Po' Monkey's: Portrait of a Juke Joint

By Will Jacks

Outside of Merigold, Mississippi, off an unmarked dirt road, stands Po’ Monkey’s, perhaps the most famous house in Mississippi and the last rural juke joint in the state, now closed to the public. Before the death of the lounge’s owner, Willie Seaberry, in 2016, it was a mandatory stop on the constant blues pilgrimage that flows through the Delta.

Seaberry ran Po’ Monkey’s Lounge for more than fifty years, opening his juke joint in the 1960s. A hand-built tenant home located on the plantation where Seaberry worked, Po’ Monkey’s was a place to listen to music and drink beer—a place to relax where everyone was welcomed by Seaberry’s infectious charm.

In Po’ Monkey’s: Portrait of a Juke Joint, photographer Will Jacks captures the juke joint he spent a decade patronizing. The more than seventy black-and-white photographs featured in this volume reflect ten years of weekly visits to the lounge as a regular—a journal of Jacks’s encounters with other customers, tourists, and Willie Seaberry himself.

An essay by award-winning writer Boyce Upholt on the cultural significance of the lounge accompanies the images. This volume explores the difficulties of preservation, historical context, community relations, and cultural tourism. Now that Seaberry is gone, the uncertainty of the future of his juke joint highlights the need for a historical record.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Release date: Sep 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781496825346

Will Jacks

Will Jacks is a process artist best known for his photographic work. His research examines the blurred areas between art and journalism, individual and collective, and the impact of each on the other. He is assistant professor of art and photography at Troy University in Alabama and executive director of JX Farms Artist Residencies located in the Mississippi Delta.

Book preview

THE AFTER-MONKEY BLUES

—Boyce Upholt

On TripAdvisor, the publicly sourced tourism website, there was no address for Po’ Monkey’s. Instead, there was this note: Take Highway 61 to corner store and get directions, Merigold, MS. At the corner store in Merigold, the clerk pointed anyone who asked down a dirt road, along a swamp, through old cotton fields. By the time I first saw the place, it seemed to have forever been old: cypress planks for walls, galvanized tin for a roof, the hand-built tenant house slumped toward the surrounding dirt, holding itself up as if by willpower alone.

This might just be the most famous house in Mississippi, or at least the most photographed. Its decay was offset by a loud array of signs, all hand painted. Some clarified the rules: no loud music, no dope smoking, no sagging pants. One offered an invitation: It’s on, it said, alongside the phone number to call if you wanted to join the party at Po’ Monkey’s Lounge. Of course, the party is over now.

But back then, inside, revelers were greeted by a riot of color: old posters and T-shirts and glittery decorative bunting and road signs and neon lights were tacked to the walls, nearly every surface covered, though in places black plastic garbage bags were visible, a kind of ad hoc insulation hidden behind the decor. Mismatched tables were topped with mismatched vinyl tablecloths and surrounded by mismatched plastic chairs. Atop the visual assault came the jolt of the music, a physical sensation, really, deep bass rocking the plywood floors. The room was sweat and bodies, but the beer tasted cool and clean, and when you stepped outside for a break, the chirping summer felt like a release, even in the worst days of Mississippi’s summer heat.

Release: that, you might say, is why the Mississippi Delta’s black residents invented the juke joint in the early twentieth century. Theirs was a life that demanded release. Clear out a house’s furniture, bring in a bluesman, and throw a party. That’s a juke joint.

Po’ Monkey’s—or just Monkey’s, as the familiar called it—was an update on that old tradition. Five-dollar cover, bring your own liquor, or buy 40-ounce beers through the Dutch door to the kitchen. It was known as the last rural juke joint in Mississippi, the land that created the blues. It’s impossible to know how true that is, but it certainly became the most famous juke joint. If there were a global Hall of Fame for drinking establishments, Po’ Monkey’s Lounge would be a shoo-in.

The name came from its owner’s nickname: Po’ Monkey is all anybody ever called me since I was little, Willie Seaberry told the New York Times in 2007. I don’t know why, except I was poor for sure. The bar was Willie’s domain—and Willie set the rules. He made the magic, too. He’d come and go throughout the night, his costume always changing: funny hats, sometimes, and sometimes tailored suits. His favorite prank was a stuffed toy phallus, a few dozen inches long, which he hid behind an apron and revealed with a grin. He greeted everyone who entered his door, and in the final years his greeting felt like a blessing: the man himself had become a celebrity, a legend;