The Blues Master : In a culture with little memory, voices like Jack Owens struggle to survive. His sound echoes the hard times of the Mississippi Delta as it embraces a simpler life.

As a howling rainstorm soaks the delta, Jack Owens hunches over his guitar and tears stinging notes from the strings. Thunder cracks and rumbles in his front yard, but the old man’s high, trembling voice rings out:

Lord I’d rather be the devil, than be that woman’s man. Don’t want no woman, just sit here while I can. . . . Yes, just be here while I can.

Owens grins as a ray of sunlight cuts through the gloom, flashing off his golden teeth. Putting down the guitar, he grabs a bottle of gin, takes a gulp and chases it with a swig of orange Nehi. Then he belches with satisfaction.

It’s 1995 but it might as well be 1925. Owens has been playing the blues since he was a boy, and nothing here seems to have changed--from the mangy dog snapping at his feet to the rusting cars in the grass behind his shack.

At a distance, the little man on his front porch seems dwarfed by the flat and lonely landscape. Even his guitar looks too big. But if there’s one thing Jack Owens has mastered in his 91 years, it’s music. He’s the oldest performing Mississippi Delta blues man--one of the last links to the golden age of country blues and an American tradition that has all but vanished.

“I don’t got long,” Owens says matter-of-factly, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and picking up the guitar again. “But until I’m gone, I’ll be here.”

*

Today, black kids in Bentonia watch rap videos just like teen-agers in Beverly Hills, and “Seinfeld” billboards stand in cotton fields along the Delta’s busy highways. Regional distinctions are fast disappearing, and as the country becomes more homogenized, few Americans know or care much about the grinding, primordial blues that Mississippi artists once gave the world.

And why should they? At first glance, the blues are alive and well. You hear them everywhere, on radio and TV jingles, in clubs and on records that sell in greater numbers than ever. Fans of this mainstream music may think they’re enjoying the real thing, but the gritty taproot of it all--the Delta blues--is withering away. In a culture without memory, folk voices like Jack Owens struggle to survive, and they are truly endangered people.

Some may question if this is a bad thing, because Mississippi country blues--and the lifestyle that nurtured it--grew out of slavery, racial bigotry and economic hard times. For many blacks, it’s just as soon forgotten. Yet as people like Owens vanish, so does a legacy of musical authenticity and human contact that is impossible to replace.

Once upon a time, everyone in Bentonia knew each other. They helped raise each other’s children, shared food and played music for entertainment. Traditions passed from one generation to the next, along with a powerful sense of community.

Today, the town is full of strangers and Owens’ music is a metaphor for something much larger in America. He and people like him are ghosts in a disappearing rural landscape.

“Somehow, Jack has survived in his little corner of the world,” says David Evans, a University of Memphis music professor and the man most responsible for rediscovering Owens during the 1960s blues revival.

“He’s the dean of living Delta blues men and he gives you a rare window into a world that most of us can only read about, or listen to on records. . . . There just aren’t too many people like him around, and soon they’ll all be gone.”

*

Fifty years ago, the Delta was filled with men like Owens. Singers such as Robert Johnson and Charley Patton roamed the Magnolia State, playing juke joints, rural dances and street corners. Without microphones or amplifiers, they sang of blues like showers of rain, of killin’ floors and love in vain.

With their wailing, primitive sound, the original Mississippi blues men influenced younger artists such as Muddy Waters and B.B. King, as well as modern performers like Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones. Yet the country life that nurtured the blues changed during World War II--and so did the music.

From 1940 to 1970, some 5 million African Americans fled the South to escape racial violence and to find better jobs. They left behind Jim Crow laws and tenement shacks that were being torn down, the result of new technology that no longer needed human hands to pick the valuable cotton crop.

It was an unprecedented migration, and the black refugees who flocked to Los Angeles, as well as to Chicago, New York and other Northern cities, brought their culture with them. In time, the acoustic Delta blues went electric, reaching a much wider audience. Meanwhile, those traditional musicians left behind in Mississippi had fewer people to entertain and their numbers dwindled.

