Please Ask For It
posted 4 hours ago #
Awhile back, we caught Please Ask For It, a 20-minute documentary about a record store in Holly Springs, Mississippi called "Aikei Pro’s Record Shop." It's been operating since the 1960's and served as a hangout for modern blues artists like Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside (to name just a few). It is a hole in the wall down a side street of a very small town in an area of the South that continues to be drenched in racial division. It's a great documentary and I wish I could remember how I saw it - as I'd implore you to do so as well.
As luck would have it, we were down in Holly Springs this past weekend and decided to see if Aikei Pro’s Record Shop was still around. Much to our delight, it's still operating (on a Sunday!) and the 99-year old proprietor David “Fox” Caldwell talked to us at length about the history of the store, the racial disparity of Mississippi and plenty of other topics. If we didn't have to get back on the road to get home, he'd still be talking to us. A delight.
The shop itself is not really a place you'd shop at. I tried to buy a record and he refused, choosing to give me a 45 instead. It's stacks of history wall-to-wall but I believe Caldwell knows what lies underneath all the rubble.
As luck would have it, we were down in Holly Springs this past weekend and decided to see if Aikei Pro’s Record Shop was still around. Much to our delight, it's still operating (on a Sunday!) and the 99-year old proprietor David “Fox” Caldwell talked to us at length about the history of the store, the racial disparity of Mississippi and plenty of other topics. If we didn't have to get back on the road to get home, he'd still be talking to us. A delight.
The shop itself is not really a place you'd shop at. I tried to buy a record and he refused, choosing to give me a 45 instead. It's stacks of history wall-to-wall but I believe Caldwell knows what lies underneath all the rubble.
