EDITORIAL: Inaugural Blue Suede Rockabilly Weekend deserves Jackson’s support

In the coming days, many people from across West and Middle Tennessee and Kentucky will converge in Paris to celebrate the annual World’s Largest Fish Fry.

This is the unofficial kickoff to festival season in rural West Tennessee.

After that comes the Teapot Festival in Trenton, and then after that, the grandaddy of them all, the West Tennessee Strawberry Festival in Humboldt.

May and June will have a few other festivals like the Buford Pusser Festival in Adamsville, Mule Days in Columbia, the Banana Pudding Festival somewhere in Middle or East Tennessee happens too.

In the fall, Martin will celebrate the Soybean Festival during the week of Labor Day, and a couple weeks after that, Bradford will celebrate its annual Doodle Soup Festival.

Henderson and Chester County will celebrate their Barbecue Festival also.

Even smaller towns like Finger and Milledgeville have heritage days or festivals.

Jackson doesn’t have an annual celebration like that.

Yes, we have the Jackson International Food & Arts Festival, and we’ve had a statewide beauty pageants for more than seven decades that bring people into town for a week or two, but there’s never been something to bring everybody together for multiple days with a week or so full of events that many can enjoy and bring people out multiple nights to enjoy Downtown Jackson.

That could be changing this week.

Paris is on Kentucky Lake with its fishing. Trenton is home to the world’s largest collection of teapots. At one time, the area surrounding Humboldt was one of the largest areas to produce strawberries in the country.

There’s a reason to have those festivals in those respective towns. Even South Fulton has its Banana Festival not because bananas are grown there but because South Fulton was a regular stop for trains that were shipping bananas from South America to Chicago.

What has Jackson given the world? What would constitute a reason to invite people into town to celebrate what the Hub City has to offer?

It took nearly 30 years after Carl Perkins’ death to figure out he and the genre of music he’s credited with pioneering - Rockabilly - is what differentiates Jackson from every other municipality in this country.

And finally, Visit Jackson TN and B3 Creative have partnered to put together the inaugural Blue Suede Rockabilly weekend.

The weekend begins with an event at a brand new venue that fills a want or need Downtown Jackson has had for a few years at The Press Room.

And then there’s music and educational opportunities at Hub City Brewing, The Carnegie Center for Music and History, theLOCAL and other places Downtown.

These events will probably not have the attendance of the Strawberry Festival Parade on the Friday before Mother’s Day in a couple weeks where Governors, candidates for Governor and other high profile positions march and greet voters.

But this weekend can be the foundation that eventually builds to something like that.

So thanks to Visit Jackson TN and B3 for providing this opportunity for Jackson.

Letters to the editor and guest columns are encouraged as a venue for readers to voice their opinions on local matters or the occasional state or national matter. Letters can be e-mailed to brandon@jacksonpost.news.