Pioneering Blues Tourism Promoter and Advocate
Entertainment executive Howard Stovall has been singing the praises of blues music and tourism since before hardly anyone realized its potential for preserving the critical history of this born-in-America musical genre, boosting regional pride and revitalizing the Delta.
After a post-college stint in Chicago, Coahoma County native Stovall returned to the Delta in the early 1990s and quickly became immersed in the region’s nascent blues tourism movement. Stovall gave scores of speeches talking about cultural tourism, tourism taxes, and the immense value of Clarksdale’s blues history.
For several years, Stovall led the Sunflower River Blues Festival, which added gospel to its lineup during his tenure. He also played lots of Saturdays at Margaret’s Blue Diamond Lounge with the Stone Gas Band. This deep involvement with the Delta blues scene led to his being tapped in 1996 to be executive director of The Blues Foundation, the Memphis-based nonprofit that serves as an international support organization for blues players and fans all over the world.
Stovall learned the craft of event production at the Foundation, producing awards shows and tributes ranging from Ray Charles’ 70th birthday party at House of Blues Los Angeles to putting Bobby Rush and Rufus Thomas on stage together at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
In 2001, Stovall found an opportunity to take Delta blues tourism to a new level by partnering with Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman and the late Bill Luckett of Clarksdale to open Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale.
“The club turns twenty-four this year, and it has been the linchpin that has allowed so much other blues development to come in behind it,” says Stovall. “And while Ground Zero might be the biggest and best known, there are now a variety of places that pull together to ensure that Clarksdale has live blues music 365 days a year. Our current management team (including ‘new’ partner Eric Meier) is phenomenal and the result is a fantastic place to hear the best in current Mississippi blues.”
A testament to the club’s international appeal, CNN broadcast live from Ground Zero as part of their New Year’s Eve broadcast this past December.
Stovall says working with Freeman through the years has been a pleasure. They have been listening to music together for more than twenty years, though Stovall admits neither of them “club” like they used to when they started. Not only do Freeman, Meier and Stovall enjoy a strong partnership through Ground Zero, but their new “Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience”, which combines blues with a symphonic orchestra, is making waves internationally.
And the innovation continues. Five years ago, Stovall decided to do something new on the music scene and launched the Mighty Roots Music Festival at the family’s Stovall Gin Company near Clarksdale.
“Having spent so much time in building up blues tourism, I wanted to create something that didn’t re-slice the pie, but created a brand-new branch of music tourism,” says Stovall. “The blues thing in Clarksdale is fully realized, and it is so much more than our wildest ideas back in 1991. But to create a new blues event might just take away from someone else’s event, so we made a strong decision to feature other kinds of roots’ music to bring a new music fan to Clarksdale who could ultimately be enticed to return for the blues events. So, country, bluegrass, zydeco, reggae, pop, indie and rock are banging together at Mighty Roots. Where the blues sneaks in is through our late-night jam sessions, where the musicians from our main stage jam with some of our local blues friends until about 4 a.m.”
It takes time to build a new event. Stovall says the hardest thing in the world is to put a band on stage, sell tickets based solely on that band’s name and turn a profit at the end of the day. A successful music event requires an experience that goes beyond just the band on stage, which is why Mighty Roots has an artist market, a kids’ zone and always some strange new activity floating out there. Stovall adds that the creation of that total “experience” is one of the reasons that the Juke Joint Festival remains so successful.
Mighty Roots, which will be held Oct. 3 and 4, also has offerings such as food trucks and yoga classes. The diversity of music has been well received.
“We are ramping things up this year to create more activity at Mighty Roots,” he says. “We’ve hired someone full time to help us build up the calendar. My wife Baylor and I have worked together to create Mighty Roots and breathe new life into the Stovall Store and the Stovall Gin, and people really seem to be enjoying the result. The old gin adds a layer to that experience that Disney couldn’t create. It feels like a destination, and we are investing in the site to make it a place to host more than just the festival.”
They presented their second Cocktails and Jingle Bells event this past December which attracted more than 350 Ole Miss and Mississippi State students to celebrate the end of exams. They have recently installed permanent bathrooms, which is going to make the facility a lot more cost effective for smaller events. Rental bathroom trailers can get expensive.
Stovall says the embrace of reggae by Coahoma County has been enormous fun.
“We featured Mystic Bowie’s Talking Dreads year one and year two, and every year we hear people wanting them back,” he says. Last year we inaugurated Reggae Hour with our friends at Circle Hook Rum and it was a huge hit. Somehow reggae has become a staple of Mighty Roots.”
