South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
‘Better Call Saul’ to remain on hold
Juke joint owner Holmes is last carrier of Bentonia’s musical storytelling tradition
Q: Any info on “Better Call Saul”?
A: Yes, and it’s not good for the fans of this great show. In late February, AMC boss Josh Sapan said, “We still have some shifting around due to COVID-related production delays for our shows,” according to a report by The Wrap. “We have a fuller slate of the ‘Walking Dead’ universe shows than we’ve had in some time, with ‘The Walking Dead’ back and ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ back at full strength, and then the second season of ‘World Beyond.’ It does look likely, at this point, that ‘Better Call Saul’ will move into the
first quarter of 2022.”
Q: Is the Discovery+ streaming channel replacing regular programming on cable TV? On every channel I watch on TV, it is inundated with the Discovery+ boasting exclusive programming with most of the channels that are on regular cable TV. Does that mean that programs like “Ghost Adventures,” several of the programs on the Food channel and programs on HGTV will not be showing any new programming or even repeats?
A: Thanks to the heavy marketing campaign for Discovery+, the new streaming service drawing on original shows and an array of cable programs, I have received many letters from people concerned that they are losing shows from their cable, possibly entire channels.
So let’s start with the promise a top Discovery executive recently delivered: HGTV, Food, Travel and all the other channels in the Discovery family will continue to exist on cable, with new and returning programs.
At the same time, though, the parent company is very high on Discovery+. It helped add about 7 million subscribers to Discovery’s streaming portfolio by the end of February as viewers were drawn to new shows featuring Discovery stars, spinoffs of Discovery programs and repeats of older shows.
Q: What happened to Lou Dobbs’ show on Fox Business?
A: Fox let Dobbs go in early February, even though he hosted the most popular show on Fox Business. The network said in a statement that “plans have been in place to launch new formats as appropriate post-election, including on Fox Business. This is part of those planned changes.” It was widely speculated that Dobbs had gone too far in his support of former President Donald Trump, including what one publication called Dobbs’ “extreme and unrepentant endorsements of Mr. Trump’s false election claims.” Or he could have been sacrificed because of a bigger problem for Fox. The day before his firing, the Smartmatic voting-technology company filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the Fox Corp.; the suit targeted Fox’s “false claims” that Smartmatic had fixed and rigged the 2020 election.” In addition to the company, the suit specifically named Fox stars Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo.
Do you have a question or comment about entertainment past, present and future? Write to Rich Heldenfels, P.O. Box 417, Mogadore, OH 44260, or brenfels@gmail.com.
BENTONIA, Miss. — With callused hands, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes plucks an old acoustic guitar at the juke joint his parents started more than 70 years ago. He checks the cafe’s inventory: jars of pickled eggs, beef jerky, pork hocks. He tends to the wood-burning stove, made from an oil-field pipe. And every morning, he eventually settles in on a stool behind the counter, waiting — hoping — that someone who wants to hear him play will drop in.
Holmes, 73, is the last Bentonia bluesman, the carrier of a dying musical and oral storytelling tradition born in this Mississippi town of less than 500 people. And now, he’s a Grammy-nominated artist, with a recent nod in the category of best traditional blues album category for “Cypress Grove,” a record he hopes will help preserve the Bentonia blues long after he’s gone.
The world has changed around Holmes and his Blue Front Cafe, the country’s oldest surviving juke joint. Across the South, the venues — historically owned and frequented by African Americans — have shuttered as owners pass away.
“I’ll be here in this hole in the wall every day, for as long as I can, so that people don’t forget,” Holmes said. “We’re trying to make sure it doesn’t die.”
When the Blue Front opened in 1948,
it was the first African Americanowned retail business in Bentonia, then a majorityBlack farming community. Holmes was just a baby. His parents, Carey and Mary, were sharecroppers.
Mary ran the Blue Front during the day while Holmes worked with his father in the fields.
The Holmeses’ business was a community gathering place. People came to have their laundry pressed, get a haircut, or pick up salt, pepper and other nonperishables.
And they came for the blues. Musicians lined up outside to play the Blue Front, with guitars strapped to their backs and harmonicas in their pockets.
During cotton-picking season, the Blue Front was open 24 hours a day to accommodate farmworkers, who came in for a hot plate of Mary’s famous buffalo fish. On weekends, people stayed all night drinking moonshine, dancing and playing music.
