Eden Brent (Listening Room)

WHO IS EDEN BRENT?

Blues lady Eden Brent is a modern-day piano-pounding, juke-joint hollering powerhouse of American roots music. A legendary performer and southern songwriter, she spent the first two decades of her career under the tutelage of Abie “Boogaloo” Ames, before winning The Blues Foundation’s Challenge and bouncing onto the international scene. Since then she has landed steady honors, three Blues Music Awards among them. Her new album Getaway Blues presents nine original songs recorded in London with a four-piece band. Laid down in London. Mixed up in Memphis. Made in Mississippi. 

Eden was born into a family of riverboat captains and guitar pickers in the river port of Greenville, the largest town in the Mississippi Delta, renowned for its literary history. Eden’s own story could have been written by Eudora Welty or Tennessee Williams, or any number of Mississippi’s colorful authors. By the time she was old enough to drive, she christened the M/V Eden Brent, a working towboat built by her family’s river transportation company. The Greenville Bridge and a river museum in Vicksburg bear the name of her grandfather Capt. Jesse was dubbed "Riverman of the Century" by the Waterways Journal. Her father Capt. Howard, famous for his Hank Williams renditions and grand story-telling, received the “River Legend Award” from the Seaman’s Church Institute also named a riverboat training simulator in his honor. Mother Carole was a sharecropper turned fashion model, big band singer, and “Miss Ace Records” who landed on the cover of Inside Detective magazine and worked at Chicago’s famed Chez Paris where she encountered Boogaloo's friend Nat King Cole and members of the Rat Pack. Both of Eden’s parents met Elvis Presley, her father in 1955, and her mother in 1956. The Brent household overflowed with music on reel-to-reel and vinyl, all played on a Hi-Fi that was formerly owned by Jerry Lee Lewis and later auctioned by the IRS where the Brents bought it. Suppertime sparked entertainment hour with regular family sing-a-longs. Author Julia Reed remembers the home as “a soulful and far funnier version of ‘The Sound of Music,’" and refers to the family as the “von Brents.” 

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