Willie “Po’ Monkey” Seaberry said he opened a juke joint at his home here in 1963 while working as a farmer and operating the club at night, continuing to live there as well. By the 1990s Po’ Monkey’s drew local patrons, Delta State University students, and blues enthusiasts seeking an “authentic” juke joint, and its dramatic décor brought attention from the New York Times and photographers including Annie Leibovitz and Mississippi’s Birney Imes, who featured it in his 1990 book Juke Joint. Despite that notoriety, Po’ Monkey’s still typified the rural juke joint, with a jukebox, pool table, beer posters on the walls, and Christmas lights across the walls and ceiling. Rural juke joints grew out of informal plantation “jookhouses,” where residents cleared furniture from the largest room, spread sawdust on the floor, and gathered for music, dancing, gambling, fried fish, and homemade liquor at events also called house parties, fish fries, country suppers, Saturday night suppers, balls, or frolics. Many musicians recalled first hearing blues in jookhouses run by neighbors or relatives, and some artists, including Muddy Waters, operated their own jukes in Mississippi. After coin-operated phonographs spread across the South in the 1930s and became known as jukeboxes, most music at juke joints, including Po’ Monkey’s, came from jukeboxes and later deejays rather than live performers. The term “juke,” sometimes spelled “jook,” may have African or Gullah origins with suggested meanings including “wicked or disorderly,” “to dance,” and “a place of shelter”; as a noun it refers to small African American-run bars, cafes, and clubs such as Po’ Monkey’s, and as a verb it refers to partying. The word appeared in recordings in the 1930s, the Mississippi Jook Band’s 1936 Hattiesburg session was later described as producing the first rock ’n’ roll records, and “Juke” became widely known through Little Walter’s 1952 hit. Although more formal establishments in towns and cities replaced most rural juke joints, jukes remained important in the imagination of blues fans and performers, and in the 21st century Mississippi musicians continued writing and singing about them while Clarksdale began an annual Juke Joint Festival in 2004.
