Big A Sherrod — Torchbearer of the Clarksdale Sound

You are at 305 Issaquena Avenue, right off 3rd Street. Delta Muffler is up the road. So is Our Grandma’s House of Pancakes, except in the opposite direction. A 10-minute hike around the corner lies Red’s Lounge, where folks have been juking since the turn of the 1980s. But where you’re standing serves as a perfectly viable, makeshift juke that, at the moment, is erupting with blues.

Because wailing before you—inside Clarksdale Reels, a recording studio that moonlights as a blues club in its off-hours—is hometown hero Anthony “Big A” Sherrod fronting a responsive three-piece band.

Welcome to Clarksdale, Mississippi.

You’ve made it just in time, as “Baby That Hurt” kicks off the 30-minute set. Warm waves of bass flood in. Drums boil away. An organ blurts out funky, little earworms the way Frank Frost’s did around the Delta, except here it’s courtesy of the session’s producer, Jimbo Mathus, pulling double duty. And despite the melody’s soulfulness, Sherrod establishes these six minutes as gut-punch blues. A cold shot, for sure. And he is ticked. That’s plain to hear every time the chorus cycles around, coupling “Girl, you treat me just like dirt” with “and you know that hurt.”

Beyond the lyrics, his singing doesn’t let the infraction slide without condemnation, since Big A has the kind of voice meant for reverberating around juke-joint walls: part-asphalt, part-holler, 100% honest. Kind of like that of the late Big Jack Johnson, who once ruled Clarksdale’s joints with his booming bark and handmade songbook—a role his godson has now taken over.

The newly-turned 41-year-old is indeed a veteran of the area’s clubs (which includes Red’s as well as Ground Zero), having been in the blues business since the ripe old age of five. That’s when a cousin came recruiting for a wannabe bassist to join Johnnie Billington’s J.B. and the Midnighters. Fed on B.B. King cassettes and trained on the job, Sherrod joined the ensemble specifically meant to introduce local youth to the blues, and stuck around for 17 years. “My Life” delivers his story as a talking blues set to a simmering pulse, except when that guitar of his speaks up.

Needless to say, he since commanded centerstage and crossed over to guitar. Because those are his single notes flying throughout, whether coolly tumbling down “Baby That Hurt,” coolly firing up “My Life” or maximally worrying “Don’t Make Me Pay,” a chain reaction of retaliation, by extracting all their blueness from hitting the strings just so. His lyrical streak of bad luck keeps right on sinking by losing his “Good Woman,” which hustles along with a wicked, little shimmy to its motion.

In line with the music’s raw edge, Mathus’ production keeps the setup simple and straightforward: Sherrod gets one mic; another suspends over the room for everyone else; then the four of them are set loose. And just like that, five original songs got caught on two-track, reel-to-reel analog tape. Torchbearer of the Clarksdale Sound, the resulting lickety-split session, indeed sounds like a live, in-club experience.

So much so that when “Everybody Ain’t Your Friend” begins its scorched philosophizing and limber fretwork, you’re in that Clarksdale room earwitnessing genuine Delta blues at home and as fresh as only a few short months ago, in February of this year.

Label: Music Maker

Release date: 7/11/25

Label website: Music Maker.org

Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski