The Lineup for 14th Annual Clarksdale Film & Music Festival January 26-28, 2024 in Clarksdale, Mississippi

The historic little town of Clarksdale, Mississippi, presses “play” on a brand-new, curated collection of movies, music, and special guests at its 14th annual Clarksdale Film & Music Festival January 26–28.

Friday, January 26, 2024

Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art

1:00 pm: Pre-Fest live blues by TERRY “HARMONICA” BEAN

Stone Pony Tack Room

3:00 pm: Land of the Blues (21 min.)

3:30 pm: Africans Reasons (90 min.)

Award-winning director Jefferson Mello traveled to six countries and over many miles to explore the ancestry in the blues, rumba, and jongo, through the eyes of three main characters (including Pontotoc, Mississippi’s Terry “Harmonica” Bean) and their beautiful stories. Although geographical spaces and musical instruments are different, the origins of all these rhythms are African. African Reasons is a delicate, intimate, and musically profound portrait in images and interviews with musicians and experts that traces the identity of these musical genres in the appreciation of their cultures.

5 pm: Daily reception with live music by JAMES “SUPER CHICKAN” JOHNSON

6:15 pm: A Life in Blues (90 min.)

A Life in Blues is a documentary film by Mark Rankin and Brian Wilson, who are flying down from Canada to for this world premiere event. After decades in the blues trenches—from long juke-joint nights to international festival stages—the life story of Clarksdale, Mississippi’s blues-playing, truck-driving, folk-art-making legend James “Super Chikan” Johnson will finally be told.

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Stone Pony Tack Room

11:00 am: Tribute to RED PADEN

11:05 am: Mississippi Music Videos by TIM HARDIMAN (15 min.)

11:15 am: American Mileage: Cam Cole (preview, 12 min.)

11:30 am: Spring Initiative: Student Films (10 min)

11:45 am: “Growing a Film Industry on America’s Richest Soil” by NOLAN DEAN (25 min.)

12:30 pm: King Bee: The Slim Harpo Story (90 min.)

This new documentary film is told by James “Slim Harpo” Moore himself, via a super-rare 1968 interview with Susan Cassidy Clark at Steve Paul’s Scene in NYC. His wife Lovell, his stepson William Gambler, and his original King Bee bandmates James Johnson, Rudy Richard, and Jesse Kinchen also tell the story with the original King Bee. Harpo fans Dr. John, Ray Davies, Delbert McClinton, and Jimmie Vaughan also appear in the film. Slim Harpo (1924–1970) was a Grammy Hall of Famer from Baton Rouge and a leading example of the “swamp blues” style. The singer/guitarist/harmonica player is perhaps best remembered for hits like “I’m a King Bee” (1957), “Rainin’ in My Heart” (1961), and “Baby Scratch My Back” (1966). Over 250 artists have recorded his music, including The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Pink Floyd, Otis Redding, the Who, Hank Williams, Jr., and many more. This is the film’s Clarksdale premiere, featuring the filmmakers John S. Zaffuto and Johnny Palazzotto.

2:15 pm: Born in Chicago (78 min.)

Born In Chicago chronicles a uniquely musical passing of the torch. It’s the story of first-generation blues performers who had made their way to Chicago from the Mississippi Delta and their unexpected followers—young, white, middle class kids who followed the evocative music to smoky clubs deep in Chicago’s ghettos. This new Chicago blues transcended the color lines of the 1960s as young, white Chicago musicians apprenticed themselves to legends such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Featuring Dan Aykroyd, Elvin Bishop, Mike Bloomfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, and many more.

4:00 pm: CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE & ELVIN BISHOP concert film presented by SFJAZZ at Home (60 min.)

5:00 pm: Daily reception with live music by JIMBO MATHUS

6:00 pm: The Secret World of Charley Patton with JIMBO MATHUS (20 min.)

The Secret World of Charley Patton is a short film by Jimbo Mathus that chronicles the early Delta blues legend Charley Patton and his only child, Rosetta Patton.

Jimbo Mathus spent his youth playing music with family and friends and worked as a hand on Mississippi riverboats. Later, he scored platinum records with his band the Squirrel Nut Zippers and earned multiple music awards, including a Grammy with Buddy Guy. Through all those experiences, he also maintained a fascination with handmade, European-style marionettes. In 2023, Visit Clarksdale Tourism awarded a grant to Shared Experiences (SE) in downtown Clarksdale, and Jimbo Mathus became SE’s first Artist in Residence. For a month he worked, creating marionettes and background sets to make a based-on-a-true-story short film that chronicles early Delta blues legend Charley Patton and his only child, Rosetta Patton.

6:30 pm: The Blues Society with AUGUSTA PALMER

This acclaimed new documentary film offers a re-evaluation of the 1960s seen through the lens of the Memphis Country Blues Festival (1966–1969). It’s the story of Blues masters like Furry Lewis and Robert Wilkins, who had attained fame in the 1920s but were living in obscurity by the 1960s. It’s also the story of a group of white artists from the North and the South who created a celebration of African American music in a highly segregated city. The Blues Society follows the festival from its start in 1966 as an impromptu happening, through a period of cross-pollination with New York’s East Village scene, and up to the 1969 Festival, which mushroomed into a three-day event and garnered substantial print and television coverage—including an appearance on Steve Allen’s national PBS show, Sounds of Summer. Reaching into the present, the film ends in a 2017 concert where Rev. John Wilkins returns to the stage he last shared with his father 48 years earlier.