Jimmy Crosthwait performing at Crosstown's Green Room, June 2019. Photograph by Mike Kerr.
A beloved Memphis figure, Jimmy Crosthwait has made his mark in many artistic areas over the years. He’s been a puppeteer and sculptor, a musician and poet. He recently found himself on center stage once again, during the premiere of the concert film, Memphis 69.
For the 300-plus crowd who gathered for the sold-out screening in June, the evening was a raucous celebration of Memphis’ blues heritage. The film chronicled the performances given during the Memphis Country Blues Festival of 1969. Founded by writer Robert Palmer and held at the Overton Park Shell from 1966 to 1969, the festival brought to the stage such notable musicians as Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bukka White, and others. Collectively, the Delta blues heavily influenced the rock-and-roll emerging from Britain in the early 1960s.
Playing washboard for the band, Crosthwait doesn’t strum the instrument so much as tap dance across it. He plays in the traditional way, with sewing thimbles on his fingers. As he plucks the washboard, his long white hair closes like a curtain around his face as he gently sways to the music.
The film came about thanks to the efforts of Bruce Watson of Fat Possum Records, who acquired the footage, and filmmakers Joe and Lisa LaMattina, who produced the film. As one of the players in the original festival, Crosthwait shared his memories of that era to an appreciative audience, some of whom had attended the festival themselves. He emceed the 1968 concert, playing his trademark washboard with Bukka White, with whom he later recorded. That year found Memphis fractious. “A week before the festival, the KKK had held a rally at the Shell and Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed a few weeks earlier,” observed Crosthwait.
During the Q & A session that followed, he joined the filmmakers on stage, along with close friend and fellow musician, Chris Wimmer, an original board member of the Memphis Country Blues Society. Following the screening, the Sons of Mudboy performed at Crosstown’s Green Room, laying down a bluesy acoustic groove that kept the audience spellbound.
Playing washboard for the band, Crosthwait doesn’t strum the instrument so much as tap dance across it. He plays in the traditional way, with sewing thimbles on his fingers. As he plucks the washboard, his long white hair closes like a curtain around his face as he gently sways to the music. His delicate playing adds a percussive, mid-range sound that’s bright and lacy.
The 100-year-old washboard, which hangs from his shoulders, was a gift from musician and producer Jim Dickinson, who picked it up on a road trip through Waco, Texas.
“He gave it to me and said, ‘Learn to play this, we’re gonna start a jug band,’” says Crosthwait. That jug band became the iconic Mudboy and the Neutrons, whose players included Dickinson, Sid Selvidge, and Lee Baker.
Formed in 1970, the group was influenced by the 1960s folk blues revival and particularly the hill country blues of North Mississippi. The Mudboys played periodically for more than 25 years until silenced by Lee Baker’s untimely death in 1996. After Jim Dickinson’s passing in August 2009, the sons of those musicians — Steve Selvidge, Ben Baker, and Luther and Cody Dickinson — picked up the musical mantle, forming the Sons of Mudboy — and Jimmy played on.
Jimmy as seen through one of his weathervane sculptures. Photograph by Jane Schneider.
A Public Artist
Crosthwait has long been woven into the funky, artistic soul of Memphis and today, he remains an undisputed original. Some locals know him as a musician with the Mudboys; others decorate their homes with his Zen chimes and sculptures. Others still remember attending his popular puppet shows at the Memphis Pink Palace Museum, where he performed from 1975 to 1997.
Despite that lengthy passage of time, Crosthwait remains instantly recognizable. At age 74, he still sports an extended goatee, though his shoulder-length hair has long since gone from brown to snowy white. But his eyes still twinkle and his passion to create still burns brightly.
“He deserves some recognition,” agrees musician and producer Joe Mulherin. “Some people look and see the world. Others look at the world and see art. Jim is one of those people.”
To view his drawings and sculptures is to recognize the continuity of his work. The abstract shapes Crosthwait creates are somewhat reminiscent of Chinese characters or fragments of coral from the sea.