To be sure, blues are still heard in Delta juke joints, and there are several acoustic artists--Keb’ Mo’, Guy Davis, Lonnie Pitchford--making a conscious effort to revive the form. Yet the music played in most clubs is electrified, and the revivalists, however talented, approach the music secondhand. The old-time blues--grounded in experience--is facing extinction.

Just don’t tell that to Jack Owens. His front-porch music is still alive.

“I could have gone North, you bet, to some big city,” he says. “I know times have changed here. But I’m country all the way. I ain’t leaving.”

*

Despite his isolation, Owens managed to build a career with help from Evans and other supporters. He made a 1971 record that gained critical attention and began touring in 1990 after the death of Mabel, his third wife. Backed by Bud Spires, a 64-year-old harmonica player, Owens has been highly praised in blues magazines and enjoys a cult status on the revival circuit.

Still, he is largely unknown, and only several thousand people have been fortunate enough to see him perform at recent festivals in Long Beach, St. Louis and other cities. The high point came in 1993, when he got a $10,000 National Heritage Award and flew to Washington, D.C. For two days and nights, Owens was treated like a national monument. Then he returned to obscurity.

“Jack Owens . . . is he still around?” asks Chris Strachwitz, an ethnic music expert and owner of Arhoolie Records. “He’s really a name from the past.”

But what a face. In a cultural twist that only America could serve up, Owens has suddenly become a hot media property. Every day, millions of American TV viewers see him as an authentic voice of the Mississippi Delta. No one’s been blue any longer . . . at least that’s what the advertising folks at Levi’s say.

“We were looking for a way to make 501 jeans cooler for younger guys, and we wanted one spot to play on the idea of the old blues,” says Paul Wolfe, creative director at Foote, Cone and Belding in San Francisco. “When we saw Jack’s amazing face, we knew he was the guy for us. He was perfect. “

Owens is never identified in the spot, which was shot on his porch. He’s still puzzled by the TV folks, because they talked so damn fast. When they offered him $1,800 for his troubles, Jack politely asked for twice as much. The $3,600 check was welcome--as are the residual payments he gets each month.

*

Luckily for him, Owens got a small piece of the blues mania sweeping America. These days, radio and TV commercials are filled with Delta riffs and the electric thump of Chicago blues, selling everything from cars and sour cream to breakfast cereal and soap.

The House of Blues boasts that its profitable venues in Los Angeles, New Orleans and Cambridge are “authentic” replicas of Mississippi Delta roadhouses. For true believers, there are blues cruises to the Caribbean and festivals in many cities. Meanwhile, New York firms like Homespun Tapes offer video lessons in the Delta blues and the Internet is heavy with blues chat. Most telling, a boxed set of Robert Johnson’s 1936 records has sold more than 500,000 copies.

“That Johnson set triggered the boom,” says James Austin, who created Rhino Records’ respected “Bluesmasters” series. “So I guess you can trace it all back to the Delta. . . . It’s powerful music, and it sells.”

For how long is anybody’s guess. But now even Owens has a stake in the action, however small, and some traditionalists are scratching their heads.

“It’s bizarre,” says Jim O’Neal, a blues expert and longtime friend of Owens’. “Just when you think someone like Jack is going to vanish, they become a TV figure, a cartoon. That’s how America remembers the past.”

*

The Levi’s spot stirred a commotion in Jack’s hometown, because Bentonia is eerily quiet these days. Fewer than 400 people live here and the railroad depot closed years ago. Folks are still talking about that commercial down at the liquor store, one of the few remaining shops, but Owens hasn’t seen it.

His old TV set, stored in a corner of his bedroom, doesn’t work too well and Jack wouldn’t know a VCR if it dropped on his head. He’s covered the walls with muddy photos of himself and blues celebrities, and there’s a snapshot of him shaking hands with Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) when he got the 1993 award.

