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Wesley Jefferson's Page
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- About Me:
- By the time Wesley Jefferson was born in rural Coahoma County, Mississippi in 1944, the first great era of Delta blues was history. Robert Johnson and Charley Patton were dead; Skip James had joined the church; and many of the rest were left behind as a result of a recording industry ban and shifting public tastes.
But blues remained an ongoing proposition for the people of the Delta, and Jefferson was raised in the thick of it. From his childhood experiments with an ancient diddley bow to his recent triumphant appearance at the Chicago Blues Festival, Jefferson has quietly carved out a half-century career as a blues musician.
His sharecropper parents supplemented their meager incomes in the traditional style. “My mama ran a juke as early as I can remember,” Jefferson recalls. “It wasn’t no separate building. It was in our house. Just a room in the front. One room with a couple of tables in it. They always had a gambling table. She always made fish and chitlins, and there was always blues around.”
Among the earliest bluesmen he recalls hearing was Lee Kizart of Tutwiler. “He was a burial guy. Worked in a funeral home. But he played this big old piano. He was a great player. He and a bunch of guys would haul that piano around Coahoma County playing parties and fish fries. Took about four men to move that thing.
“There was another guy they called Popeye. Played acoustic guitar, beat his old drums, harmonica, trumpet even. He sounded like a six-piece band,” Jefferson says. “He had some woman hit him on the head with a brick and kill him. She was jealous, thought he was after some other woman.”
But of the bluesmen he heard as a child, the best was Ernest Roy Sr. “He played 12-string, just great. I’ve never heard anyone quite like him” he says. Roy’s sons Ernest Jr. and Walter Roy would go on to record with Big Jack Johnson and Frank Frost.
Jefferson heard some of these men at his mother’s juke, where he listened from a back room. Others he would hear when visiting nearby Tutwiler. “We’d have to go on over there to get our hair trimmed,” he says. “And while I waited for my turn, I’d walk over to the clubs there and listen from outside.”
Inspired by the music he heard, Jefferson – like a lot of kids of his generation – made his own stringed instrument. “Oh, it wasn’t nothin’ but a piece of wire nailed onto the wall, but I could make it sound pretty good!”
It wasn’t until he moved to Memphis in his late teens, however, that Jefferson really began to play more seriously. “I used to get down there on Beale Street and, course, it’s a lot different now than it was then,” he says. “People had so much stuff in the pawn shop, it’d be spilling out on the street. Anything you wanted you could get it there. New suit, whatever. That’s where I got my first guitar.”
But little-by-little during his five years in Memphis, Jefferson began to gravitate toward drums. When he returned to Clarksdale in the mid-1960s, he was firmly ensconced in the drummer’s chair.
By day, Jefferson worked as a mechanic at the Hopson Plantation on the southern end of Clarksdale. By night he began infiltrating the Clarksdale blues scene, forming a trio with guitarist and vocalist David Porter and a bass player known only as “A.C.” They took up a residency at the famed Smitty’s Red Top Lounge, where Jefferson’s various groups would play for decades, along with likes of the Jelly Roll Kings.
Eventually Jefferson switched bands and instruments, this time settling in on bass, which remains his instrument of choice today. The new band featured guitarist J.C. Holmes, drummer and singer C.V. Veal, and Veal’s wife Marian on vocals. Although the Veals subsequently left blues in favor of the church, a man who looks suspiciously like C.V. occasionally shows up at local jukes to commandeer the microphone late at night.
“We’d get paid something like $8 a piece,” Jefferson recalls. “We’d charge 50 cents at the door and it would be just packed in there. Standing room only.”
Among those who witnessed Jefferson’s band at Smitty’s, was a very young Terry Williams, who had yet to acquire the nickname “Big T.”
“I known Terry since he was nine or ten. He and his friends used to be peeping in the windows over at Smitty’s,” Jefferson says with a chuckle. “He was just a kid then, but he kept growing up and up and he told me he wanted to play with me. He played bass mostly back then. He was the baddest bass player around. I got him and some of his friends and we played together for two or three years.”
Williams remembers those days fondly. “There was always hot blues at Smitty’s. And whiskey! Whiskey was the thing. Everybody had a pint. If you came out of there walking straight you were good. I played with them off and on. That was a traditional thing in Clarksdale. Everybody had to spend time sitting in with Wesley and his band.”
In the early 1990s, two-thirds of the legendary Jelly Roll Kings lineup, Frank Frost and Sam Carr, cast their lot with Jefferson. Although the Jelly Roll Kings had been an internationally renowned unit, Jefferson’s local reputation and drawing power – along with Frost’s growing alcoholism and failing health – were such that Jefferson was the front man. “That was my band,” Jefferson confirms. “I was out front. I organized the gigs. I’d even go to pick up Sam every weekend in Lula and bring him back to Clarksdale for the shows.”