“They could be American Indian or Eastern or even Mayan. They have an ethnographic sensibility, a marriage between strength and delicacy, mystery and timelessness,” he says.
“My dad liked Jimmy, I think he saw his real talent,” observes retired educator, Baird Callicott, the son of artist Burton Callicott. His father was a great supporter of Crosthwait and encouraged his talent. “In my opinion, Jimmy’s work is undervalued. He hasn’t gotten recognition as an artist. He’s often put in the crafts category, but I think he’s more of an artist than a craftsman.”
Like a number of collectors, Callicott has several of Crosthwait’s pieces in his riverfront condo, including a handsome, abstract metal wall hanging that references the Mississippi River. Last year, Crosthwait was working on two commissions, one for a client in Venice, Florida, another for a collector in California.
“He deserves some recognition,” agrees musician and producer Joe Mulherin. “Some people look and see the world. Others look at the world and see art. Jim is one of those people.”
Growing up in Normal Station
Jimmy Crosthwait was born on September 5, 1945, the second of four children of Ed and Mora Crosthwait of Memphis. His father sold road construction equipment while his mother stayed at home to raise the family. He grew up on Cowden Avenue off of Highland, part of a middle-class neighborhood teeming with children. There were so many, in fact — 76 as Crosthwait remembers it — that the street merited a feature in the Memphis Press-Scimitar.
Street games outside abounded all summer long, “and I had lots of time for exploring,” he says. Jimmy’s creativity was fostered at the newly formed Memphis Children’s Theatre, which he joined at age 5. There, he played the lead in Rumpelstiltskin, impressing founder Lucille Ewing because, “I could remember so many lines at age 8.” Crosthwait routinely delighted relatives at family gatherings by telling stories about make-believe objects. “I always had a knack for entertaining and conjuring up dialogue,” he says.
While creating art invigorated him, academics did not. He left Memphis Technical High at age 17 and moved to New Orleans. His parents bought him a train ticket and gave him $50 to launch his dream of selling artwork in Jackson Square. But reality proved more daunting. His work didn’t sell and instead of drawing, he found himself washing dishes at Cafe du Monde to make ends meet. Five months later, with the Cuban missile crisis brewing, his mother insisted her son come home.
Jimi Hendrix reportedly remembered their act because Crosthwait sailed through the air in a clown suit, showering the dance floor with confetti before his friend Wimmer triumphantly carried him off on his shoulders.
Once back in Memphis, Crosthwait returned to Tech, earned his GED, and enrolled at Memphis State University as an art major. His sculpture classes provided the most inspiration, but the idea of making his sculptures move was what led him to contact puppeteer Ken Hodge, who operated a studio in Florida. Since Hodge had an opening for a husband-and-wife puppeteer team, Crosthwait married his high school sweetheart, Linda Raiteri, and moved to Florida to learn how to build marionettes. From there, the couple traveled across the Southeast, performing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at elementary schools, logging some 300 performances that year.
His puppetry would later take him and close friend Chris Wimmer to New York City in 1967. They auditioned for the Electric Circus, a popular nightclub and discotheque in the East Village. “Jim Henson also had a hippy puppet show but we beat him out because our show was more political,” he says. “It was kind of like performance art before that was a thing,” incorporating acting, magic, and mime. Jimi Hendrix reportedly remembered their act because Crosthwait sailed through the air in a clown suit showering the dance floor with confetti before Wimmer triumphantly carried him off on his shoulders.
Returning Home
Once the summer of love drew to a close, Crosthwait returned home again, living for many years in a small house on rural property in Raleigh owned by Burton Callicott. He became lifelong friends with the painter, as well as his son, Baird. During the 1970s and 1980s, Crosthwait made music with the Mudboys, delighted audiences with his puppeteering at the Pink Palace, created artwork at a studio in Eads, and drank — a lot. His ups and downs took a toll on his first marriage, which eventually ended in divorce in 1972.
