From Mississippi to Memphis Miss US 61 South Haven, MS

Bottom 

Miss US 61

From Mississippi to Memphis

The bright lights of Beale Street and the promise of musical stardom have lured blues musicians from nearby Mississippi since the early 1900s. Early Memphis blues luminaries who migrated from Mississippi include Gus Cannon, Furry Lewis, Jim Jackson, and Memphis Minnie. In the post-World War II era, many native Mississippians became blues, soul, and rock ‘n’ roll recording stars in Memphis, including Rufus Thomas, Junior Parker, B.B. King, and Elvis Presley.

B.B. King 

Elvis Presley 

From Mississippi to Memphis

From Mississippi to Memphis

Top 

Memphis blues was discovered by the rest of the world largely via the works of Beale Street-based bandleader W. C. Handy, who began using blues motifs in his compositions shortly after encountering the music in the Mississippi Delta around 1903. By the 1920s many musicians from Mississippi had relocated here to perform in local theaters, cafes, and parks. The mix of rural and urban musical traditions and songs from traveling minstrel and medicine shows led to the creation of new blues styles, and record companies set up temporary studios at the Peabody Hotel and other locations to capture the sounds of Mississippians who came to town to record, such as Tommy Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt, as well as some who had settled in Memphis, including Robert Wilkins, Jim Jackson, Gus Cannon, Memphis Minnie, and Joe McCoy.

In the decade following World War II musicians from around the Mid South descended upon Memphis, and their interactions resulted in the revolutionary new sounds of R&B and rock ’n’ roll. Riley King arrived from Indianola and soon became known as the “Beale Street Blues Boy,” later shortened to “B. B.” Many of King’s first performances were at talent shows at the Palace Theater, 324 Beale, co-hosted by Rufus Thomas, a native of Cayce, Mississippi, who, like King, later worked as a deejay at WDIA. King and Thomas were among the many Mississippi-born artists who recorded at Sam Phillips’s Memphis Recording Service, where Tupelo’s Elvis Presley made his historic first recordings for Phillips’s Sun label in 1954. The soul music era arrived with the Stax and Hi labels in the 1960s, and again many Mississippians were at the forefront: Stax’s roster included Little Milton, Albert King, Rufus Thomas, and Roebuck “Pops” Staples, while Hi producer and bandleader Willie Mitchell, a native of Ashland, oversaw recordings by soul and blues artists Otis Clay, Syl Johnson, Big Lucky Carter, Big Amos (Patton), and others with Mississippi roots.

WC Handy Statue on Beale St Memphis, TN 

The revitalization of Beale Street as an entertainment district, beginning in the 1980s, resulted in new performance venues for Mississippi natives including Daddy Mack Orr, Billy Gibson, and Dr. Feelgood Potts. The Mississippi-to-Memphis blues tradition has also been promoted by the Center for Southern Folklore, radio stations WEVL and WDIA, and labels including Inside Sounds, Icehouse, Memphis Archives, Ecko, and High Water. Mississippi has been well represented in the Memphis-based Blues Foundation’s International Blues Competition and Blues Music Awards (formerly W. C. Handy Awards), and thirteen of the first twenty artists inducted into the foundation’s Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 were born or raised in Mississippi.

Brunswick Recording Company “Fourth and Beal” Cannon and Woods “The Beale Street Boys

Jim Jackson, Rufus Thompson (at microphone), and Furry Lewis (right)became Memphis music icons after moving here from Mississippi. They all settled in Memphis prior to 1820.

The Handy Sheet is from 1917.
In 2003 WC Handy awards, Sam Phillips with four of the Blues legends is recorded in the early 1950s. Seated, from let are Ike Turner, BB King and Little Milton (all natives of Mississippi). Standing with Phillips is Memphian Rosco Gordon. Phillips also recorded Little Junior Parker Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, and Doctor Ross, among others Mississippi bluesmen.
Beal Street at night the late 1930s.
WC Handy Shown at a parade held in his honor here in 1953 came to Memphis form Clarksdale, MS. The park is a block north of this marker was renamed for him in 1931.




