John Lee Hooker - Vance MISS US 61 Blues Trail South Haven, MS

MISS US 61 John Lee Hooker - Vance

John Lee Hooker (c. 1917-2001), one of the most famous and successful of all blues singers, had his musical roots here in the Delta, where he learned to play guitar in the style of his stepfather, Will Moore.  Hooker spent many of his early years with his family in the cotton fields around Vance and Lambert before he moved to Detroit in the 1940s. He became an international celebrity after recording hits  such as “Boogie Chillen,” “I’m in the Mood,” and “Boom Boom.”

John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker was at once one of the most influential yet inimitable artists in blues history.  His distinctive “boogie” style harked back to the early days of blues, but his mixture of down-home sounds and urban sensibilities resounded with many Southerners who, like him, migrated north seeking work and a better life.  Hooker, one of eleven children, often gave vague and contradictory details about his early life, later professing little desire to return to Mississippi. He often cited August 22, 1917, as his birth date, although census records, showing the family near Tutwiler in 1920 and 1930, indicate he was several years older. He said he was born between Clarksdale and Vance; Social Security files list his birthplace as Glendora. His father, William Hooker, at one time a sharecropper on the Fewell plantation near Vance, was a preacher who frowned upon the blues. John Lee preferred living with his stepfather, blues guitarist Will Moore and claimed that his idiosyncratic style was “identical” to Moore’s. Hooker was also influenced by his sister Alice’s boyfriend, Tony Hollins (1910-c.1959), who gave Hooker his first guitar. Hooker’s song “When My First Wife Left Me” was based on a 1941 Hollins recording. Hollins once lived north of Vance in Longstreet (so named for its long street of stores, houses, and dance halls).

Following stays in Memphis and Cincinnati and returns to the Vance/Lambert area, Hooker settled in Detroit, where he made his first recordings in 1948. In 1949 his single “Boogie Chillen” reached No. 1 on the R&B charts; “I’m in the Mood” achieved the same feat in 1951. Hooker, famed for his ability to improvise new songs in the studio, recorded prolifically for many different labels, often under pseudonyms to avoid contractual problems. He later crossed over to rock ‘n’ roll and folk audiences and enjoyed a remarkable resurgence beginning in 1989 with the release of The Healer, one of several Hooker albums that featured collaborations with leading rock artists. Hooker received four Grammy® Awards, a Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (as well as the one in Clarksdale). He was inducted into both the Rock and Roll and Blues Hall of Fame. Hooker moved to California in the late 1960s and later owned a club, the Boom Boom Room, in San Francisco. He died at his home in Los Altos on June 21, 2001.

Hooker’s cousin Earl Hooker (1929-1970), who also hailed from the Vance area, was widely regarded by his peers as the best guitarist in the blues.  A versatile and innovative performer, Hooker was especially celebrated for his slide guitar skills. As a teenager, Hooker performed on the King Biscuit Time radio show in Helena and later played and recorded with Ike Turner, Junior Wells, and many others, including his own Chicago-based group, the Roadmasters.

Modern Hollywood Records
“Boogie Chillin'”
 John Lee Hooker & His guitar 

Far left, Shaw Artists photo, the 1950s let Hooker during an interview for Living Blues Magazine, Chicago 1977.
Hooker was a headliner on the "chitlin circuit" when he appeared at the Lyric Theater in Louisville, Ky advertised here in the March 1, 1952 issue of the Louisville Defender.
Cousin John Lee and Earl Hooker followed separate career paths but came together to record the album If You Miss I got im in 1969.
Eddie Barns, who once lived in nearby Dublin teamed up with John Lee Hooker to perform and record in Detroit in the 1950s and 50s. Barns (b.1928) knew the Hooker family here, although John Lee had already moved north at the time. Hooker's first wife, Alma Pope was also from Dublin.
Hooker, "King of the Boogie" at a California performance in 1981 with fellow Mississippi native Charlie Musselwhite on hardware. 

Welcome to one of the many sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail  Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

Abbay & Leatherman - Robinsonville Blues Trail South Haven, MS

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MISS US 61

Abbay & Leatherman - Robinsonville

Abbay & Leatherman, one of the oldest and largest cotton plantations in the Delta, is known to music enthusiasts worldwide as the boyhood home of blues icon Robert Johnson (c. 1912-1938). Johnson lived here with his family in a tenant shack by the levee during the 1920s. The powerful and impassioned recordings he made in 1936-37 are often cited as the foundation of rock ‘n’ roll, and the facts, fantasies, and mysteries of his life and death are a continuing source of intrigue.

