Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes - Cypress Grove

Size: 91,0 MB
Time: 38:55
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2019
Styles: Juke-Joint Blues
Art: Front & Back

01. Hard Times (2:54)
02. Cypress Grove (2:08)
03. Catfish Blues (4:11)
04. Goin' Away Baby (4:37)
05. Rock Me (4:16)
06. Little Red Rooster (3:22)
07. Devil Got My Woman (3:18)
08. All Night Long (2:59)
09. Gonna Get Old Someday (3:59)
10. Train Train (2:59)
11. Two Women (4:08)

Jimmy "Duck" Holmes is one of the last practitioners of old-fashioned Mississippi blues, playing a variation that belongs to the Yazoo county town of Bentonia. Holmes kept that sound alive at his own juke joint and on a series of records in the 2000s, but the 2019 album Cypress Grove is designed as a vehicle to introduce the bluesman to a wider audience. Dan Auerbach, the lead singer of the Black Keys and head of the Easy Eye Sound studio and label, shepherded the project, bringing Holmes up to Nashville to record with a bunch of his cohorts, including guitarist Marcus King. Undoubtedly, this crew is much larger than the roster that usually shows up on a Holmes album, but Auerbach doesn't overload the grooves of Cypress Grove. At times, he has Holmes perform with a full band, sometimes emphasizing King's vivid, greasy slide, but at all times, Auerbach lets Holmes set the pace and flavor, grounding every one of the 11 tracks in the spooky stomp of the Delta. All the extra color isn't extraneous, though. Auerbach's band of pros accentuates Holmes' full-blooded, deeply etched blues, lending dimension to both his guitar and voice. It's a modernization of his sound but not a bowdlerization; if anything, it's perhaps the finest realization of Holmes' blues. At the very least, it's certainly the liveliest and boldest album he's made. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Cypress Grove

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Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes - Back to Bentonia: 5th Anniversary Edition

File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Source: LL (from CD)
Released: 2006/2011
Styles: Blues
Time: 54:25
Size: 124,9 MB
Art: Full

(4:30) 1. I'd Rather Be the Devil
(3:49) 2. Cool Water
(3:29) 3. Hurry, Hurry, Hurry
(4:13) 4. Count the Days I'm Gone
(3:17) 5. Vicksburg Blues
(3:10) 6. Six Little Puppies
(4:01) 7. Mr. Taxi Driver
(1:51) 8. Duck's Shuffle
(2:49) 9. Hard Times
(5:35) 10. Back To Bentonia
(2:17) 11. Your Buggy Don't Ride Like Mine
(3:26) 12. Whiskey and Women
(4:25) 13. Rambling On My Mind
(4:10) 14. Everyday (Blues All Day Long)
(3:15) 15. Keys To the Highway

Upon its original release in 2006, Back To Bentonia served as both the debut CD by rural Mississippi bluesman Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes and the inaugural release from Broke & Hungry Records. This 5th anniversary deluxe edition expands on the original with new notes, never-before-seen photos and four previously unreleased tracks from the original recording sessions. The CD features sterling contributions by Bud Spires on harmonica and the late great Sam Carr on drums. In its original form, Blues Revue Magazine raved that the CD was 'as plaintive as anything you're likely to hear this side of Robert Johnson's crossroads.' It received three Living Blues Awards. In this deluxe edition, Back To Bentonia is now even better. -- Amazon.

Back to Bentonia: 5th Anniversary
Back to Bentonia: 5th Anniversary artwork

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Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes - It Is What It Is

Size: 108,3 MB
Time: 46:29
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2016
Styles: Delta Blues, Country Blues
Art: Front

01. Buddy Brown (5:36)
02. Pencil And Paper (5:35)
03. It Is What It Is (5:26)
04. Love Alone (3:53)
05. Evil (6:26)
06. It Had To Be The Devil (5:48)
07. So Glad (4:14)
08. Slow Down (3:58)
09. It Was What It Was (5:29)

The entire album was recorded at the Blue Front Café, the oldest juke joint in Mississippi. The record purposefully allows its cinderblock acoustics to be Jimmy’s accompaniment compelling the listener to close their eyes and experience pulling up a chair in the old juke joint and listening to him play. Those same walls have absorbed the haunting music of Skip James, Jack Owens, Henry Stuckey, Bud Spires, Cornelius Bright, Tommy West and others over the years and provided the perfect feedback to Jimmy’s stark and dissonant blues.

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes is the embodiment of raw country blues and this album presents the full range of his singular talents. Jimmy’s tenor voice rises and falls along with the electric menace of an old Harmony Stratotone, the full smoothness of a 12 string and the jangling hypnotic rhythms of his acoustic Epiphone. A few songs also feature Jimmy’s slow and mournful harp overlaying and contrasting with the minor tuning that makes the Bentonia Blues so distinctive and unique.