Ecko Records, founded by Mississippian John Ward in 1995 became a leader in the soul-blues market with releases by Mississippi natives including Ollie Nightingale Sheba Potts-Wright, Denise LaSalle, OB Buchana, David Brinston, and Lee "Shot" Williams.
High Water Records under the direction of Dr. Davis Evans at the University of Memphis documented more traditional blues.

Beal Street as it appeared in the summer of 1944.

Welcome to one of the many sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail 

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/146489606/b.b.-king

Big Walter Horton-Horn Lake Miss Us 51 South Haven, MS

Bottom

Miss U. S. 51 

Big Walter Horton  - HORN LAKE (1918-1981)

Blues harmonica virtuoso Big Walter Hortonwas renowned for hi sinnovative contributions to the music of Memphis and Chicago. Horton was born in Horn Lark on april 6, 1918, and began his career as a child working for tips  on the streets of Memphis. He performed and recorded with Muddy Waters, Jimmy rogers, Willie Dixon, Fleetwood Mac, Johnny Winter and many others. His technique and tone continued to be sutdied and emulated by harmonica players around the world. 

Big Walter Horton

Big Walter Horton

Walter Horton was heralded as one of the most brilliant and creative musicians ever to play the harmonica. Born on a plantation near this site, as a child he blew into tin cans to create sounds. His birth date is usually cited as April 6, 1918, although some sources give the year as 1917 or 1921. Nicknamed “Shakey” due to nystagmus, an affliction related to eye movement that can result in involuntary head shaking and learning disabilities, Horton quit school in the first grade. He made his way doing odd jobs and playing harmonica with local veterans such as Jack Kelly, Garfield Akers, and Little Buddy Doyle as well as young friends Johnny Shines, Floyd Jones, and Honeyboy Edwards. They performed in Church Park, Handy Park, hotel lobbies, and anywhere else they could earn tips, including nearby areas of Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.

Horton began recording for legendary Memphis producer Sam Phillips in 1951. The first record on Phillips’s Sun label in 1952 was assigned to “Jackie Boy and Little Walter” (Jack Kelly and Horton). While Sun never officially released the Kelly-Horton disc, other Horton tracks from Phillips’s studio appeared on the Modern and RPM labels under the name of “Mumbles.” On later recordings, Walter was usually billed as “Shakey Horton” or “Big Walter.”

Horton joined the Muddy Waters band in Chicago in 1953. Chicago’s foremost blues producer/ songwriter, Willie Dixon, who called Horton “the greatest harmonica player in the world,” began recording him for labels including States, Cobra, and Argo, and hired him to play harmonica on sessions by Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, Jimmy Rogers, Sunnyland Slim, and others. Horton also toured and recorded with Willie Dixon’s Chicago Blues All Stars, and played on the Fleetwood Mac album Blues Jam in Chicago. Full albums of his work appeared on several labels, including Alligator, Chess, and Blind Pig. Horton toured internationally, but in Chicago most of his work was in small clubs. He also resumed playing the streets for tips at Chicago’s Maxwell Street market.

Horton’s playing–sometimes powerful and dramatic, other times delicate and sensitive–left an influence on harmonica masters Little Walter (Jacobs) and Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2 (Rice Miller) and on the generations to follow. His shy, gentle nature, often hidden beneath a gruff or glum exterior, endeared him to many. The uplifting beauty of Horton’s music contrasted with the sorrows and tragedies of his personal life. He died of heart failure on December 8, 1981. His death certificate also cited acute alcoholism. Horton was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1982.

Captions

“Easy,” one of Walter Horton’s classic instrumentals, was recorded in 1953 with Jimmy DeBerry on guitar. Horton and DeBerry reunited in 1972 and 1973 to record for producer Steve LaVere in Memphis.

