A blues festival will be back in Columbus beginning Thursday, featuring bands, a harmonica workshop and a motorcycle charity ride — all in honor of local blues musician Willie King.
The Columbus Arts Council hosts Blues for Willie most years in celebration of the artist whom CAC program manager Beverly Norris called a “home body” who loved Columbus and wanted to make music for the people in his community.
“He was just such a great musician that represented the best of the old time blues, but at the same time he was such a wonderful loving, giving person,” Norris said.
King performed his last ever concert at the CAC in March of 2009 the day before he died.
Norris remembers King giving her 10-year-old grandson $5 that night and telling him to put it toward his first guitar lesson. It was the sort of thing King did, she said.
“He could have been a musician who was out making lots of money in bigger areas and markets but he was a home body,” Norris said. “He liked to stay around here and be around his people, his family. He never called them fans. He didn’t think of them as fans or business people. He thought of them as his family.”
This year’s three-day festival will open with a gallery exhibit at the CAC featuring artwork from blues artists Bill Abel and Big Joe Shelton. The gallery opening is 5:30 p.m. Thursday and Abel and Shelton will likely be playing music during the event, Norris said.
On Friday and Saturday nights, four bands will perform. Each band has a connection to King — either the artists played with him or were mentored by him, Norris said.
Big Joe Shelton and The Black Prairie Blues Ambassadors will perform at 7 p.m. Friday, followed by The Nellie Mack Project at 8:30 p.m.
At 7 p.m. Saturday, The Bill Abel Band will perform followed by the Old Memphis Kings at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door each night. Attendees can also purchase a weekend pass for $20.
Harmonica players Harvey Berman and Mike Bruce will conduct a harmonica workshop for beginners from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday. Both instructors are members of the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica and have played harmonicas for 45 years. Berman is the founder and president of the Crescent City Harmonica Club in New Orleans, and Bruce is the State Tennessee Harmonica Champion. To register, call 662-328-2787 or go by the Rosenzweig Arts Center. The class is for ages 10 and up. The cost is $6 in advance and $8 at the door. The lesson includes a free harmonica.
The CAC will also host Bikin’ for the Blues, a motorcycle charity ride to raise money for the CAC’s education programs and for the Richard E. Holmes, II Memorial Foundation, which helps veterans with health issues. The charity ride will start at 1 p.m. at the Hitching Lot in downtown Columbus. VFW Riders is also sponsoring the ride.
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