MEMPHIS BELLE: JOYCE COBB BRINGS BEALE STREET TO CAPE

When Doc Cain, owner of Port Cape Girardeau restaurant, heard singer Joyce Cobb at a Memphis night club and asked her about performing in Cape Girardeau, he didn't need give her directions to the city.

One of Beale Street's premier performers, Cobb has roots in the Cape Girardeau and Jackson area that go back to the turn of the century. Her great-grandfather, born a slave in 1849 in Tennessee, is John S. Cobb, a noted educator here. The former city school for blacks at Merriwether and Ellis streets was dedicated in the teacher's honor in 1925.

Cobb and Cain, who both were surprised at the local ties, agreed to bring Cobb and her five-piece orchestra to the River City Yacht Club, the night spot above Port Cape Girardeau this weekend.

Cobb says she's excited about visiting Cape Girardeau and hopes to research information about her great-grandfather while she's in town.

She said John S. Cobb was a determined person, who gained an education for himself despite odds against him. He also resolved to help others have the same opportunity.

"Great-grandfather was determined to provide education to the young blacks at the time," Cobb said. "He realized their need for it.

"He stressed the necessity to learn the basics - reading, writing and arithmetic - which are still important now. He saw that the goal of education was important in life, so a person could make a good living and support a family."

Cobb said education has been stressed in her family for generations. Her grandfather Robert S. Cobb Sr. earned a law degree and settled in Jefferson City. Cobb's father Robert Cobb Jr. is an educator, as is her mother Florence.

Both parents told Cobb and her siblings they were to get college degrees before venturing into the world.

John S. Cobb, who did not have an opportunity to learn the alphabet until he was 19, had a talent for writing.

"He was a great romanticist," his great-granddaughter said. "He wrote beautiful letters to my great-grandmother during their courtship. The courtship was a long one between the two teachers so there were many letters."

Cobb served 38 years, first as a teacher and then as principal, at the former Lincoln School. He previously had taught three years at the school for blacks in Jackson.

Lincoln school burned in March 1953, shortly before the Supreme Court decision banning segregated schools. Its students were assigned to other Cape Girardeau schools. All that remains is the gymnasium, which was built in 1937 by the Works Progress Administration, and is just west of Del Farm National grocery store on South Sprigg Street.

Cobb died in 1919, only a month after his wife Mary Elizabeth Eulenberg Cobb died. Their son, Robert, relocated to Jefferson City, where Joyce's father Robert S. Cobb Jr. was born.

Joyce Cobb, 43, began singing for others at age 4 in her grandmother's African Methodist Episcopal church.

"That's the first time I felt applause," she remembered. "That kind of acceptance is what entertainers strive for, more than the money. That feeling never got back to me till later."

Cobb's background in music is steeped in the Catholic liturgy and music, which she said is out of the ordinary.

She credits the discipline and emphasis on music for her ability to develop her later style. In her early days, she sang with choirs in Nashville's Cathedral of the Incarnation, including High Masses for the archbishop and Requiem Masses. The period spanned the pre-Vatican II music and the later modern songs.

After graduating from college and doing social work a few years, Cobb played the Ramada Inn circuit with a partner before settling in Nashville.

There she adapted to the city's indigenous taste and converted to country-western music, something of a fish out of water.

She relocated to Memphis in 1976 and made the transition to jazz and blues. Since her arrival there, she has sung with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and become a fixture on Beale Street.

She and another Beale Street singer, Ruby Wilson, co-starred in "Ain't Misbehavin'," a revue of Fats Waller music.

It was Cobb's first theater experience since grade school, when she played the witches in Hansel and Gretel and the Wizard of Oz.

"Memphis has accepted me, they have embraced me," Cobb said.

Cobb's band will perform from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday at the River City Yacht Club.