Edward Memphis Antoine was born in Rayne, Louisiana, into a cajun French speaking

family with talented siblings and cousins. With the help of those cousins he teaches
himself to play the guitar and earns the name “Blues Picking King.” With Clifton Chenier,
his cousin of blues and zydeco fame, he learns Cajun music and, soon enough, young
Edward becomes the rhythm guitar player for Clifton’s band. In 1960 he moves to
Portland, Oregon, where he plays in a jazz band for a year before deciding to move to
Chicago to pursue blues music with his brother Nolan Struck.

The Chicago years. Once in the Windy City, where he will live for 15 years, King meets
the great McKinley Mitchell who hires him on the spot to be his guitar player. King gets
to perform at the Regal Theater and to meet Willie Dixon. He also plays on a regular
basis at the Checkerboard Lounge with Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Lonnie Brooks, and at
Theresa’s Lounge where he sits in with Muddy Waters. King and McKinley later go on
the road playing theater gigs, leading King to open for Tyrone Davis, Little Milton and
Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland. He also tours and plays with his brother Nolan.
The Jackson years. King moves to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1975, following McKinley,
who has relatives there. McKinley begins working for Malaco Records and asks King to
play guitar for him on several records. Both musicians are also touring together. In 1978
King decides to sign and record his first solo album, Genuine Mississippi Blues with Ace
Records and Johnny Vincent, along with notables Sam Myers and Big Bad Smitty. His
first break into the Jackson club scene is at the Queen of Hearts, still operated by
Chellie B. Lewis. King also performs at Richard’s Playhouse on Farish Street,
sometimes even plays both clubs on the same night. He later becomes a fixture at
Jimmy King’s famous Subway Lounge where he plays ten years.

Around Mississippi, and further. King has become a legend in Mississippi, playing
festivals and venues across the state, such as in Ocean Springs, Rolling Fork or
Clarksdale, but also further – St. Louis, Missouri, Davenport, Iowa, and twice at the
internationally acclaimed Chicago Blues Festival. He is a member of the Central
Mississippi Blues Society – he plays every week at the Society’s Blue Monday, hosted
by Hal & Mal’s – and the International Blues Foundation. He is also a regular at the
Queen of Hearts and at Underground 119.
Photo by John Gellman

King regularly participates in Blues in the Schools programs, talking to kids about
staying in school and teaching them about Mississippi’s music heritage, and also in
Blues Symposiums for adults. He is part of the Mississippi Artist Roster.
Photo by John Gellman

Recognition. MAG Last of Mississippi Jukes King is featured in Robert Mugge’s Last of
the Mississippi Jukes, a documentary filmed at the Subway Lounge. He also appears on
the 2010 Mississippi Celebrates Its Grammy Legacy, along with Bobby Rush, Eddie
Cotton and Zac Harmon. More recently, King participated in the 2012 Blessissippi
concert hosted by Morgan Freeman at Ground Zero, in Clarksdale. King has received a
Peavey Award for his contribution to Mississippi music. And he is honored on three
blues markers on the Mississippi Blues Trail, all three of them in Jackson – Subway
Lounge, Queen of Hearts and Ace Records.
==
Intoxicating Blues By Lance Lomax Wednesday, November 10, 2010

"King Edward" Antoine has played the blues for decades and doesn't intend to stop any
time soon
Through decades of change and evolution in the Jackson music scene, Edward "King
Edward" Antoine has held his ground. Planted firmly in his chair, King Edward picks his
guitar and shares his music all over the country several nights a week, from Chicago to
Louisiana to Texas and venues everywhere in between.

