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Jimmy "Duck" Holmes

Jimmy "Duck" Holmes (born July 28, 1947) is an American blues musician and proprietor of the Blue Front Cafe on the Mississippi Blues Trail, the oldest surviving juke joint in Mississippi. Holmes is known as the last of the Bentonia bluesmen, as he is the last blues musician to play the Bentonia School. Like Skip James and Jack Owens and other blues musicians from Bentonia, Mississippi, Holmes learned to play the blues from Henry Stuckey, the originator of the Bentonia blues. Holmes' music is based in the Bentonia tuning utilizing open E-minor, open D-minor and a down tuned variant, and is noted for its haunting, ethereal, rhythmic and hypnotic qualities. His eighth and most current album, It Is What It Is, on Blue Front Records has been praised by fans and music critics who have called it: "addictive" and "obsession worthy," "as gritty, stark and raw as one could imagine" and "absolutely hypnotic," and "an essential modern recording."

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Album Review

Jimmy "Duck" Holmes: Cypress Grove

Read "Cypress Grove" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Cypress Grove is the tale of two very different artists following well-tested and successful professional trajectories. While none of the Ur-bluesmen (Charlie Patton, Son House, Tommy Johnson, Skip James, Ishmon Bracey) are living, there remain a few musicians who knew them while they were still alive. One such musician is Jimmy Duck Holmes of Bentonia, Mississippi. One listen to the opening “Hard Times" will reveal the Ur-bluesman Holmes knew as one Nehemiah Curtis “Skip" James (1902 -1969). The flavor of ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Cypress Grove

Easy Eye Sounds
2019

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