contemporary setting. Many of these performers have recorded songs with the Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dublin Gospel Choir.

For Fans of: Celtic Woman, Riverdance, Celtic Thunder

Driving Miss Daisy Friday, February 28, 2014, 7:30 p.m.

Its pedigree might be without parallel: it began as Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, became an Academy Award-winning film, and is now touring as a production of Philadelphia’s renowned Walnut Street Theatre. “Driving Miss Daisy” tells a gentle story of a not-so-gentle topic as an elderly Jewish widow must rely on an African-American gentleman as her driver while they both navigate Atlanta society during the 1950s and ’60s.

Walnut Street’s skillful rendering makes it easy to enjoy this tale of transforming friendship.

For Fans of: “Steel Magnolias,” “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “The Help”

2200 5th Street • Meridian, Mississippi 601-696-2200 • www.msurileycenter.com

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STORY FROM JACKSON, MISS.

It’s Back!

BY JOE LEE PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL BARRETT

Remember the mouth-watering chips and salsa at the old Iron Horse Grill on Pearl Street in Jackson?

The fried broccoli was every bit as popular. Even the building itself, which cut quite a figure with its almost rustic combination of bricks and lumber, remains a conversation starter for folks throughout Mississippi and beyond.

“John McWilliams and his son, John David, opened the restaurant. It took them 10 years to do so, which included collecting all the wood,” said David Joseph, who served in 1987 as the first general manager of the Iron Horse. “We were sort of the cream of the crop of the downtown area, and I felt proud to work for the restaurant back then. It was so massive and beautiful.”

Disaster struck in late 1999 when fire damaged the building and closed the restaurant. But Joseph Simpson, managing member of the Iron Horse Grill, LLC, is part of a group that not only wanted to

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reopen what they felt was an authentic piece of Mississippi history, but take full advantage of the creative economic possibilities that would come with combining great food and exciting live music.

“Robert Johnson, Elvis Presley and Jimmie Rodgers are the fathers of their musical genres, and they’re all from Mississippi,” said Simpson, a financial planner and music lover whose group has put $6.5 million into the project since 2010. “I’m tired of Mississippi being at the bottom of all the national categories. We’ll win hearts with our food and music, and hopefully people will see this as a starting point for music tourism here.”

General Manager Andy Nesenson oversees a staff of 120 and expects more than 5,000 guests a week for lunch, dinner and music, including 1,500 or more on Friday and Saturday nights.

“Great food, great service and a clean restaurant are the keys to creating a memorable dining experi-

CUISINE

The Southern Komfort Brass Band played on opening night, announcing the return of the popular music hall and restaurant.

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“Your restaurant has a vibe. You either have it or you don’t, and you do.” - David Joseph

TOP TO BOTTOM: The new face of the rebuilt Iron Horse Grill on Pearl Street; Manager Andy Nesenson; Southern Komfort Brass Band trombone player Lorenzo Gayden.

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ence,” Nesenson said. “This is exactly what the development of downtown Jackson needs. Folks know what the Iron Horse was, and they’re very excited about its rebirth.

Music will be an element, but it’s a restaurant first and foremost. We’ll serve lunch and dinner six days a week – lunch only on Sunday – and have live music three nights a week, most likely Thursday through Saturday.”

The original chips and salsa, fried broccoli, and the chicken and black bean enchiladas have taken their rightful place on the new menu. Entrees include Shrimp and Grits (made from M&M shrimp from Biloxi and Delta Grind grits from Water Valley) and Smoked Catfish Dip (featuring Heartland catfish from Itta Bena).

Along with the fine food, of course, there’s an equally impressive selection of wines, cocktails and craft beers. Favorites include Southern Pecan Honey Ale (brewed by Lazy Magnolia on the Mississippi Gulf Coast), Devil’s Harvest and Fireant Imperial Red Ale (both brewed by Southern Prohibition of Hattiesburg), and Ballistic Blonde Belgian

Ale (from Lucky Town Brewery of Gluckstadt in Madison County).

“We’re using Mississippi products whenever we can,” Nesenson said, “from catfish, shrimp, grits, chicken and craft beers to the artwork on the walls and even wait staff tshirts and uniforms. We’re targeting regional customers who want great food and live music – not just those in Jackson – and we really want to support Mississippi.”

And just as the Mississippi musical palette is colored with blues, country, rock ‘n’ roll and everything in between, the Iron Horse Grill offers a little bit of everything when it comes to live music. In January, Bill Morganfield – son of blues legend Muddy Waters – performed, as well as making a donation of some of his father’s memorabilia to the blues museum on the second floor.

“Anne Robin Luckett, a doll artist, creates lifesize replicas,” Simpson said. “She donated a replica of Muddy Waters from the era when he played in Chicago with the Rolling Stones (circa 1979) – it’s sitting at a vintage piano in a resplendent red outfit and top hat.

Any museum can display a few works, but it takes a truly special place to showcase the quirks. Visit the showcase at Greenville - Washington County: Greenville History Museum 409 Washington Avenue, Greenville Old #1 Firehouse Museum 230 Main Street, Greenville William Alexander Percy Memorial Library & Delta Writer’s Exhibit 341 Main Street, Greenville “Century of History” Hebrew Union Temple & Museum 504 Main Street, Greenville 1927 Flood Museum 118 South Hinds Street, Greenville The Patriot at Greenville Cemetery South Main Street, Greenville E.E. Bass Cultural Arts Center / Armitage-Herschell Carousel 323 South Main Street, Greenville Highway 61 Blues Museum 307 North Broad Street, Leland Jim Henson Delta Boyhood Exhibit 206 Broad Street North, Leland Winterville Mounds 2415 Highway 1 North, Winterville Greenville Air Force Base Museum Mid Delta Regional Airport, Greenville

Greenville - Washington County. More than meets the eye. www.visitgreenville.org 1-800-467-3582

Convention & Visitors Bureau MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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The drummer for the Allman Brothers, Jaimoe (Jai Johanny Johanson), will play in the spring and donate one of his drum kits. B.B. King is donating a Lucille guitar.”

While there’s classy new construction that

“We’re using Mississippi products whenever we can, from catfish, shrimp, grits, chicken and craft beers to the artwork on the walls and even wait staff t-shirts and uniforms.

We’re targeting regional customers who want great food and live music – not just those in Jackson – and we really want to support Mississippi.” - Andy Nesenson

FROM TOP LEFT, CLOCKWISE: Cheeseburger with guacamole; shrimp kabobs; grilled chicken wings with signature sauce; crawfish and crab enchilada; apple pie ala mode; crab cakes with poblano pepper.

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includes an elevator to take patrons to the second floor, great care has been taken to preserve what was left of the original structure. Nesenson said the brickwork, fixtures and lumber from the older section of the restaurant is original, as is the red brick in the building’s west side exterior with the old logo.

“It is exactly what we envisioned,” Nesen-

 The Southern Komfort Brass Band on opening night.  A life-sized replica of Muddy Waters during a 1979 stint in Chicago with The Rolling Stones, created by doll artist Anne Robin Luckett.

son said. “There were hurdles to work through, and the weather got to us at the end of the job, but the Iron Horse was a staple of Jackson you had to visit, and serving 4,000 guests our first week is a sign that we’re back – and that downtown Jackson is back.”

“When I walked into the new Iron Horse, I saw that Andy had captured the magnificence of the original building,” David Joseph said. “I told Joseph Simpson, ‘Your restaurant has a vibe. You either have it or you don’t, and you do.’

Money can’t buy that vibe. It’s something people connect to and feel. It really captures the essence of what you are, that vibe where people want to be there.

“If they carry that over, and develop the blues museum and tie into the Blues Trail, they’ll have a goldmine. If the Iron Horse can capture that whole blues vibe and that arena, it will definitely drive the downtown area. This gives them one of the best shots the city has ever had on Farish Street.” L

WANT TO GO? Visit online at www.theironhorsegrill.com and find the restaurant on Twitter and Facebook. The Iron Horse Grill is located at 320 West Pearl St. and can be reached by phone at (601) 398-0151.

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STORY FROM THE MEANDERING BANKS OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER

BY CHRIS STAUDINGER PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL BARRETT

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or zen-seeking drivers, western Mississippi’s two-lane highways will mean bliss.

Motorists can lose themselves in hypnotizing expanses of row crops, meandering bayous and mile-wide views, and then, come back up to earth with a lap full of greasy tamales, all bundled in twine.

No matter the time of day, there is a man dressed in jeans and a bright red shirt, beaming as he stands alongside Highway 61 as

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drivers enter Mississippi near Memphis. He is three stories tall, and he is happy to see you. He stands between a warehouse-looking cabaret and trailer reading “FIREWORKS! Lowest Prices.”

At this point, the road has begun. Fill your car with roman candles, and prepare for the drop-in and the “land of the loins” beyond. As drivers enter Walls and the road becomes flat, they can look back and feel how drastically different the land of the Delta is.