Abbay & Leatherman - Robinsonville

Abbay & Leatherman - Robinsonville

Abbay & Leatherman - Robinsonville

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Robert Johnson would become known as the “King of the Delta Blues,” heralded not only as a dramatic and emotional vocalist but also as an innovative and influential master of the guitar and a blues poet who could chill listeners with the dark depths of his lyrical vision. But he was recalled only as a good harmonica player who had limited skills as a guitarist during his adolescent years here on the Abbay & Leatherman Plantation. Johnson left the Delta around 1930, but when he reappeared about two years later he possessed such formidable guitar technique that Robinsonville blues luminary Son House later remarked that Johnson must have “sold his soul to the devil.”  The 1986 Hollywood movie Crossroads was based on the legend of Johnson’s alleged deal with the devil, as were several subsequent documentaries and books.

Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, the illegitimate son of Julia Dodds and Noah Johnson. May 8, 1911, is often cited as his birthdate, although some sources, including a census listing and his death certificate, point to 1912. His mother once sent him to Memphis to live with his father, Charles Dodds (aka Charles Spencer) but took him back after she married Willie “Dusty” Willis at Abbay & Leatherman in 1916. Johnson, then known as Robert Spencer, reportedly lived here for a decade or more beginning in about 1918. Records from the nearby Indian Creek School verify his enrollment there. However, the 1920 census shows Will and Julia Willis and Robert Spencer in Lucas, Arkansas, in the same county where Abbay & Leatherman owner Samuel Richard Leatherman once acquired additional cotton-farming property.

Johnson married Virginia Travis in Tunica County in 1929, but his 16-year-old wife died in childbirth on April 10, 1930. Back in Hazlehurst, Johnson found himself a new wife, Callie Craft, as well as a musical mentor, guitarist Ike Zinnerman.  He soon left married life behind to pursue a career as an itinerant musician, now able to play alongside the best bluesmen in the Delta, including Son House and Willie Brown, and to entertain crowds wherever he went with a reputation for being able to play any song after hearing it just once. He began recording in 1936, and though his recordings proved highly influential in the course of blues and rock ‘n’ roll history, few of them sold well during his lifetime. His death near Greenwood on August 16, 1938, has often been attributed to poisoning, although the case remains a mystery. Johnson was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in its first year, 1980, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame also in its initial year, 1986.

I'm gon' get up in the mornin',
I believe I'll dust my broom.
Girlfriend, the black man you lovin'
My girlfriend can get my room.
"I Believe I'll Dust my Broon""
Robert Johnson
An aerial view of part of the Abby & Leatherman plantation from the 1920s. At its peak, more than 45-0 families lived and worked here, according to Bobby Leatherman. The plantation traces its history back to 1831 when Richard Abby purchased land from the Chickasaw Indians tribe. 

“I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” was one of many of Robert Johnson’s classics later covered by blues and rock performers. Others include “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Cross Road Blues,” “Love In Vain,” “Come On In My Kitchen,” and “Stop Breakin’ Down Blues.”

The deep Delta blues of Son House and fellow Delta legends Charley Patton and Willie Brown were a major inspiration to Robert Johnson. House, Brown, Louise Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin, Woodrow Adams, Willie Johnson, and Tommy Bankhead were among the blues recording artists who lived and performed at various times on plantations in this area.

The mystique surrounding Robert Johnson helped propel the boxed set, The Complete Recordings, to the Billboard pop music charts in 1990. It was the first album to feature a photograph of Johnson; earlier album covers, including that of the historic 1961 compilation King of the Delta Blues Singers, relied on illustrators’ imaginations.

Willie Coffee and R. L. Windum were local childhood friends of Robert Johnson. Coffee was one of several musicians who played in the area at house parties and juke joints but who never recorded commercially; others he recalled included Willie Polk, Robert Newman, Henry Neyland, Mitchell Winters, Mamie Fletch, Will Loving heart, Walter Rogers, and Sol Henderson. Windum (1910-2003) and Johnson played harmonica together as youngsters. He recalled “Three O’Clock in the Morning” as a favorite harmonica piece of Johnson’s.

