Scott Davidson

While some look forward to Jubilee!JAM for the chance to see their favorite musicians perform, or to peruse the Arts Fair, Scott Davidson of Brandon looks forward to seeing each year’s official poster artwork.

Davidson is not an artist, and he doesn’t really collect art. As a matter of fact, Davidson doesn’t collect anything but Jubilee!JAM’s annual poster, which he’s done since the festival starting producing them in 1987.

“There are several that I really like, and I try to rotate those around on the wall,” Davidson, 59, says. The first room of his house is lined with festival posters, and nostalgia creeps into his eyes as he gazes over his treasures and smiles. Davidson says he keeps the ones he likes the most near the bottom of the stairs, but to pick a single favorite is impossible.

“I like the Wyatt Waters. I like Sandy’s (McNeal),” he says. “Man, it’s hard to say.”

For a while, he bought a poster each time the festival began, but Davidson says that he stopped purchasing the works for a period of time and found himself looking high and low for the ones he had missed. He began rummaging through frame shops and asking people around the area if they had one, or knew of anybody who did.

“I’m sure there are several people who have them squirreled away somewhere in their closets that they never look at or think about,” Davidson says. “You catch things like that.”

The collection certainly became a passion, though, and Davidson continued his efforts to close the missing links in the chain, and eventually did so.

“As far as filling in the gaps … that must have been three years ago,” Davidson says. “I mean you’re still completing it every year there’s a new one.”

Davidson sometimes bought several posters at a time from different places, and discovered others through word of mouth. Yet one poster in particular proved to be in especially scant supply.

“The hardest one to get was one by Sandy McNeal, which I think was ’97,” Davidson says. “I tried and tried, I even talked to Sandy McNeal, the artist. She didn’t have one and didn’t know where I could get one.”

Davidson eventually got in contact with a woman who had one of the 1997 posters, still rolled up and in pristine condition. He delights as he recalls meeting her in a nearby parking lot to collect the treasured item.

The history and Mississippi culture intrinsic to Davidson’s Jubilee!JAM poster collection is undeniable, but the real joy of the collection is the music and folklore representative of each poster and festival.

“We always enjoy the music, and of course this year they’re tying more of the arts into it,” Davidson says. “I hope they continue it.”

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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.