A wave of kudzu and trees rises on the bluff behind them.

FEATURE

Much of Mississippi’s Great River Road runs through this land, once breathing with small offshoots of the Mississippi River. Thousands of rivers and bayous dropped such fertile swaths of topsoil on the region that writer David Cohn called it “the land of the loins of the river.”

If black gold isn’t your cup of tea, try the Gold Strike. Tucked between the corn and cotton fields of Tunica, Miss., are the bright lights and tight skirts of the third largest gambling center in the

country behind Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

If that isn’t close to your thing, but you still want a gamble, explore the ruins of the abandoned casinos of Mhoon Landing, once so popular that patrons stood in line for up to three hours and paid a $10 admission fee to boot. It’s a bit further south off of Highway 61; however, neither this magazine nor your mother endorses this detour, which is unequivocally unlawful.

If you’d rather play it safe, but still feel like brushing elbows with MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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cops and challenging your mother, sit under the gingham curtains of Tunica’s Blue and White Restaurant and eavesdrop on crop duster pilots and policemen as you savor the country fried steak that, according to most, is better than their mother’s. Between Tunica and Clarksdale, Highway 61 crosses at least 15 ancient Mississippi River channels.

Moon Lake, a short jaunt from Highway 61, is a recently cut-off channel with a rich little history. In his attempt to capture Vicksburg from behind, Ulysses S. Grant blew out the levee of the big river and moved a flotilla, nine ships strong, through the lake and into its backwaters. (He was eventually thwarted near Greenwood.) Today, Uncle Henry’s Inn and restaurant is the epicenter of Moon Lake’s local legend.

The cypress and cabin-specked village was once a home to a speakeasy during prohibition and a gambling spot frequented by Delta elites.

Tom “Tennessee” Williams visited often with his grandfather. What he saw helped inspire the drunkenness, shootings and drownings in and around his fictionalized Moon Lake Casino, which appeared in seven of his plays.

The Great River Road, like its namesake, is given to meanders and forks. Mississippi Highway 1 is one of them. It provides a secluded and winding diversion through bottom land hardwood forests and blues towns like Friars Point, Rena Lara, Alligator and Rosedale. And, according to Devi Lockwood, you really ought to see it (and hear it) from your bicycle. She’s one of many cyclists who pedal the length of High-

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way 1 each year via the Mississippi River Trail. The web-based cyclists’ guide stretches the entire length of the Mississippi River, from Minnesota to New Orleans, and it covers everything from camping spots to bike shops. Lockwood’s ears were spoiled by the Delta.

“Literally every night was a beautiful, musical surprise.” And the blues was just the beginning. “Every field has its own music,” she said.

“The fact that a field of corn or soybeans or cotton is so alive was really captivating for me.”

Maybe Lockwood felt the most ancient lives once walked these river roads. Humans have inhabited Mississippi for some 12 millennia, long before the planters and the bluesmen. We often forget that the Delta is covered in mounds and that the region has one of the highest concentrations of archaeological sites in the world. Interest in the mound builders is steadily rising.

Mark Howell, director of Winterville Mounds State Park, said, “Before European encroachment, the Mississippi-Yazoo River Delta was one of the most populous and culturally developed areas in North America.” He paints a picture of a bustling Delta, with one mound about every three miles. “Many of these mounds, more properly pyramids, were massive in size, some, such as at the sites of Winterville and Lake George towered over 50 feet, and they supported huge structures with plastered walls, peaked roofs, multiple rooms, furniture, paintings, sculptures and other characteristics associated with modern civilization.”

The park is about to see a multi-million dollar expansion.

The Great River Road’s archaeological abundance has, among other things, helped it grab the attention of the federal government. It is now one of America’s 120 National Scenic Byways. Bill Seratt, the executive director of Vicksburg’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, was largely responsible for taking the Great River Road to Washington.

He piloted a 10-state group tasked with showing the Department of Transportation that the Great River Road was worth it.

“It’s a long process,” he said, noting the strict and tedious requirements, “But in the last round of designations … we got the whole length of the river designated.”

Seratt couldn’t pinpoint a favorite destination on the road, but he did say that The Old Country Store in Lorman was “out of this world.”

Mr. D knows it. He’s the longtime owner of the buffet that sits in a 100-year-old

Seratt

building midway between Port Gibson and Natchez. “I’m honored to have the best fried chicken in the world,” he often says, with a bravado that is surprisingly modest. Foodie Alton Brown was put in a freaky stupor

by Mr. D’s chicken. “I will never eat fried chicken again,” he said. “It was like Colonel Sanders pole dancing.” L

Want to go?

To plan your motoring tour of the nationally designated Mississippi River Byway, visit experiencemississippiriver.com.

On the Great River Road, LEGENDS also suggests: Highway 61 Coffee House - 1101 Washington St., Vicksburg. An otherworldly, cozy meeting place with good music, good books and good baked goods. Upstairs, you could spend hours drooling over the folk and fine art of the Attic Gallery.

Larry’s Tamales - 947 Sunflower Ave., Clarksdale. The perfect amount of greasy rib tips smoked to perfection.

McCarty’s Pottery - 101 Saint Mary St., Merigold. A Delta family’s bamboo tunnels, aquatic gardens and nationally acclaimed Mississippi River mud pottery.

Gemiluth Chessed Synagogue - 706 Church St., Port Gibson. The breathtaking Moorish-revival temple was built in 1892. It is the oldest synagogue in the state. It’s name translates to “Acts of loving kindness.”

Doe’s Eat Place - 502 Nelson St., Greenville. The flood of 1927, prohibition, civil rights and beef.

The Ghost Town of Rodney - Muddy Bayou Road. West of Lorman. A 19th century booming river town left behind by the changing course of the Mississippi River. Today, the area is nothing but deer and wild turkeys in “one of the best preserved ghost towns of the South.” Be careful of rough roads.

  Picturesque fields, churches and historic sites greet the Great River Road motorist. These scenes are found south of Vicksburg, amid the winding road of meandering bayous and mile-wide views.

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Story and Photographs by Marianne Todd

“The destruction here ... is incomparable to the vast ruination wrought upon New Orleans by Katrina, but for those who lost their homes, possessions, pets and family members, it is no different. It is truly touching … yet not surprising … that musicians are the ones to come forth and give of their time, talent and heart … it is particularly poignant when the beneficence emanates from all of you ... who from the heart and soul of your city’s famed culture know first-hand the power of music in revitalizing a hurting community. Music connects us all … and you are proving that today.”

- Colorado resident Penny Pearson, thanking the New Orleans musicians from across the country.

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT: Craig Klein of Bonerama helped lead the cause for the Colorado flood victims; the New Orleans-based funk/rock band Bonerama with guitarist Brian Stoltz (The Neville Brothers, Funky Meters), playing at The Howlin’ Wolf to raise money for the victims of flooding in Colorado.

STORY FROM NEW ORLEANS

CLOCKWISE: David Shaw of The Revivalists; art, photographs and other items were auctioned to raise money; musician Deanna Bogart; Mark Mullins of Bonerama; Dave Malone of The Radiators.

N

ew Orleans’ Howlin’ Wolf was packed on a rainy Saturday Gruver said the musicians are still reeling from the event’s success. afternoon in December as some of the city’s best musicians “We raised about $12,000 between the ticket sales, silent auction, raffle played to raise money for the victims of the deadly Colo- and cash donations,” he said. rado floods that hit Boulder County in mid-September.

The money goes directly to the Lyons Community Foundation Flood C.R. Gruver, keyboardist for the New Orleans Suspects, had moved Relief Fund, an all-volunteer organization that donates 100 percent of to New Orleans in 2006, and when the flooding affected more than 700 their volunteer time to collecting and distributing funds to those in need families in Colorado, he went to work with fellow musicians putting in the Boulder area. together the event dubbed NolaRado.

“It was such a positive experience, and so moving for all of us on the The lineup included Gruver’s Suspects, Bonerama, the Dirty Dozen NolaRado crew, that we’ve gone ahead and secured the domain name Brass Band, Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes, James Booker band nolarado.com for a future website, created a Facebook page for it and are members Reggie Scanlan and Johnny Vidacovich and Brian Stoltz (Nev- planning on keeping the organization going.” L ille Brothers, Funky Meters), artist at large, among others.

Brent Boland, a former Lyons resident who lost his 80-year-old father, WANT TO GIVE? Gerry, in the flood, attended with his wife, Sarah. On stage, Boland told Please visit www.lyonscf.org for more information, or to donate. Dohow his father and mother became separated on the day he died. “Out nors may also purchase a 12-song compilation from participating artof love he came back to the house to find her, and he lost his life doing ists, the proceeds of which go directly to supporting the flood victims. so,” Boland said.

To purchase, visit cdbaby.com/cd/nolaradobenefitneworlean.

STORY FROM CLARKSDALE, MISS.

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COVER STORY

John Ruskey, navigating the Mississippi River on a replica of a 200-year-old English row boat named Annie.