The Bentonia Blues traces its roots to early blues musician, Henry Stuckey who developed a unique style of playing using an odd open D-minor and E-minor tuning that he developed after meeting some British soldiers from Trinidad or the Bahamas in France during World War I. Stuckey brought the tuning back to the small, isolated Mississippi town of Bentonia and taught it to Skip James, Jack Owens, Jacob Stuckey and Cornelius Bright. Together these musicians elevated the unique style of blues evolving in Bentonia by playing together and writing songs invoking dark and brooding imagery.

Bentonia Blues continued to develop when Mary and Carey Holmes started the Blue Front Café in 1948, the year after Jimmy “Duck” Holmes was born. Henry Stuckey lived next door. His guitar was the first guitar Jimmy ever held in his hands and Jimmy is regarded as the last bluesman Henry Stuckey ever taught.

After Jimmy took over the operation of the Blue Front Café in 1970, it became more than just a place for the local blues musicians to play on weekends. It became the center of the Bentonia Blues with Jack Owens, Bud Spires, Jacob Stuckey, Cornelius Bright, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and Hill Country Blues musician Tommy West regularly meeting at the Blue Front Café to shoot pool, have a few drinks and listen to each other play. Jack would teach Jimmy how to play the Bentonia Blues by telling him, “Watch my hands, boy. Watch my hands.”

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes has since emerged as one of the most original and uncompromising country blues musicians playing today as he preserves the Bentonia Blues tradition taught to him by the originals, Henry Stuckey and Jack Owens. Fans of Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and the Bentonia Blues can hear it first-hand almost every day at the Blue Front Café. Stop in and grab a cold drink on a hot summer day or sit by the barrel stove on a cold winter day and, if you’re lucky, Jimmy may play you a song or two. If you’re really lucky, he may show you how. Until then, fans can put on this record, close their eyes and listen to Jimmy’s toe tapping the dusty concrete floor, the light clacking of a ceiling fan, the roar of a train and the most original and important country blues being played today.

It Is What It Is

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Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes - Live From Briggs Farm Blues Festival

Size: 143,9 MB
Time: 61:53
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2015
Styles: Acoustic Blues, Country Blues
Art: Front

01. Slow Down (4:39)
02. Worry You Off My Mind (5:54)
03. Shaggy Hound (5:44)
04. Wake Up Woman (5:51)
05. Bentonia Blues Narrative (1:46)
06. Evil (4:36)
07. I Hate To Leave You (3:27)
08. Bath Water (5:06)
09. Cool Water (6:02)
10. Blue Front Cafe Narrative (2:36)
11. Early In The Morning (7:17)
12. Bye Bye (8:48)

Briggs Farm is older than the blues. The farm, founded in the 1760s in Nescopeck, has been maintained by 10 generations of Briggs’ and counting. The music, founded at the turn of the 1900s in the South, migrated with its musicians and adapted to its new environments. Both American institutions have gone through generations of change while remaining fundamentally the same. They’re coming together again July 10 and 11 for the 18th Annual Briggs Farm Blues Festival.

Blues music came to Richard Briggs when he was a teenager. He was 16 in 1969—the perfect age for an impressionable young man to be exposed to the British Invasion and, by proxy, the American musicians who were influencing them.

“The British Invasion (artists) were coming here and listening to the blues guys—Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and everybody out in Chicago,” Briggs said. “That’s pretty much the sound that turned into rock and roll … blues. That was all happening when I was a teenager. I think the music just stayed with me my whole life.”

As Briggs got older he began looking into the contemporary blues scenes of the South. He said that music is still directly handed down in that area, so the style differs from the cosmopolitan blues of Chicago birthed by African Americans driven from the South by the Great Depression. It was important for him to have Southern blues represented at Briggs Farm when he started the festival in 1998—this year he’ll be doing his part to preserve the sound of the South for future generations.

“One of the things we try to do every year is bring musicians up from there,” Briggs said. “This year it’s Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who is directly related to a style of guitar playing that is rarely seen anymore. Some people say he’s the last person that plays the Bentonia style guitar. This year we’re going to be recording a ‘Live from Briggs Farm’ album by Jimmy “Duck” Holmes (in) two nights on the Back Porch stage. This is our first Live from Briggs Farm.”

Holmes is the latest in a long line of blues legends who’ve taken the stage at the local festival, but Briggs doesn’t just look to the past when he’s booking acts—he also has his ear to the future. Contemporary blues musicians Devon Allman and Danielle Nicole are the headlining acts for July 10 and 11, respectively. Nicole, who previously performed with her two older brothers in the blues band Trampled Under Foot, is making her first appearance at Briggs Farm. The eponymous band and EP put Nicole front and center, but when it comes to the live show, she likes to let the audience dictate the experience.

