The Commercial Appeal

GRAVEL SPRINGS, Miss. — Blues fans from around the country gathered at Otha Turner's picnic Saturday at his Tate County, Miss., farm, ate goat sandwiches, listened to blues players, including the 92-year-old Turner on fife, and bought T-shirts with Turner's photo and the words "living legend" on them.

"This is reality," Jay Martin of Portland, Ore., said. "This is life. Rawness and good people. No pretension whatsoever. Everybody's here to have a good time. Everybody's really gracious."

Daniel Roth of Santa Monica, Calif., found out about the picnic when he heard Ike Turner talk about it at a festival in Clarksdale, Miss. Roth said he thought at the time, "Somehow or other I'm going to get there this summer."

"It took me awhile to track it down," he said.

Record producer Jim Dickinson and his wife, Mary Lindsay, of Tate County, also attended. Jim was there to represent his son, Luther Dickinson, who produced two of Turner's albums: Everybody Hollerin' Goat, Otha Turner and the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band and Otha Turner and the Afrossippi Allstars, Senegal to Senatobia.

Luther and his brother, Cody Dickinson, are on the road with their band, the North Mississippi Allstars.

"I have nothing but admiration for Otha," Jim Dickinson said. "He's one of the most complete and successful human beings I have known. His music embodies a whole belief system — extended family, extended community, a glimpse of the past. That's what this [picnic] is."

R. L. Burnside, T-Model Ford and Blind Mississippi Morris were among the musicians who performed at the two-day picnic, which began Friday.

Turner, who drifted in and out of the crowd and watched the other musicians perform on a stage beneath a tin-covered roof, said he cooked four goats for the picnic.

Turner also served pork barbecue, but he said, "Goat is not gonna hurt you. It's not gonna run pressures up. Pork meat now is killing people."

Asked if he was going to stay until the picnic, which has been known to run late, was over, Turner said, "I'm the head of it. I have to stay."

— Michael Donahue