HELENA-WEST HELENA – Two more popular Delta musicians – Kenny Brown and C.W. Gatlin -- have been added to the mounting Mother’s Best Music Fest line-up for Saturday, June 16, in historic downtown Helena at the Cherry Street Pavilion and inside the Delta Visitors Center on Cherry Street.

Among performers announced earlier to perform at the 2007 event are Alvin Youngblood Hart, Jimbo Mathus, Sam Carr with Dave Riley, a duo performance by William Lee Ellis & Billy Gibson, Spoonfed Blues featuring Bob “Mississippi Spoonman” Rowell and Carla Robinson, Terry “Big T” Williams and Wesley Jefferson, and acclaimed Memphis cigar box guitarist John Lowe.

The festival begins at 10 a.m. and will continue well into the evening. Admission is free and the public is encouraged to attend. Events are to be held rain or shine.

“The addition of Kenny and C.W. to the line-up just makes this year’s Mother’s Best better and better,” said DCC Assistant Director Terry Buckalew, who heads up the festival’s organization. “They’re both great musicians and they are further demonstration of the great music created by the people of the Delta region.”

Named in homage to a 1940s radio show on station KFFA 1360-AM that featured musical innovators from throughout the Delta region, including Doctor Isaiah Ross, Mother's Best Music Fest offers an eclectic take on the variety of music produced throughout the Delta -- from its blues to its rockabilly, country, and Americana sounds.

Brown, long-time guitarist for the late Mississippi hill country bluesman R.L. Burnside, received rave reviews for his 2003 solo “Stingray” album on the Fat Possum record label and is gaining new attention through his participation in the hit movie, “Black Snake Moan.” Brown accompanies Samuel L. Jackson in the climactic scene in which Jackson’s bluesman character returns to performing, singing “Alice Mae,” written by Brown. He also plays guitar on two other tracks sung by Jackson; the soundtrack also includes Brown’s distinctive slide work on Burnside’s “Old Black Mattie.”

Taught to play guitar as a youth by bluesman and neighbor Joe Calicott, he later apprenticed with harmonica player Johnny Woods and Mississippi Fred McDowell before taking on right hand duties with R.L. Burnside for 25 years. Brown became integral to the north Mississippi hill country sound on stage and on seminal recordings by Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Asie Payton, Paul “Wine” Jones and others.

Brown lives today in the middle of the Holly Springs National Forest at Potts Camp.

Like his childhood friend Levon Helm, Phillips County native Gatlin was bit by the music bug as a teen in the late 1950s, inspired by the sounds around him in the Delta. Befriended by legendary bluesmen Robert Nighthawk and Houston Stackhouse, young Gatlin received a varied an informal introduction and education in the music business. Nighthawk also taught the youth his technique of paying slide guitar. Another key musical figure in Gatlin’s development was Helena rockabilly man Mack Self, a Sun Records artist with whom Gatlin began performing.

“To me, rockabilly and blues are really the same thing,” Gatlin once said in an interview. Today, he performs throughout the region, offering shows that offer few musical boundaries.

Respected by aficionados and his musical peers, Gatlin has created his own spot in the pantheon of rockabilly survivors. In addition to entertaining under his own name, Gatlin has also appeared with Self, Johnny Cash’s long-time drummer W.S. Holland, and Carl Perkins’ son, Stan Perkins, as the Rockabilly Masters. Hart, who has been called a “musician’s musician,” “The Cosmic American Love Child of Howlin’ Wolf and Link Wray,” and the “era’s most diverse bluesman,” has done his best to stymie audiences since his first album, “Big Mama’s Door,” debuted in 1996. Hart runs the gamut from acoustic blues to roaring rock and R&B, from obscure and reverential covers by blues masters to his own acclaimed compositions. He also won a 2004 Grammy as a contributor to “Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster,” the year’s winner for Traditional Folk Album.

Ellis, the son of acclaimed bluegrass fiddle player Tony Ellis (and named for his godfather, Bill Monroe), earned a master’s degree in classical performance at the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music before he carved his niche as a respected bluesman with his own unique finger-picking guitar technique that draws upon his diverse background, as well as the acoustic “Piedmont” style, drawing upon the inspiration of gospel blues great the Rev. Gary Davis, as well as Blind Willie Johnson, Willie McTell, Lonnie Johnson, and Blind Blake.

Ellis’ third album, “The Full Catastrophe,” drew considerable attention upon its release in 2000. Traditional blues fans were once again drawn in by Ellis’ acclaimed “Conqueroo” in 2002 and “God’s Tattoos” in 2006.

Harmonica player Gibson built a solid reputation on Memphis’ Beale Street for his rollicking regular gigs at Rum Boogie Café. His album’s include “Nearness of You” (2001), the live “In a Memphis Tone” (2004), “The Billy Gibson Band” (2005), and the newly-released “Southern Livin’.”

Clarksdale’s Mathus is an acclaimed singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He has released a variety of well-received solo discs, and was also a guitarist and founding member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, the hot jazz band that rose to prominence in the early 1990s.

Drummer Carr, a founding member of the Jelly Roll Kings with Frank Frost and Big Jack Johnson, is a legendary instrumentalist among blues musicians and fans. Mother’s Best will pair him again with blues vocalist and guitarist Riley, with whom Carr cut 2001’s “Whiskey, Money & Women” on the Fedora label.

Riley, a native of Hattiesburg, turned away from a blues career in 1973 to raise his son, and worked 25 years as a guard at Joiliet State Penitentiary before he returned to the stage in 1996. His albums also include the autobiographical “Living on Borrowed Time” and “Blues Across America.”

For more information, interested persons can contact the Delta Cultural Center at (870) 338-4350 or (800) 358-0972.

The Delta Cultural Center shares the vision of all seven agencies of the Department of Arkansas Heritage – to preserve and promote Arkansas heritage as a source of pride and satisfaction. Other agencies within the department are the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Old State House Museum, the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, the Arkansas Arts Council, and the Natural Heritage Commission.

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