Juke Joint Festival
Juke Joint Festival attendees (photo by Delta Bohemian)
The Juke Joint festival is Clarksdale’s largest and most attended entertainment festival. Now in its 17th year, the festival is centered in Clarksdale’s historic downtown Arts & Culture District. Festival dates are in late April every year (2023 festival is April 15th).
The annual Juke Joint Festival is a combined blues music festival and small-town fair. The official date is on a Saturday, but events and activities around the festival spread across four days, and much of the week proceeding it.
Pig Racing pleasure at the Juke Joint Festival (more fun than a barrel of monkeys).
Growing annually; the Juke now features 100 plus blues music acts spread across daytime and nighttime performance slots. A nationally known attraction, Juke Joint has been featured in the New York Times and on Sirius-XM Radio. It is covered annually be news media throughout the U.S. and abroad.
One can see music performed on more than 10 different stages, and in every venue in town (over 20 in all), plus one can see such diverse, wildly entertaining events such as pig races, monkeys riding dogs and an amplitude of other midway attractions. Visitors from all over the world and the majority of our United States attend (48 of them last year).
Reds Lounge is one of the Juke Joint Festival’s places to be.
Accommodations: Juke Joint Festival attendees fill up downtown Clarksdale. Most are repeat visitors and many book accommodations much, if not years in advance. Food is available throughout the festival, and Clarksdale restaurants are packed. Many attendees start arriving in town days to a week or so in advance.
Get involved, check out the Juke Joint Festival website here. Buy wristbands for night-time Juke events here (only $25 for every venue in town).
Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival
Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival poster in tribute to Big Jack Johnson
(Visit the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival website and the Mississippi Blues Trail website.)
Now in its 30th year, the internationally recognized Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival is a major event to see authentic Mississippi talent perform live on stage. This Festival, along with The Sunflower Blues Association and the Delta Blues Museum, was the launching point for Clarksdale’s evolution into the widespread birthplace of the blues and rock and roll attraction that it has become. It has core support from the City of Clarksdale and Coahoma County, and it is attended by enthusiastic fans, visitors, and the news media from all over the world.
Sunflower River Blues Festival on the Delta Blues Museum stage (photo via the Sunflower Festival).
The Sunflower Blues and Gospel Festival was originally created and funded in 1988 by downtown merchants as an event to bring shoppers into Clarksdale. In 1992 the North Delta Academy of Gospel Music became involved, which added “gospel” to the festival’s title.
First organized by blues scholar, Jim O’Neal and blues and overall music enthusiast, Dr. Patricia Johnson, the Festival is held the second weekend in August each year. Spread across three days, the festival is free to the public. It has a primary focus on blues, soul and gospel music, and inspiring acoustic, rock, and other performances can be on the bill too.
Robert Plant crowd at the Sunflower River Blues Festival (photo by Travis Calvin).
Each year, this art and cultural music celebration event honor the music and culture that came out of the Mississippi Delta. This includes world known artists, national and regional professionals, today’s Clarksdale acts and student performers from the Delta Blues Museum Education Program and other Clarkdale youth enrichment programs as well. The Festival is primarily held on the main stage at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale’s historic downtown Arts & Culture District, and most all Clarksdale music venues and nightclubs come alive in support of the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel festival too.
Johnny Rawls working up the crowd at the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival (photo via online festival coverage).
Festival Performers: Every Festival line-up is somewhat different, and each year terrific surprises fill out the Festival line up. Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant has played here. Clarksdale’s own Big Jack Johnson was a regular for years. So has been Grammy Award Winner, Bobby Rush. Famed blues harmonica player, Charlie Musselwhite is a regular repeat headliner. So are current Clarksdale guitar wonders, Super Chikan and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. Denise La Salle has graced the Festival stage, and so have Lonnie Shields and Lonnie Pitchford. Down home country blues fans have marveled at Robert Bilbo Walker, Foster “Mr. Tater” Wiley, T-Model Ford and Sam Carr when they were still with us. Local favorites Jimbo Mathus, of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Lightening Malcom play here, as does rising hill country blues star, Cedric Burnside. (Do come see for yourself, the list goes on and on and on.)
Come early to get an upfront seat at the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival.
To recognize the efforts of those who have worked on behalf of blues and gospel, the festival began presenting an annual Early Wright Award in 1991 in honor of the legendary Clarksdale deejay, followed by the Julius Guy Award, named for the co-founder of the gospel festival.