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TOP: River guide Braxton Barden takes a break during rowing.

BOTTOM: Writer Chris Staudinger, who authored this story and worked for the Quapaw Canoe Company for 16 months, rows with apprentice Roy Williams.

OPPOSITE: From the bow, Ruskey guides a group of apprentices, river guides and other adventurers, down the Mississippi River from Memphis to Helena, Ark.

Throughout the year, two, three – even as many as 10 people at a time – climb into John Ruskey’s 30-foot, hand-built canoes and spend hours or days jumping from island to island on the largest river in North America.

It is an experience few undertake and none forget. It is an intimate view of the the giant river, feared for her swift currents and heavy barge traffic.

In the north Mississippi town of Clarksdale, John is the Coloradoborn owner of Quapaw Canoe Company, the small outfitter and guide service offering tours of the nearby river.

When he was younger, he survived a near-death disaster on the river, one he is reminded of each time his boat stops at the 5,000 acre Cat Island. These days, John still dodges ominous barges and the damaging effects of industry in what has become two centuries of popular disaffection with the Mississippi River. His customers are mostly outsiders, those not influenced by the inaccurate information and rumor upon

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which the river’s reputation is built.

By 2010, John’s work with his then 12-year-old canoe company had been featured in Outside Magazine, ESPNOutdoors and National Geographic. Three years later, John’s hometown recognized his business as Coahoma County’s “Business of the Year.” In his acceptance speech, he thanked the local business community, comprised mostly of large agricultural interests (some dating to the mid-19th century), for effectively leaving him alone.

It seems unfathomable that the quiet streets of a post-industrial Main Street community could nourish a company better than could a deeppocketed, metropolitan area like Memphis. But John often says that Clarksdale is one of the only places that Quapaw could have thrived.

THE CAVE My lodgings above John’s office (or “the Cave”) have afforded me a birds eye view of the growth of Quapaw Canoe Company. I’ve spent

the last 16 months learning the river from John and his team in an experience that gave me a surprise at every turn.

At 6:53 a.m. a dense December fog was brightening above the Sunflower River, and John was finishing the first phase of his day. He looked a bit pummeled, with puffy eyes and knotted hair. He stretched his elbows up above his head as I asked him what time he’d woken up.

“Oh...” he said, “The three o’clock hour.”

We faced his squat A-frame hut: all corrugated steel and chunky wood with no straight lines. From its low-slung roof, a line of old shoes, splotched with algae, hung by their strings. Behind it, the chalky brown Sunflower River barely crawled.

He did not stare off towards the sky or the water and linger in the silence, as he is sometimes prone to doing. Instead, with subdued excitement, he told me that he had been working on a breakthrough proposal for the KIPP charter school network, which he hoped would take his Mighty Quapaw Apprenticeship Program from

a small, bold after-school safe haven to a firmly-founded, streamlined outdoor education program. His hopes are for big, river-centric changes in the Delta - especially for the chronically under-served.

The Cave’s heavy steel door, painted in trademark Ruskey swirls, squeaks like a truck’s breaks when it swings open. A 3 a.m. squeak is not unusual. Neither is a 4 a.m., 5 a.m., or even a midnight squeak. A 7 a.m. squeak is fairly late.

One magazine article described “The Lovely Life of John Ruskey.”

But “lovely” is not the descriptor that comes to mind when I hear the Cave’s door squeak in the dead of night. I pull my sheets up to my chin and wonder what he possibly does down there or whether (and why) he works longer hours than, say, George Lucas or Jeff Bezos.

The Quapaw Canoe Company is headquartered behind this squeaking steel door in an underground, one-room basement whose contents paint a clear, if scattered, picture of the 15-year-old, slow-grown company. There are floor-to-ceiling shelves of river books, Navajo rugs, MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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26 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

“

The Mississippi River, he says, is ‘the greatest expression of the beauty and the patterns and the awful destructiveness of those wild powers that govern the universe.’”

 A thick layer of frost covers Annie as she waits for her crew, who are enjoying a leisurely breakfast of oatmeal and berries before beginning the row from Cat Island to Helena, Ark.  LEFT TO RIGHT: The cracked earth on Cat Island, a 5,000 acre island in the middle of the Mississippi River teeming with wildlife; apprentice river guide Oscar Donaby unpacks the row boat; by the campfire, the travelers get respite from the first bitter cold of the year.

MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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half-finished watercolors, driftwood effigies, old photos and bones. It was once a home office, where John lived without most modern conveniences, including A/C and refrigeration (He preferred to chill his perishable foods on a line in the Sunflower River.)

Ellis Coleman, a fellow Quapaw team member, told me that John used to lay his head at night on a driftwood pillow. Now the Cave has a new role as board room for John’s newly-founded non-profit, Lower Mississippi River Foundation.

And now, four hours after his latest 3 a.m. squeak, John held up a hand in an idle wave and smiled under his thick, gray beard. “Well, okay, brother. See you in a few,” he said, walking across the Second Street bridge toward his home, where his wife, his 6-year-old daughter, oatmeal, school books and empty dog bowls awaited him.

He would return to the Cave to untangle the logistics of a 10-day expedition, full of solar batteries, wetsuits, jugs of water, laptops, maps and emails. He had been helping his friend and fellow river man, Kris-

In a bit of a compromise, I joined Ruskey’s team in Clarksdale instead. At an average flow rate of 450,000 cubic feet per second, the Mississippi River is undeniably a force. It could fill the Louisiana Superdome in four minutes. At flood stage, it wouldn’t take nearly as long.

Though John is from the Front Range of Colorado, he knows the life-taking potential of the river better than most. Fresh out of high school, he and a friend began their Mississippi River journey in Wisconsin on a hand-built raft that splintered near Memphis, sparking a near-death ordeal that could have scared him away for good. Instead he picked up his paddle for another few thousand miles, and now he makes his living encouraging others to do the same.

It began by chance in 1996. A German tourist by the sole name of Hugh – a curious traveler unencumbered by deep-seated fears of the Big River – had heard about a young blues musician in Clarksdale who liked to duck out of town, sometimes for long stretches, to explore the

tian “Big K” Gustavson, to map a Florida river for what will one day become Google Riverview.

Mississippi alone.

By contrast, the locals – Memphians and Mississippians – are a much tougher clientele, still carrying the burden of three centuries of horror stories, superstitions, floods and spectacular explosions.

Reversing such a tide is audacious work, but John usually goes about it in his bright-eyed way. Last November, a barge passed across the brown channel of the Mississippi, south of Greenville. It sent small waves of water lurching towards the gravelly bank. Ten of us sat there and spat pomegranate seeds between our feet. John tapped his toes on the wet rocks to the railroad beat of his song. “I’m the river man,” he sang, nasally like Bob Dylan.

He played it by request of his friend, Paul Hartfield, a Corps of Engineers biologist, who was along for the 100-mile journey. The trip was to celebrate and publicize The Rivergator: The Lower Mississippi River Water Trail. The mile-by-mile paddler’s guide was sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation through the Lower Mississippi River

THE RIVERGATOR I came to Quapaw because of my mother. I had been planning a long canoe trip down the Mississippi, and she passionately objected, painting gruesome pictures of collisions with barges and their giant propellers. As a general rule, the nearer one lives to the river, the farther one is told to stay away. My mother was raised in New Orleans, where “that river” is more of a floating factory than a body of water.

28 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

Foundation, which John directs. As of now, the trail stretches between Caruthersville, Mo., and Vicksburg, Miss. In two years, when it is complete, it will guide experienced paddlers from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico, and it will be the longest river-based water trail in the United States.

In its introduction, John writes that he “hopes to share the secrets for safe canoeing and kayaking on this often mysterious and confusing waterway and at the same time dispel some of the myths about paddling the Big River.”

The Rivergator, much like the guided tours, begins when curious adventurers (like myself ), come across John’s name and send him questions about paddling the Mississippi. Hundreds of brave souls descend the Mississippi every year in self-propelled vessels, usually from upper tributaries in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and sometimes even Montana.

Most go unnoticed because they’re only specks in the lake-like channel.

From a bridge above the water, you’d just as soon notice a stick or

the water ... It’s perched on stilts with a tall staircase reaching up to the porch. The ground floor and the front porch stand at least twenty feet off the ground. A jacuzzi had been installed on one side of the porch. But now the river had risen over its sides, and the jacuzzi was full of muddy water. A wide screen television was located on the porch wall behind. We couldn’t resist. We tied the canoe off and jumped into the muddy jacuzzi and enjoyed a few minutes of relaxation!

He repeatedly offers that the Mississippi is reserved for advanced paddlers. “Yes,” he concedes, “unfortunately a lot of people have gone out and not come back. The river and its tributaries have probably claimed more lives than all other rivers in North America put together.”

It’s a fine balance between play and reverence, fear and respect. It’s a balance he deifies: The Mississippi River, he says, is “the greatest expression of the beauty and the patterns and the awful destructiveness of those wild powers that govern the universe.”