A Louisiana native, King Edward grew up among 12 brothers and sisters, in a family full
of talent. After teaching himself to play guitar, the musician moved to Chicago for 15
years, performing at the Regal Theater and touring with his brother Nolan Struck and
musician McKinley Mitchell. The Mississippi Blues Trail has honored King Edward with
three blues markers in Jackson: the Subway Lounge, the Queen of Hearts and the Ace
Records marker. He has played with blues legends including Muddy Waters, Howlin'
Wolf, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells and has opened for B.B. King. king Edward spoke to
the Jackson Free Press by phone.
You come from a family of musicians.
Most of my kin folk were musicians. My cousin and all them were playing Zydeco. I
played with Clifton Chenille when I was 17. When I was 18 or 19, I got my own band and
played in Louisiana and Texas. It was hard back then in the '50s; I started playing in '58.
I was in Chicago in the '60s. I met all these guys up there. We toured with B.B. King for
a little while doing some school things for the kids. I got to know B.B. and Bobby Bland
really well. I was already a good blues player, but I learned a lot when I went to Chicago.
I worked in a recording studio. Tyrone Davis and all them were recording there. My
brother and I did an album for Ace Records and called it "Brothers to Brothers." I did
"Mississippi Roots" with Ace Records.

When did you come to Mississippi?

I moved back to Mississippi in '75 and ran across Sam Miles. We started out on Farish
Street at Richard's Playhouse, and we played at the Queen of Hearts on Martin Luther
King (Avenue). Finally, I went to play at the Subway. Jessie Robinson went in there, and
then I took over. We did "The Last of the Mississippi Jukes" there. We did some work
with Fingers Taylor.
I've been in this business for so long I can't tell you where I've been. I've been
everywhere, but my best music was right here. Mississippi blues artists are moving back
here because the blues is coming back.

How has the blues culture developed and changed in Mississippi?

This is the problem with the blues: When we were coming up in the '60s and '70s, we
got a lot of radio airplay. Then the radios stopped playing the blues. ... They went on to
R&B and disco. The younger generation didn't know what the blues was all about.
A lot of these young folks come to me now, and I just tell 'em where it came from. A lot
of them thought it was slavery music, and it wasn't. Blues is just a problem people go
through. The young folks are really getting into the blues. We have a blues society at Hal
and Mal's, and a lot of black and white folks are getting into it and getting along.

What about the old Subway days?

I came down here in '63 and did a show. Things were rough. Blacks and whites couldn't
get along, so I left. I came back in '75, and the subway had a mixed crowd. We did
everything there. I couldn't believe how people were getting along. We'd start at 12 at
night and play until 4 or 5 in the morning.
It made me happy to see how people got back together. One crowd would come in
around 12, and later another crowd would come in. Eddie Cotton played at the Subway
with me for two or three years. I taught him how to play the blues. Eddie was the first
person to play at 930 (Blues Cafe), then Jackie Bell, and then me.

What it's like being on stage?

I feel like I'm supposed to satisfy the customer. A lot of people have to drink to play. I get
the "feeling" when I play my first song. That's what happens when you've been doing it
as long as me. When I start playing all the music I grew up with, it all comes back.

What about the business side of it?

We didn't know the business early on as far as contracts. The companies were taking
advantage of that. We never got rich off it because we were giving away our talent.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
A lot of times I'm practicing. I think I'm going to record this new album in the Delta--up in
Clarksdale. I'm going to redo a lot of these old blues songs people forgot about and put
it on this new album. ==
Traditional Mississippi blues, with a taste of Chicago, spices from Louisiana, and some
soul and rhythm’n blues thrown in…

King Edward Antoine is an authentic Mississippi blues guitarist and singer, with
Louisiana and Chicago roots, who can play rhythm’n blues and jazz as well. He has
performed with legends such as McKinley Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy
Guy, Junior Wells and Sam Myers just to name a few.

Today, the guitarist leads his own band, the King Edward Band, and also performs duo
and solo acoustic acts. He plays festivals and venues across Mississippi, the Southeast
and the Midwest, and has been on the Chicago Blues Festival line-up twice. He was a
regular guitarist at the famous Subway Lounge, in Jackson, Mississippi, until the juke-
joint disappeared. He now performs every week at the Central Mississippi Blues
Society’s Blue Monday, at Hal & Mal’s, in Jackson, among other venues.
King Edward is honored on three blues markers on the State of Mississippi Blues Trail:
The Subway Lounge, The Queen of Hearts, and the ACE Records markers. He has
received a Peavey Award for his contribution to Mississippi music, and is featured in The
Last of the Mississippi Jukes documentary. He also regularly participates in Blues in the
Schools programs, blues symposiums – teaching students and adults about the blues
and Mississippi’s music heritage.

