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Helena-West Helena

Arkansawyer

By Arkansawyer
in Arkansas

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sleepy Burg

sleepy

Posted
Posted

Regarding the King Biscuit Blues name---

I'm on a google list-serve for blues, and people are outraged about the name and festival being bought out.

The name was bought by "Performa" which runs Beale St. in Memphis, yet many music people in Memphis are disgusted with the corporate takeover of the regional music.

Performa was also the entity which ran the "Center for Southern Folklore" off of Beale St. a few years ago and placed some generic barroom in its place.

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Mith242 Gigalopolis

Mith242

Posted
Posted

Regarding the King Biscuit Blues name---

I'm on a google list-serve for blues, and people are outraged about the name and festival being bought out.

The name was bought by "Performa" which runs Beale St. in Memphis, yet many music people in Memphis are disgusted with the corporate takeover of the regional music.

Performa was also the entity which ran the "Center for Southern Folklore" off of Beale St. a few years ago and placed some generic barroom in its place.

Thanks for the update and info sleepy. Now we know who to hate. :angry:

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dunveth Whistle-Stop

dunveth

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I lived in West Helena for three long years. Google "Elaine massacre " to learn about the region's tragic bloody heritage. Racism and classism are choking the whole region.

Good luck to the new city! I wish they called it New Helena, to symbolize the change.

The antebellum homes are great, the Confederate Cemetery is awe inspiring (and I'm a dyed in the wool Yankee), Storm Creek Lake is one of the most beautiful places for miles around, but the Juke Joints of Walnut Street (the African American main street) succumbed to urban renewal long ago.

Helena will always haunt me ...

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Mith242 Gigalopolis

Mith242

Posted
Posted

I lived in West Helena for three long years. Google "Elaine massacre " to learn about the region's tragic bloody heritage. Racism and classism are choking the whole region.

Good luck to the new city! I wish they called it New Helena, to symbolize the change.

The antebellum homes are great, the Confederate Cemetery is awe inspiring (and I'm a dyed in the wool Yankee), Storm Creek Lake is one of the most beautiful places for miles around, but the Juke Joints of Walnut Street (the African American main street) succumbed to urban renewal long ago.

Helena will always haunt me ...

Nice to hear from you. :D Thanks for the info, we don't often get many people from this area of the state. Even if you only lived there for a little while.

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Mith242 Gigalopolis

Mith242

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Helena-West Helena could be home to an Ethanol plant. I think that things like this are the real future of East Arkansas, in that there is an abundance of crops and access to the Mississippi River.

Possible Ethanol Plant Under Discussion

Sounds great. I thought I had heard some mention of something biofuel related around Stuttgart. But I never heard any exact info on it.

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Aporkalypse City

Aporkalypse

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I read today where a company is interested in buying the site of an old contaminated chemical plant that closed in Helena and building a factory to manufacture biodiesel and ethanol from local agricultural products. Since unemployment there is approaching 10% that would be a GREAT thing.

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Mith242 Gigalopolis

Mith242

Posted
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I read today where a company is interested in buying the site of an old contaminated chemical plant that closed in Helena and building a factory to manufacture biodiesel and ethanol from local agricultural products. Since unemployment there is approaching 10% that would be a GREAT thing.

I had heard about the biodiesel, but didn't realize it was in Helena.

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Spaceman Spiff Unincorporated Area

Spaceman Spiff

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I swung through Helena this past saturday for the Blues festival, and it was an awesome experience to walk down Cherry Street with live music literally on almost every corner. In addition to the 4 or 5 stages, there were musicians set up performing all over the place up and down the street. There were a lot of folks down there. I've been through Helena several times before (never for the blues festival), and always thought it was such a shame that so much of that historic downtown was literally rotting away. It was nice to see the place hopping, and was easy to imagine how downtown Helena must have been 70-80 years ago.

There was a small exibit in the delta cultural center regarding the "heyday" for Helena, it listed statistics such as number of grocery stores, etc., it was quite impressive. It's sad to see how far the town has fallen (economically).

So many beautiful old homes though. Anyone who's never been owes it to themselves to drive over and visit at least once. There's a lot of Arkansas history down there. If you like historic buildings, you won't be dissapointed.

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Aporkalypse City

Aporkalypse

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Seems like I may have heard of something like that before. I used to be a pretty important center on the Mississippi River. Although I'm not sure if it really even compared to Memphis back in it's heyday. For me when I think about Helena I think about the music. It certainly played a big part in that. A number of the early Blues performers had ties there.
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Clobber Burg

Clobber

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As of today's online Memphis Daily News, there appears to be a New York-based company called the King Biscuit Entertainment Group that is behind a joint project to open a club in downtown Memphis. I thin this is along the lines of my original impression regarding the legal conflict behind the name -- that the owner of the name was based in New York.

http://www.memphisdailynews.com/Editorial/...e=5%2f30%2f2007

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