Friday night at Rick’s Caf will be the home to the first “Blues Night” in Starkville. Mississippi-natives Willie King and the Liberators will headline the concert along with local blues artists The Bill Cooke Trio and The Bar-B-Q Boys.
The idea for “Blues Night” came about last spring when WMSV Radio and Rick’s Caf celebrated their respective 10th anniversaries together. The week-long celebration consisted of different musical acts playing every night. One of the nights deemed “Blues Night” featured Willie King and drew the most success.
“We’ve been doing a six hour blues show on the radio station for 10 years on Sunday nights and that’s a real popular show,” WMSV Radio director Steve Ellis said.
“So we had our 10th anniversary back in April and one of the nights we did a ‘Blues Night’ at Rick’s and it worked out great, the bands were super, we had a big crowd and we thought, ‘Let’s try this again.'”
“The Friday night of our 10th anniversary celebration we had a ‘Blues Night’ and it did so well that we wanted to do it, eventually, on a monthly basis,” Rick’s Caf owner Rick Welch said. “It’s something different; I usually don’t do a lot of blues, or haven’t traditionally had blues acts in the past, but I’ve wanted to and this is just an avenue to help it and support it.”
The concert will feature a variety of acts such as The Bill Cooke Trio, which includes Bob Dam, a music professor at MSU, and recently reunited The Bar-B-Q Boys, a blues and R&B group comprised of Jim Beatty, Dee McKay, Earl Six and Jeffrey Rupp, the mayor of Columbus. The Bill Cooke Trio will take the stage at 8:30 p.m. followed by The Bar-B-Q Boys. At 11 p.m. Willie King and the Liberators will perform.
King, who hails from Prairie Point, Miss., has won many accolades which set him apart from other blues musicians. Among the awards he received are the Living Blues Magazine Blues Artist of the Year in 2003 and 2004 and the Living Blues Best Blues Album in 2002 for Freedom Creek.
King also received more than nominations as the Living Blues’ and W.C. Handy’s Best Live Performer, Best Song and Best Male Blues Artist.
Additionally he also was nomiated as the W.C. Handy Best New Artist of the 2001, when he was just 58.
King’s work has been featured on Martin Scorsese’s “The Blues,” a seven-part film series aired on PBS last year where he performed “Terrorized,” also nomiated for the W.C. Handy Best Song of the Year.
He’s appeared on blues magazine covers like Big City Blues and Juke Blues from London. According to The Commercial Dispatch, he founded the Rural Members Association in 1981 which creates opportunities for young people growing up in rural areas to learn about their cultural roots from community elders and help them gain economic and personal benefits from traditional skills and artistic talents.
“[Willie] is well-known in the blues circle and people generally love him,” Blues Roots Production’s Rick Asherson said. “He spends most of his time around his home in Mississippi and Alabama, but is known internationally. He’s slowly but surely getting better known and he just wants to spread his music around to everyone.”
He played at our 10th anniversary show and got a real good response from folks. It’s the type of folks that like jam-band music-like Dave Matthew’s Band,” Ellis said. “We had a lot of college-age folks come in and watch him; I was surprised to see that he has a strong following among the college kids.”
Ellis and Welch hope as many students as possible come out and see the show, but their main goal is targeting a slightly older crowd.
“Since it’s an away game this weekend, hopefully people that stay in town will come out and see it, but we’re also targeting a little older crowd, people my age, because they’re always looking for something to do and this is their chance,” Welch said.
Welch and Ellis hope this Friday’s performance fuels the fire for further blues shows in Starkville.
“If this thing is a success we hope to have it once a month,” Welch said. “This is gonna be great entertainment, and it’s not the like the typical college bands that I usually book.”
Admission is $7 at the door. Patrons under 18 can attend if accompanied by a parent.