The Rivergator, in that respect, is an almost evangelical mission to

one of the barges heaving the 400 million tons of cargo that passes through the river every year.

At times in The Rivergator, John supplements the instructions with stories. One particular account happened just down the river from where John sang his song at the pomegranate seed-spitting lunch, at a point called Fitler’s Bend.

During the record high water of 2011, he, a writer and a photographer “were documenting the flooding river for an Outside Magazine story that would later be voted one of the best adventure stories of the year.”

A small community had been carved into a wooded place that probably shouldn’t be inhabited ...Obviously shouldn’t be inhabited as made evident now: water was flowing over the streets twenty feet deep and telephone poles were quivering like frightened bunnies. Some of the spec houses had been overturned. We saw one house with muddy water flowing through its porch and decided to investigate. Normally this house would stand tall above

venerate it, and ultimately, he says “to protect it.”

DISTINCTLY SOUTHERN The canoe shop’s front on Sunflower Avenue is streaked with psychedelic pastels. A red 1956 Chevy flatbed truck leans against the curb outside of the building, which once housed an auto parts distributor. A naked man holds a paddle and stands above a nighttime river scene in a painting that is propped in the storefront window.

The shop was recently fitted with a huge portico, the sight of which caused small traffic jams. The facade, which John designed and had built with a downtown revitalization grant, combines the Southern dogtrot and the Southwestern hacienda. The result is distinctly neither, much like its creator, especially within the confines of downtown Clarksdale.

“I’m a creative spirit,” John says. And it’s this foreign push towards the nonexistent (as well as his work on “that river”) in a place of deeply-

FROM LEFT: John Ruskey shares a laugh with fellow travelers at daybreak over coffee on Cat Island, the overnight stopping point on the trip.

Annie at sunset at Cat Island.

Coffee is always on the fire.

A large piece of driftwood sits covered in frost after the year’s first bitter cold.

MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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held traditions that has led some to write him off as an eccentric. Delta locals mostly call him “Ruskey,” and they sometimes accent the word with a hint of mischief. It’s similar to the way they refer to Dollar Bill, who has been known to walk down the middle of streets and shout vulgarities from the bridges of the Sunflower River.

A reporter once asked him about the issue of the invasive “Asian Carp,” a fish that has seen exponential growth on the river, frightening boaters as it heaves its slimy body several feet out of the water when frightened. John looked to the sky, shook his head and said, “You shouldn’t be motor-boating anyway. You should be out there in something slower and something that exercises your body and doesn’t make you more fat and lazy. You know, Southerners are already overweight and have health problems. They need more solutions that lead to better

“John looked to the sky, shook his head and said, ‘You shouldn’t be motorboating anyway. You should be out there in something slower and something that exercises your body and doesn’t make you more fat and lazy.’” health.”

Others are enamored by him. “I believe in John Ruskey,” they say, or “I’m a Ruskey fan.” He is “unreal,” “a visionary,” “enigmatic.”

The 1991 King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Ark., brought John to the Delta. He lived in a tent at Friar’s Point landing (“You know, where they fish,” he says) and worked on a cotton combine crew during harvest hoping to get by until the winter. But more than 20 years later, he hasn’t gone far.

Patty Johnson is a fellow Delta transplant and longtime friend of John’s. Two of his watercolor riverscapes - one a predawn gray, the other a bluer flood scene - hang in her house. She is familiar with his preQuapaw, Clarksdale music life. She said she first saw John on the porch of Hopson Plantation, a music spot on the outskirts of town.

“I think he was playing the accordion, of all things,” she says.

John plays the guitar, keyboard and drums, as well, and when Patty remembers John’s weekly residency with bluesman Wesley Jefferson at the Dew Drop Inn, she rolls her eyes back like she’s searching for something that she can’t find. Because at some point, John traded the musician’s life for the river.

30 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

His stints with Jefferson, Tater ‘The Music Maker’ Wiley and James ‘Super Chikan’ Johnson were successful and brought him as far as Europe, but those years are often buried by the river. The late nights of his bluesman days sometimes abut oddly with the early mornings of his email-laden business days. I saw the odd confluence of those two periods of John’s life one day in the summer of 2012. On the way to a river presentation in Rolling Fork, we stopped in Greenville for what I thought would be a simple, routine meeting. The next thing I knew, we were listening to the mayor of Greenville try to lure a Quapaw apprenticeship program to his town.

John and I wore shorts and colorful plaids that I cannot guarantee were clean. The mayor wore a suit. John listened intently in the varnished, wood-paneled room, legs crossed, head tilted, as if he, too, were wearing a suit. Then we shook the mayor’s hand and went to Butch’s house.

Euphus Butch Ruth is a Greenville photographer who drives a hearse, which he parks in his front yard and uses as a mobile dark room. Butch used to develop John’s film photos. He remembers watching a photo develop that was frightening even to look at. A livid towboat captain stood on the deck, shaking his fist and yelling. The man - and the boat - were impossibly close. “There must be a whole lot goin’ on in that head,” Butch said. But, he also said, “John and I’s got one thing in common. We both like to skinny dip in the Mississippi River.”

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LEFT TO RIGHT: Frost covers the dinnerware on the first morning of the trip; rubber river boots dry on sticks by the driftwood fire; Mark “River” Peoples beats a native drum in a ceremony that puts passengers, the river and Annie, on the same wavelength; Roy Williams tends to Annie during a break on a sandbar.

THE MIGHTY QUAPAWS In late September of that same year, John was driving north on Interstate 55 towards Davenport, Iowa, when he got a call. He was to be the keynote speaker at a river conference, and he had prepared notes in which he would talk about the Mighty Quapaw Apprenticeship Program. “They’re the same kinds of kids who often end up as gang leaders,” he wrote. “They often end up not graduating and in jail. The Mighty Quapaws gives these kids an alternate route across the river, to the top of the mountain.”

The call was from a Darron, a quick-witted and good hearted Mighty Quapaw apprentice, who carried his confidence the unwieldy way that a 17-year-old boy often does. He asked John to bail him out of the Coahoma County Jail. John told him he was 1,000 miles away; he’d have to find someone else. Darron called back, again and again, all weekend.

I paddled with Darron on my first Mississippi River trip. At the end of the eight miles and soaking wet from a particularly nasty storm, he sprung out of the boat. “Man, I feel great!” His words jumped out of his smiling mouth too quickly for his teenage cool to hold back. (It was, by all accounts, not an “awesome” trip. The boat was full of people who had been misled by their tour company to expect a Mississippi River “Safari” rife with bears and other exotics).

Other teenagers have similar responses to the river. Roderick, a

32 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

17-year-old from Clarksdale, said, “I don’t know what it is, but being here calms me down.” Jeremy ‘Popeye’ Hays is 20 and has amassed hundreds of miles on the Mississippi over the last decade. He puts it more simply, “I had to get out of town.”

At the conference, John diverged from his planned notes and brought up Darron. He decided to highlight the arrest rather than ignore it. “That’s the modern day reality of the difficulties facing youth in Mississippi.”

Those difficulties have not been easily overcome. “We gain Quapaws and we lose them,” John said. But a new partnership with KIPP: Delta Public Schools, a charter network in Eastern Ark., has John hopeful.

“We’ve started a new direction with some really smart people who understand child development,” he said of the the program. “I’m hoping to codify that so that we can make an impenetrable program.”

TRAILBLAZER John finds all sorts of things on the river. He emerges from the woods with fossils and shells and skulls and other animal remains. He tries new recipes that sound absurd but usually turn out delicious. With the Mississippi, he has managed to find a new space in a world that we consider wrapped up and mapped. For the most part, he doesn’t find the discovery groundbreaking. He chocks it up to the circumstances of his rearing and the luck of his landing in Clarksdale.

“When it was time to go on vacation, my parents would pile us up

in the green van and we’d go camping and that’s just what we’d do,” he says. But in the Delta, “that’s not the way families have traditionally looked at the outdoors. You know, there’s hunting, and hunting is the family thing in the South.”

It left a lot of room to grow a western-style approach to the outdoors. John’s mother, Lou, is the brave woman who piled all eight of her children into that green van. She is white-haired and almost angelically mild-mannered, and she, too, is a painter. In a compelling selfportrait, she towers over her home, with hands held to the sky, larger than life. In her right hand is an array of paintbrushes, in her left is a set of arrows (“Don’t ask me about the arrows,” she says with a little laugh.)

When John was three or four, the family lived near a park and a lake.

Between the house and the lake was a busy road. John used to climb up to the bedroom window, Lou says, and stare out at the lake. One day, he wandered out of the house and crossed the road towards the lake.

Lou told the story with fresh horror in her face.

“He was always looking for something more,” she said, “And he was always trying to see more and go farther.” It is perhaps the same instinct of wonder that drove him to build a raft and float the Mississippi in the first place. He writes that when the raft crashed, he and his friend, Sean, clutched barrels “which kept flopping and twisting in the boils and eddies of the main channel.”