Historians traveling through Mississippi to document blues musicians discovered Bentonia’s style. It’s described as haunting and eerie; its minor tonality isn’t found in the betterknown blues styles of Delta and hill country.
Growing up, Holmes learned from his neighbor, “the father of the Bentonia blues.” Henry Stuckey, an aging World War I veteran, played to entertain Holmes and his 13 siblings on their porch.
The style is passed from one musician to the next — it can’t be learned using sheet music.
“The old-timers I learned from couldn’t read, and they couldn’t read sheet music,” Holmes said — he doesn’t read music, either. “They didn’t know what a count was, didn’t know about minors or sharps or open or closed tuning. They was just playing. They had no idea there was a musical language to what they were doing.”
Dan Auerbach, producer
of “Cypress Grove” and a member of the band the Black Keys, said the beauty of Holmes’ music is the improvisation. Holmes never plays the same song twice. Each performance is a snapshot in time.
“Those songs, they’re like a living organism, almost. They’re changing daily,” he said. “You can feel the realness and the immediacy of the music. It’s very idiosyncratic, and that’s what makes it so special.
“Now, in this day and age, it’s like everything’s homogenized, and we’re all on the same server. Jimmy ‘Duck’ Holmes lives in a world that time forgot — it hasn’t changed.”
Today, businesses of Holmes’ youth
have shuttered; buildings are torn down. More than a quarter of residents live under the poverty line.
“People my age was
tired of going to the cotton fields,” Holmes said. “As soon as they got a chance, they got away from Bentonia, to Chicago, California, New York. There wasn’t nothing here.”
Holmes never imagined leaving. He lives on the same farm where he was raised, about a mile from the Blue Front.
His presence has become Bentonia’s biggest draw. Visitors come from all over the world to see him, to hear the music and to learn the tradition.
Before the pandemic, Mississippi musicians performed at the Blue Front every other Friday, sometimes more, playing different blues styles. In 1972, Holmes started an annual blues festival, now the longest-running in Mississippi.
He holds Bentonia Blues workshops. And every day that he sits behind the
counter at the Blue Front, he’s willing to teach anyone who walks in.
Some fans are surprised he’s so accessible, said Robert Connely Farr, a Mississippi native who has been visiting Holmes for years for guitar tips, all the way from Vancouver. But for those who know Holmes, it makes perfect sense.
“His whole goal in life is to give that sound away, is to perpetuate or further the Bentonia sound,” Farr said. “I think it’s important to Jimmy, that his place is open and that it constantly has music. He wants there to be life in that building.”
Holmes has performed in Europe, South America and across the U.S. He opened for the Black Keys in the nation’s capital in 2019. But he always comes back home.
“I would hate if someone took time out of their day to
come see me, and I wasn’t here,” he said. “I appreciate it, that people want to travel from Asia and Europe because they want to know about the blues. I like to be here when they come.”
Holmes laments that no young people in Bentonia want to learn. They say it’s too complicated. People don’t appreciate how the blues influenced popular music today, how every genre has roots dating back to it, Holmes said.
But he keeps spare guitars around the Blue Front, just in case someone wants to play.
“It will survive somehow,” Holmes said. “I learned enough that I was able to carry it on, and probably once I’m gone, somebody will be sitting around here playing, someone who picked up the things that I was doing. I have to hope. I have to hope.”
Fireworks, skateboards and button batteries are among the products associated with increased trips to the emergency room during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
While ER treatment of product-related injuries fell by about a quarter between March and September of last year, a new report pointed to surges for certain types of products.
The rate of severe injury was nearly the same as the year before.
Overall, treatment for product-related injuries dropped 24%, but only went down 1% for severe product-related injuries.
The largest increases in all age groups involved fireworks and flares (56%); skateboards, scooters and hoverboards (39%); and severe injuries from all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), mopeds and minibikes (39%).
Meanwhile, ER-treated injuries related to button batteries was up 93% among young children.
The report also found steep increases in treatment of injuries related to cleaning agents (84%) and soaps and detergents
(60%).
While bicycle injuries were up 1% overall, they were up 21% among people
40 and older, and 39% for those older than 70.
Sports-related injuries, including those that usually occur at schools, fell by as much as 81%.
“These data begin to tell a story of how consumers were injured by products during the pandemic,” CPSC acting Chairman Robert Adler said in a news release. “With more data and more resources, CPSC can help make sure that consumers are safer, whether they are quarantining at home or back at work and school.”