Concert to help Helm house
A free concert to honor late musician Levon Helm and to help raise $100,000 to preserve one of his boyhood homes near Marvell will take place Saturday at the Marvell Ballpark.
The celebration, Levon Helm Downhome Jubilee, will feature music by the Lockhouse Orchestra from Batesville and include barbecue and beverages for sale, with proceeds from the sales benefiting the restoration project.
Gates open at 6 p.m. with the event beginning at 7. A live auction set for a break during the concert will feature several items, including a pearl white guitar donated by Loretta Lynn as well as some autographed photos, some autographed items donated by the late Conway Twitty’s family, and some photos and a CD donated by the Oak Ridge Boys.
Those attending are asked to provide their own lawn chairs.
About the house, Barbie Washburn, president of the Marvell’s Civic Club, says, “It’s been around the block a bit.”
Originally located in Turkey Scratch on the Thomson Farm, the house was earlier moved to property on U.S 49 near the Louisiana Purchase State Park and Blackton, where the historic, circa-1873 John Coleman Palmer House was located and in 2008 was being restored by business partners Richard Butler Jr. and Jeremy Carroll of Little Rock. Those plans changed when the Palmer House was destroyed by fire in May 2013.
“We got it after that,” Washburn says of the rustic early 20th-century farmhouse, which was then brought into Marvell. Earlier this year, the rustic wooden house, now owned by the local civic club, was moved intact to Marvell and placed on land across from the City Hall, library and police station.
“Levon lived there when he was very young until he was about 3 or 4,” Washburn says of the drummer for the legendary rock group The Band who was born in 1940 and died in 2012. “His daddy was a sharecropper and it was on the farm where he worked.”
Those attending the concert will be able to see the exterior of Helm’s former residence as it’s located next to the ballpark, but there won’t be any tours.
“You can walk up to it and have your photo made by it, but you can’t go in it,” Washburn says about the house, which is currently surrounded by a fence.
When it was moved, the chimneys and fireplaces were removed and there are still holes in the floor that need to be repaired.
Word of efforts to restore the house has spread and so has interest in it.
“In the last two or three weeks, we’ve had people from California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota come through here,” Washburn says. “It’s been unreal.
“We’re very proud of Levon. We’ve always thought of him as being special because we all knew him.”
Marvell Mayor Clark Hall says the fundraiser has drawn several sponsors — corporate and individual ones — for the only early Helm house still standing.
“Levon had lived in other houses around here but they have all since been torn down,” Hall says. His wife, Becky, owns the land where it sits and is leasing it long term to the Civic Club for a dollar a year.
The goal is to restore the house and furnish it the way it would have looked when Levon and his family lived there. Photos of Helm as a youth and personal items belonging to him, donated by his family and friends, will be incorporated.
Hall says, “We hope it will serve two purposes, to honor and serve as a tribute to him, but also to introduce Marvell and our part of the Delta and our way of life and heritage to the rest of the state of Arkansas and others.”