Dan Auerbach Animates Authentic Bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes with Full Band on ‘Cypress Grove’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

72-year-old Mississippi bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes’ star continues to rise with this, Cypress Grove, his sixth studio album since 2006. His prior release, It Is What It Is was the inaugural release for the Holmes-owned Blue Front Records, and appropriately, was recorded inside the Blue Front Café, the oldest juke joint in Mississippi, which is owned and managed by Holmes. As such, its cinderblock acoustics, Holmes’ foot tapping on the concrete floor, the click of the ceiling fan, and the roar of train whistles caught Holmes sitting in a wooden chair playing solo. The disc was widely reviewed, including on these same pages, and must have caught the attention of Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. Either that, or Auerbach visited the Blue Front Café.

The Blue Front Café is located in Bentonia, MS and Holmes is today’s leading progenitor of the Bentonia Blues, a unique style of guitar open D-minor and E-minor tuning. It was developed by Henry Stuckey, who learned it from British soldiers from Trinidad who were stationed in France with Stuckey during World War 1. Stuckey brought the style back to Bentonia and taught it to the legendary Skip James, Jack Owens, Jacob Stuckey, Bud Spires, Cornelius Bright, Tommy West and others. As the style evolved through collaboration among these players, the lyrics and music took on a haunting, dark, quality that to this day remains mesmerizing and trance-like. Holmes’ parents, Mary and Carey Holmes, started the Blue Front Café in 1948, the year after J. Holmes was born.

Auerbach wanted to capture the magic of a juke joint Saturday night at the Blue Front Café where Holmes begins as a solo acoustic act and is later joined by other musicians to create electric sounds that rattle the windows and shake the walls. This writer has listened to several Jimmy “Duck” Holmes albums and seen him live twice but assuredly none of those performances are nearly as explosive as this one. Auerbach captured an energy and fire in Holmes that’s never been heard on record, and remarkably, was able to do so in a studio setting., that being Auerbach’s own Easy Eye Sound Studio in Nashville, with the album issued on Auerbach’s record label of the same name ( which, by the way, would benefit from larger and brighter graphics).  Unlike the “luck of the draw” chance on musicians showing up at the Blue Front Café, Auerbach hand-picked this band.

Drummer Sam Bacco is the principal percussionist in the Nashville Symphony and a very versatile resume, Eric Deaton, the quintessential Hill Country bassist, while Auerbach plays guitar along with emerging star Marcus King on a couple of tracks. Holmes handpicked the tunes, some originals, three from Skip James and covers from others. The album begins, as a Café evening would on “, with Holmes singing and playing alone on “Hard Times” – a song that Bentonia’s most notable bluesman, Skip James recorded in 1931 as “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” Another James’ tune, the title track, follows with Holmes singing “I’d rather be dead, dead in some old cypress grove.” Right off, you hear the hypnotic grooves and African influences to the blues. Auerbach takes it further with wah-wah guitar and feedback. Holmes is ebullient on “Catfish Blues’ as Auerbach brings stabbing accents and some fuzzy tones.  Marcus King adds slide guitar behind Homes’ fueled-up versions of Muddy Waters’ “Rock Me” and Holmes’ “All Night Long.”

Saxophonist Leon Michels provides a counter melody to Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster,” a tune that’s been covered way too much but this one, fortunately, offers a new sound. Another interesting mix of sounds is Holmes’ “Train, Train” which epitomizes its title with churning rhythms, train whistle sounds, and harmonizes guitars of Holmes and Auerbach. To really appreciate this album and the energy that Auerbach and band draw from Holmes, suggest you listen to Holmes alone, as in the album mentioned in the opening paragraph, for comparison.

Holmes will be touring with the Black Keys later this year as an indication of how high his trajectory is climbing. Yet this quote of his is somewhat baffling. “I didn’t know who Dan Auerbach or the Black Keys were when my manager told me Dan wanted to make an album with me,” Holmes said. Perhaps it’s simply an indication of how isolated life is in Bentonia, MS because this is not the first time Auerbach has taken up the cause of an original bluesman. Auerbach produced Leo “Bud” Welch’s last recording  The Angels In Heaven Done Signed My Name that was released earlier this year. But to Homes’ credit he says, “But when we started to play, I knew after a couple songs that him and those other fellas were passionate about it. And that’s what you need to play this music, It’s about passion. It’s not about dollars. You don’t make any money playing the real blues. There ain’t none in it.” We can whisper in Jimmy’s ear “opening for the Black Keys will be worth some money.” Holmes deserves it.

Related Content

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter