Jimmy “Duck” Holmes

Gonna Get Old Someday

Fat Possum Records

By Geoffrey Himes

When the country-blues revival swept through Northern folk-music circles in the mid-‘60s, most of the aging bluesmen coaxed out of retirement played a variation on one of two themes--the gritty Delta blues of Son House or the lilting ragtime of Mississippi John Hurt. But there was one rediscovery whose music was so anomalous, so unlike that of his colleagues that he seemed to come from another planet, not merely another part of Mississippi.

That was Skip James, whose eerie falsetto vocals, open E-minor guitar tuning, rush-and-drag timing and jaundiced lyrics proved as foreboding as they were mesmerizing. With a little research, blues scholars learned that the singing and tuning were signatures of the Bentonia blues, named after the tiny town in west-central Mississippi, but the phrasing and lyrics were inventions of James' own distinctive gift.

The story goes that during World War I Bentonia's Henry Stuckey met some black soldiers from the Bahamas and learned the falsetto vocals and E-minor tuning from the islanders. When he returned home, he taught the style to his brother Jake and to their neighbors Jack Owens and Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James.

This is the way it always is with musical schools: the identifying sound can be shared by anyone who learns it, but only a genius can turn it into something special. James was such a talent that Robert Johnson rewrote James's "Devil Got My Woman" as "Hellhound on My Trail," Cream recorded James's "I'm So Glad" twice, and his "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" was sung by Chris Thomas King on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

In recent years, though, a second genius has emerged from the Bentonia school of the blues. Jimmy "Duck" Holmes was born in 1947, two generations after James, Owens and the Stuckeys. The youngster's parents ran the local juke joint, the Blue Front Café, where Owens, the Stuckeys, Cornelius Bright and Tommy Lee West regularly performed, often doing James' songs. "Duck" took over the café in 1970 and in the ‘90s started picking guitar with Owens and harmonica player Bud Spires. After his mentor died in 1997, Holmes finally stepped forward as a solo artist.

It was a late blossoming, but it bore remarkable fruit. Holmes, it turned out, had a rare gift for the unhurried, trance-like guitar picking of the Bentonia school. He was more likely to sing in a tenor than in James' falsetto, and he was more likely to be stoic about the world's injustices than insulted. But Holmes could hypnotize a listener with his cycling guitar patterns and his laconic drawl and thus get us to share his unblinking, clear-eyed view of the world as it is.

Jimmy Holmes' first album, featuring two songs by Owens, was 2006's Back To Bentonia, taken from 2005 sessions at the Blue Front Café and at the studio of the Squirrel Nut Zippers' Jimbo Mathus. The second album, featuring a spot-on remake of James's "Cherry Ball," was 2007's Done Got Tired Of Tryin', featuring leftovers from the Blue Front Café session and new recordings. The third album, the recently released Gonna Get Old Someday, is taken from 2003 sessions at the Pluto Farm in Mississippi. All three are terrific, with only minimal differences between them, but this latest release, representing Holmes' eager first shot at announcing himself to the world, may well be the best.

"Devil Blues" is an obvious nod to James and the Bentonia tradition, with Spires on harmonica, but Holmes' originality really comes through on "What's the Matter Now." This 12-bar blues gets the bickering between a husband and wife just right--both the title and the repeating acoustic-guitar figure imply that this is an argument the couple has had many times before. But when Holmes sings, "Baby Gal, is it me or is it you?" he's the rare blues singer who seems to be listening to what the woman is saying.

He subverts the usual blues formula in a similar way on "Could Have Been Married." The song's protagonist explains that he's remained single all these years because he didn't want to settle down and stop all his running ‘round. We've heard that a million times, but we rarely hear such a character admit that he was seriously tempted by marriage and had to make a tough decision. But that's just what Holmes does when he wistfully admits that he "could have" tied the knot, especially when he met this "good gal" who "let me have my way." Those sparkling Bentonia guitar fills represent the lure of what he passed up, but his tenor pushes on down its inevitable path.

The same kind of regret fills the slow blues of "Shade Tree," featuring Spires again. Holmes interrupts his own come-on to a woman by admitting that she probably won't join him under the tree because she's "got another man." Holmes reworks Memphis Minnie's song about male sexual impotence, "Done Broke Down," as a slap-happy dance song with hand percussion by Calvin Jackson. "Hard Times," one of the five songs that also appear on Back To Bentonia, is a chillingly despairing cry of poverty in this stark, minimalist arrangement.

The centerpiece of this album, however, is the title track. Holmes sings the opening lines, "If you keep living, you're gonna get old someday," in the weariest of voices, a fatigue contrasted by the jangling guitar motifs, as if equally sobered by both options: dying young or growing old. There's something arresting about the droll, deadpan vocal, for it never whines but it never sugarcoats either. It's the sound of someone thinking, "I don't like it either, but it's no good to pretend."

They may tell you you're not getting old yet, "but we all know that's a lie," he sings with a faint trace of disgust. Why be foolish about it? "You're gonna look in the mirror/you're gonna be a ball of gray." On the acoustic-guitar break, he plays the notes like sharp slaps across the jaw of anyone inclined to deny the facts. He sustains this unsparing but never rushed meditation on mortality for more than four minutes. No other blues song of this decade can match it.

It would be inaccurate to claim that Holmes is a blues giant of James' stature. There are only a dozen or so figures like that, and it's unlikely that Holmes can make up for his late start and catch up with them. But make no mistake: Jimmy "Duck" Holmes is a major blues figure, the most important active performer in the country blues tradition today. Keb' Mo' and Corey Harris have their place, sure, but they're unlikely to ever record something as unnerving as Gonna Get Old Someday.