Walking into Owens’ house is like stepping back in time: An ancient metal heater keeps the room warm at night and the floorboards sag with age. There are cracks in the windows and tattered, stained curtains flapping in the breeze. A dull brown rug seems to have rotted into the floor and a sofa in the front room gives off clouds of choking dust when people sit on it.

The place hasn’t been cleaned since Jack’s wife died, and he doesn’t care. He keeps a picture of her by his bed and sleeps with a pistol under his pillow, convinced that thieves are lurking outside. Friends have told him his house needs fumigating, yet Owens is content to let things stay as they are.

When the modern world comes calling--as it does with more frequency these days--it finds an old man set in his ways. A survivor with a guitar.

*

On a brisk October morning, Owens greets Evans and a reporter at his front door and prepares for a whirlwind day. He’s been invited to a prestigious blues festival near Amsterdam but can’t go without a passport. To get one, he needs a birth certificate, and none exists. The festival is two weeks away.

A similar problem exists for Spires, Owens’ partner. He, too, needs help in a hurry, and it’s up to Evans, a mild-mannered academic, to find a solution.

“When poor blacks like Jack and Bud were born in the country years ago, nobody thought to issue birth certificates,” he explains. “It’s a dilemma.”

There’s a potential solution: If one of Jack’s three sisters living nearby will sign an affidavit that he is their older brother, the passport can still be legally issued. But that’s easier said than done.

Initially, the sisters--Viola, Willie-Ethel and Lou-Ethel--are adamant in their opposition. Jack is too old to be flying to Europe, they insist.

“We all got to die!” Owens shouts into the telephone as Viola gives him what-for. “But I ain’t gonna die yet! I’m going across the water to play! You can’t stop me!”

The arguments rage, and finally Willie-Ethel, a prim woman in her 80s, agrees to sign the form. To calm the waters, Evans takes Jack aside and recommends that he slip his sister $50. When he does, she beams with pleasure.

“Why thank you , Jack!” she gushes. “Now I can pay my gas and electric!”

*

A major hurdle has been cleared, but the adventure is just beginning: At the post office in Jackson, Owens learns that Willie-Ethel’s affidavit is useless. Since she’s younger than him, she can’t prove he’s 91 years old.

A young clerk tells Jack apologetically that the government has no real evidence he exists. The old man looks at her and shakes his head.

Playing his last card, Evans decides to visit Sen. Lott’s district office a few blocks away in the federal building. Hopefully, he can be of some help.

Lott’s office is on the third floor, but Jack must first pass through a metal detector. He immediately sets off the alarm, and when a guard asks him to empty his pockets, he puts a fistful of coins--and bullets--on the tray.

“Try it again, fella,” the guard says, and once again Owens sets off the alarm. This time, he takes a clip with 10 bullets out of his pocket.

When Jack sets off the alarm a third time, the guard’s face tightens. Heaving a sigh, Owens pulls a loaded .22 caliber revolver out of his boot.

“They stole my guitar once,” he explains. “Ain’t gonna happen again.”

Mercifully, the guard relaxes and orders Jack to put the bullets, clip and revolver in his car and try yet again. This time, he sails through.

“If he was 30 years younger, I’d have run his butt into jail,” the attendant notes. “But he’s an old guy, and once in a while we see folks like him from the country. It’s like they’re living in a different world.”

Once in Lott’s office, Owens’ problems disappear. Of course Jack will get his passport, an aide says. And by the way, could he sign some autographs?

Back home an hour later, the old man searches for signs of a robbery. He’s convinced that there’s been a break-in, but everything seems to be in order.

When Evans gives him two compact discs of the record he made in 1969, Owens looks bewildered, then stuffs them under a mattress. Handed a copy of his latest recording contract, he hurriedly slips it under the bedroom rug.

“Now it’s safe,” he explains. “Right here, everything’s safe.”

*

Unlike many Mississippi blues men, Jack Owens never left home. Born in Bentonia on Nov. 17, 1904, he was the oldest of eight children. His parents were longtime farmers, and Jack worked in the cotton fields at an early age. He never learned to read or write.