Incidentally, he even plays with his teeth or his hat… and speaks Cajun French!
==
08 jun2013

King Edward
By Mike Stephenson for Jefferson Blues Magazine # 176

Interview of this Jackson, Mississippi, based guitarist and singer by Mike

Stephenson took place in Jackson in June 2010. Many thanks go to Peggy Brown
for arranging the interview for Blues & Rhythm.

I was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, my daddy was a sharecropper and I worked on a

farm with him back in the fifties. That was before I even learnt how to play music. My
true name is Edward Memphis Antoine. When I was seventeen or eighteen years old I
was in the field working and I didn’t go to school like I was supposed to because back
then those days was hard. Then I got with my cousin and they all played music and I
wanted to play so bad so they taught me, they taught me how to play guitar. This was
when I was about eighteen and that was when I did my first club gig. My cousin Clifton
Chenier, I was playing guitar with him when I was seventeen and he taught me how to
play rhythm guitar behind him and we would play a lot of zydeco music and blues. We
played through Louisiana and Texas back then. I was a young buck trying to learn from
him. I did one recording with him back then which I think was something like ‘Dance With
Me’ which was in French. I played with him up to about 1958, and in 1959 I moved up to
Port Arthur in Texas with my sister and mother. After that I started playing with my other
cousin playing blues and also playing by my own. The name of that cousin
was Lionel and I played with him for about a year in 1959, and then I left and went to
Portland, Oregon, and then I got my own band. Before I got my band I was playing with
a jazz band, a twelve piece band in Portland, and I stayed there about a year and played
the blues with my band which was called King Edward Blues Band. Then my
brother, Nolan Struck, who was living in Chicago, called me and told me to get to
Chicago as there were a lot of blues players there, so I moved to Chicago in 1960.
When I got to Chicago I started playing with my brother and Lonnie Brooks, we all grew
up together.

Chicago

I met Buddy Guy and Junior Wells and played with them for a while and I used to sit in
with Muddy Waters sometimes and I got to meet B.B. King there as well. I stayed in
Chicago and played all over, Milwaukee, Gary, Indiana, Jew Town and all over the
Southside. I did some recordings in Chicago with Nolan Struck called ‘Too Many Irons in
The Fire’ which was a 45 recorded in Chicago. I then met McKinley Mitchell, after I left
my brother as he went to work with Lonnie Brooks, so I went to work with McKinley and
we started doing theatre gigs like the Regal and a lot of road work and I did a lot of
recordings with him, playing the guitar. Some of the numbers were ‘End Of The
Rainbow’, ‘The Town I Live In’ and others this was by the George Leaner label One-
Derful. I stayed in Chicago up until 1975. When I was with McKinley we would open for
acts like Michael Jackson when he was a little boy, The Temptations, Diana
Ross, Bobby Bland, B.B. King. Any big star that came through the Regal, we were the
opening act for them. Pervis Spann was bringing everybody through there and he was
booking us.

Me and Jessie Robinson grew up together and I met him in Chicago in 1965. We were
both in our mid-twenties then and that’s when I met Lonnie Brooks and all of them. I
met Tyrone Davis then and he was singing with my band. We didn’t have nothing but a
three piece band and Tyrone was on vocals and my brother Nolan was on bass. This
was back in 1962. He sung with us for about a year and he used to sing a lot of Bobby
Bland stuff then. When he cut that song ‘Can I Change My Mind’ the reason he got that
hit at the time was Jackie Wilson’s company wasn’t going to sign him back up so Tyrone
got with the company. I knew Jimmy and Syl Johnson back then. Now ‘Too Many Irons
In The Fire’ was Nolan’s first record and Syl Johnson also recorded that. I recorded a
song behind Lee Shot Williams in Chicago and L.V. Johnson was on there as well. I
can’t think of what that song was, it was back in the sixties. It was a good hit for Lee
Shot back then.
McKinley Mitchell

