SUNFLOWER RIVER BLUES & GOSPEL FESTIVAL

2010 - 23rd Annual Festival

Join us for the 23rd annual Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival!

Ike Turner and his Rocket 88 crew from Clarksdale who launched the world's first rock and roll record are being celebrated as musical icons this summer by the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival.

Being planned are reunions, interviews, exhibits, and educational forums similar to last year's "Remembering Sam Cooke" and others honoring Early Wright, Charlie Musselwhite, Latimore, and Norway 's Spoonful of Blues Band.

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We would love to hear from you and share the great times you have had at the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival. Please email any comments and photos you would like to share with us to sunflower@deltabluesmuseum.org

2010 was out first time in USA from France for a musical trip : New Orleans - Memphis - Nashville for 3 weeks, something like a pilgrimage. I have been listening to all the music from blues to rhythm and blues and rock n' roll for more than 35 years.

I was running the blues trail, discovering the Sunflower Festival at the end of the week. We stopped for three days and searched for artists and especially the roots of blues (what I was looking for...) Jimmy Duck Holmes was on stage, Robert Bilbo Walker was at Cat Head, great moments but hearing Tater and discovering his strange music and lyrics, right back from Africa, directly to my heartune musique lancinante par a hypnotic music by a great man in brown suit, a tired voice as a whisper, he sold CD but I did not dare, I bought it at cathead ... we returned to France 10 days after the festival and some days later,we learn his death by email ... disappointing and curious to discover a beautiful thing and if it goes off shortly after. RIP Tater. He continues to play and sing the blues for us.

The other great moment was Sunday afternoon concerts at the gospel festival. What an amazing time. Powerful, a warm, engaging and simple fervor, never feeling abroad, a big big big time in our life.

Images are less strong than the memories, but here is a record of that memory.

Good luck, success,congratulations for your work to continue to live this music, take care of old, encourage and support young people, we will return, sure !

Cordially
Jean Jacques LE ROUX
France

For more information regarding the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival please visit www.sunflowerfest.org.