Horton performance at ChicagoFest on August 7, 1981, just a few months prior to his death 

From left: Walter Horton, Willie Nix and wife Patry, J.T. Brown and wife Katie, Muddy Waters, and Jimmy Rogers, Chicago, 1953

From left: Walter Horton, Willie Nix and wife Patty, JT Brown, and wife Katie, Muddy Waters, and Jimmy Rodgers Chicago 1953

Sun Records

 “EASY”

Jimmy & Walter 

Delta Music 

Welcome to one of the many sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail 

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/4160/walter-horton

Jessie Mae Hemphill-Senatobia Miss US 51Blues Trail South Haven, MS

Bottom

Miss U. S. 51

Jessie Mae Hemphill Senatobia

One of the few female performers of country blues, Jessie Mae Hemphill (c. 1934 – 2006) was a multi-instrumentalist who performed in local fife and drum bands before gaining international recognition in the 1980s as a vocalist and guitarist. Her grandfather, Sid Hemphill, was a leading musician in the area, and his daughters, including Jessie Mae’s mother Virgie Lee, all played drums and stringed instruments. She is buried here at the Senatobia Memorial Cemetery.

Jessie Mae Hemphill

Jessie Mae Hemphill

Jessie Mae Hemphill, who struck a unique chord with blues fans due to her colorful personality and attire and her choice of instruments, represented deep and rich traditions in the Senatobia area. Her great-grandfather, Dock Hemphill, was a fiddler who was born a slave, and her grandfather, Sid Hemphill (c. 1876-1963), played fiddle, guitar, banjo, drums, fife, mandolin, organ, and quills. Folklorists Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress and Lewis Jones of Fisk University documented Hemphill’s broad repertoire at a recording session in Sledge in 1942. Lomax, who recorded music around the world and returned to record Hemphill in 1959, later recalled that encountering Hemphill's fife and drum music was the “main find of my whole career.”

Sid Hemphill’s daughters, Rosa Lee, Sidney, and Virgie Lee, were all musicians, and when Jessie Mae was a small girl her grandfather inspired her to take up a guitar, harmonica, and drums. During the 1950s she sang briefly with bands in Memphis, but most of her early musical experiences were local. Folklorist George Mitchell, who included chapters on her and her aunt Rosa Lee Hill in his book Blow My Blues Away, recorded her in the late '60s. Her first 45 rpm single, produced by Dr. David Evans, was released on the University of Memphis' High Water label in 1980. Hemphill subsequently toured the U.S. and Europe, recorded several albums, and won several W. C. Handy Awards for traditional blues. She played drums behind fife player Otha Turner on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and gained broader acclaim via her appearance in the 1992 documentary film Deep Blues. In 1993 Hemphill suffered a stroke that prevented her from playing guitar, but she continued to sing, and in 2004 she was featured singing and playing tambourine on the album Dare You to Do It Again, which featured many local musicians.

Other Senatobia area musicians who played in distinctive local folk traditions include many members of the extended family of Otha Turner, including his granddaughter and fife player Sharde Thomas; fife players Napolian Strickland and Ed Young; drummers Lonnie Young, Abe (“Cag” or "Kag") Young and R. L. Boyce; diddley bow players Glen Faulkner and Compton Jones; guitarists Sandy Palmer and Ranie Burnette (who was a major influence on R. L. Burnside); harmonica player Johnny Woods; banjoist Lucius Smith; and vocalist James Shorter, who recorded with Jessie Mae Hemphill. Artists who left the area and performed in more modern styles include guitarist Willie Johnson and bassists Calvin “Fuzz” Jones and Aron Burton, all of whom moved to Chicago; Wordie Perkins, guitarist with the Memphis band the Fieldstones; and Kalamazoo, Michigan, soul/blues vocalist Lou Wilson

Captions
Jessie Mae Hemphill is shown here in a 1967 photo by George Michell, who also recorded her. The recordings were issued in 2007 by the Oxford-based Fat Possum label.

In these 1959 photos by Alan Lomax, said Hemphill plays the quills, while Lucius Smith plays banjo on Hemphill's porch. Hemphill's daughter Rosa Lee Hill (with guitar) and Sidney Hemphill Carter are shown on the porch on Fred McDowell's Como Home.
Willie Johnson (1923-1995)is known for his distorted electric guitar work on Howlin Wolf's earliest records. He also made a recording for Sun label in Memphis. Senatobia, Lake Cormorant, and Arkabula have all been cited as his birthplace.
Jessie Mae Hemphill poses in her brand new "leopard queen" outfit in the early 1990s. According to photographer Steve Gardner, Hemphill carried both a .38 Special and a 9mm automatic pistol in her purse and wanted people to know that she "didn't play and was ready for business.

