Music Notes by Matt Hanks Grammys Bring Surprises Like that embarrassing uncle you see once a year who still wears a leisure suit and a bad toupee, the Grammys have always been the least hip of the major entertainment awards. The odd thing is that hipness carries more cache in the music business than anywhere else. I guess the irony is appealing to the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the group that awards the Grammys. Of course, the Grammys can’t please everybody. Their greatest fault is that they try to. By setting his sights squarely on America’s lowest common aesthetic denominator and maintaining a doggedly provincial definition of popular music, that embarrassing uncle shoots himself in the foot every year around this time. But there’s something different about this year’s nominations, something curious, even encouraging. Be sure, the crass commercialism that usually defines the academy’s choices is still intact. But some of their choices are also informed by what can only be called genuine critical discretion. To wit: Legendary guitar obscurist John Fahey, a Grammy nominee? That has to signify something. Maybe it’s the apocalypse. But who knows? Maybe it’s hope. Then again, maybe it’s just a sign of the times. With the music business currently weathering a severe financial slump, there’s scarcely anyone to be crassly commercial about. Simply put, there’s less at stake this year. And that clears the way for an Album of the Year nod to arty upstarts Radiohead, and sagely voice-of-a-generation Bob Dylan. Both released albums this year – OK Computer and Time Out of Mind, respectively – to a flood of critical acclaim but modest sales. Of course, Grammy teacher’s pet Babyface (nominated in several categories again this year) gets his share of raves from the press too, but in the case of Radiohead and Dylan, the hype is deserved. In a year when reissues and retro-influenced newcomers achieved prominence, Radiohead was perhaps the only band that dared to take rock-and-roll into uncharted territory. And after a 20-year hiatus from relevancy, Dylan returned with a record so good that it almost makes up for all the regrettable music that other ’60s stalwarts are passing off these days. And speaking of the press, the biggest story of ’97, though far from the biggest seller, was electronica. The academy didn’t go as far as to create a category for this “new” genre, but it did welcome some of electronica’s most promising practitioners into its ranks. The Chemical Brothers received two nominations (Best Alternative Album and Best Rock Instrumental Performance) for their worthy second album Dig Your Own Hole, and the more obscure French duo Daft Punk received a Best Dance Recording nomination for “Da Funk,” a track from their debut album Homework. But the most welcome of this year’s Grammy surprises would have to be the two nominations bestowed on the little boxed set that could – Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. This reissue of the collection that almost single-handedly spawned the folk and blues revival of the ’60s would rank as one of the landmark releases of this or any other year. It’s also where John Fahey comes in. He, along with noted critics Greil Marcus, John Pankake, and others, offered up some of the most informed and sympathetic liner notes ever to grace the page. And with tracks from the likes of Dock Boggs, the Carter Family, and Furry Lewis, music doesn’t get any more timeless than this. Bravo, Grammy. n		Bringing It On Home A new nightclub and museum in Tunica brings the blues back to its cradle. by Mark Jordan ifty years ago, when a large number of African Americans were still sharecropping the huge cotton fields of northwest Mississippi, working six days a week with only Sundays off, the area’s dozens of juke joints were the place to be on Saturday night. Often mere clapboard shacks not much larger than a convenience store, the juke joints were true “dens of sin,” where a body could get a cheap bottle of liquor, meet a member of the opposite sex, and gamble the night away. And through all the drinking and gambling and loving ran the constant strain of the blues, often played by one or two guys on guitar with maybe a harmonica player. Today, of course, a new kind of “den of sin” has popped up in northwest Mississippi, specifically Tunica County. Not far from where the ramshackle jukes once stood, huge, gleaming, Las Vegas-style casinos have risen out of the region’s soy and cotton fields. And though they don’t look like they have much in common with, say, Muddy Waters’ old juke outside of Clarksdale, the essential purpose is the same, with plenty of gambling, free (and better-quality) drinks, and music. B PHOTO BY MARK JORDAN Blues Legends and Hall of Fame, when completed later this month, will be a free museum that will trace the development of the blues from its Mississippi and Texas origins to its maturation