LONGUEROR Recording Company
“I Believe I'll Dust My Broom”
 Robert Johnson

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

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org

Memphis Minnie-Walls Miss US 61 Blues Trail South Have, MS

MISS US 61

Memphis Minnie - Walls

Memphis Minnie (Lizzie Douglas, 1897-1973) was one of the premier blues artists of the 1930s and ‘40s. Her singing and songwriting, spirited demeanor, and superlative guitar playing propelled her to the upper echelons of a field dominated by male guitarists and pianists. In the early 1900s, Minnie lived in Tunica and DeSoto counties, where she began performing with guitarist Willie Brown and others. She is buried here in the New Hope M.B. Church Cemetery.

Memphis Minnie 

Memphis Minnie 

Memphis Minnie 

MEMPHIS MINNIE spent most of her childhood in Mississippi, where she was known as “Kid” Douglas. U.S. Census listings of 1900 and 1910 place her in Tunica County, but she gave her birthplace as Algiers, Louisiana (June 3, 1897). When she was a teenager, her family moved to Walls, but Minnie soon struck out on her own, inspired to make a living with her voice and guitar. She reportedly joined the Ringling Brothers circus as a traveling musician and performed locally at house parties and dances with Willie Brown, Willie Moore, and other bluesmen around Lake Cormorant and Walls.

The lure of Beale Street drew her to Memphis, where she worked for the streets, cafes, clubs, and parties. She began performing with Joe McCoy, whom she married in 1929. After a talent scout heard the duo performing for tips in a barbershop, they made their first recordings that year, billed as “Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie.” “Bumble Bee” was their big hit, and has been recorded by many other blues singers, although in later years their most recognized song would become “When the Levee Breaks.” The couple soon relocated to Chicago and continued to perform and record together before Minnie took on a new guitar-playing husband, Ernest Lawlars (or Lawlers), a.k.a. “Little Son Joe.” Minnie recorded prolifically throughout the 1930s and ‘40s, scoring hits such as “Me and My Chauffeur Blues,” “Please Set a Date,” “In My Girlish Days,” and “Nothing in Rambling.” Her showmanship and instrumental prowess enabled her to defeat the top bluesmen of Chicago, including Muddy Waters and Big Bill Broonzy, in blues contests. Minnie gained a reputation as a down-home diva who could handle herself, and her men, both on and off the stage. In 1958 Minnie returned to Memphis, where she died in a nursing home on August 6, 1973.

One of the rare women of her era to gain prominence as a guitarist, Minnie overcame considerable odds to achieve success, battling both racism and sexism. She has been heralded as a champion of feminist independence and empowerment. She was elected to the Blues Hall of Fame in its first year of balloting (1980). The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund erected a headstone for her here in 1996. Her songs have been recorded by women such as Big Mama Thornton, Lucinda Williams, and Maria Muldaur, as well as by men, including Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and Western swing pioneer Milton Brown.

Columbia Recording Company
“When the Levee Breaks”
 Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie 

If it keeps on rainin',
Levee's goin' to break.
And the water gonna come and
You'll have no place to stay.
Oh, cryin' won't help you,
Prayin' won't do no good.
When the levee breaks, mama,
You got to move.
It's a mean old levee,
Cause me to weep and moan.
Gonna leave my baby and
My happy home.
When the Levee Breaks
Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie

When the Levee Breaks, recorded June 18, 1929, was the first release by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie. McCoy was the vocalist on this song and many others during the years of his partnership with Minnie. Led Zeppelin brought the song to rock audiences when they recorded it in 1971, and its lyrics carried its renewed prominence as a theme song for documentaries about Hurricane Katrina after the levees broke in New Orleans in 2005.

In Woman with Guitar, Memphis Minnie's Blues at 1922 Da Capo Press book. Paula and Beth Garon documented Minnie's life and music analyzing her work from sociological, political, and surrealist perspectives.

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

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

Son House Miss US 61 Blues Trail South Haven, MS

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Miss US 61

Son House

Eddie James "Son" House (1902-1988) plumbs the emotional depth of the blues perhaps more than any other Delta blues artist. A preacher at times, a barrel-housing bluesman at others, House has fiercely torn between the sacred teaching of the church and the secular lure of the blues life. House, who lived in the Robinsonville-Laekr Cormorant area in the 1930s and early 40s, was a major influence on both Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. 