But he says, “I gazed downstream upon the sands and forests of Cat

Island … I found myself wondering what it would be like to walk across the island and imagining what secret places were there contained within the sandy undulations and pristine pockets of willows, cottonwoods, sycamores and sweet gums and oaks.”

The wonder (and the thought of the unpleasant alternative) helped them hang on. After he and Sean washed up onto the north end of Cat Island, and with waterproof matches that they miraculously had gathered in the water, they started a fire that eventually attracted the attention of a tow boat.

That drive “to see more” was the beginning of the love affair that has helped shaped Quapaw, which John calls “a creative business.” There’s a lot more to see in that river, which is still shrouded in mystery, much like our oceans. And there’s a lot more room to grow in Clarksdale and Helena. Last April, the company built its fifth wood-strip canoe. And a 20-foot cottonwood log, felled by a spring storm, waits to become a dugout canoe under the manpower of the Griot Youth Program, an arts-based outlet for Clarksdale teens that recently moved into downtown Clarksdale.

And the violence? It’s given him inspiration. “At the essence of my soul,” John says, “I’m a creator, and I’m sure I’ll forever be fascinated by those powers that are in the process of destruction and creation.” L

To book a Ruskey Mississippi River Tour, visit www.island63.com.

MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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STORY FROM THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER

By Kara Martinez Bachman Photography by Marianne Todd

“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book … and it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it has a new story to tell every day.”

- Mark Twain These words are inscribed on a brass plaque in the Chart Room of the American Queen steamboat.

Among the maps and charts and large wooden wheel in the same room, brass plaques with other Twain quotes lie within view of the river. Through the windows of the Chart Room and across the bow, lies the water that Twain spoke of: the mudcolored current of the great Mississippi River.

Sitting in the Chart Room is a person who has been hanging around steamboats since he was a young child. Travis Vasconcelos is the ship’s “Riverlorian” and calliope player. He is tasked with collecting and translating for passengers the facts, lore and feelings that have always been a part of this iconic waterway.

At each stop of this American Queen route -- from Vicksburg to Natchez to down river in the Crescent City -- he helps passengers turn each page of the great book of the Mississippi, a guide to un-

34 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

FEATURE

MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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Top and center left: Lamb chops with mint tomato marmalade; vegetable curry with chick peas.

Right: Pan-seared Atlantic salmon; in the large dining hall, guests are served a formal breakfast, lunch and dinner.

derstanding the history behind every ripple and eddy of this essential American thoroughfare.

“The Mississippi River was the super highway of this country from when the steamboat came in 1811 until the ‘war of northern aggression,’ if you will. This was a super highway of America,” explained Vasconcelos. “In 1811, 95 percent of the people who called themselves American lived on the east coast. They didn’t even live in the Ohio River Valley, much less the Mississippi River Valley. The steamboat brought people here and brought these settlements … these were our first baby steps from the east coast to the midwest and the Mississippi Valley.”

The largest steamboat ever built, the American Queen Steamboat is a six-deck paddle wheel powered by authentic steam engines that turn a working stern paddle wheel. The boat, built in 1995, has more than 200 staterooms that can accommodate more than 400 passengers plus crew.

Vasconcelos said he believes that seeing the river - on a cruise like those offered by the American Queen Steamboat Company - is like flipping through pages of our history. At leisure, passengers can take a slow, relaxing trip while taking in the food, people and places of the South.

“By coming out here, you not only see how this nation was formed here on the lower Mississippi River. You see these historic buildings.

36 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

Like here we are, in Baton Rouge, and you see the original capitol building and the wonderful museum they have there. You can go up to the current capitol building and see what Huey P. Long did.”

Vasconcelos gestures toward the windows of the Chart Room, toward the bank containing the City of Baton Rouge. The day is cloudy, but the easily visible capitol building sits a bit upriver from where the Queen is docked.

“When you come here to this part of the country, you see how we built this nation. You learn about these things in books, but to really learn something you can only read so much, and at some point you have to actually walk in the footsteps of the people,” he said.

Two people who walked in those footsteps were Sam and Donna Miller, of Ventura, Calif. On the last day of their cruise of the lower Mississippi, they enjoyed playing cards together in the Mark Twain Lounge, one of the steamer’s onboard sitting rooms. The boat was docked at Oak Alley Plantation, in Vacherie, La. “We’ve been to Europe and places like that … the river cruises on the Danube and the Rhone, and we’ve also been to Australia, New Zealand, Rome and all that,” explained Sam Miller. “But I haven’t seen any of the United States. I told Donna, ‘The last trip we took was in East Africa. That was hard to me.’ On a safari, you don’t get to rest, you’re going all the time ... I just told her that the next trip I take is going to

 A model of the American Queen Steamboat sits in the Mark Twain Lounge.  TOP TO BOTTOM: A steamboat wheel sits inscribed with a Mark Twain quote in the Chart Room; one of the boat’s steam towers can been seen in front of setting sun; blue furniture complements a reading room on the steamboat, where guests can converse or play cards or board games.

be in the United States.”

“It’s a slow pace,” added Miller. “It’s like the river cruises in Europe; they’re slow paced. They’re not like an ocean cruise where you get off the boat and get in a tender to get ashore … like the river cruises in Europe, you just pull up to the dock and you’re there.”

Room Attendant Sandra Elion speaks often with passengers about their favorite ports, and mentioned Angola Prison as a favorite on the itinerary.

“They like the prison a lot... they really like the prison,” said Elion. “They also like Houmas House. They really love St. Francisville [La.]. The 300-year-old oak trees are just magnificent. Walking through those trees is incredible. But every leg of the trip draws a different set of attention.”

The Millers were among the passengers who cited the Louisiana State Penitentiary in West Feliciana Parish as a favorite.

“We went to the Angola Prison, and that was fabulous. It was very inspirational,” said Donna Miller. “The one trustee that spoke to us was telling us they mentor the younger prisoners that come. They closed a prison somewhere, and I think a thousand prisoners came to Angola that are not lifers. But they’re trying to mentor them … so that when they get out on parole they will be functional.”

A stop at the largest - and most infamous - prison in the United States may not MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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“Adventure seekers looking for constant activities may want to look elsewhere;

this trip is only for those seeking peace.

It is for minutes and hours and even days of sitting still. It is for moments of silence and communion with the river as it reflects a sunset or as it meanders darkly under a timeless constellation of stars.” be what most envision for a waterway most connected to hoop skirts erage, dessert and ice cream buffet and a full casual buffet available and mint juleps. But the American Queen provides a variety of educathroughout most of the day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served in tional views. the formal dining room. Although not nearly as large as ocean-going “We’re going to towns without big shopping malls. We’re going to vessels, the American Queen offers many of the same amenities. There’s towns without big box stuff,” added Elion, who lives in Memphis. “So a sun deck and small pool, exercise room and gift shop. Staterooms they’re getting to see how other parts most with a river view - are equipped of the country live, how other elewith full baths, fine linens and bathments are factored into the U.S. way robes. of being.”

Although steam boating isn’t what An American Queen cruise is it was in Twain’s day, some things nothing like a Caribbean cruise. This have not changed. The river continboat offers something more genteel; ues to write its story, and the Ameriit offers something much, much can Queen offers a picturesque red slower. Adventure seekers looking for wheel that keeps turning. Each misty constant activities may want to look revolution is another turn of the page, elsewhere; this trip is only for those as the water continues to reshape seeking peace. It is for minutes and itself and a new page of the story is hours and even days of sitting still. It left to be read by whomever happens is for moments of silence and comto be following behind. munion with the river as it reflects a “The American Steamboat is a sunset or as it meanders darkly under unique American invention. It’s a a timeless constellation of stars. unique part of our history,” said Vas Attracting an older clientele, the concelos. “In America, we don’t celship has no rock climbing walls. It ebrate our history like we should. We has no discos. Most entertainment don’t put the emphasis on it like they appeals to retirees seeking the nostaldo in Europe. How can you know gia of youth and the peacefulness of a where you’re moving forward when week in a slow drift past levees, trees you don’t know where you’ve been?” and natural embankments.

On our last night, it was cold and The staircase leading from the boat’s dining room to the main floor above.