Calvin "Fuzz" Jones (1926-2010) played bass with Muddy Water's band in Chicago and later toured with her legendary Blues Band.
a native of Lefore County, he lived his final years in Senatobia.
Vocalist Low Wilson, who recorded several soul and blues singles and CD's was born in Looxamhoma in 1933. He began his career singing doo-wop in Battle Creek, Michigan, and later moved to Kalamazoo. wilson' uncle LP Buford owned a local store and picnic grounds where fife and drum bands often performed.

High Water Recording Company
“Shame on You "
Hemphill
Jessie Mae Hemphill 

Welcome to one of the many sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail 

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15026875/jessie-mae-hemphill

Otha Turner -COMO Miss US 51 Tanger Outlet Blues Trail South Haven, MS

Bottom 

Miss US 51

Otha Turner -COMO 

The African American fife and drum tradition in north Mississippi stretches back to the 1800s and is often noted for its similarities to African music. Its best-known exponent, Otha (or Othar) Turner (c. 1908-2003), presided over annual fife and drum picnics and goat roasts on his property in nearby Gravel Springs and performed at numerous festivals. His music was featured in several documentaries as well as in Martin Scorsese’s film Gangs of New York.

Otha  Turner MIss US 51

Black Fife and Drum Music

The fife and drum ensemble is most closely associated with military marches, but African American bands in North Mississippi have long used fifes and drums to provide entertainment at picnics and other social events. Many scholars believe that such groups formed in the wake of the Civil War, perhaps using discarded military instruments. Prior to the war slaves were largely forbidden from playing drums out of fear that they would use the instruments for secret communication, though African Americans did serve in military units as musicians, playing fifes, drums, and trumpets. North Mississippi fife and drum music are often described as sounding “African,” but it was not imported directly from Africa. Instead, it appears that African American musicians infused the Euro-American military tradition with distinctly African polyrhythms, riff structures, and call-and-response patterns. Fife and drum bands have performed spirituals, minstrel songs, instrumental pieces such as “Shimmy She Wobble,” and versions of blues hits including the Mississippi Sheiks’ “Sitting On Top of the World” and Little Walter’s “My Babe.” While the black fife and drum tradition is identified with northern Mississippi, researchers have also documented the music in other areas, including southwestern Mississippi, western Tennessee, and west central Georgia.

In 1942 multi-instrumentalist Sid Hemphill and his band made the first recordings of Mississippi fife and drum music for Library of Congress folklorist Alan Lomax. His granddaughter, blues singer-guitarist Jessie Mae Hemphill, later played drums in local fife and drum bands. Lomax also recorded fife and drum music by brothers Ed and Lonnie Young in 1959. In the 1960s and ’70s folklorists George Mitchell, David Evans, and Bill Ferris recorded groups featuring Napolian Strickland (c. 1919-2001) on fife and Otha Turner on the bass drum.

Turner, born in Rankin County around 1908—various sources suggest birth years ranging from 1903 to 1917—moved to northern Mississippi as a child together with his mother, Betty Turner. He learned to create his own fifes by using a heated metal rod to hollow out and bore a mouth hole and five finger holes into a piece of bamboo cane. Turner, who spent most of his life as a farmer, eventually became the patriarch of the regional fife and drum tradition. He recorded as leader of the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band for various American and European labels and appeared in several documentaries, including Gravel Springs Fife and Drum, Lomax’s Land Where the Blues Began, and Martin Scorsese’s Feel Like Going Home. Following his death in 2003 his granddaughter and protégé Sharde Thomas inherited leadership of his fife and drum band.

Captions
Top Photo: Otho Turner leads his fife and drum band including RL Boyce and Abe Young, at the annual picnic at his home in Gravel Springs, northeast of Como in August 1998

Otha Turner plays guitar as his friend Mississippi Fre McDowell looks on. The photograph was taken in 1969 by folklorists David Evans during a field recording session.

The band on this 1995 eP on the Sugar Ditch label included, from left, Bernice Turner Pratcher RL Boyce, Otha Turner and Aubrey Turner, Otha Turner and Pratcher, his daughter and the group's manager, tragically died on the same day, Feb 27, 2003. Otha's name was spelled Othar, other in Otbo on various recording and documents.