Son House

Son House

Son House

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SON HOUSE Son House is regarded as one of the preeminent blues artists, but during his early career in the Delta, his renown was largely confined to local jukehouse audiences. He later attained international prominence during the 1960s “blues revival” through passionate, trance-like performances that highlighted his aggressive guitar style. He would occasionally rise from his chair to sing spirited a cappella gospel songs.

 House was born near Lyon in Coahoma County on March 21, 1902, or by some accounts years earlier. Through his association with Delta blues legend Charley Patton, House first recorded for the Paramount label in 1930, though sales were minimal in the Depression era. Like other Robinsonville-area blues artists, including Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Brown, House performed mostly at weekend suppers and dances held at sharecroppers’ houses. Tunica County locals have recalled House living and working on the Harbert, Tate, and Cox plantations, though he preferred to sing or preach. When the spirit called, he would preach at various churches, only to resume his nightlife as a bluesman.

House was a tractor driver on the R. E. Neunlist plantation in 1941 when he was recorded for a Fisk University-Library of Congress study led by Alan Lomax and John Work III. On September 3, they recorded House, Willie Brown, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin, and Leroy Williams at Clack Store, a commissary and train station that stood at this site. (A chugging locomotive can be heard on the recordings.) Despite problems with local authorities, Lomax later recalled, “Of all my times with the blues, this was the best one.” The second Library of Congress session in Robinsonville in 1942 would be the House’s last recording in Mississippi.

In 1964 a group of blues aficionados, including Dick Waterman, drove to Robinsonville to look for House, only to learn he had long retired from music and had moved in 1943 to Rochester, New York. His subsequent “rediscovery” was reported in Newsweek, and Waterman would manage House’s comeback career, often booking him as the closing act at festivals. The most notable of the albums House recorded was the 1965 Columbia LP Father of Folk Blues. House performed little after the early ‘70s, and from 1976 until his death on October 19, 1988, he lived in Detroit with his wife Evie, whom he had married in Robinsonville in 1934. He is buried in Detroit.

Oh, I'm gon' get me religion,
I'm gon' join the Baptist church.
I'm gon' be a Baptist preacher,
And I sure won't have to work.
The above Paramount label courtesy of Yazoo Records is the only copy of the record known to record collectors journals. It was recorded in 1930. Left The Columbia LP "Father of Folk Blues" was recorded in 1965
The above photo of Fiddlin' Joe Martin was from a 1967 recording session in Robinsonville, conducted by David Evans
Son House in Philadelphia, Penn.
The Clack Store stood at this site until it was razed in 1993. House sometimes preached at a church behind the store. This photo was taken in 1984.

PARAMOUNT Recording Company
“Preachin’ The Blues-Part 1”
Son House

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

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7951199/eddie-james-house

Highway 61 Blues - Tunica Miss US 61 South Haven, MS

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Miss US 61

Highway 61 Blues - Tunica

U.S. Highway 61, known as the "blues highway," rivals Route 66 as the most famous road in American music lore. Dozens of blues artists have recorded songs about Highway 61, including Mississippians Sunnyland Slim, James “Son” Thomas, “Honeyboy” Edwards, Big Joe Williams, Joe McCoy, Charlie Musselwhite, Eddie Shaw, Johnny Young, Eddie Burns, and Mississippi Fred McDowell. The original route, now called Old Highway 61, was just west of here.

HIGHWAY 61 BLUES

HIGHWAY 61 BLUES

Highway 61 Blues - Tunica

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Highway 61 Travel has been a popular theme in blues lyrics, and highways have symbolized the potential to quickly “pack up and go,” leave troubles behind, or seek out new opportunities elsewhere. As the major route northward out of Mississippi, U.S. Highway 61 has been of particular inspiration to blues artists. The original road began in downtown New Orleans, traveled through Baton Rouge, and ran through Natchez, Vicksburg, Leland, Cleveland, Clarksdale, and Tunica in Mississippi, to Memphis, and north to the Canadian border. Mississippi artists who lived near Highway 61 included B. B. King, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Son House, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2 (Rice Miller), Ike Turner, Robert Nighthawk, Sunnyland Slim, Honeyboy Edwards, Sam Cooke, James Cotton, Jimmy Reed, and Junior Parker.

