Bio:
Jimmy “Duck” Holmes is the embodiment of raw country blues as one of the most original and uncompromising acoustic blues musicians playing today. From his first, Back to Bentonia (2006), to his most recent, It Is What It Is (2016), Duck’s albums have won numerous blues music awards from the Blues Foundation, the Living Blues Critics, and other organizations, and been named to annual top ten blues albums by NPR, Paste Magazine, Living Blues and others. Duck and his rhythmic and haunting minor tuned blues have been featured in numerous documentaries and programs by the BBC, Netflix, and independents including the acclaimed Canadian documentary I am the Blues, which won Best Feature Length Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards.
Duck’s importance as a blues musician was recently recognized when the State of Mississippi featured him on the Mississippi Bi-Centennial Forever Stamp issued by the United States Postal Service. Duck has developed fans across the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and South America through appearances at various festivals and by attracting fans to Bentonia for the past 46 years to the Bentonia Blues Festival, held the week ending on the third Saturday in June each year. In 2019, Duck appeared on Rose Hill, the new album by Mike Munson, and is currently working on a new album.
Duck is referred to as the Last of the Bentonia Bluesmen since he is the last direct musical descendent of Henry Stuckey, Skip James and Jack Owens. After Henry Stuckey and Skip James passed, Jack Owens continued Jimmy’s instruction while the two would sit and play at the Blue Front Café, the oldest surviving juke joint in Mississippi. Started in 1948 by Jimmy “Duck” Holmes’ parents, Jimmy took over the old juke in 1970. The local blues musicians would meet at the Blue Front, shoot pool, have a few drinks and play for each other. Today, Blues fans from all over the world travel to the Blue Front to soak in its history and hear authentic Blues from Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and others.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
General Manager
Michael Schulze [email protected]
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“Make No Mistake: Jimmy Duck Holmes is a major blues figure, the most important active performer in the country blues tradition.”
– Paste Magazine
“Jimmy Duck Holmes sings with a deep soulful phrasing.”
- New York Times Review
“Command performance ... hypnotic ... perfect ... when you can get your hands on something this legendary, you do it, without hesitation."
- American Blues Scene Magazine
"His themes are dark and moody, and his guitar work is simple yet stunning, building a hypnotic reverie on each track. Holmes … proves that the real blues are indeed not dead and buried. If you’re a deep blues fan, this is an essential modern recording.”
– Vintage Guitar Magazine
"Hypnotic. . . compelling . . . . Blues enthusiasts who enjoy their blues raw and honest will relish It Is What It Is"
- Living Blues Magazine
“His originals are as low-down as anything by Son House, Charlie Patton, or even Robert Johnson. Holmes is the heir to such blues and deserves a pedestal so more people can hear the real thing.”
– Classicalite Magazine
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).