Jimmy King

We sit on the concrete steps that protrude out of the grass on an empty lot near the corner of Pearl and Minerva, I on a white handkerchief that Jimmy King has put down and he on the cold concrete. I’ve known King, whom I call Mr. Jimmy, for almost 10 years. He is the proprietor of the Subway Lounge, in the basement of the abandoned Summer’s Hotel, which opened Dec. 16, 1966. He is also the elegant presence in the documentary “Last of the Mississippi Jukes,” which just debuted on the Black STARZ network.

King’s career in all things musical began at his high school prom at Lanier in 1954. A band led by Duke Huddleston performed there and asked King to get up and sing a couple of songs. He sang “Never Walk Alone” and “Summertime” so well that Huddleston asked for King’s phone number. That June, Huddleston called and needed a replacement singer. King has been singing professionally ever since, and has helped to create more bands than I have room to name. And although his basement blues joint is about to enjoy its 15 minutes of fame, he admits that he is more a lover of jazz than blues.

As if a career in music weren’t enough, King graduated from Jackson State with a biology degree and was accepted for a fellowship at Columbia University. He spent a summer in New York City (the subways there provided him the name for his now famous lounge), but was called back by the principal of Jim Hill High School to fill a role teaching biology for a year. King never returned to New York. “Sometimes I wonder if I made the right mistake, or the wrong mistake,” he says. He went on to earn a specialist degree in biology in 1979, and taught high school biology for 34 years, introducing his students to music along the way.

Even dressed as he is this day in a black Subway Lounge T-shirt, black dress pants and black loafers, King makes a grand presence. At 65, gray speckles his close-cut hair, but he still has a potent vibrancy about him, a joie de vive. He motions augustly around his realm, an area destined to become the new Jackson Metro Parkway, and talks of renovations and dreams.

King is determined to entertain his patrons, to give them “their money’s worth, or more,” he says. He tells me of posters he used to print and post around town that had the proclamation “If it’s a Jimmy King production: Gotta be good.” I’m curious about what will come next in King’s repertoire, and I’m sure it’s gonna be good.

— J. Bingo Holman

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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.