The first song recorded about the road was Roosevelt Sykes’s “Highway 61 Blues,” cut in 1932; at the time Sykes was a resident of St. Louis, the first major city along Highway 61 above the Mason-Dixon line. In 1933 two Memphis bluesmen, Jack Kelly and Will Batts, recorded "Highway No. 61 Blues," and the Tupelo-born Sparks Brothers cut "61 Highway." Other 1930s recordings included "Highway 61," a sermon by Raymond, Mississippi, native “Hallelujah Joe” McCoy; "Highway 61" by Jesse James; and "Highway 61 Blues" by Sampson Pittman, recorded for Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress. In 1947 Gatemouth Moore recorded a jump blues version of “Highway 61 Blues,” and in 1956 pianist Sunnyland Slim (Albert Luandrew) of Vance, Mississippi, recorded “Highway 61.” Over the next decades, Highway 61 songs often appeared on albums by James “Son” Thomas of Leland, Honeyboy Edwards, Big Joe Williams, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and other traditional blues veterans.

Although many bluesmen used the lyrics “Highway 61, the longest road that I know,” their descriptions of the highway’s route were often misleading. Some suggested that the road started at the Gulf of Mexico (100 miles south of New Orleans) and ran through Atlanta, New York City, or Chicago. Many Mississippians certainly did begin their migrations to Chicago via Highway 61, but most finished their journeys by continuing from St. Louis to the Windy City along the famous Route 66. In 1965 the road gained an even more mythological reputation when Bob Dylan recorded his influential album “Highway 61 Revisited.” Dylan was well versed in the blues, but his inspiration may also have come from the fact that Highway 61 ran through his home state of Minnesota.

Well, I'm leavin' here in the morning
I'm goin' down Highway 61.
Girl, I'm lookin' for my baby.
Boy, you know that ain't no fun.
If she done left Mamphis
There's one thing, boy, that worries me;
She's down in New Orleans
"Down on Rampart Street  Highway 61"
Suland Slim

The blues artists pictured here are among the many who lived along the route of Highway 61 It is the northern Delta area of Mississippi and or in Memphis or Missouri
Muddy Waters
James Cotton
Jimmy Reed
Junior Parker 
Sunnland Slim 

Cobra Record Corp
 “Highway 61”
Sunnyland Slim 

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

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

The Blues Foundation - Memphis Miss US 61 South Haven, MS

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Miss US 61

The Blues Foundation - Memphis

The Blues Foundation, the world's premier organization dedicated to honoring, preserving, and promoting the blues, was founded in Memphis in 1980. Mississippi-born performers and business professionals in the Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame outnumber those from any other state, and Mississippians have also won many annual Blues Music Awards, Keeping the Blues Alive Awards, and International Blues Challenge talent competitions sponsored by the Foundation.

The Blues Foundation

The Blues Foundation

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The Blues Foundation, the headquarters of an international network of blues appreciation with thousands of members, grew from a small base of Memphis supporters that presented the first W. C. Handy Blues Awards at the Orpheum Theatre on November 16, 1980. Balloting for the awards (later renamed the Blues Music Awards) and the Blues Hall of Fame was initially conducted by Living Blues magazine by polling a worldwide group of blues authorities, deejays, musicians, folklorists, record dealers, and producers. The majority of the first twenty inductees into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 were born in Mississippi: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, Elmore James, Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2 (Rice Miller), John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon, Son House, Otis Spann, Jimmy Reed, Charley Patton, and Memphis Minnie. By 2012, more than fifty Mississippians had been inducted. As the Foundation grew, paid members became the Blues Music Award voters, while a select committee of experts elected the Hall of Fame inductees.

Over the years, the Blues Foundation expanded its activities to include education programs, blues conferences, health care, the Handy Artists Relief Trust (HART) Fund, Keeping the Blues Alive Awards, Lifetime Achievement Awards, and the International Blues Challenge (IBC). Hundreds of blues societies and organizations around the world have affiliated with the Foundation and many have sponsored bands in the IBC competitions. While the blues has become an international phenomenon, the Blues Foundation has continued to acknowledge Mississippi for its crucial role in blues history and as the home of generations upon generations of blues musicians. More than two hundred Blues Music Awards have gone to Mississippi natives or one-time residents as Performers of the Year in various categories or for their contemporary, traditional, acoustic, soul-blues, or reissue recordings. Multiple award recipients include B. B. King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Charlie Musselwhite, Pinetop Perkins, Little Milton, James Cotton, Willie Kent, Magic Slim, Albert King, Eddie Shaw, Eden Brent, Hubert Sumlin, Bobby Rush, Cedric Burnside, Honeyboy Edwards, Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, R. L. Burnside, Sam Myers, Otis Rush, Jimmy Rogers, Willie Dixon, Carey Bell, Eddy Clearwater, Otis Spann, Sonny Boy Williamson (No. 2), and Snooky Pryor. Zac Harmon, Eden Brent, and Grady Champion are among the IBC winners with Mississippi roots.