“I really like the people who come to the show to kind of decide how they’re feeling rather than me telling them how they’re going to feel for the night,” Nicole said. “I feed more off of the crowd and the vibe of the ambiance rather than being like, ‘this is what we’re gonna do tonight!’ We touch on a lot of different genres of the blues and roots, not just traditional. I don’t really feel like I fall into a certain category. When you come to one of my shows you’re going to get a lot of original material. We don’t spend a lot of time telling stories on the stage, we’re pretty focused on the music and more the experience of the show.”

From Nicole to Holmes, the Briggs Farm Blues Festival will showcase a diverse lineup of blues artists. The blues won’t be the only attraction available at the festival, though—Lonnie Shields is a blues musician from Philadelphia who’s performing at the festival, but he’s arriving early to help prepare the festival’s Mississippi-style soul food. The festival will also have a vendor’s village featuring artwork, clothing, jewelry and cigar box guitars for aspiring blues musicians.

There are a lot of miles separating the South, Chicago and Nanticoke. There are a lot of years separating the blues on sharecropper fields from the blues on the field at Briggs Farm. Distance and time mean nothing to the blues, though, and on July 10 and 11 a century of music will take over a centuries-old field for a two-day celebration of the blues.

The South has its juke joints. Chicago has its clubs. Nescopeck has Briggs Farm, and Briggs Farm has the blues.

Live From Briggs Farm Blues Festival

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Jimmy Duck Holmes - Ain't It Lonesome

File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Source: LL (from CD)
Released: 2010
Styles: Blues
Time: 40:07
Size: 92,5 MB
Covers: Full

(3:45) 1. Slow Down, Slow Down
(5:20) 2. That's Alright
(3:27) 3. All Night Long
(3:04) 4. Done Got Tired Of Tryin'
(5:05) 5. My Baby's Gone
(3:42) 6. Bentonia Boogie [Instrumental]
(3:13) 7. Someday Baby
(3:22) 8. So Glad (My Baby's Coming Home)
(5:05) 9. Tell Me Woman
(3:59) 10. Nightmare

A lot has changed for Jimmy "Duck" holmes since the release of his first album in 2006. He's been nominated for awards and invited to play major festivals. But for the most Holmes' life hasn't changed much. He still lives in the house where he was born and he still runs the Blue Front Café, the rural juke joint his parents opened when he was an infant. Holmes continues to play his blues in the same mournful style that made his hometown of Bentonia, famous among blues lovers through the music of Skip James and Jack Owens. Several cuts were recorded in the back room at Duke's juke joint, but the bulk of the recordings are from a session at the Big toe Studio in Duncan, MS. For the most part it's just Duck and an acoustic guitar. For three raucous tracks he plugs in with Lee Williams on drums. regardless of what he plays, Duck never loses sight of the local tradition of straight Bentonia blues.

Ain't It Lonesome

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Jimmy 'Duck Holmes' - Back To Bentonia

File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Source: LL (from CD)
Released: 2006
Styles: Blues
Time: 39:01
Size: 90,1 MB
Covers: Full

(4:30) 1. I'd Rather Be the Devil
(3:49) 2. Cool Water
(3:29) 3. Hurry, Hurry, Hurry
(4:13) 4. Count the Days I'm Gone
(3:17) 5. Vicksburg Blues
(3:10) 6. Six Little Puppies
(4:01) 7. Mr. Taxi Driver
(1:51) 8. Duck's Shuffle
(2:49) 9. Hard Times
(5:35) 10. Back to Bentonia
(2:12) 11. Your Buggy Don't Ride Like Mine

Hailing from Bentonia - the same small southern Mississippi town that spawned country blues legends Skip James and Jack Owens - guitarist Jimmy "Duck" Holmes manages to conjure up the spirits of his predecessors while at the same time infusing his blues with his own stark and powerful voice. Critics are calling Back to Bentonia a contender for best traditional blues release of the year and hailing it as "a traditional blues masterpiece." Blues historian and Muddy Waters biographer Robert Gordon writes that, "I've never been to Bentonia, but whatever's in the water there, whatever's haunting the grounds at night, whatever gave the place its historical power, clearly lives on in these recordings."
Jimmy "Duck" Holmes is as real as blues gets. He's like stepping back in time, and Broke & Hungry Records should be thanked for capturing this authentic Mississippi bluesman on disk. As a bonus, a few of the tracks feature the legendary Sam Carr on drums (for god's sake, Carr has played with everybody from Sonny Boy Williamson II to Buddy Guy!) and the ellusive Bentonia, Mississippi harmonica player Bud Spires (Spires is best known for his work with bluesman Jack Owens). This is a CD that rewards the listener more and more with each listening. Add it to your collection, and then brag about it to your blues friends. -- Amazon.