Elion says people choose the ship misting outside, typical for the end because it is more intimate than of November. Vasconcelos played larger cruises. the calliope as we pulled out of Vacherie and began our last overnight, “The big ships are packing them in, and it’s just a bunch of noise en route to New Orleans. Nobody was on deck. They were inside in and chaos,” said Elion. “But here, they slow down, they take it in, they their staterooms, dressing for dinner. But Vasconcelos played, and the relax, they enjoy the people, they enjoy the river, they enjoy the music.” distinctive sound of the steamboat’s clarion call spread through the Onboard, the music Elion speaks of comes from a jazz band, lounge darkness for miles. Steam puffed in great plumes from the calliope’s singers and performers of several musical revues; the music recalled the whistle-like pipes, and something about it all - the river, the Victorian ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. scroll work design of the columns, the lone calliope player doing his Onboard dining consists of 24-hour room service, a 24-hour bevthing - all felt truly American. L

38 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

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STORY FROM VICKSBURG

40 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

FEATURE

RIVER CITY STYLE ART, ANTIQUES & ARCHITECTURE

BY KARA MARTINEZ BACHMAN PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIANNE TODD

Whether painting a portrait, carving a chair leg or stacking rows of bricks and mortar, the products of art and architecture are a reflection of lifestyle, geography and philosophy. In Vicksburg, a town shaped by the cultures that arrived on its banks via the mighty Mississippi River, this rings doubly true.

Lesley Silver, owner of the Attic Gallery in Vicksburg, explains why her gallery reflects the city’s marriage with the river. “If you’re a river town, you’ve got quirkiness.

And this certainly is a quirky gallery,” Silver says. “I think we have a blend of everyone, but it gives us the freedom to show what is close to our hearts, and it’s certainly not mainstream.” Primarily offering work by local artists, the funky, color-infused Attic Gallery provides a rootsy portrait of the local arts scene.

“In the gallery, we not only have the art … we have the artist … it’s really part of the landscape, because we love the artist,” Silver explains. “When you buy the art, you buy the artist also.”

Another visual artist from Vicksburg is H.C. Porter, whose current project, “Blues at Home,” features Mississippi blues legends in a confluence that feels “right” for a river town shaped by various people. “I set out to create a project that would focus on Mississippi-born living blues legends so we ended up with 30. I interviewed each musician, and created an edited oral history, and have paired that with my paintings - portraits - of that musician,” Porter says. “It’s an opportunity as a storyteller to tap into the cultural heritage of Mississippi ... that’s just a powerful part of the state, and we finally recognize that’s one of our biggest resources.”

Jeanie Nicolson, owner of Nicolson Arts and Atelier, says she would like to see an arts district developed in the city’s thriving downtown. Her own contribution to the arts scene can be viewed and purchased in her gallery, one of the newest in town. Her work - done in acrylic, pen and pencil, and ink - appeals to fans of realism. “On days like today when the steamboats are in, there’s a lot of tourists, a

OPPOSITE: The historic Mississippi River Commission Building, constructed in 1894, sits as part of the river city’s diverse architectural background.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: The Southern Cultural Heritage Center Convent (c. 1830); Christ Episcopal Church (c. 1939) is still used for worship; paintings by artist Kennith Humphrey hang in the Attic Gallery; old pictures are among the Civil War relics in Adolph Rose Antiques; a child’s shoe in the Old Court House Museum.

42 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

lot of foot traffic on the street,” Nicolson says. “They are attracted to the Vicksburg prints. But I don’t find they’re just looking for Vicksburg stuff … they’re just looking in general.”

Another shop, featuring a selection of antiques mixed with contemporary art and Southern themed gifts, is Peterson’s Art and Antiques. Shop employee Mary Benson says the shop tries to appeal to visitors seeking to bring a bit of old Vicksburg home with them.

“We [Vicksburg] have the church steeple, we have the bridge, the park,” Benson says. “The antiques are an assortment of all different time periods.”

Larry Walker, proprietor of Adolph Rose Antiques says visitors are looking for a bit of the old South. “A lot of Civil War items, that kind of stuff. Small items that they can take with them.” Walker’s shop features an assortment of antique and vintage goods and is probably the premiere antique and vintage venue in Vicksburg. “We have a lot of Civil War relics; cannonballs, swords, Civil War guns, real fancy Victorian-era furniture.”

Walker’s deco-era property is interesting, but most architecture buffs come to Vicksburg to see the antebellum era structures, and as a grand old lady of the South, Vicksburg has plenty.

A tour of town should probably begin with the Old Court House. Hailed as one of the 20 “most outstanding” courthouses in the United States by the American Institute of Architects, the Old Court House takes visitors back in time as they view an example of an 1860s public building.

“The Old Warren County Court House was designed from its inception to be the architectural jewel of the city of Vicksburg, and has held that distinction for 155 years,” says George “Bubba” Bolm, director/curator of the Old Court House Museum. “The Greek Revival structure showcases the incredible strength and skills of a local people that rival any of its time.

“The Greek Revival style building was designed to be an ornament to the city and to compare favorably with any other building on the Mississippi River,” he adds. The building was constructed by highly-skilled slave labor and features 30-foot ionic fluted columns that support porticoes on all four sides, cast iron capitals and original doors and shutters.

The old St. Francis Xavier Convent run by the Sisters of Mercy is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It consists of five buildings constructed between 1830 and 1955. A must-see for any tour of Vicksburg’s architectural treasures, the main building now houses the Southern Cultural Heritage Center, which provides space for a wide array of cultural and arts activities in Vicksburg.

A drive or leisurely walk through downtown will inevitably lead visitors past two of the main historic spires that have graced the city’s skyline for generations.

Among the very first public buildings ever constructed in Vicks-

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 Inside the Old Court House sits the jury chairs, just as they were when the building was constructed in the 1860s. It’s now hailed as one of the country’s “most outstanding” courthouses by the American Institute of Architects.

burg, the Christ Episcopal Church is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Built in 1839, the church still stands - with much of its original furnishings - as an active place of worship in Vicksburg. The church contains two original Tiffany stained glass windows.

The dramatic slate-roofed steeple of the Church of the Holy Trinity can be seen from virtually all parts of downtown. Built circa 1869, the church still offers worship services, but only gives tours by appointment. The stunning red brick building with it’s elegant spire contains six Tiffany stained glass windows.

Vicksburg architecture is known for one main unique innovation: the pierced column. According to the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation, the pierced column appeared in about 1870, and now graces more buildings in Vicksburg than an any other city. Approximately 40 existing buildings stand today that display this construction element.

As with most things, it is suspected that the river might have something to do with pierced columns. Although no one knows for sure, the Italianate pierced column style - which features airy scrollwork cutouts - first appeared when the steamboat era was in full swing. Members of

44 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation have speculated the columns, which often contain cutouts of hearts, diamonds or spades - may have been invented by a carpenter who worked aboard a steamboat.

If the guesswork is true, then as in most things, the river finds its way into every nook and cranny of life, art and history in Vicksburg.

Visitors seeking arts, antiques and architecture will not only find the buildings and old furniture and contemporary artwork of Vicksburg’s people, but will find the work of the river hiding there as well.

Even today, the river feeds the local arts economy. “It’s a historic district. Every building has history, every brick has history,” Nicolson says. “I think it’s integral to keep us alive. Those tourists travel on to other destinations and they tell people all along the river to come here.

I think it’s very important, and I want to keep them coming.” L

WANT TO KNOW MORE? Visitors interested in learning more about the art, antiques and architecture of Vicksburg can find all they need to know at www.visitvicksburg.org. Or call (800) 221-3536.

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STORY FROM NATCHEZ

BY KARA MARTINEZ BACHMAN PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIANNE TODD

V

isitors to the Eola Hotel find themselves above everything else in Natchez.

Through the windows of the historic hotel, the Mississippi River rolls by, and the horizon is clear ten miles away. In its beginnings, in the years before the space was converted to suites and was used as an open-air ballroom and lounge, people took bets on when the sun would go down. They’d tip their glasses to whoever came closest.

But that was way back when, during the days when the Eola

46 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

Hotel was not considered a luxury property, but a place of respite for weary business travelers on their way to their next sales call or next session of wheeling and dealing in the business interests that thrived along the lower Mississippi corridor.

Built in 1927, the Eola Hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Two blocks from the river, the tallest building in Natchez brings guests back in time to the Art Deco era.

“This is the heartbeat of this town,” explained JoAnn Brumfield, sales and catering director. “It’s still a living and breathing

FEATURE

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CLOCKWISE: Tables are set at the upscale Cafe LaSalle Restaurant; the hotel sign hangs below the historic structure, which was heralded by the local news media as a “symbol of civic progress” when its doors opened in 1927; Juleps Restaurant offers courtyard dining and views of a fire-and-water fountain.

entity. It’s a hotel, and it always has been. You’ll see so many buildings that say ‘established 18-whatever’ and they’re no longer a bank.

They might be a retail store or something else. This is still a hotel … what it was built for.” Although it has changed hands over the years, and has been vacant at times, the building has always stayed true to its original purpose.

When the hotel first opened, its advanced structural design was heralded in local news media as a “symbol of civic progress.” Unlike rooms in many full-service modern properties of today, rooms

48 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

at the Eola can be slightly small by modern standards. Brumfield explained that this was a way to keep the rooms affordable and streamlined for the lone business traveler. Today, this echo of its past use is a part of the quaint appeal of the property.

It is only in recent decades that the hotel has modified some of its older features to meet the needs of today’s guests. One example is the European twin sized beds, which were replaced in the early 2000s.

