all images courtesy memphis in may international festival and georgehuntart.com
George Hunt’s artwork for the 2019 Beale Street Music Festival poster.
When George Hunt was in his tent at the Beale Street Music Festival, he was in heaven.
For years, until his death in late 2020, he painted music- and Memphis-themed canvases that would become the annual posters for the Memphis in May event. His works were popular from the get-go in the early 1990s, and it didn’t take long for those posters to become collectors’ treasures. Jim Holt, president and CEO of the Memphis in May International Festival, says there’s always been a demand for the posters and some of them from the early years are scarce.
all images courtesy memphis in may international festival and georgehuntart.com
George Hunt was the official artist for every MIM BSMF poster between 1992 and 2019.
But most years are still available and a few years ago, Holt thought it would be a good idea to have an “Art of George Hunt” tent at the BSMF. “We would sell the current year’s poster and the back-stock of many of the prior years,” he says. “People enjoyed that; maybe they had once attended the festival with their future wife, or they wanted a poster to commemorate the year James Brown played.”
But more than just an opportunity to move some merchandise, Holt wanted to get Hunt in on the action. “I talked to George about coming down to the tent for a few hours and do signings,” he says. “He liked the idea and it turned out to be a very popular feature.”
People would come into the tent and peruse the posters hanging there. If they bought one, they’d stand in line to have Hunt autograph it. And there might be a bit of a wait because the artist was so friendly and accommodating that he’d chat with everybody about his art, about the music, about the festival, about Memphis.
Hunt’s posters speak to Memphis’ heritage as a blues capital, depicting characters he has seen in clubs or juke joints over the years.
“He wanted to be there all the time,” Holt says. “I told him we had people there to handle the sales, but he loved being there. We’d open the gates on Saturday at 1 p.m. and he’d be there about 2 and wouldn’t leave till 10 or 11.”
And that was after he’d been there Friday and would come back on Sunday.
“I couldn’t get him to cut back the hours, and it kind of wore him out,” Holt says, “but it also exhilarated him because there was such great respect among the fans of the festivals. They wanted him to personalize it and they would share their stories with him about attending and how much they enjoyed his art.”
But Hunt would occasionally break away and slip into the Blues Tent to see one or two of his favorite performers. Because, after all, the art was all about the music.
“Musicians have come a long way, but we’ve still got the blues. It’s about a means of improvising. The blues is about being down, but hey, I’m not going to be down always. The sun’s going to shine in my back door someday.” — George Hunt
Hunt was born in a sugar cane field in Louisiana and grew up listening to the blues playing on an aunt’s old phonograph. He never played an instrument or sang, but he fell in love with the sound and the culture of the blues.
His depictions of blues musicians and their milieu didn’t get going until later in his career. He told the Memphis Flyer in 2003: “These kinds of blues images were taboo in the Black community. You were supposed to create images that would uplift in a way, like mother-and-child pieces. I did those for a long time before I started coming to these images in the back of my mind which had been with me since childhood.”
all images courtesy memphis in may international festival and georgehuntart.com
In 1994, when Coté d’Ivoire was the honored MIM country, Hunt’s art also graced the festival’s fine art poster.
Holt credits Davis Tillman, the former program director for Memphis in May, with coming up with the idea of having Hunt’s art be part of the festival in the early 1990s. At the time, Holt was working with Mid-South Concerts, which did sponsor support and bookings for the Beale Street Music Festival.
Tillman and Holt thought initially they might have Hunt do the poster for three years and then rotate artists, but his work was so instantly popular and became so quickly identifiable with the festival, that it became a recurring gig.
Holt took the reins of MIM in 1998, and seeing how popular Hunt’s works had become, decided to acquire the original paintings that would become the posters. That includes the artist’s final painting that he had produced for the 2020 festival. Since the festival was canceled in 2020 and 2021, the artwork will be used for the 2022 event. Hunt, who had been in poor health, died December 4, 2020, at age 85.
Hunt taught art education at Carver High School and coached football and track for three decades before working on his art full-time. He garnered plenty of recognition for his work outside of the posters.
In 2003, he was the featured artist in the U.S. Senate’s designated “Year of the Blues,” which included a national tour of his works. His title piece, High Cotton Tour, examines the evolution of sound and an expansion of the blues to other cultures. Hunt said, “Musicians have come a long way, but we’ve still got the blues. It’s about a means of improvising. The blues is about being down, but, hey, I’m not going to be down always. The sun’s going to shine in my back door some day.”
all images courtesy memphis in may international festival and georgehuntart.com
The 1997 painting America Cares depicting the Little Rock Nine, the first African-American students to attend Central High School in Little Rock, was issued as a 2005 USPS stamp as part of a series title, “To Form a More Perfect Union.”
His work was on a postage stamp issued in 2005 as part of a series titled “To Form a More Perfect Union,” which recognized the struggle for equality during the civil rights movement. The 1997 painting America Cares depicts the Little Rock Nine, the first African-American students to attend Central High School in Little Rock.
David Simmons, head of LongRiver Entertainment Group, represented Hunt as business manager, art agent, publisher, and broker for many years. Simmons says the painting that ended up on the stamp was done to be part of the Central High School Interpretive Center in Little Rock. President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were at the groundbreaking ceremony that also unveiled Hunt’s artwork. “Hillary was so taken by the painting that she asked to take it back with her to the White House, where it hung for five years until it was returned to its permanent home,” Simmons says.
Hunt’s appeal as an artist was clearly in the vivid colors and lively images that evokes the feel of music. His posters speak to Memphis’ heritage as a blues capital. Less obvious are some of the details in his works.
“People always enjoy the interesting little elements that he will include in the paintings,” Holt says. “Many of them are characters that he has seen in clubs or juke joints over the years, and there are stories behind a lot of those characters.”
The artist, for all the acclaim he received, never let it go to his head. “He stayed humble,” Simmons says. Sometimes he was so self-effacing that people didn’t know who he was even when he was surrounded by his art.
The consensus is that he was simply nice, although Simmons says he enjoyed telling stories that may not have been entirely true. “He never did it to change a business deal or out of meanness,” he says. “It was a recreational game. I still don’t know the sequence of his life between high school and when he got married.” Various tales had Hunt in the Navy, or in Chicago, or the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. “The pieces of the puzzle don’t always quite fit,” Simmons says. “If I ever write his biography, it’ll have to include Option One and Option Two in several places.”
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all images courtesy memphis in may international festival and georgehuntart.com
Memphis in May Street Music Festival lineups were an essential part of Hunt’s poster. Concert-goers would share stories with Hunt about attending past shows and how much they enjoyed his art. Shown here: 1996.
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all images courtesy memphis in may international festival and georgehuntart.com
Memphis in May Street Music Festival lineups were an essential part of Hunt’s poster. Concert-goers would share stories with Hunt about attending past shows and how much they enjoyed his art. Shown here: 1997.
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all images courtesy memphis in may international festival and georgehuntart.com
Memphis in May Street Music Festival lineups were an essential part of Hunt’s poster. Concert-goers would share stories with Hunt about attending past shows and how much they enjoyed his art. Shown here: 1999.
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all images courtesy memphis in may international festival and georgehuntart.com
Memphis in May Street Music Festival lineups were an essential part of Hunt’s poster. Concert-goers would share stories with Hunt about attending past shows and how much they enjoyed his art. Shown here: 2002.
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all images courtesy memphis in may international festival and georgehuntart.com
Memphis in May Street Music Festival lineups were an essential part of Hunt’s poster. Concert-goers would share stories with Hunt about attending past shows and how much they enjoyed his art. Shown here: 2005.