Several family members played guitar, and the boy soon developed an interest in music, learning to play on a three-stringed instrument. As he tells it, blues came naturally to him during long hours in the fields.

“I’d be working the plow and then a song would come to me, I’d be moanin’ me a song, and then when I got home, I’d try to play it,” he recalls. “But I was dragging a guitar around the floor before I could even walk.”

The exact details of Owens’ early life are fuzzy, as for many blues men, but at one point he says he came to know Skip James, the most famous singer to come from Bentonia. James’ style was defined by high-pitched singing and powerful, dynamic guitar work unlike any other blues performer. Jack’s playing style is strikingly similar, but he insists he developed it on his own.

The result is what some experts have called the Bentonia blues sound, a riveting blend of falsetto singing, modal chords and apocalyptic lyrics.

“It’s a chilling kind of Delta blues,” says Don Kent, manager of Yazoo Records, a respected archival label. “But like so many other styles, it was the music of people who were overwhelmed by a violent, changing world.”

Although he’s outwardly cheerful, Owens has known dark moments: He lost his only three children to a house fire in the 1930s, and the recent death of his third wife was a traumatic experience. He’s also felt the lash of racism.

“Look at that place,” he says, pointing toward a local river. “Once it was filled with black bodies. There was lynchings here. The peoples who got taken didn’t do nothing. They stringed ‘em up and set fire to the bodies.”

*

As the years passed, Jack quietly worked the land and played his guitar. He became a popular entertainer, and on Friday and Saturday nights the blues man turned his little shack into a juke joint. His wife sold barbecued goat sandwiches through a hole in the wall while he sold gallon jugs of moonshine.

When folks had enough to eat, he’d play. Blues was originally a dance music and the so-called frolics in Jack’s front yard got rowdy. Sometimes there were gunshots and knifings, but mostly people enjoyed themselves, he recalls.

It was a way of life that continued through the late 1960s, long after most Delta blues men had hopped a train for Chicago. Owens would have remained hidden from the outside world, but the trail to his “discovery” began in Los Angeles in 1966, when James spent several nights as a guest in Evans’ flat.

The blues legend was performing at the Ash Grove nightclub and his host, then a folklore student at UCLA, asked if there were any other performers like him in Bentonia. Hopeful that he might find other artists, Evans visited the remote Mississippi town and locals directed him to Owens.

“I remember that he had blood on his hands when he first came to the door,” the professor jokes, recalling that Owens was cleaning fish at the time. “But he turned out to be very nice and surprised that I had come by.”

Soon, Evans recorded Owens and the LP became a collectors’ favorite. It gained more attention in the 1980s, because by then Jack had outlived most of his contemporaries. He was one of the few Delta blues men still playing, and folks who wanted to hear the original music made a beeline to his porch.

“My life would be different if David Evans didn’t come along,” Owens says. “If not, me and Bud would be sittin’ around wavin’ at flies.”

As Owens’ celebrity grew, he became a tourist attraction. Busloads of Japanese fans descended on him, asking him to perform and pose for pictures. Other visitors recorded him and made bootleg records. Jack never got a dime.

Once, a visitor fast-talked him out of his beat-up National guitar, offering him a cheap Taiwanese model in trade. That National would fetch at least $1,000 today, Evans says, and Owens continues to grumble about the old EKO guitar he now uses, complaining that he badly needs a new instrument.

“Compared to the way he plays now versus 25 years ago, Jack has slowed down,” the professor adds. “But he can still do it. In so many ways, he hasn’t changed at all. It’s just the world around him that’s changed.”

*

Out on Jack’s front porch, a steady rain is falling once again. Only this time, it seems like a hurricane is approaching. A photographer has just begun snapping away when the downpour drives him into Owens’ house for shelter.

The old man plays on, oblivious. His foot stomping, he slides his fingers up the strings. Reaching, twisting for a blues note that shivers in the air:

Come on, baby, take a little walk with me.

Yes come on, baby, take a little walk with me.

We’re in the same old place, baby, where we always used to be.