“You didn’t have king-sized beds back then,” Brumfield said. “We

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had European twin beds, which were extra long, kind of like a dorm bed. It’s narrow and it’s long, for an adult. We also had full size and queen size, but no king. People weren’t that tall back then. So only in our recent history have we added king sized beds.”

Another change made in recent decades concerns the elevator. “It is only recently that the hotel elevators are automated. That was done in 1998,” Brum-

“It is only recently that the hotel elevators are automated. That was done in 1998. Until then, you had to have an elevator operator or you couldn’t go to your room. field said. “Until then, you had to have an elevator operator or you couldn’t go to your room.”

The opulent lobby – which features displays of interesting old news clippings and historical items – has a display showing parts of the old, manually operated elevators.

“Truly, this is what people come to Natchez for,” Brumfield said, about these small touches from the past. “And when they can actually stay in a place like this, it’s all the more an experience for them.”

Today, the hotel features 131 rooms and suites; many have excellent views of the river. Georgian-style reproduction furniture is used throughout the property, which also offers two restaurants and a lounge.

The rooftop lounge of old is no longer there, having long since been replaced with the hotel’s king-sized

Guest rooms offer Georgian-style reproduction furniture, antique fixtures and spectacular views of the river.

50 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

luxury suites, each of which provides spacious accommodations with views of Natchez.

Today, the Eola offers the on-site Juleps Restaurant for courtyard-style dining within sight of a fire-andwater fountain and imported palms. For sophisticated dining, there is Cafe LaSalle. For drinks, Peacock’s Bar and Grill is popular with locals and features timeless music played by an antique Wurlitzer jukebox.

Hotel amenities include wireless internet, room service, handicapped accessible rooms, exercise room, business services, dry cleaning services and free parking.

Brumfield said the modern services catering to today’s traveler are much like the services offered for the traveler of the past. She tells of hotel porters carrying large trunks of luggage, unlike the lightweight traveler of today.

“We’ve had a few people send us pictures,” Brumfield said. “We went through the process when the hotel turned 80 of interviewing tons people who had been married here or stayed here on their honeymoons. And it’s all recorded on a CD.” Brumfield said historic photos show the halls of the Eola lined with shoes.

“Back then, there was a shoeshine guy and you’d leave your shoes outside the door.”

Although there are no more shoes and steamer trunks in the halls, nor dancing on the rooftop, the Eola offers a fair share of the history people seek in Natchez.

“It’s nostalgic,” Brumfield said. “It’s not cookiecutter. You don’t find this everywhere, you can’t go to Baton Rouge or Jackson and get this. It’s here ... and only here.” L

WANT TO GO? The Eola Hotel is located a 110 Pearl St., Natchez.

For more information, visit www.natchezeola.com or phone (601) 445-6000 or (866) 445-3652.

King size luxury suites offer living rooms and views of the river through oversize windows. The fire-and-water fountain is a focal point of the lounge area as is this antiquated gambling wheel.

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STORY FROM NEW ORLEANS

52 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

FEATURE

A Gallery for Fine Photography

BY KARA MARTINEZ BACHMAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES EDWARD BATES

J

oshua Mann Pailet’s museum is for sale. Not the whole thing, mind you. The brick walls that contain it on Chartres Street in New Orleans are not for sale. Nor is the name -- A Gallery for Fine Photography. Nor is the reputation that this fine photography dealer has built with collectors the world over.

The items for sale are simple sheets of paper, impressed with images of single moments in time that

will never happen again. Some of these moments may have happened this year; some happened almost two centuries ago. But there’s one thing most of the images in Pailet’s “museum” have in common: they were snapped by giants. Carrying original work by names such as Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus and E.J. Bellocq, Pailet’s labor of love is half-gallery, halfattraction.

OPPOSITE: Joshua Mann Pailet in his New Orleans gallery, A Gallery for Fine Photography, on Chartres Street.

ABOVE: A client peruses the photographs of Pailet’s gallery, which contains works by the masters - everything from the Daguerreotype to Ansel Adams and Diane Arbus.

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ABOVE: photographs line the walls of A Gallery for Fine Photography. The gallery hosts the work of the original masters such as Henri Cartier-Bresson (signature pictured), the Father of Photojournalism. The photographs appeal to both serious collectors and those wishing to connect with art.

54 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

“It’s the only museum in the world that’s for sale,” said Pailet. “What that means is from day one, I wanted to compete against museums. Competing against other galleries wasn’t enough. I really set my bar very high.”

Pailet’s “day one” happened 40 years ago, back when, he says, nobody understood photography as collectible art.

“What I really love is that more and more younger people, they know photography. They know who Ansel Adams is, they know who Diane Arbus is,” said Pailet. “I started in the ‘70s. And for the first 10 years I totally educated. Every single person who came to the door didn’t even know Ansel Adams.”

Pailet describes how many who walk into his gallery are visibly impacted by the emotional power of photography, which he believes is immediately accessible to just about anyone.

“There’s something about a photograph that everybody can connect to without any major education or background or special experience,” he said. “Any aged person can look at a photograph and say, ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it.’ You can’t quite do that in painting and in sculpture … they don’t know anything about the history of those mediums. I’m always reluctant to broadcast what I think or feel about a painting. But a photograph? Everybody feels comfortable.”

Pailet well remembers his first experience in viewing an Ansel Adams photograph. That day was part of a series of introductions to photography as art that have shaped his lifelong passion. “That Ansel Adams pulled me into that room and just woke me up,” he said.

He sees the same process play out with many of his clients when they walk into his gallery, which is different from others in many ways.

“I have a pretty unique gallery setting. It’s not a white-walled gallery. It is more like being in your home or a library or a study,” Pailet said. “There’s a lot of wood walls, a lot of brick … it’s a warmer, friendlier gallery than you’d expect, even though it has photographs that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

The kind of photographs Pailet offers really are only found in museums or in lock-boxes and safes. In fact, the New Orleans Museum of Art exhibits work from Pailet’s collection; his involvement with the city’s most prominent art museum runs deep.

“I just endowed a photography endowment at the New Orleans Museum of Art in the gallery there that’s named after my father,” Pailet said. “I’ve been very involved with the museum.”

And this other “museum” -- his own on Chartres Street -- features photography that is so old and rare, it goes back to the very beginnings of the medium.

“1839 is the earliest picture I have.

Photography kinda gets ‘announced’ in 1839,” explained Pailet. “If it’s an interest, we’ll open up the door that shows you one of the first photographs ever made, by one of the inventors of photography.”

The early photos Pailet speaks of are the work of Louis Daguerre. And of Henry Fox Talbot, another early pioneer of the art form. These photos are not reproductions; they are all the “real deal” and are for serious, discerning collectors.

“There is an authenticity,” said Pailet. “For instance, this is a real Ansel Adams. This isn’t a poster. This is the thing that he touched.”

The gallery is 2,000 square feet in size and has 200 photos from his collection hanging at any given time. As a dealer who carries a variety of international photographers, Pailet stresses that he does not focus on “New Orleans artists” per se, but the important ones -- such as Bellocq, who photographed the brothels of New Orleans’ infamous Storyville

District. The early days of jazz are also represented.

“When I do have someone in my gallery who lives in New Orleans, they are only in my gallery because they are very important on the world stage. Bellocq is an easy example,” Pailet said. “Most of my clients come from all over the world. Their tastes are quite varied and versatile and always surprise me.”

He makes exceptions for what is not readily available.

“I remind people gently that if I don’t have it, I know where it is,” Pailet said. “I started when there were no more than three or four galleries in the whole country that even attempted to show great photography. I’ve watched the whole market grow. When you think back to when I started, an Ansel Adams was a hundred bucks.” L

“I started when there were no more than three or four galleries in the whole country that even attempted to show great photography.

I’ve watched the whole market grow.

When you think back to when I started, an Ansel Adams was a hundred bucks.”

DID YOU KNOW?

“The most known name is Louis Daguerre, a Frenchman, with the Daguerreotype. The other person who gets equal billing is Talbot of England. They kind of invented competing and opposing photographic processes. Daguerre’s was a one-of-a-kind. Whatever you put in the camera and exposed and developed, that was the finished thing and that’s what you got, so there were no duplicates. Talbot created a paper negative that you could make many positives from. Talbot kind of revolutionized the world, because it made it possible to illustrate books. Nonetheless, Daguerre’s invention might be more beautiful, but it only lasts for about 15 years and fades off whereas this paper negative kind of evolves on and on and on.”

--Explained by Joshua Mann Pailet

WANT TO KNOW MORE? A Gallery for Fine Photography, 241 Chartres St., New Orleans, is open from 10:30 to 5:30 p.m. Thursday through Monday and Tuesdays and Wednesdays by appointment. For more information, visit www.agallery. com, phone (504) 568-1313, or email josuahmann@att.net.

