The Sound of Our Town: Pine Bluff Paved by Music
It’s hard to stump Jimmy Cunningham Jr. when the topic is the Arkansas Delta and especially on his beloved hometown of Pine Bluff.
Cunningham, head of the Delta Rhythm & Bayous Alliance, knows this place like most people know their own heartbeat. The people, the culture, the tragedy and the triumph, all of it Cunningham knows by rote, like the lines of the Pledge of Allegiance or the words to “Amazing Grace” or the idealized version of humanity that lies somewhere in between.
But asked what makes it different, what you hear rumbling up from the Arkansas flats that chimes differently than, say, Tupelo or Clarksdale, and Cunningham’s resplendent baritone — round, deep and lush as a whiskey barrel — falls silent in thought.
“That’s a very good question,” he says at last. “One of the differences between the Arkansas Delta and the Mississippi Delta is that even though both regions had large populations of African Americans, on the Mississippi side the entire area was predominantly African American while on the Arkansas side it wasn’t. And if you went to the Upper Delta, you got places right on the river where it’s an even different mix of elements, and you get a different mix of art.”
Cunningham unleashes a broad smile at this thought, then a dram of liquid basso laughter pours out.
“It’s kind of blues-plus,” he says. “You know, we have some different dynamics and some different things going on that have impacted our music, and they kind of make us different.”
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Of all the geographic regions that comprise Arkansas’ unique physical landscape, the Delta is easily the most enigmatic. On the one hand, it’s by far the harshest, most economically disadvantaged and most troubled, both in retrospect and present tense. On every measure — quality of education, median income, access to health care, addiction rates — Delta communities simmer at the bottom of the societal pot, causing population to gurgle downward, flowing out in search of opportunity.
On the other hand, no stretch of Arkansas ground — perhaps none in the entire South — stakes a larger claim to the soul of a state than these alluvial reaches. It’s where the ducks come home, greeted by hunters from all over the world huddled in phantom flooded timber and stubbled fields where rice billowed just two months prior. It’s where the White River carves its ancient, looping initials into the ground, underlined by slow, mystic bayous.
And somewhere from within this collision of staggering beauty and indescribable hardship, came its soundtrack, the blues. Al Green (Forrest City), Robert Nighthawk and CeDell Davis (Helena), Big Bill Broonzy (Pine Bluff), Louis Jordan (Brinkley) and Albert King (Osceola), among others, preached tales of lives lived, loves lost and demons at the crossroads.
(In the process, it bears mentioning, fueling Arkansas’ native gospel greats Roberta Martin of Helena and Sister Rosetta Tharpe of Cotton Plant who put back on Sunday what Saturday night had let out.)
Joining all those who came from here are those who came to here, by fate or by opportunity. Every artist large or small on the so-called Chitlin’ Circuit knew well the Arkansas dance halls and juke joints throughout the region. At its heart was Pine Bluff, a citadel of Black culture and commerce since Union forces secured the city during the Civil War, making it a haven for runaway slaves. The musical roster, seared into the face of history here, puts any other community to shame.
“It is absolutely staggering,” Cunningham says. “Big Bill Broonzy, any of the folks from the British Invasion pay homage to him, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Beatles.
“You got people like Charles Brown who lived here; 13 No. 1 blues songs in the ’40s and the ’50s, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. George Washington Thomas, first published boogie-woogie song, first recorded boogie-woogie song. You get Bobby Rush who comes here from Louisiana and ends up starting his career over here on 3rd [Avenue]. Got paid in chitlins, hamburgers and 25 cents when he started out.”
Somewhere along the line, Pine Bluff’s glittering history fell gray, caked-over with urban decay, loss of local industry and the incursion of drugs. The cracked streets once walked by jazz legend Miles Davis, here on summers visiting his grandfather, and Sam Cooke, looking to become Sam Cooke, grew weeds and leaked dreams. All of Arkansas, and Pine Bluff itself, forgot its birthright.
“All of these different performers who are connected to this area, and the world doesn’t even know,” Cunningham shakes the words out of his head. “When I tell you the world does not know, it’s a shame. They sent out all these sociologists that were supposed to be so smart and had the vision to write all these books and theses and dissertations and everything? Hell, they missed Pine Bluff. They just — you know, just missed it.
“Somehow, we didn’t get written up about all of this stuff, about our contributions to music, places where people were born, places people lived or places where significant developmental milestones occurred. It’s just — it’s staggering. It is absolutely staggering.”
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Cunningham’s growing up in Pine Bluff was in many ways typical, right down to his leaving here after graduating high school and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
“I flew the coop, like so many of my classmates did, looking for gold and whatever else that big world was out there holding,” he says. “But my mother lived here until she passed in 2017, and I got cousins and friends and everybody else and their mama. Really, I got like 20 mamas, and then I got big mamas; I got all that here. Literally, it’s like a Southern buffet of family, friends and networks. I’m rich in that regard. So, I was always coming back.”
Moving around in a professional career that also included travel, Cunningham began to notice how communities with a similar backstory were finding ways to thrive in ways his hometown was not.
