From Johnny "Guitar" Knox's soul-wrenching version of "The Sky Is Crying" at the Horsemen's Club on Sunday, you'd never know the Sacramento Heritage & Blues Festival was dying.

Knox was one of seven classic blues acts who amped up for the 17th and final Heritage Festival, which has fallen victim to public arts funding cuts and the death of Tower Records.

But Arbess Williams – who cut hair across from Grant High School for 25 years before she became the queen of Sacramento blues – tried to keep the festival on life support with some smoking hot blues and gospel. "Music is a healing thing for the soul," said Williams, 65, who was on life support herself in 2001. "I had congestive heart failure and went into a coma for a month and lost 92 pounds."

Her family thought she was goner, "but you can't stop me from singing," said Williams, who also survived hip-replacement surgery to take center stage Sunday. "You know I love you guys," she told the crowd of several hundred. "This is one of the greatest events Sacramento could ever have. It blesses everyone from the smallest to the oldest."

Williams, introduced as the queen of trash-talking blues divas, got the audience to shake their tail feathers when she belted out, "Take your dog with you – and don't forget his dish."

The song was inspired by a dream she had about a dog. "It's about somebody breakin' up with you," she said. "You get one of those bad breakups, and they always leave something behind so they can see you again. … Don't give them an excuse to come back!"

Williams, whose heart has been broken several times, confessed, "I guard my heart real close. It's got to be somebody really special to steal my heart."

Clad in a mauve suit, Williams played some air guitar and delighted the ladies in the crowd with spicy lyrics such as "You think you've got honey on your sugar cane because you've been dippin' it all over town" and "Don't call me Momma, because you're too old and ugly to be a son of mine!"

Williams began singing and cutting hair at 15, and after helping raise her five younger brothers and sisters in San Diego, she moved to Sacramento to be a barber.

At her Grant Avenue shop, she'd be on her feet clipping at least 25 heads a day. "I spoiled them rotten. I always came up with unique styles to match their faces."

Williams dazzled the crowd with "Weak Feet," a song inspired by standing on her feet cutting hair that morphed into a ballad about heartbreak. "I keep on walkin' and walkin', they got me walkin' right back to you," she sang.

Williams struck a chord with correctional officer Susan O'Pecko, who rode to the Horsemen's Club on her chopper and rocked out. "I was freed six years ago from marriage," said O'Pecko, 53. "It makes me move and makes me feel sexy!"

Fair Oaks health coach Kathleen Shafer, fueled by a rum and Coke, also busted moves to Williams' blues licks as the afternoon air filled with the sweet scent of barbecue and marijuana.

Shafer's been coming to the festival for eight years. "I like the energy here," said Shafer, 57. "We're all a bunch of older, like-minded people. No B.S. going on, no fights."

Williams got her start singing Aretha Franklin's "Dr. Feelgood" at Sam's Hofbrau. "It all started with Big Mike," she said of Heritage Festival promoter Mike Balma. "He watched me for two years, took me to lunch and signed me to a record contract."

Balma – who got two hours of sleep Saturday night preparing a show that also featured Bobby Rush, Magic Slim & the Teardrops, Lydia Pense & Cold Blood, W.D. Gospel Singers and Joe Louis Walker & the Bosstalkers – said Sunday's blowout marked the end of an era in Sacramento and West Coast blues.

"The last song for me personally would be B.B. King's 'The Thrill Is Gone,' " said Balma, who's seen funding dry up and is tired of risking his own bankroll on $30,000 shows.

"We took three big hits," said Balma. Around 2002, the California Arts Council stopped funding the Heritage Festival, "and we went from a peak of $20,000 to zero," Balma said.

Tower Records, the festival's primary sponsor for more than a decade, folded in 2006. The Sacramento Arts Commission dealt the festival its third strike, cutting its support from $23,000 to $17,000, Balma said.

Balma, who put on more than 70 shows at the Horsemen's Club, wonders what will happen to Sacramento blues. He started the Heritage Festival after the Sacramento Blues Festival folded in 1993 after 19 years.

Balma's fans include Percy McDaniel, a contractor originally from south Sacramento who brought his wife, sister-in-law and mother.

"It's something Sacramento needs," said McDaniel, 58. "It brings people together in times like these when the economy's so rough."

His wife, Corky, who's in the mortgage industry and feels the pain, said, "I don't like no rap – I want to hear the real stuff!"

The blues reflects her past and present. "That's what the blues is – you have to struggle and persevere," she said. "Determination is in our roots, and you can't let nothing stop us."

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