Como native Napolian Strickland was a close musical associate of Otha Turner who played fife, drum, diddley bow harmonica and guitar. Turner made his first recording performing on drums behind Strickland's fife and vocal.

fife player Ed Young and his brother Lonnie (right)were among the many local musicians, including Fred McDowell, who was first recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax. Lomax subsequently booked the Youngs as folk festivals nationwide.

Drummer Abe ("Kag" or "Cag")
Young the son of Lonnie Young

Otha Turner looks on with pride as his granddaughter, Sharde Thomas (b Jan 8, 1990) performs at the Turner's annual picnic in Aug 1997. Sharde was accompanied on drums by her cousin Rodney Andre and Aubrey.

Welcome to one of the many sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail 

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19636923/otha-turner

Fred McDowell-Como Miss US 51 Blues Trail Tanger Outlets South Haven, MS

Miss US 51

Fred McDowell -Como 

Fred McDowell, a seminal figure in Mississippi hill country blues, was one of the most vibrant performers of the 1960s blues revival. McDowell (c. 1906-1972) was a sharecropper and local entertainer in 1959 when he made his first recordings at his home on a farm north of Como for noted folklorist Alan Lomax. The depth and originality of McDowell’s music brought him such worldwide acclaim that he was able to record and tour prolifically during his final years.

Fred McDowell Miss US 51

“Mississippi” Fred McDowell, as he was usually billed, was actually born and raised in Rossville, Tennessee. He never knew his birth date–January 12, 1904, is often cited, although census and Social Security documents point to 1906 or 1907. His music blended the sounds he heard from local guitarists in Tennessee with the pulsating juke joint grooves of the North Mississippi hills and the hard-edged blues he picked up during several years spent in the Delta.  Spirituals were an important part of his repertoire, and one, “ You Got to Move,” recorded by McDowell in 1965, gained widespread fame when the Rolling Stones recorded it on their 1971 album Sticky Fingers.

Fred McDowell 

Fred McDowell 

"Mississippi" Fred McDowell, who learned to fret his guitar strings with a bottleneck or metal slide after seeing his father’s cousin play with a steak bone, honed his skills under the tutelage of longtime friend and neighbor Eli Green, who was said to possess magical powers. Green’s song “Write Me a Few Lines” became a McDowell signature piece and was later recorded by one of McDowell’s biggest admirers, Bonnie Raitt. McDowell was also so well known for the rhythmic tour-de-force “Shake ’Em On  Down” that he earned the nickname “Shake ’Em.” His music laid the groundwork for generations of hill country musicians to come, most notably R. L. Burnside, who started out by playing McDowell’s guitar at a house party.  Alan Lomax described  McDowell as “a bluesman quite the equal of Son House and Muddy Waters, but, musically speaking, their granddaddy.”

The highly acclaimed albums that McDowell waxed during his belated recording career (1959-1971) proved that some of the greatest country blues music had gone undiscovered by the record companies that scoured the South for talent in the 1920s and ‘30s. McDowell found himself in demand at folk and blues clubs and festivals, yet kept a job pumping gas at the Stuckey’s candy store and service station on I-55 during his final years, even when he was at last able to support himself as a musician. Stuckey’s became his social hangout and his office, where he would receive phone calls from booking agents and record producers. In earlier years, McDowell held a variety of jobs, including picking cotton, driving a tractor, and working for an oil mill, a dairy, and a logging company.  In 1940, when he applied for a Social Security card, he was employed by the Hotel Peabody in Memphis. Fifty-one years later the Peabody was the site of McDowell’s posthumous induction into the Blues Hall of Fame. McDowell died at Baptist Hospital in Memphis on July 3, 1972. He is buried in the Hammond Hill M. B. Church cemetery north of Como.

Captions

In the 1960s McDowell entertained at fraternity tea parties at the University of Mississippi. He recorded the album I Do Not Play No Rock N’ Roll in Jackson at Malaco Studios in 1969 for two Ole Miss graduates who booked an act for those tea parties, Tommy Couch and Wolf Stephenson.