Memphis has long been a major gateway to and from the Mississippi Delta, both for musicians and for blues fans worldwide. In 2010 the Blues Foundation, formerly housed in small office spaces without room for a Hall of Fame exhibit, acquired this building to make 421 South Main Street the permanent address of the Blues Hall of Fame and the “International Home of Blues Music.”

Muddy Waters, a native of Issaquena County MS received more votes than any other artist in the first Blues Hall of Fame balloting in 1980. He recorded "Gone to Main St" in 1952.

The first album elected in the Blues Hall of Fame's Classics of Blues Recordings was King of the Delta Blues Singer by Robert Johnsson who was born in Hazelnuts, MS. In the singles category "Dust my broom" bu Elmore (Elmo)James from Richland, MS let the first-year voting. 

Pinetop Perkins of Belzoni, MS won so many annual honors in the piano keyboards category as "instrumentalist of the year" that the award was renamed for him. The Blues Entertainer of the Year was renamed after BB King a native of Berclair, MS who began his professional career in Memphis. 

Among the Blues Hall of Fame inductees or Blues Music Awards winners who lived in both MS and Memphis (or West Memphis) are Rufus Thomas, Albert King, Charlie Musselwhite, Litttle Milton, Junior Parker, James Cotton, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Honeyboy Edwards, Memphis Minnie, Furry Lewis, Matt "Guitar" Murphy, Gus Caannon, WC Handy, Hubet Sumlin, Ike Turner, BB King, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sunnyland Slim, Eddie Taylor, Robert Nighthawk, Big Walter Horton, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Rogers, Jimmy Johnson, Sonny Boy Willaimson, No 2, Billy Gibson, George Jackson and Jessie May Hemphill. 

Chess Recording Company
“Gone to Main St”
Muddy Waters 

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

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

Elvis Presley-Tupelo Miss US 78 Blues Trail South Haven, MS

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Miss US 78

Elvis and the Blues  

Elvis Presley revolutionized popular music by blending the blues he first heard as a youth in Tupelo with country, pop, and gospel. Many of the first songs Elvis recorded for the Sun label in Memphis were covers of earlier blues recordings by African Americans, and he continued to incorporate blues into his records and live performances for the remainder of his career

Elvis and the Blues

Graceland 

Elvis in Tupelo, MS 

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Elvis Presley and the Blues - Tupelo, MS 

Elvis first encountered the blues here in Tupelo, and it remained central to his music throughout his career. The Presley family lived in several homes in Tupelo that were adjacent to African American neighborhoods, and as a youngster, Elvis and his friends often heard the sounds of blues and gospel streaming out of churches, clubs, and other venues. According to Mississippi blues legend Big Joe Williams, Elvis listened in particular to Tupelo blues guitarist Lonnie Williams.

During Elvis’s teen years in Memphis, he could hear blues on Beale Street, just a mile south of his family’s home. Producer Sam Phillips had captured many of the city’s new, electrified blues sounds at his Memphis Recording Service studio, where Elvis began his recording career with Phillips's Sun label. Elvis was initially interested in recording ballads, but Phillips was more excited by the sound created by Presley and studio musicians Scotty Moore and Bill Black on July 5, 1954, when he heard them playing bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s 1946 recording “That’s All Right.”

That song appeared on Presley’s first single, and each of his other four singles for Sun Records also included a cover of a blues song—Arthur Gunter’s “Baby Let’s Play House,” Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” Little Junior Parker’s “Mystery Train,” and Kokomo Arnold’s “Milk Cow Blues,” recorded under the title “Milkcow Blues Boogie” by Elvis, who likely learned it from a version by western swing musician Johnnie Lee Wills. Elvis's sound inspired countless other artists, including Tupelo rockabilly musician Jumpin' Gene Simmons, whose 1964 hit “Haunted House” was first recorded by bluesman Johnny Fuller.