“It’s no secret that he was a wild guy, but my dad saw through his foibles,” notes Callicott. “My dad was a teetotaler and often seen as a saint. Jimmy was the opposite.” Regardless, Burton Callicott considered Jimmy his second son.
Then, in 1988, fate intervened. Crosthwait met Ulla Mansdorfer, a nurse at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, whom he credits with pulling him out of his tailspin.
“I can safely say I’ve tried every vice and I gave each and every one up in the nick of time,” he says. “The fact that I’m the last man standing [from the Mudboys] is something no one would have put money on. That I’ve made it this far is because of Ulla — she saved my life.”
At Home in the Gullies
Jimmy and Ulla married in 1991 and proceeded to look for land on which to build a home. As luck would have it, acreage adjoining the property of gardening masters Wolfgang Marquardt and Diane Meucci of Gardens Oy Vey in Arlington, became available. Because the land was “in the gullies” as Crosthwait describes it, this hilly, forested eight-acre glade had never been farmed. “We’d often find wild azalea there,” remembers Marquardt.
Once purchased, the two couples quickly became friends. Crosthwait would often arrive at their doorstep with freshly baked bread tucked under one arm. In return, Wolfgang would arrive to fix the kitchen sink on occasion. “Jimmy can put stuff together,” says Marquardt with a wink, “but he’s not mechanically inclined.”
“Building a home is a good test of a marriage if you can live through the building process, though I wouldn’t do it again,” Jimmy says.
While it took several years for the couple to build their three-story home, this creative space is a testament to their vision and craftsmanship. Everywhere you turn, artwork is evidenced, from decorative woodwork along the staircase to a sculpture on the front of the house. The living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows bring in light and color, making it feel like an aerie perched high above the forest floor.
Their use of wood and slate gives the house a sense of permanence. Crosthwait tells of laying tongue-and-groove cypress boards in the ceiling of the sunroom during the suffocating heat of summer and building kitchen cabinets of warm honey locust wood brought up from Mississippi. It was gratifying, if sometimes trying, work.
“Building is a good test of a marriage if you can live through the building process, though I wouldn’t do it again,” he says. Despite the challenges, their marriage endured and later, the couple cared for Jimmy’s dad, who lived with them for 15 years.
This wall sculpture, featuring a Mississippi River motif, was commissioned for the home of Baird Callicott. Photograph by Jane Schneider.
This isn’t just their home. Crosthwait also welds and assembles his sculptures here, in an expansive studio on the ground floor. One room holds a massive table that functions as his palette and is filled with an assortment of ceramic beads, iron finials, metal scraps, and bric-a-brac. From this Crosthwait chooses pieces that he incorporates into Zen chimes or collages. Outside is a welding space for crafting fire pits, metal screens, and the occasional percussion instrument. Even the exterior foundation reflects Crosthwait’s whimsy, the stonework interspersed with curious clay faces and nautilus shells.
Crosthwait has had a number of art shows over the years at Christian Brothers University, Rhodes College, and Marshall Arts Gallery, among others. Currently, he’s preparing for an upcoming show entitled the “Rural Route Artists,” which will be mounted at WKNO’s Gallery 1091 from through September 27th. The show features work created by artists from East Shelby County (see below).
Though Jimmy’s health was in jeopardy several years ago — a cancerous tumor on his liver had to be ablated — the treatment was deemed a success and his twice-yearly scans remain clean. As for being the last man standing? It’s a position he’s come very much to appreciate. He continues to play and create, performing with the Mudboys at Huey’s on Madison or the bar DKDC in Cooper Young. Crosthwait is one Memphis original whose legacy will live on long after his washboard is silenced.
Rural Route Artists Art Opening
WKNO's Gallery 1091
7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova
Through September 27, 9 am to 5 pm
Group show features East Shelby County artists, including sculptor Jimmy Crosthwait, potter Agnes Stark, sculptors Larry and Andrea Lugar of Lugar Bronze Foundry, potters Ellen and Butch Boehm, and painter Deborah Carpenter.
