Jim Dickinson
If you don’t get out much and want to sample some live local music,
it’s hard to imagine a better weekend for it than this one, led by a
trio of sprawling special shows:
The first one to get started is a two-night benefit concert at the
Hi-Tone Café Friday, September 18th, and Saturday,
September 19th. Dubbed “For the Love of Shirley,” the benefit is
for Shirley Williams, a bartender at the classic Midtown dive
the Lamplighter Lounge for the past 33 years and a beloved
figure among many in the city’s cultural scene. (Williams even made an
appearance in a New York magazine profile of photographer
William Eggleston for bouncing him — firmly but
compassionately — from the bar.)
Facing health problems, Williams is dealing with mounting medical
bills despite being insured, and some of her music-scene friends are
banding together to help out. Friday night’s lineup will feature
Jack O. & the Tearjerkers, Impala, Angel
Sluts, John Paul Keith & the One Four Fives, and the
Bulletproof Vests. Saturday’s lineup includes Snowglobe,
the Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright, Vending Machine,
and Jeffrey James & the Haul.
Doors open at 9 p.m. each night. The $10 admission and a portion of
bar sales will go to assist Williams. Additional donations are welcomed
and appreciated.
For more info, see hitonememphis.com.
While not a benefit concert, another outpouring of musical affection
will occur Monday, September 21s, at the Levitt Shell as a group
of the late Jim Dickinson‘s friends, family members, and
protégés get together to celebrate his life in what is
being dubbed the Jim Dickinson Memorial Folk Festival.
(Dickinson was an organizer of the first Memphis folk festival in the
early 1960s.)
According to event organizer David Less, who worked with
Dickinson on a string of excellent solo albums in the last decade of
his life, the show is “in response to an overwhelming need from the
local music community and those touched by Jim and his music. When we
produced the benefit concert on August 8th, the intention was to raise
funds [for medical bills and expenses]. After he died the next week, we
heard from many people who were unable to participate and wanted to
memorialize him in some way.”
The free concert, which will begin at 7 p.m., currently boasts a
lineup that includes Dickinson’s son Luther, his old bandmates
and friends Sid Selvidge and Jimmy Crosthwait, and other
connected performers such as Jimbo Mathus, Shannon
McNally, Reba Russell, Keith Sykes, Steve
Selvidge, Paul Taylor, and Amy LaVere.
The show will be acoustic and informal, with more performers likely
to join by showtime. Less says there also will be a video of Dickinson
incorporated into the show.
In between these two events, the annual Cooper-Young
Festival, held during the day on Saturday, September 19th, will
present a diverse slate of contemporary local music across three stages
from roughly noon to 6 p.m., with New Orleans roots-rockers The
Iguanas supplementing the Memphis acts. The lineups:
East Stage: Organ Thief, Ryan Peel, Good Luck Dark Star,
Streetside Symphony, and the Bulletproof Vests.
Congo Stage: The Will Tucker Band, Groundspeak, Valencia
Robinson, Two Mule Plow, Queens of Zion.
Main Stage: Rhythm Realm, U of M Jazz Band, River City
Tanlines, Tonya Dyson, Darrel Petties & Strength, Susan Marshall,
the Iguanas.