How I first met McKinley, I was walking in the street in Chicago and me and Nolan used
to look alike back then and he thought I was Nolan, and I explained that Nolan was my
brother and I told him I played guitar, and he said he was looking for a guitar player right
now and he wanted me to get with him and get on the road and do some recordings with
him. Before I met McKinley I was playing in the basement with Buddy Guy and Junior
Wells at Theresa’s. James Cotton would come in there and Pinetop Perkins. When I
went with McKinley that was a different type of music that was more r&b. We travelled
with Red Saunders and his band on the Greyhound tour bus. We were the opening act
for him. Now Red had a fifteen piece band and they would back us up. I had to go to
rehearsal with them and get their musical director to write the music for me. Now his
band used to read music but for me it was in my head. When I first went to play at
Theresa’s it was Fenton Robinson, and I went there and Theresa thought I was Nolan
and she asked me what I played and I told her guitar and bass, so I went there and
Fenton was looking for a bass player so I played bass with him for about three weeks on
my regular guitar, and then Theresa let me play guitar and I stole the show from Fenton.

So then I started playing with Junior Wells and then James Cotton wanted me to go on
the road with him but I was already hooked up with Buddy Guy and Junior Wells then. I
used to play at the Checkerboard as well sometimes in the early morning. There used to
be bands playing there all night and during the day, there were so many bands back
then. I played with Magic Slim in clubs and with Magic Sam. I used to sit in with Earl
Hooker and he was a real terrible guitar player, nobody could touch him on guitar. He
would play with a slide and make that guitar talk. He had that TB thing and they had him
in that hospital and he would sneak out of the hospital at night through the window and
go play his gig, and before the doctor would come back in the morning he was back in
the hospital. We used to tease him about what time he had to be back in the hospital.
Me and Hound Dog Taylor played together and he wanted me to go to Alaska with him
but it was too cold there so I didn’t go with him.

In 1975 I broke up with my wife and McKinley was breaking up with his at the same time.
He told me that he came home one night and all his clothes and furniture was gone and
I told him the same had happened to me. So he decided to move to Mississippi and I
was going to go to Louisiana and we decided to ride together and when we got to
Jackson, Mississippi we lived with his mother and his family for a while, so I stayed
there. So McKinley started working for Malaco Records and I started working with him at
Malaco. We recorded ‘When It Rains It Pours’, ‘When I Try’, ‘Over The Rainbow’ and
many others. I helped him put the music together for those songs, I was the music
director and I played guitar. After that we brought Nolan in from Chicago and recorded
him at Malaco studios. We did ‘My Nerve Has Gone’. James Bennett, the producer,
was working with Malaco then, and Nolan’s numbers were on James Bennett’s label.
We recorded ‘Falling In Love With You’, ‘Fire Don’t Burn All The Time’, The Love You
Share’, Just A Matter Of Time, ‘Ghetto Cowboy’ and more.

I was guitar behind Nolan on those recordings. Bennett was the producer on those
recordings. So I was working with both Nolan and McKinley on the road at that time. I
decided in 1978 I would record myself and I signed up with Johnny Vincent’s Ace
Records. Me and Sam Myers, we recorded some tunes, some that came out on the CD
called ‘Johnny Vincent Presents The Ace Blues Masters Vol 4’. Me and Sam played
together for a long time and we were on the road together. Back then I was young and
enjoying myself. I cut ‘The Things I Used To Do’, ‘I Should Have Quit You’, ‘Today I
Started Loving You Again’, ‘Look Over Yonders Walls’, ‘You’re Looking Good Again
Tonight’, that’s an original, ‘I Wanna Get Funky’, ‘Something Good Going For Me’, and
‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’ and Sam is blowing harp on some of those songs. See,
there were a lot of us on that Johnny Vincent album and I was playing on the whole
session and we used only one band. I took my songs off that album and put them on my
CD. Johnny Littlejohn and Elmore James Junior, Bad Smitty was on that album, so
what I did was to put my songs on my album called ‘History Of King Edward’.

