It is Clarksdale’s oldest blues festivals and she turns 35 years-old this weekend.
And it may be the best one yet!
Grammy Award winner and Clarksdale’s own Chris “Kingfish” Ingram will headline this year’s Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival and is expected to draw a crowd. The weekend event will see the town packed with blues legends on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 11-13.
“We are delighted to announce Kingfish as our Saturday night Main Stage finale,” said Melvita Tillis, Sunflower chairman, and Maie Smith, booking chairman. “It’s appropriate that his performance marks this important year in our festival’s history of authentic and elite presentations that have remained free and open to the public for decades.”
Ingram, who is a graduate of the Delta Blues Museum's education program and a Grammy Award winner, has performed in the White House, was honored with the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters (MIAL) top honors for musicians, and has performed extensively abroad in the UK and in Europe.
“Attendance at the Saturday night finale is expected to be large although it would be impossible to duplicate the attendance of Robert Plant’s 25th anniversary performance, which was the largest downtown crowd in Clarksdale history” said Smith.
The music starts at 7 p.m. Friday with the Delta Blues Museum Band performing on the Main Stage. Local Bluesmen Lusious Spiller and Super Chikan also play that night.
While Kingfish will play at 10 p.m. Saturday, there are other performers lined up, too. Mark “Mule Man” Massey plays at 5:45 followed by Jimbo Mathus at 6:45, awards presentation at 7:30, Terry “Big T” Williams at 7:45, Miss Gladys at 8:45 and Anthony “Big A” Sherrod at 9 p.m.
The music tones down Sunday with seven groups, choirs and soloists singing Gospel music at the air conditioned City Auditorium.
The Sunflower Festival helped publicize many bluesmen and some of these still make the pilgrimage home to play in Clarksdale.
Among past Sunflower headliners are Otis Rush, who played at the first festival inside the Thompson Center.
Other super popular headliners have been Bobby Rush, Big Jack Johnson, Shemekia Copeland, Koko Taylor, Bobby Blue Bland, Ike Turner and the Ikettes, the North Mississippi Allstars, Dorothy Moore, Charlie Musselwhite, Latimore, “Spoon Full of Blues,” led by Jostein Forsberg from Clarksdale’s sister city of Notodden, Norway; and “Women in Blues” with Rita Engedalen and Margit Bakkin of Norway.
The 2023 Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival website - sunflowerfest.org - has the complete lineup and venues for this weekend’s event..
