HELENA-WEST HELENA – Mid-South blues icon Reba Russell, a longtime King Biscuit Blues Festival favorite, received the Delta Cultural Center’s 2026 Sonny Payne Award for Blues Excellence on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026.
An integral part of the Memphis music scene for many years, Russell has been entrancing club audiences and bringing her singular talent to recording studios as a featured artist, producer, and valued backup vocalist. She has also long been a beloved presence at the King Biscuit Blues Festival, where the high energy performances of the Reba Russell Band delight festival-goers year after year and where several Russell-penned songs about the event and its much-missed legends can bring both smiles and tears.
Russell’s association with the King Biscuit Blues Festival goes back to the late 1990s when she sat in on a set by Jimmy Thackery & The Drivers one year and was invited back the next year for her own set on the Main Stage. Inspired by the environment during that first appearance with Thackery and crew and having met Delta blues icon Frank Frost there shortly before his death days later, Russell wrote a song called “Heaven Came to Helena.” When she performed it for the Biscuit audience that following year, many along the levee became enchanted by an artist to whom they have clung ever since.
Later, Russell wrote a tribute to “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, the Blues Hall of Fame disc jockey and longtime host of “King Biscuit Time,” as well as one of the festival’s beloved masters of ceremonies. Following Payne’s passing in 2018, the song gained new poignancy. Russell and her husband, Wayne, also teamed with one of the King Biscuit Blues Festival, Bubba Sullivan, to pen “Pink Pussycat Wine,” a lively tune that explored the origins and early days of the event. That song, too, took on new dimensions following Sullivan’s death in 2021.
Born in West Virginia, Russell came to Memphis with her family as a child and quickly fell under the spell of a musical culture surrounded and embraced her.
She started her own band, working the city’s night spots, and turned to studio work to pay the bills. She became familiar with all the studios, made countless music world friends, and found herself involved in prestigious recordings.
Russell has appeared on albums by many renowned artists, including the Rev. Al Green, Huey Lewis & The News, Memphis soul queen Carla Thomas, Tracy Nelson, Don Bryant, and Victor Wainwright. Russell also participated in the “Class of ‘55” project by Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis, overseen by producer Chips Moman, which also included guests John Fogerty, Marty Stuart, the Judds, and more. She also became a part of the Sun Studio recording session for U2 for their “Rattle and Hum” album.
What Russell has learned in the recording studio has also come in handy as a producer, not only for her own work, but on such projects as the acclaimed 2023 “Tell the World "Album from southwest Missouri blues act Sister Lucille.
The DCC’s Sonny Payne Award for Blues Excellence – called “The Sonny” – recognizes individuals who have strongly influenced the blues music of the Arkansas Delta. The honor is named for Payne, longtime host of the Peabody Award-winning “King Biscuit Time” program, which is broadcast each weekday from the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street on radio station KFFA-AM. The DCC is a museum of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage & Tourism.
The Sonny Award is traditionally bestowed to musicians with distinguished status and a lengthy career, and additional consideration is given to those with ties to Arkansas and the Delta region. The award is to be presented by Thomas Jacques, DCC museum and heritage services director, and host of “King Biscuit Time” and the museum’s weekly “Delta Sounds” radio show, immediately preceding the Reba Russell Band’s appearance on the Sonny Boy Williamson Main Stage.
Previous recipients of the “Sonny” include Robert Lockwood Jr. and Houston Stackhouse (posthumously) in the award’s inaugural year of 2002, Sam Carr and Pinetop Perkins (2003), Cedell Davis and John Weston (2004), David “Honeyboy” Edwards (2005), Michael Burks and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith (2006), Hubert Sumlin (2007), Bobby Rush (2008), Red Holloway (2009), B.B. King (2010), James Cotton(2011), the Cate Brothers (2012), Willie Cobbs (2013), Big George Brock and Sonny Burgess & The Legendary Pacers (2014), C.W. Galin and Larry McCray (2015), Charlie Musselwhite (2016), James Yancey “Tail Dragger” Jones (2017), Bob Stroger (2018), Eb Davis and Mary Lane (2019), Mavis Staples (2022), Manis “Detroit Johnny” Johnson (2023), James Morgan (2024), and Anson Funderburgh (2026).