LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Grab your kazoo and string bass! The 2014 National Jug Band Jubilee celebrates the festival’s 10th anniversary on Saturday, September 21st.
Festival organizers have a lot of treats in store for local music fans. The Jubilee has partnered with the Kentuckiana Blues Society to purchase a headstone for classic blues singer Sara Martin, who was the first vocalist to record with a jug band. The memorial will be unveiled on Friday, September 19th at 3 p.m. Sara Martin is buried in Louisville Cemetery, 1339 Poplar Level Road, near Eastern Parkway. The Jake Leg Stompers will be at the ceremony to perform a few of Martin’s blues classics.
Maria Muldaur and her Garden of Joy Jug Band will headline the 2014 National Jug Band Jubilee on Saturday, September 20th. The free festival goes from Noon to 11 p.m. at the Brown-Forman Amphitheater in Louisville’s Waterfront Park. Maria Muldaur is best known for her 1974 hit “Midnight at the Oasis,” but before this she was a member of the seminal Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band, as well as the Even Dozen Jug Band. She promises a mixture of folk and blues standards.
Other 2014 Jubilee performers are:
· Juggernaut Jug Band (Louisville, KY)
· The Cincinnati Dancing Pigs (Guess!)
· The Jake Leg Stompers (Bucksnort, TN)
· The Hokum High Rollers (New Orleans, LA)
· Steel City Jug Slammers (Birmingham, AL)
· Bones Jugs N Harmony (Urbana-Champaign, IL)
· Drunken Catfish Ramblers (New Orleans, LA)
· Brotherhood of the Jug Band Blues (New York, NY)
In addition to their sets at the festival, the Juggernaut Jug Band, Bones Jugs N Harmony, Steel City Jug Slammers, and Drunken Catfish Ramblers will spend the day before the Jubilee performing at area elementary schools.
Attendees of the 2014 National Jug Band Jubilee will be able to purchase advance copies of “Louisville Jug Music: From Earl McDonald to the National Jubilee”, a
history of the genre written by Jubilee board member Michael L. Jones. The book will be official published by The History Press in October 2014, but Jones will be at the Jubilee signing copies for jug band enthusiasts.
Louisville is the acknowledged home of jug band music, a pre-war jazz style that features traditional and homemade instruments. In the late 19th century, African American musicians walked the streets of the River City playing tunes on improvised instruments like empty liquor jugs (“the poor man’s tuba”), kazoos and washboards. By the time the sound reached its peak in the 1930s, it had infiltrated towns up and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, especially Memphis and New Orleans.
National Jug Band Jubilee
P.O. Box 2944
Louisville, KY 40201
(502) 417-1107
www.jugbandjubilee.com
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