Rain outside but steam in the blues tent with Sumlin, Costello

Photo by Nikki Boertman // Buy this photo

Elvis Costello made a guest appearance with Hubert Sumlin at the Blues Tent at the Beale Street Music Festival on Saturday.

Despite having some of the lesser-known names on this year’s lineup, the north end of Tom Lee Park continued to draw big crowds on the second day of Beale Street Music Festival as soggy music fans sought shelter from the storm, followed cult favorites, and chased down last minute news of at least one surprise performance in the Blues Tent.

The unannounced guest appearance of Elvis Costello during blues legend Hubert Sumlin’s afternoon Blues Tent slot was just one of the early highlights Saturday. (Costello, for his part, made at least one more guest shot later during Los Lobos’ set on the Sam’s Town Stage.)

Photo by Nikki Boertman

Elvis Costello made a guest appearance with Hubert Sumlin at the Blues Tent at the Beale Street Music Festival on Saturday.

The British Rock and Roll Hall of Famer joined Sumlin, the late Howlin’ Wolf’s longtime guitarist and widely considered one of the most influential pickers in modern music, about midway through his set. With backing by Memphis’ Billy Gibson Band, Costello sat in for the late Wolf on a version of “Killing Floor,” parrying back and forth with the 77-year-old Sumlin on lead.

It was not the only case of veteran musicianship on display. As members of the twenty-something blue-eyed soul band Jump Back Jake took notes in the wings, Memphis soul-funk giants the Bar-Kays put on a master class on how to get a party started. The eight-piece band, coolly dressed in white while three backup dancers swarmed around them, never let up as they knocked out classic dance tunes like “Sexomatic” and “Shake Your Rump To The Funk.”

The 40-year R&B veterans were just one of the party bands on the Budweiser Stage, which could have rightly been renamed the “Bud” Stage earlier in the day. Marijuana was a major theme for the stage’s first two acts.

A day after he made his MTV debut playing himself in director Craig Brewer’s Memphis music paean “$5 Cover,” good-time rapper Muck Sticky capped the triumph with a day-opening performance from the stage that found him at one point wielding a giant papier-mâché roach.

Despite the rain and early start time, the squirrel-voiced rapper drew a strong crowd of hardcore followers.

Ranging in age from 15 to 50, the audience chanted along to the lyrics of songa like “Because I Can” add “One Day At A Time,” that reinforced the artist’s happy-go-lucky ethos.

If Muck Sticky was shy about actually lighting up during his otherwise family-friendly set, the act that followed him, reggae singer Julian Marley, had no such reservations. Marijuana permeated the Budweiser Stage as Marley, a son of the late reggae king Bob Marley, ran through reworked versions of some of his father’s best-known numbers, including “Waiting In Vain” and a “Stir It Up” that showed a subtle hip hop influence.

Back at the Blues Tent, acts continued to benefit from both its location at festival’s main gate and by the fact that it is the only covered stage at the event with seats to boot. Even the barroom rocker Shane Dwight, a relative unknown from Nashville, drew big crowds for his journeyman six-string writhing.

And Cedric Burnside & Lightnin’ Malcolm, the latest young blues act to pick up the North Mississippi Hill County blues torch, kept the standing-room-only crowd that Sumlin had built before them dancing into the evening.

In late night action Friday, Lonnie Baker Brooks and Tommy Castro closed out the Blues Tent with plenty of epic guitars solos.

And Philadelphia’s G. Love & Special Sauce got the crowd before the Budweiser Stage hopping after Medeski, Martin & Wood’s jazz-heavy set with their trademark blend of old school R&B grooves and hip-hop rhymes.

But the highlight of Friday was Ben Harper’s arresting Budweiser Stage closing performance. Debuting his new pared-down three-piece rock band, the Relentless7, Harper indulged the more rocking side of his eclectic musical personality, announcing his intentions with furious covers of Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times” and the Queen/David Bowie classic “Under Pressure,” re-imagining audience favorites like “Better Way” and previewing material from their upcoming album White Lies For Dark Times.

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