Fred McDowell and Bonnie Raitt, Philadelphia Folk Festival, 1971

Much of Fred McDowell’s best work appeared on the California-based Arhoolie label. His recordings included both blues and gospel songs, some featuring McDowell’s wife, Annie Mae, his sister Fannie; and the Hunter’s Chapel Singers. 

McDowell’s first recordings for Alan Lomax are released for Atlantic Record’s Southern Folk Heritage series in 1960. 

McDowell at Ann Arbor Blues Festival, 1969

Napolian Stricklin (1919-2001) of Como, shown here playing a homemade cane fife, learned guitar from Fred McDowell and sometimes accompanied him on harmonica. 

Johnny Woods from Looxahoma played harmonica with Fred McDowell and with R. L. Burnside. 

Memphis bluesman Daddy Mack Orr was born in Como in 1945. Other blues and should performers with Panola Country roots have included Jessie Mae Hemphill and Ranie Burnette; also form Como Big Daddy Kinsey, form Pleasant Grover, Ollie Nightingale from Batesville; and Big Amos Patton and Lucius Smith from Sardis 

Capitol Label “I do Not Play No rock N’ Roll” side 2

Everybody's Down on Me

61 Highway

Glory Hallelluha

Jesus is on the Mainline

Produced by Tommy couch 

for Malaco Productions 

Album Coordinator Waybe Shuler 

Welcome to one of the many sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail 

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15710062/fred-mcdowell

Magic Sam-Grenada Miss US 51 Blues Trail Tanger Outlet South Haven, MS

Miss US 51

Samuel “Magic Sam” Maghett

Magic Sam (Samuel Maghett) was one of the most dynamic and gifted blues musicians during his short lifetime (1937-1969). Born a few miles northeast of this site, Maghett began his performing career in Grenada and lived in this house until he moved to Chicago in the early 1950s. The youthful energy and spirit of Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and Freddie King modernized Chicago blues into an explosive, electrifying new style in the late 1950s and early '60s.

MISS US 51 Magic Sam 

Top 

Magic Sam, unlike most of his blues contemporaries, was born and raised in a community where fiddle music, hoedowns, and square dances held sway over the blues among the African American population. Roy Moses, a renowned black fiddler in Grenada County, was not only the leading caller of steps at such dances but also a mentor and inspiration to younger local musicians. Samuel Maghett carried these musical influences with him to Chicago in 1950. Blues guitarist Syl Johnson, who later became a nationally known soul singer, recalled that Sam was playing “a hillbilly style” at the time, and Johnson began teaching him blues and boogies. Sam developed a house-rocking blues style unparalleled in its rhythmic drive; it may well have had roots in the dance tempos of the reels and breakdowns he learned in Grenada.

Magic Sam was better known, however, for the heartfelt vocals and stinging guitar work of his 1957-58 blues recordings produced by Willie Dixon for the Cobra label in Chicago such as “All Your Love” and “Easy Baby,” some of which featured another Grenada native, Billy Stepney, on drums. Sam’s singing reflected another early influence, that of the church. During the ‘50s he often returned to visit and perform in Grenada, where he was credited with helping to popularize the blues. Sam and his combo won a local talent contest at the Union Theater which enabled them to compete on a show in Memphis promoted by WDIA radio. After performing under several stage names, he settled on “Magic” Sam–to rhyme with his surname.

In Chicago, Sam was at the vanguard of a new West Side blues movement. He remained a popular nightclub act during the 1960s and was poised to take his career to a new level, after recording two acclaimed albums for Delmark Records and turning in legendary festival performances in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and in Europe, but he died of a heart attack on December 1, 1969. His music has continued to influence generations of blues, R&B, and rock musicians.

Magic Sam’s birthplace now lies submerged beneath Grenada Lake. The Redgrass and Hendersonville communities where he spent his earliest years, along with the former town of Graysport, were flooded in the late 1940s to create the lake as a flood control reservoir. The Maghett family relocated here to the Knoxville community, where Sam resided until he was thirteen. Maggitt Street, just south of this site, represents one of many local variations of the family surname.

Caption

You don’t have to work all day.

