Living on King Biscuit Time

Living on King Biscuit Time

Old Man River runs by it, the blues runs through it, and if you ever drive near Helena, Ark., tune your car radio to 1360-AM. If it’s noon on a weekday, then it’s King Biscuit Time, a show that’s broadcast the blues to an international audience since 1941.

The Mississippi River and blues have been rolling through Helena as long as anyone can remember, and King Biscuit Time is the longest-running blues radio show in the world.

Each weekday, “Sunshine” Sonny Payne broadcasts the show live from a corner booth at the Delta Cultural Center, flanked by portraits of some of the Delta’s most famous blues musicians—Pinetop Perkins, Houston Stackhouse, and Johnny Shines.

Payne’s been living on King Biscuit time most of his life, hosting more than 12,000 of the radio station’s 14,000-plus blues shows. “I think if I didn’t keep working, I’d die,” says Payne, 77, who broadcast his first show in 1965 and began his career at KFFA as a mop boy in 1941.

That same year King Biscuit Time debuted after harmonica-playing singer Sonny Boy Williamson secured sponsorship from Interstate Grocery Co., which carried a product called King Biscuit Flour, giving the show its name. The show promoted the careers of singers and musicians who pioneered the musical style and delivered the blues from the Delta’s street corners and juke joints to an international audience.

Over the years, Helena (pop. 6,323) has hosted a long line of musical icons, including the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, who spent the last five years of his life in the Arkansas Delta town and taught protégé Robert Lockwood Jr. all he knew about the blues. Other notables, such as the late singer and keyboardist Frank Frost and slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk, are buried in Helena’s Magnolia Cemetery.

Even with the passing of such folk heroes, the blues and other legacies of the Mississippi Delta continue to be honored in Helena.

At the Missouri Street branch of the Delta Cultural Center, tour guide Juanita Russell walks through the history of her hometown. She makes her way around the former train depot, passing exhibits chronicling Hernando DeSoto’s exploration of Arkansas as well as pictures of prominent African-American citizens educated at a late 19th-century Quaker college called Southland. An agricultural display promises to reveal the “cotton pickin’ truth” about Delta farming.

When Russell reaches the map of Old Man River, she stops to point out her lifelong respect for the mighty Mississippi. She doesn’t remember the worst flood of recent history (in 1927), but she does mark the occasion with a personal milestone—her birth.

“And now,” Russell says with a flourish, “the river will tell you its history.”

She pushes a button on the interactive exhibit and steps back. Old Man River, in a voice as deep and dark as the Mississippi, begins an “eye-witness” account of life on the Delta.

The Delta and the music it gave birth to are alive and well in Helena’s Cherry Street district. Over the last 16 years, the district has taken on fresh life as thousands throng to hear a new generation of blues musicians, such as Levon Helm, Bruce Page, and Eddie Cotton, perform alongside such veterans as Lockwood at the King Biscuit Blues Festival, held the second weekend in October.

During the remainder of the year, fans from around the world make the pilgrimage to Helena’s juke joints, as well as to such downtown shrines as Gist Music Co.—once frequented by King Biscuit entertainers—and Bubba’s Blues Corner, owned by Bubba Sullivan.

Sullivan’s admiration for Helena’s blues masters is evident throughout his small store, where stacked collections of records and CDs share cramped quarters with a couple of vintage jukeboxes and Frank Frost’s frock coat—still adorned with his leather harmonica belt.

Sullivan also is the founder of the Sonny Boy Blues Society, which, in addition to organizing Helena’s festival, celebrates local musicians and helps those who’ve fallen on hard times.

Born 20 miles south of Helena, Sullivan grew up with the blues, although he says he “didn’t know what it was” at the time.

“I just knew I liked it.”

Margaret Dornaus is a regular contributor to American Profile.

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