on the streets of Memphis and Chicago. ut now one casino has decided to put a little bit of the old juke joint back into the new juke joints. Horseshoe Casino’s Bluesville and Blues and Legends Hall of Fame – a combination blues-themed music hall and blues museum – opens this week with a series of performances by some of the blues’ hottest acts. On Friday and Saturday, the Fabulous Thunderbirds will open the Bluesville nightclub with performances on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, Bluesville will host a Blues Foundation benefit with Bob Margolin, Pinetop Perkins, R.L. Burnside, John Westin, and Blind Mississippi Morris and the Pocket Rockets. Monday will be another fund-raiser, this time benefiting the Memphis Food Bank and featuring James Cotton, Burnside, and Morris. The opening festivities will continue on Thursday with the Robert Cray Band, Tracy Nelson, Marcia Ball, and Koko Taylor. Tickets for the Thunderbirds and Robert Cray shows are $10 each; tickets to the two charity events are $20 each. Tickets to all the events are available through Ticketmaster outlets. For David Simmons, partner in Memphis’ Rutland-Simmons advertising agency and Bluesville’s creator and “spiritual adviser,” the week’s festivities trumpeting the opening of the club and museum are the fruition of a dream that began when he first came to Memphis in the late ’70s. Simmons first heard the blues while working on his father’s construction crew in Anniston, Alabama, and fostered his passion for the music through the blues revival of the mid-’60s. He was dismayed by the deterioration of Beale Street, the home of the blues. But like others, Simmons saw the potential to turn Beale into a viable entertainment attraction. When developers first started to build Beale back up, Simmons tried to find backers for his blues-music hall/museum idea, but had little luck. The consensus was that Simmons’ idea was just too grand for a street that was taking its first steps toward revitalization. “I didn’t just sit on [the idea],” Simmons says. “I continued to develop the idea and collect memorabilia. … Finally, I just thought the idea wasn’t going to work and put it on the shelf.” There it sat until Simmons’ friend Isaac Tigrett invited him to dinner at Huey’s. Tigrett had just sold his share of the Hard Rock Cafe chain he had helped create and, after some time spent on a spiritual journey, was now looking to start a new chain of clubs based around the blues. As a result of that dinner, some of the ideas Simmons had been developing found their way into Tigrett’s famed House of Blues chain of clubs. Then two years ago, Simmons was approached by Horseshoe Casino. “Horseshoe asked me to ask Isaac if he would be interested in putting a House of Blues in their casino, and Isaac responded that he didn’t want to put a House of Blues here [in Tunica] or in Memphis,” Simmons says. “Well, I told them that that didn’t have to be the end of the project, that I had an idea that I had been working on.” Now, Simmons’ vision is almost complete. Blues Legends and Hall of Fame, when completed later this month, will be a free museum that will trace the development of the blues from its Mississippi and Texas origins to its maturation on the streets of Memphis and Chicago. Encompassing some 5,000 square feet, the hall of fame utilizes rare photographs, original recordings, and vintage instruments – including guitars owned by Furry Lewis, Albert King, and Buddy Guy, among others – to tell the story of the blues. Adjacent to the hall of fame is Bluesville, a 1,200-seat nightclub done up in the juke-joint style but with some of the distinct, ostentatious touches that define today’s themed bars like Hard Rock Cafe and House of Blues. Old signs and posters dot the walls. The club’s three bars are each themed after a different instrument – guitar, harmonica, and keyboard, to be exact. “Mojo” guitars – autographed axes painted in a colorful folk-art style – hang from posts, paying tribute to players like Albert King and John Lee Hooker. Over the entrance hangs the King Biscuit Blues Festival’s distinctive neon sign, on loan 51 weeks a year. “It’s been a long time coming, but I’m so relieved it’s finally coming together, and the real thing is really starting to exceed even my dreams,” Simmons says. “It just so happened that [the project] came together in Robinsonville, which is a legitimate cradle of the blues. Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, and Willie Brown all lived and played around here. The junction of Highways 61 and 49 near here is where Johnson supposedly made his deal with the devil. James Cotton was born around here. And as a young man Howlin’ Wolf tilled fields here by day and by night learned from the likes of Charley Patton, Johnson, Brown, and Robert Jr. Lockwood. … So, ultimately we ended up not just revitalizing the project but putting it in a place that made sense.” n