The artifacts that make up the rich history of arts in Pine Bluff spans as long as a Delta highway.
“It sounds so cliché, but it’s so true: When you travel and come back to your hometown, you see things from a different angle,” he says. “You can see some things that are appreciated in other places may not be as appreciated in yours. It’s a reason to say, ‘Hey, y’all, we got something here!’”
In 2009, Cunningham ran across a random historical fact about his hometown, a tiny thread of local lore that before long led him down a rabbit hole of all the things about Pine Bluff that he didn’t know.
“I found so much stuff that I got with my mom, and we wrote our first book, African Americans of Pine Bluff and Jefferson County,” he says. “After that, I ended up finding stuff about the Lower Delta, which led to the second book, Delta Music and Film.
“Then I got an idea; it was about 2015, and one of the biggest trends at the time was cultural heritage tourism. People want these authentic experiences to be built out where they can interpret and have fun with them. And they bring in dollars, and they help a community to redefine itself, recenter itself, give it some spiritual depth and meaning.”
Inspired, he returned to Pine Bluff to give a presentation on the subject at a local museum. There, he spelled out for the audience all of the historical inventory the region had to work with and ways other communities had leveraged similar assets into tourist dollars.
“I said, ‘Here’s your story, here’s a bunch of stuff.’ People were going on, ‘Oh, I love it, I love it, I love it,’” he says. “Then at the break, two guys pulled me aside and said, ‘Great ideas, great history, great plan. Who’s going to implement this?’
“I was like, ‘I’m giving it to y’all. Like, I’m presenting this and y’all, the community, makes it happen.’ They looked at me and said, ‘You’re crazy. There’s no way anybody else around here is going to do this.’ I said, ‘No, you don’t understand. If I give it to y’all, somebody is going to pick up. Just watch.’”
He took a breath and again shakes his head.
“The best way I can describe this is it’s almost like a football,” he says. “As quarterback, I dropped back in the pocket, and I took the ball, and I threw it way out there, and through some cosmic quirk in the universe I looked up, and I was catching the ball! I’m like, I threw it to me, and now I’m running.”
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Two years after his museum audience, Cunningham was again presenting, this time before the state legislature to get Arkansas Highway 65 from Pine Bluff to Lake Village designated the Delta Rhythm and Bayous Highway. That accomplished, he told the same story in 2018 to Mississippi lawmakers to gain similar designation for the stretch between Greenville and Leland to create the nation’s only multistate music highway, intersecting with the Blues Highway, Highway 61.
Also that year, the Pine Bluff City Council designated an area downtown, the Delta Rhythm and Bayous Cultural District, for which Cunningham envisions a forthcoming clutch of art and music spaces telling the story of the city and the region.
“The district is an area where a lot of music and art activity and accomplishments occurred,” he says. “Part of it is where Black businesses were clustered during the days of segregation; part of it is where the theater district was; part of it is where the Civil Rights movement is connected. One part of it is where a Civil War battle was, one of four urban battles in the war. There are 15 to 20 powerful areas in that district.”
The speed with which the effort has moved belies the difficulties in getting this far. The fight for authenticity of message was more than Cunningham bargained for, challenging his staunch belief that editing history’s darker moments robs luster from hard-won accomplishments.
“It comes down to this: Getting people excited about history has been hard,” he says. “History is what builds the sense of community and the sense of bonding, even when it’s the bad stuff. A block from where we have all the blues that happened, all the juke joints and so many of the blues greats coming through, one block over is an area where we had a lynching, on that very spot. In fact, Pine Bluff has had the largest number of lynchings of any major city in the state of Arkansas.
“Now, we have political players here who see things a certain way with the same kind of paternalistic attitude they have had for years. Father knows best, and follow us, because what we say counts. And, if they have the money and the muscle, they can build that vision out, and if the vision doesn’t include cultural heritage tourism, so be it.
“But I’m as persistent as a mosquito on the lake, man, and I will keep buzzing until I get what I need. I have preached this gospel and preached it, and I was able, fortunately, to link up with the Pine Bluff Advertising and Promotion Commission who understood that this is the direction that we need to be going. That has helped to amplify the message and, in some ways, legitimize it.”
The district Cunningham envisions is right now little more than pictures on a page, but something he’s determined to see through. Meanwhile, he’s producing short films and music videos that tell bits and pieces of the story of this place, until the full chapter and verse can be completed. Ask him why, and he pauses long once more.
“Purpose,” he says softly. “Purpose. If you haven’t been able to pick up on it, I’m a person of passion. I’m not some subtle seasoning, like paprika or something. I’m hot sauce. I’m looking to get the sauces out of this life before I get out of here.
“I really and truly believe what led me here was this broader sense of purpose, and the fact that I’m supposed to do this, that I am intimately connected to this, that there is something bigger for this city, and I’m supposed to be part of that. And there’s more hot sauce to come in the process; I see something much bigger with a third eye. That lights my fire. When you know you’re walking in your purpose, it doesn’t matter what things look like around you. This is where I have to be to get out of me the things that are there.”
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