MARVELL -- Over the past month, people from Canada, Australia and England traveled to this Phillips County town to see Levon Helm's boyhood home.
"It seems like we get more international visitors than Americans," said Barbie Washburn, president of the Marvell Civic Club.
Work began April 24 to restore the house. The civic club hopes to have the work done in three months, and definitely before Oct. 20. That's when the third annual Levon Helm Downhome Jubilee will be held at the Marvell Ballpark.
Helm, a Grammy award-winning musician, grew up in the house, but not in Marvell.
Initially, the house was in a cotton field in Turkey Scratch, 8 miles north of Marvell on Arkansas 243, a road that serves as the Lee and Phillips county line.
For a while, the house wandered the Delta.
Richard Butler and his business partner Jeremy Carroll, both of Little Rock, bought Helm's childhood home and two other houses from A.B. Thompson of Turkey Scratch. They moved the houses to Monroe County and put them in a pecan grove near a three-story 1870s plantation home they were restoring.
In 2013, fire took the big house, and they donated Helm's house to the Marvell Civic Club. It was moved to Marvell a couple of years ago.
Joe Griffith, organizer of the Levon Helm Legacy Project, said the other two houses will be cannibalized for parts to restore Helm's house. He said the three houses date from the 1930s and are made of cypress.
When Helm's house was moved to Marvell, initial work was done to make sure the roof didn't leak and the front porch didn't collapse, Washburn said. But otherwise, Helm's house sat empty waiting until funds were raised to start the restoration in earnest.
Griffith has been spearheading the effort to honor Helm in Phillips County. He said organizers raised about $75,000 of the $125,000 they needed. About $25,000 of that will go toward a bronze bust of Helm designed by Kevin Kresse of Little Rock. It will be installed in front of the house.