Club Ebony, one of the South’s most important African American nightclubs, was built in Indianola just after World War II by entrepreneur Johnny Jones. Opened for business around 1948 on property Jones had purchased with his wife Josephine in November 1945, it became known for presenting major blues and jazz performers. Jones had previously operated other Indianola clubs, including Jones Nite Spot on Church Street, where a young B. B. King watched performers such as Louis Jordan, Jay McShann, Pete Johnson, and Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2. Jones wrote that when he opened his first business there were no other clubs for Negroes in Indianola, and King later recalled that Jones helped keep the neighborhood alive by bringing in entertainers and often allowing local workers to pay on Saturday if they lacked money during the week. Because of his generosity and the high fees required to book leading acts, Jones fell into financial difficulty with Club Ebony. After his death in May 1950, his widow, his son John E. Jones, Jr., and others operated the club under the ownership of James B. “Jimmy” Lee, who had loaned him money. Ruby Edwards took over the business in the mid-1950s and purchased it in 1958. By then B. B. King had become a major blues artist, and during a 1955 return to Indianola to perform there he met Ruby Edwards’s daughter Sue Carol Hall, whom he married in 1958. Willie and Mary Shepard rented the club in 1974 and bought it in 1975, continuing its tradition of booking top acts from the chitlin circuit, including Ray Charles, Count Basie, B. B. King, Bobby Bland, Little Milton, Albert King, Willie Clayton, James Brown, Ike Turner, Syl Johnson, Clarence Carter, Denise LaSalle, Bobby Rush, Howlin’ Wolf, Tyrone Davis, and local performers such as David Lee Durham and the Ladies Choice Band. After B. B. King began returning for an annual homecoming festival in his honor in 1980, it became customary for him to cap the festivities with a nighttime performance there. When Mary Shepard retired in 2008 after 34 years, B. B. King purchased Club Ebony to preserve its tradition and its place in Delta cultural life.