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STORY FROM VICKSBURG

SOUTHERN FRIED LOVE at Walnut Hills %

BY KARA MARTINEZ BACHMAN PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIANNE TODD

H

erdcine Williams has been putting her love into pots of smothered vegetables and fryers of Southern-fried chicken for nearly 34 years. In a building that has stood for generations in Olde Town Vicksburg, Williams’ love for her work has stood equally strong. The heart she brings to the Walnut Hills kitchen is unmistakable.

“You’ve got to love what you do. A lot of people don’t love what they do—they just do it for the check,” says Williams, kitchen supervisor and culinary engine behind the beloved restaurant. “I loved it in the beginning, but now I love it more because it’s a living. If you go into a kitchen and start cooking and you don’t love what you do, you’re not gonna do it correctly. It’s gonna look like crap, it’s gonna taste like crap, but if you love it, you’re gonna make sure.”

ABOVE: Sitting down for a round table meal at Walnut Hills is like sitting down to a communal buffet, only there is no need to leave the table.

BOTTOM: Herdcine Williams, left, culinary engine behind the restaurant, and owner Joyce Clingan.

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58 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

Patrons of Walnut Hills apparently feel the love in every bite, in every interaction.

“We come here every week, Wednesday or Thursday, depending,” says Joy Graham of Vicksburg. “We come for the food. It is excellent.

But we come also for the feeling of family that we get here. Everybody knows us, everybody calls us by name and welcomes us.”

Graham’s husband, Rick, adds “They have the best service staff of anywhere in the city.

Williams says the experience is referred to as “round table” dining, a “family style” way of dining for which people reserve tables. “They love it.”

Sitting down for a round table meal is like sitting down to a communal buffet, only there is no need to leave the table. Food dishes simply spin on a large lazy Susan and customers help themselves to Southern favorites such as fried chicken, green beans, smothered squash, slaw, greens and the house specialty dessert, peach cobbler.

Owner Joyce Clingan says the main attraction for most diners is a clear choice of two menu favorites.

“Fried chicken and mac and cheese,” she says, emphatically.

She indicates her patrons are a mix of locals--such as the Grahams-and tourists, who are seeking an authentic Southern dining experience.

“The tourists drive our business, but we have a lot of local people who are repeats all the time,” she says. “We can make it on the locals, but the lagniappe is the tourists.”

Williams says she sometimes has to coax uninitiated “Yankees” over to her side of the culinary fence.

“It’s Southern cooking. The further you get going north, you don’t get this stuff. When you get here, when you come to Mississippi, people are looking for the mustard greens, the purple hulled peas, the squash … they want real Southern food,” she says. “Then you got some who come through here who really don’t know what Southern food is. So you kind of have a problem there. But once they taste it, they say, ‘Aw, my goodness, I like this.’”

Williams is not alone in her passion for Walnut Hills; it is a family affair. Williams’ mother used to work in the kitchen, making the slaw.

Her son, Xavier, waits tables.

“He would come up here with me at the age of 5,” says Williams, describing how her son was practically raised between the walls of the historic-home-turned-restaurant. “They’d drop him off after kindergarten and he’d stay in here with me.”

The building housing the restaurant has a long history, and it reflects a unique trait of the architecture of Vicksburg. Although it

OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE: Diners can choose from round table dining or traditional; Southern fried chicken and gravy; chicken fried steak; the house specialty peach cobbler; a colorful plate of fried chicken, greens, mac ‘n’ cheese, cole slaw, green beans and sweet tea. Doesn’t get much better than that.

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“If you go into a kitchen and start cooking and you don’t love what you do, you’re not gonna do it correctly. It’s gonna look like crap, it’s gonna taste like crap, but if you love it, you’re gonna make sure.” - Herdcine Williams opened as a restaurant in the 1980s, the handsome structure was built a full century before, in 1880.

Bill Seratt, Executive Director of the Vicksburg Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, explains what is unique about the old building: pierced

More a part of the restaurant’s story than perhaps anyone else now living in Vicksburg, Williams hopes to keep making her own history there. If she has anything to do with it, her long stint in the kitchen will continue on as long as she can keep going.

columns.

“Baby, I’ve been here from day one … I like it … I love it,” she says.

“I’m going into my 34th year here. It’s just a part of me. After here, I go home, because I have to sleep there, and do what I do there. But every day I look forward to getting up the next day and coming here, because this is just a part of life for me.” L

“I’m not really sure of the origin, but they were developed here,” says Seratt, pointing at the exterior porch columns featuring the airy, scroll work cut-outs. “There’s a few cities, I think in Fairhope, Alabama, and someone has mentioned that there’s a few in Florida – but they were prominent throughout Vicksburg in the 1880s with a more Italianate architecture.”

60 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

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STORY FROM GREENVILLE, MISS.

62 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

MUSIC

The music of Eden Brent

BY STEPHEN CORBETT PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARIANNE TODD

“Dave Brubeck said that the best way to please an audience is for them to only to be able to anticipate what you’re going to do half of the time. You can’t be too predictable, but you can’t be too unpredictable either. I give the crowd my all, and they give it back,” says Eden Brent in a Southern drawl reflective of her Greenville, Miss., heritage.

And, that’s exactly what she has done with her forthcoming album, “Jigsaw Heart.” The release is yet another achievement on a long list of accomplishments.

Brent won the Blues Foundation award for “Acoustic Artist of The Year” in 2006, along with the “Pinetop Perkins Piano Player of the Year” award, and “Acoustic Album of the Year” award for her release, “Mississippi Number One,” in 2008.

Her previous projects were recorded in Memphis and New Orleans. For her latest album, she went to Nashville and made a record that denotes an Americana sound. But given Brent’s eclectic taste in music, it isn’t too far out in left field.

“My music collection contains everything from Gregorian chant to heavy metal,” she says with a laugh. “And there is really not one genre that I enjoy more than another. But it is awfully tricky to play death metal on piano.”

Brent was initially trained in classical piano, and she studied

jazz in college. Music was always around her growing up. She got into big band jazz from her mother, and her father was a fan of Hank Williams and Marty Robbins. But she met her biggest musical influence as a teenager when she met legendary Delta blues pianist Abie “Boogaloo” Ames.

“My parents knew Boogaloo, but it never occurred to me that he would want to play with me. I just asked him one day, and he said he would. I was just a snot nosed kid at the time.”

The partnership proved to be lucrative and was documented in the 1999 PBS special, “Boogaloo & Eden: Sustaining the Sound.”

Boogaloo was so influential on her playing that she earned the nickname “Little Boogaloo.” She had also learned his style so well that when they played together listeners had difficulty distinguishing who was playing.

“My connection to Boogaloo really spoke to people because of how different we seemed, but the music was the same,” Brent explains. “Mississippi has not been seen as having been progressive, but you can do what the hell you want to in the Delta. The biggest difference I saw in black culture and white culture is that white families have their barbeques in the in the backyard, and black families have theirs in the front yard so that people knew about it. I have MISSISSIPPILEGENDS.COM

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met some bigots, but despite what people may think about Mississippi, I have never seen a KKK march in Greenville.”

Brent spent several years working with Boogaloo and remained close to him until his death in 2002 at the age of 83. Despite all of the years she spent under his wings, she has not made a career of being a Boogaloo Ames tribute act, especially with her new album.

“I tried to go in a slightly different direction. I needed to flex my muscles like a body builder,” she laughs. “Nothing in particular made me take a new direction. I still love the blues. I would have to leave the Delta if I didn’t. I just needed to stretch my legs and move in a different direction. I don’t want to keep making the same record with a different name. I get in a terrible rut if I get too cozy. I want to grow and develop.”

“Jigsaw Heart” was produced by Canadian artist Colin Linden who has worked with Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris. The

studio--formerly RCA studio A--was designed by Chet Atkins and recorded such artists as The Monkees, Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Waylon Jennings and Dolly Parton.

In addition to her normal touring schedule, Brent has also performed at The Kennedy Center, the British Embassy and with B.B.King at the 2005 presidential inauguration. She returned in January to the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise and will play the cruise again in October.

“My goal is not to be stale,” she says. “I want to leave a legacy. I want to be enjoyed beyond these days.” L

WANT TO KNOW MORE? More information on Eden Brent’s new album and her upcoming concert dates can be found at either www.edenbrent.com or www.piedmonttalent.com.

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You’re going to want to try them all. Our new menu has something for everyone. Sink your teeth into a mouthwatering steak or try our lighter fare with a salad. Otis & Henry’s® Bar and Grill combines the comfort of a neighborhood bar and grill with delicious favorites you’d cook at home.

Whatever your pleasure, we offer great food at great prices.

Sunday, wedneSday & thurSday 4:00pm - 10:00pm Friday & Saturday 4:00pm - 12:00am O&h expreSS Open 24/7 ®

1380 Warrenton rd. • Vicksburg, Ms 39182 • WWW.ladyluckVicksburg.coM © 2013 Isle of Capri Casinos, Inc. Must be 21. Gambling problem? Call 1-888-777-9696.

68 • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2014

Check out the new menu!