Po' Monkey's was a rural juke joint that played an integral role in the development of the blues by providing a distinctly secular place for people to socialize, dance, and forget everyday troubles. Although many such jukes once dotted the Delta countryside, it was one of the relatively few to survive into the 21st century. According to Willie “Po’ Monkey” Seaberry, he opened the club at his home in 1963 while working as a farmer and operating the club at night, continuing to live there as it grew from a local gathering place into a destination for blues tourists from around the world during the 1990s. By that decade it drew locals, Delta State University students, and blues enthusiasts seeking “authentic” juke joints, and its dramatic décor attracted attention from the New York Times and photographers including Annie Leibovitz and Birney Imes, who featured it in his 1990 book Juke Joint. Despite that notoriety, it still typified the rural juke joint, with a jukebox, a pool table, beer posters on the walls, and Christmas lights across the walls and ceiling. Rural juke joints were preceded by informal jookhouses in plantation tenants’ houses, where people cleared rooms, spread sawdust on the floor, and gathered for music, dancing, gambling, fried fish, and homemade liquor at events variously called house parties, fish fries, country suppers, Saturday night suppers, balls, or frolics. Many musicians first heard blues in such places, and some artists, including Muddy Waters, operated their own jukes in Mississippi. After coin-operated phonographs became widespread in the South during the 1930s and came to be called jukeboxes, most music at juke joints, including Po' Monkey's, was provided by jukeboxes and later by deejays rather than live performers. The term “juke,” also spelled “jook,” may have African or Gullah origins and has been linked by scholars to meanings such as “wicked or disorderly,” “to dance,” and “a place of shelter”; as a noun it refers to small African American-run bars, cafes, and clubs, and as a verb it refers to partying. Variations of “jook” appeared on recordings in the 1930s, the Mississippi Jook Band's 1936 Hattiesburg session later being described as producing the first “rock ’n’ roll” records, and “Juke” became widely known in 1952 as the title of a hit by Little Walter. Although more formal establishments in towns and cities eventually replaced most rural juke joints, they remained important in the imagination of blues fans and performers, and in the 21st century Mississippi musicians continued to sing and write about jukes while Clarksdale began an annual Juke Joint Festival in 2004.