I was playing a lot of club gigs and when I left McKinley I used to play the Queen Of
Hearts club and then Richard’s Playhouse on Farish Street here in Jackson and then the
Subway Lounge on Pearl Street, that was the one that everybody knows about as it was
in the documentary ‘Last Of The Mississippi Jukes’ DVD. I was leading my own band
and I was doing my own thing. Back then me and Sam Myers was working together in
club gigs and we worked with local artists like Cadillac George Harris, Bad Smitty, he
used to sing likeHowlin Wolf, and we were like a little group playing around here in
Jackson. I did some other recordings with other people like George Harris, Frank
O’ who used to work with Malaco.

Both me and Nolan did that ‘Brother To Brother’ CD. I did seven songs on that album,
numbers like ‘Rock Me Baby’, ‘Mr. Charlie’, ‘Looking Good Again Tonight’ but that was
recorded different to the one I did with Johnny Vincent, ‘Life Has Been Good For Me’
and others. Nolan has eight songs on that CD and we recorded that in Jackson at
Sergio’s Recording Studio. We recorded that in the early eighties I think, and it was
produced by Sergio, Bob Jones from Chicago and Ralph Simon. Bob writes a lot of
songs, as a matter of fact ‘You Got Something Good Going For You’ on that album was
written by him. I did some session work for James Bennett, he would hire me to put
some music together on tape, like demos. I did some stuff with McKinley Mitchell and
Nolan for James Bennett. We would go to Memphis to record it with the band. Some of
the songs that my brother Nolan did for James like ‘Stand By Me’ we recorded that in
Memphis. Back in the early nineties before McKinley died, me and McKinley was the
opening act for B.B. King in the schools around here in Mississippi.

Life Today

I’m doing a lot of road work at present and we did the Chicago Blues Festival in 2009
and we are working on a new album. On my show at the Chicago Blues Festival we
had Tina Diamond and Nolan. We are working on getting out of Mississippi and working
in other states. Recently I was awarded a Peavy Grammy award from the governor of
Mississippi when we did a big show at the Hard Rock casino with Bobby Rush, Eddie
Cotton Jr and Zack Harmon, The Mississippi Mass Choir, The Williams Brothers.
I’ve been playing festivals in Vicksburg and the Tommy Johnson festival. We have
played the Pinetop Perkins Homecoming in Clarksdale, it’s a bit like a homecoming for
musicians. I still do shows every once in a while with my brother Nolan. He does his own
thing and I do my own thing. He is doing a new album and I am helping him put that
together. In my band I have Rick Lewis on drums, Abdul on bass, Carter McMillan and
myself so we are a four piece band. It all depends on what the promoter is looking for,
we can go up to a ten piece if they want it, depending on the money. We have the Blues
Society band and I back them sometimes, that’s Pat Brown, Denise
Fountain, Abdul, Ricky Lewis, Dwight Ross, Johnny Sharp, this is the Hal and Mal’s
club thing on Monday nights here in Jackson, we all team up together for that.

When I go on the road I have my own band. I played with Honeyboy

Edwards and Grady Championrecently at the 930 Blues Café here in Jackson, which
was presented as ‘Three Generations Of The Blues’. I am mentioned on three
Mississippi Blues Trail Markers here in Jackson. At the site of the Queen Of Hearts club
in Jackson on Martin Luther King Drive, I used to play there when I first got to Jackson.
And then at the site of the Subway Lounge on Pearl Street where I used to play, and
then at Ace Records on Capital Street, it’s just down from the King Edward hotel in
Jackson. My picture is on the Queen Of Hearts marker. That is an honour for me.