Artist:     Jimmy “Duck” Holmes

Album:     Cypress Grove

Label:     Easy Eye Sound

Release Date:     10.18.2019

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Mississippi’s Bentonia blues is a localized strain akin to the northernmost Hill Country blues in its haunting, percussive grooves, but often a shade darker in tone. The late, great Skip James should not be the little town’s only famous practitioner. Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, the 72 year-old last surviving resident player of the style, should be famous as well. Most nights though, Holmes expels his blues from the belly of his guitar and his very being at Bentonia’s Blue Front Café, which he inherited from his folks.

The elder Holmes opened what’s now America’s longest continually-gettin’-down juke joint in 1948. Cypress Grove was produced to sound like Holmes at the Blue Front on any given Saturday night, but in superb audio. The highly melodic, but stark and gritty nature of these blues endures and impresses by Holmes’ natural performances, and by the ideal embellishments that The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who also played guitar on eight of the eleven tracks, applied.

Holmes begins the proceedings appropriately stripped, just his pungent, antique voice and blunt acoustic guitar attesting to Skip James’ “Hard Times.” A delicious taste that entices. Renowned Delta and Hill Country bassist Eric Deaton and drummer Sam Bacco of the Nashville Symphony add ample depth for a muggy slither through the Skip James’ title song. Auerbach then joins them all for “Catfish Blues,” cooked up so many ways, and evolving into Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ Stone” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile.” In Holmes’ hands, and with Auerback sailing like a ghost on guitar to startling effect, the old Robert Petway classic feels like a gloomy plea. For Muddy Waters’ “Rock Me,” rising star guitarist Marcus King rolls with the band, and pulls off large notes that scream in pleasure. Or is it pain?

King fits right in, solidifying his commitment and talent simultaneously, just as Derek Trucks did as a youngster playing on record alongside legendary delta guitarist Cedell Davis. Holmes’ originality, and that of the Bentonia style of blues, both hit hard here.

Highly addictive, this is traditional blues done the real way, for today. God only knows why this music isn’t as massive in popularity as it is in impact. Awards are due.

—Tom Clarke