Super Chikan Still Answers the Call: The Diddley-Bow King Headlines Home
James "Super Chikan" Johnson got his name from a cab dispatcher, not a record label — and if you don't know that story, you don't yet understand how the Delta makes its legends. Born in the Darling community in the 1950s, a farm kid so fascinated by his family's chickens that the other children called him "Chicken Boy," Johnson grew up to drive a Clarksdale taxi fast enough to earn the handle "Fast Red." Then a dispatcher, exasperated, mashed the two together. "My name isn't Super Chicken," he told her. "It is now," she said. It was.
On Friday, Aug. 7, Johnson closes the opening night of the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival, headlining the Delta Blues Museum main stage from 10 to 11 p.m. with his band, The Fighting Cocks — a slot he has earned and, in a very Delta gesture, often tries to give away. As he told the Mississippi Free Press in late July, the museum has long offered him the headline honor, and he frequently turns it down "so that other artists can have the honor."
The through-line of his life is homemade sound. As a boy he built himself a one-string diddley bow; as a young man he played bass with his uncle Big Jack Johnson's band, the Jelly Roll Kings, in Clarksdale clubs in the 1970s. His 1997 debut, Blues Come Home to Roost, won Best Blues Album and Best Debut from the Living Blues Awards. He's cut records ever since — his latest, From Hill Country to Mississippi Delta Blues, made with harmonica player Terry "Harmonica" Bean — and he famously builds his own guitars out of gas cans, ceiling fans and whatever the junk drawer coughs up. In 2025 alone he sat for a career interview at Florida's WGCU and picked up a star on the Walk of Fame at Norway's Notodden Blues Festival. Not bad for Car 4.
He remembers his first Sunflower gig in 1997 as terrifying and transformative. "Going to something like that with such a big crowd felt like going to Hollywood at the time," he told the Free Press. "I was still shy... I remember closing my eyes thinking it'd keep them from seeing me. After it was over, I found I was hungry for that kind of excitement." He has played the festival every year since.
Why he matters here and now: Johnson is a living hinge between the Delta's first-generation masters and the kids he mentors in blues classes at the museum. He is not a revival act or a re-enactor — he is continuity itself, a working artist who came up beside Big Jack and still gigs the same Clarksdale clubs. Every year he takes that stage is a year the chain stays unbroken.
His advice to anyone still deciding whether the trip is worth it is characteristically blunt: "If you want to hear the Blues, you need to come to Clarksdale." On Aug. 7, take the man at his word.
Sources: Delta Musicians Honor Blues and Gospel Traditions at Clarksdale Sunflower River Festival — Mississippi Free Press; Blues musician/instrument maker James "Super Chikan" Johnson — WGCU