Back To Bentonia

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Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes - Done Got Tired Of Tryin'

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 50:33
Size: 115.7 MB
Styles: Acoustic country blues
Year: 2007
Art: Front

[3:46] 1. Cherry Ball
[7:16] 2. Pencil and Paper
[3:49] 3. Baby Gal
[4:39] 4. Biscuit Roller
[4:07] 5. Blue Front Breakdown!
[7:13] 6. Train I Ride
[3:16] 7. Catfish Blues
[4:44] 8. Wake Up, Woman
[6:54] 9. Could've Been Married
[4:46] 10. It's Over

A year after the release of his critically lauded debut CD, blues guitarist Jimmy “Duck” Holmes returns with a second slab of deep country blues. Done Got Tired of Tryin’ features 10 new songs performed in the haunting Bentonia, Mississippi style of Holmes’ predecessors, Skip James and Jack Owens. But Holmes also incorporates strong rhythmic elements into his music, thanks to the rousing accompaniment of drummer Lightnin’ Malcolm on several tracks.

The songs on Done Got Tired of Tryin’ stem from two recording sessions held at the Blue Front Café, the rural juke joint Jimmy’s family has operated since 1948. The juke is believed to be the oldest operating juke joint in Mississippi. The CD includes Holmes’ interpretations of several blues classics including “Catfish Blues,” “Train I Ride” and the Bentonia classic, “Cherry Ball.” The remaining tracks spotlight Holmes’ powerful songwriting. Tracks such as “Pencil and Paper” and “Biscuit Roller” display a songwriting voice as strong as any in the country blues world today.

Done Got Tired of Tryin’, like Holmes’ debut Back to Bentonia, will be released by St. Louis-based Broke & Hungry Records. The label also is responsible for Searching for Odell Harris, the debut from 66-year-old Odell Harris and Meet Me in the Cotton Field by Clarksdale blues veterans Terry “Big T” Williams and Wesley “Junebug” Jefferson.

Done Got Tired Of Tryin' mc
Done Got Tired Of Tryin' zippy

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Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes - 2 albums: All Night Long / Gonna Get Old Someday

Album: All Night Long
Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 66:19
Size: 151.8 MB
Styles: Country blues
Year: 2013
Art: Front

[4:02] 1. Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues
[4:33] 2. Train Train
[6:52] 3. I'm Going To Leave You
[3:56] 4. All Night Long
[6:45] 5. Someday Baby
[7:10] 6. Blues Ain't Nothing
[5:07] 7. Red Rooster
[5:39] 8. Devil Got My Woman
[4:58] 9. Don't Get Mad
[4:59] 10. Rock Me
[4:28] 11. Six Little Puppies
[3:32] 12. Hurry Hurry
[4:10] 13. Rock Me (Take2)

A stunning new release from the last known blues musician who can play the Betonia Blues Style !

Jimmy Duck Holmes is one of today s most celebrated blues artists, and the last known blues musician who can play the Betonia Blues Style. The Betonia style is named after the style of Skip James and Jack Owens, who played the famous songs Hard Times and I d Rather Be the Devil, and is characterized by distinctive tunings, the use of falsetto, and dark lyrical themes. Various researchers including Alan Lomax recorded Holmes, but until recently his only vocal appearance on record was the song Devil s Blues, which he performed with Cornelius Bright. In 2006, Broke & Hungry released Holmes debut CD Back to Bentonia, which won several Living Blues Awards and led to performances at the Chicago Blues Festival and the Arkansas Blues & Heritage Festival. In 2007 the same label released a second CD, Done Got Tired of Tryin , which National Public Radio listed as one of the Top 10 Blues Albums of the year. This new CD release features 12 great original songs by one of the best!

All Night Long mc
All Night Long zippy

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Album: Gonna Get Old Someday
Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 43:39
Size: 100.0 MB
Styles: Acoustic blues
Year: 2008
Art: Front

[3:39] 1. What's The Matter Now
[3:30] 2. Leave In The Morning
[3:39] 3. Devil Blues
[4:00] 4. Buddy Brown
[2:33] 5. Shaggy Hound
[2:28] 6. Done Broke Down
[3:25] 7. Could Have Been Married
[4:08] 8. Shade Tree
[4:21] 9. Gonna Get Old Someday
[4:00] 10. Cool Water
[3:55] 11. Hurry Hurry
[3:54] 12. Hard Times

On his third album, and his first for Fat Possum imprint Big Legal Mess, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes goes deeper into the Bentonia, Mississippi, blues sound that Skip James pioneered and Holmes inherited. His odd tunings, use of open strings, and mournful wail recall the classic James sound to a degree, but Holmes injects enough of his own personality (and a contemporary sense of urgency) to underline the fact that his blues are not a thing of the past. GONNA GET OLD SOMEDAY makes it clear that Holmes is one of the most vital blues artists of the 21st century. ~Jim Allen

Gonna Get Old Someday mc
Gonna Get Old Someday zippy

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