Stovall does a lot of other outdoor productions including the Collierville, Tenn., July 4 celebration as well as the RiverArts Festival in downtown Memphis. He produces the Elvis Festival in Tupelo, and Tupelo’s New Year’s Eve, which puts 15,000 people on the streets and features two stages and five bands.
“The biggest thing I do annually is the college football national championship game,” says Stovall. “We do the pregame main stage concert, part of which is televised live on ESPN to an international audience, so no pressure. This year we did Kane Brown in the coldest temperature in which I have ever staged an outdoor event. We also work with Memphis Tiger Football, the Memphis Grizzlies and any entity that wants to stage something impactful outdoors.”
Stovall grew up at the end of the pavement on Stovall Road. His family has owned land in the Delta since the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1831. While the family doesn’t actively farm any longer, his father, Matthew Carter Stovall, was head of National Cotton Council and Delta Council and on the board of FNB Clarksdale. He and his wife, Nancy Gilmore Stovall, were very active in the Delta. His grandfather, known to most in the Delta as “The Colonel”, was the only World War I flying ace from Mississippi and served in both WWI and WWII.
It is hard to know when Stovall’s interest in music began. He joined the high school band at Lee Academy as a tuba player, so the desire was certainly there. “I started at the bottom and worked my way up,” he jokes. He enrolled in band a couple months into the school year and won Beginning Band Student of the Year.
After Lee Academy, he finished his junior and senior years at Woodberry Forest in Virginia before going on to graduate from Yale University. From there he went to work as a trading floor account executive at the Chicago Board of Trade from 1984 to 1990. Next, he took an interesting marketing director job with H&H Pump and Dredge Company Clarksdale. His work took him from places ranging from San Antonio to Abu Dhabi working with fabricated steel sewage and wastewater pumps and dredges designed and built in Clarksdale.
Next came working as manager of promotions and public relations for Harrah’s Casino in Tunica 1993-1994 during the “Wild West” days of Mississippi’s casino industry. He then moved to work as a project manager for Harrah’s Entertainment Memphis from 1994-1997.
Wesley Smith, Executive Director of the Greenville and Washington County Convention & Visitors Bureau, first met Stovall in 2000 when Smith went to work at The Blues Foundation in Memphis.
“The Blues Foundation was never, before or since, more high profile than during his tenure as executive director,” says Smith. “One of his strengths is he thinks as big and as cool as possible, and then can adjust to budget. So the big may not be the original vision if budget dictates, but the cool is still there. If the budget is there, though, he can scale both accordingly.
“Howard has spent much of his career outside of Mississippi, but had both the love of our musical history and culture to want to come home, coupled with the skill sets and contacts acquired elsewhere to make amazing things happen.”
Stovall is well regarded by those who rely on him to orchestrate big outdoor events. Lucia Randle, Executive Director of Downtown Tupelo Main Street Association, says Stovall is a very detail-oriented event organizer with a great creative mind who helps with numerous special events in Tupelo.
“When you are dealing with a small office as we are, there are lots of plates in the air,” says Randle. “Howard’s decades of music knowledge ensure that our events run like a well-oiled machine. He has provided Tupelo with excellent musical entertainment representing many genres. He is a pleasure to work with, has a great sense of humor and is extremely engaging. We love him in Tupelo.”
The Stovalls raised their kids in Memphis before they moved back to the Delta in 2020. Their daughter Carter is twenty-six, and their son, Quint twenty-four. “I marvel at how they turned out so well,” he muses. “The people they have become and will be long after Baylor and I are gone is both our greatest joy and the greatest achievement we have accomplished. Our two kids are on the board of the Mighty Roots festival, along with Baylor and me, and are actively involved with its programming and development, setting the stage for what we hope is a new generation to take the reins one day.”
Other lifetime highlights include saving the Muddy Waters cabin, throwing a party in Memphis for the Rolling Stones that was voted “best party of the tour” by the Stones’ crew in 1999, and having Krispy Kreme doughnuts backstage at Harlem’s Apollo Theater with B.B. King.
It was also cool being on “60 Minutes” about a year and a half ago.
“Although when you are sharing the screen with a man who is thought by many to be the ‘voice of God’, people don’t care much what you have to say!” says Stovall. “The funniest part was that I went on and on about Clarksdale’s early nineties blues scene, which predated Morgan’s arrival, and which he loved hearing, and which all ended up getting cut. I got one word intact in the whole interview.”
Stovall also enjoys performing. He has been a keyboardist for the Stone Gas Band 1991-2024, off and on. “A good thirty-year run!” he says.