Just make love to me and say,

“Easy, baby, mmm, easy, baby.”

“Easy, baby, won’t you love me night and day?

You don’t have to weep and moan.

Just hold me, baby, in your arms.

Easy Baby, mmm, easy baby,

Easy, baby, let me love you night and day. 

“Easy Baby”-Magic Sam (Cobra)

Magic Singing Sam” with Letha Jones, pianist Little Johnnie Jones, and Georgia Lee Jones; in the back is drummer S. Pl. Leary, at the Tay May Club, Chicago, early 1960s

The country music influence that Sam grew up within Grenada showed up in some of his recordings, such as “Square Dance Rock” from 1960. 

What discs would you choose if you are stranded on a  desert island and had nothing else to listen to? Critics here often given “desert island side” statue to Magic Sam’s first two LPs for Delmark, West Side Soul, and Black Magic. 

(Right) Magic Sam and friend Luberta, Texas at a Chicago Nightclub c 1963

Morris Holt, a childhood friend of Magic Sam’s in Granda assumed the stage name Magic Slim and continued Sam’s Tradition of rocking the blues in Chicago. He is pictured here at the first annual Chicago Blues Festival in 1984.

Welcome to one of the many sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail 

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

Magic Sam

Magic Sam
Mississippi Blues Trail
5205 Airways Blvd
Desoto County South Haven, MS
Tanger Outlets Shopping

Cobra Record Corp
Easy Baby 
Dixon 
Magic Sam 
5029
BMI Vocal 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/4161/samuel-maghett

2018 Aug 16, Road to Southaven, MS

Sometimes we plan trips and sometimes we just wear it. Today was a wing-it day.
Hubby had a heart test at 10:30 AM which did not take very long.
He said have you been to the Train Bridge and seen the mural that is being painted?
I said I had been to the Train Bridge many times but had not been lately.
So off we go to check out the new mural of a train which I was told is not finished.

Train Bridge Mural


Hubby said I do not want to go home, have you heard of Southaven, MS? I said I think we have been through there.

Hubby said I want to go look at an Entegra Class A diesel and we can get lunch along the way.

I said you know we traveled this same route last week when we went to Little Rock, Arkansas.
We stopped in Corinth, Mississippi at Cracker Barrel for lunch.

Cracker Barrel Corinth, MS 

Checker Board at Cracker Barrel 

Lunch Shrimp, Fried Apples with Cornbread! YUM!!

Hubby eating Pinto Beans, Fried Apples, Cornbread, and Roast Beef

We traveled US 72 West to 385 West and I-55 South to Southaven, which is just a short distance away from Memphis. We saw countless jets overhead coming out of the Memphis Airport.
We stopped at America's Largest Indoor RV/Marine Showroom at Southaven's RV's.
We looked at two of the  Entegra Class A diesel.
https://www.southavenrv.com/rv/southaven+ms/entegra+classadiesel/4844/entegra+cornerstone+45b

Sitting on display were a couple of Travel Trailers and I said we have come a long way since the beginning of travel. Hubby and I were watching the Travel Channel and it said that it was not until the 1960s that the name Travel Trail went to being called RVs.

We normally do not do a lot of shopping but today was a wing-it day.
Across the highway was the Tanger Outlet so off we go in that direction.
Mississippi is just as hot in the summer as Alabama. Hubby parks and we began our journey through the outlets.
I said I would love to have something cold so hubby sats down took out his cell phone and began looking for restaurants.
In the meantime, I have spotted Blues Markers and guitars dotted throughout the shopping area, and off I go taking pictures.

Travel Trailer

Travel Trailer

Tanger Outlets 

Flowers at Tanger Outlets

Birthplace of America's Music Blues  Notice the tarps over the walking areas. 

I take over a hundred pictures when I get a call saying where are you?
By this time it is hot, I stop at a vending machine for a Coke.

Children's Play Area Tanger Outlets 

Splash Pad at Tanger Outlets 

We headed back to the car and began our trip home it was around 4:30 and traffic was getting heavy.
The GPS bypasses Interstate traffic.
We stop at Jack's in Corinth for dinner, Mapco for gas, and Walgreens
We arrive home around 8:30PM