Another member of his band beginning around that time was an aspiring guitarist named James Johnson, who called himself Super Chikan. “He would just beat on the guitar back then,” Jefferson says with a broad grin. “He couldn’t play nothin’! Man you couldn’t believe what a racket he made. But he kept at it, and just got so good, you couldn’t believe it.” Today, Super Chikan is arguably the biggest musical draw in Clarksdale and remains a hot commodity on the blues festival circuit.
Eventually, Carr and Frost exited Jefferson’s band, and a several new members joined. Over the past decade, some of his band’s more notable members have included Super Chikan on guitar, bassist Willie “Rip” Butler, guitarist Michael “Dr. Mike” James and singer Gladys Kyles.
In 2007, Broke & Hungry Records released an intimate record of raw country blues featuring Jefferson and former bandmate Terry “Big T” Williams. The record received strong critical acclaim and earned the duo and invitation to the Chicago Blues Festival, where they wowed blues lovers from around the globe.
These days Jefferson and his band can most frequently be found at one of the Delta’s few remaining jukes – Sarah’s Kitchen and Red’s Lounge in Clarksdale or the Do Drop Inn in Shelby.
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Update on Wesley
First I'd like to thank everyone who has so generously contributed to the Wesley Jefferson Fundraiser. We still have another 10 days to go before the effort wraps up, but early response has been wonderful.
Fellow LBW member Roger Stolle and I stopped by to see Wesley at his home in Clarksdale last Saturday. He was looking pretty fragile, and it's hard to say for certain what his prognosis looks like, but he was in good spirits and had a really positive attitude. He's even talking… Continue
Fellow LBW member Roger Stolle and I stopped by to see Wesley at his home in Clarksdale last Saturday. He was looking pretty fragile, and it's hard to say for certain what his prognosis looks like, but he was in good spirits and had a really positive attitude. He's even talking… Continue
Posted on May 13, 2008 at 6:14pm
Wesley Jefferson Needs Your Help
Hey, gang. I have some lousy news to report.
Wesley "Junebug" Jefferson, who cut a record for Broke & Hungry Records last year, is battling lung cancer. For those who don't know Wesley, he has been playing blues for more than 40 years, and has been in bands with everyone from Frank Frost and Sam Carr to Robert "Bilbo" Walker and Super Chikan. He's an outstanding singer, bass player, bandleader and human being.
He's fighting the good fight . . . still out there gigging… Continue
Wesley "Junebug" Jefferson, who cut a record for Broke & Hungry Records last year, is battling lung cancer. For those who don't know Wesley, he has been playing blues for more than 40 years, and has been in bands with everyone from Frank Frost and Sam Carr to Robert "Bilbo" Walker and Super Chikan. He's an outstanding singer, bass player, bandleader and human being.
He's fighting the good fight . . . still out there gigging… Continue
Posted on April 25, 2008 at 4:47pm — 7 Comments
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I was 11 years old when I first met Wesley "Junebug" Jefferson. It was at Smitty's Red Top May of 1992. I had been reading about and trying to learn to play the Blues for a couple of years. I never dreamed that I would be sittin in a Juke Joint on a Saturday night in Clarksdale Mississippi Listening to a real live Blues Band in a real Juke Joint, but there I was. That night changed my life. I also never dreamed Wesley would become my friend, mentor, and Band Mate. Little did I know, one day I too would be singing the Blues, Just Like Wesley. It's been over a year and there is not a day goes by your not thought of. I was grateful to be counted as your friend. You will always be remembered and never, ever, forgotten. Mississippi Adam RiggleHere is my wish for the very best to you and all my LiveBluesWorld friends as we take the music of our heritage into 2009 and the 21st century.
It's an honor to be on this journey with you. ..and a pleasure to be your friend. Thank you for allowing me to be a member of the community.
..."true greats" ...are not those born with "golden spoons" in their mouths. ...but those who through "hard work" turn their own "wooden spoons" into "gold".
"...the re-emergence of blues music as serious social commentary."
http://myspace.com/billyjonesbluez
http://losangeles.going.com/billyjonesbluez
http://www.blackplanet.com/billyjonesbluez
http://www.americansongspace.com/billyjonesbluez/
I enjoyed listening to your songs... I love your style
you're really great.
much respect,
Billy Jones
Willie D.
I need to find your Cd???..thanks from the UK...
~Dave
greetings from Bristol, England
&
Ken Pustelnik
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