Helena-West Helena artist Jámin Crawford is the winner of the annual King Biscuit Blues Festival poster contest.
Crawford’s “The Birth of King Biscuit” was unveiled last week and is a hat-tip to the history of “King Biscuit Time,” the blues program that began airing in November 1941 on Helena radio station KFFA, AM-1360, and can still be heard weekdays from 12:15 to 12:45 p.m.
The drawing, made with colored pencils, uses as its reference a photograph of KFFA’s original owner, Sam Anderson, at a microphone with musicians Sonny Boy Williamson to his right and Robert Lockwood Jr. to his left. A bag of King Biscuit flour leans against the microphone stand.
The two musicians had approached Anderson about giving them airtime and he agreed after Max Moore, owner of Interstate Grocery Company, signed on as a sponsor.
Crawford’s work not only recognizes Williamson and Lockwood, who went on to influence generations of musicians, but also Anderson, who was white.
“He gave them the opportunity to play blues on the radio for the world to hear,” Crawford said last week. “He allowed Black musicians to play on the radio and be heard — that raw, Delta blues.”
The show was a hit and Williamson’s likeness — taken from the same photo Crawford references — was used on the King Biscuit flour logo and later incorporated into the festival’s logo, which Crawford includes in his drawing.
“I was honoring everything at the same time,” he said. “It’s all captured into one (work) if you knew what you were looking at.”
Crawford started making art at an early age. He also grew up attending the blues festival and the annual poster art always caught his eye, though he was a little intimidated at first.
“I was looking at all of the posters and thought, I don’t know if I’m as good as all those people, but I sure would like to be,” he said.
Crawford is now a two-time winner of the festival poster contest. His first win came in 2024 with a colored pencil drawing that featured Williamson, Lockwood, bluesman Houston Stackhouse, a plate of biscuits and a crowd scene from the festival.
His work often includes narratives of his hometown.
“I’m from Helena, so I don’t just draw a picture,” he said. “I believe if I’m going to tell a story of Helena, I have to capture it as beautifully as I know how.”
Email: sclancy@adgnewsroom.com
Sean Clancy
Sean Clancy is a features reporter who also writes the weekly column “Paper Trails.” A native of Helena, he’s been with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette since 1999.