Elvis continued recording blues after his move to RCA Records in 1955, including “Hound Dog,” first recorded by Big Mama Thornton in 1952, Lowell Fulson’s “Reconsider Baby,” Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” and two more by Crudup, “My Baby Left Me” and “So Glad You’re Mine.” One of Elvis’s most important sources of material was the African American songwriter Otis Blackwell, who wrote the hits “All Shook Up,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” and “Return to Sender.” In Presley's so-called "comeback" appearance on NBC television in 1968, former bandmates Scotty Moore and D. J. Fontana rejoined him as he reprised his early Sun recordings and performed other blues, including the Jimmy Reed songs "Big Boss Man" and "Baby What You Want Me to Do." Blues remained a feature of Elvis's live performances until his death his 1977.

Mama, she done told me, 
Papa done told me to, 
Son, that gal you're foolin' with 
She ain't no good for you.
But that's all right, that's all right.
That's all right now, mama, any way you do. 
"That's all Right" Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup (1946)
recorded by Elvis Presley 1954
Elvis appeared at the WDIA Goodwill Revue an annual charity event sponsored by Memphis leading Africain America radio station in 1956 and 1957. Here he poses with BB King on Dec 7, 1956.

In 1969 bluesman Albert King recorded this collection of songs made popular by Elvis, King was one of many African American singers who bare performed Elvis material. Presley's records hit the rhythm & blues charts from 1956 to 1963l reflecting sales and airplay in the black community.

Elvis at Dec 6, 1957, WDIA Goodwill Revenue with Little Junior Parker (from left) and Bobby "Blue" Band.

Elvis recorded three blues songs that were originally recorded by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup a native of Forest, MS.
In 1956, interview Elvis said, "down in Tupelo, MS I used to hear Old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way Ida does and said If I ever got to the place I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw."
Historians still wonder whether Presley actually saw Crudup perform, or only heard his records. Crudup claimed he never met Elvis. 

Sun Recording Company
“ That ’s All Right”
Elvis Presley
Memphis, TN 

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

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/837/elvis-presley

Robert Lee Burnside and Junior Kimbrough Miss US 78 Blues Trail South Haven, MS

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Miss US 78

Hill Country Blues Holly Springs

Although Delta blues often claim the spotlight, other styles of the blues were produced in other regions of Mississippi. In the greater Holly Springs area, musicians developed a “hill country” blues style characterized by few chord changes, unconventional song structures, and an emphasis on the "groove" or a steady, driving rhythm. In the 1990s this style was popularized through the recordings of local musicians R. L. Burnside and David “Junior” Kimbrough

R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough Hill Country Blues

R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough Hill Country Blues

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R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough became unlikely heroes of the music world in the 1990s when their “hill country” style caught on in both blues and alternative rock music circles. Although Burnside (1926-2005) and Kimbrough (1930-1998) had both begun recording in the 1960s, they had mostly performed at local juke joints or house parties. Most of their early recordings had been made by field researchers and musicologists such as George Mitchell, David Evans of the University of Memphis, and Sylvester Oliver of Rust College. They developed a new, younger following after they appeared in the 1991 documentary Deep Blues and recorded for the Oxford-based Fat Possum label, and college students and foreign tourists mixed with locals at Kimbrough’s legendary juke joint in Chulahoma. Both artists toured widely and inspired musicians from Kansas to Norway to emulate their hill country sounds. Their songs were recorded by artists including the Black Keys and the North Mississippi Allstars, and remixes of Burnside tracks appeared in films, commercials, and the HBO series The Sopranos. The music of actor Samuel L. Jackson’s blues-singing character in the 2006 movie Black Snake Moan was largely inspired by Burnside.

Burnside, born in Lafayette County, was influenced by blues stars John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters but also learned directly from local guitarists Mississippi Fred McDowell and Ranie Burnette. For most of his life, Burnside worked as a farmer and fisherman. He only began to perform at festivals and in Europe in the 1970s. Burnside’s music took a more modern turn when sons Joseph, Daniel, and Duwayne Burnside and son-in-law Calvin Jackson played with him in his Sound Machine band. By the early ’90s, Burnside was performing around the world in a trio with grandson Cedric Burnside and “adopted son” Kenny Brown. Following Burnside’s death his family, including grandson Kent Burnside, continued to perform his music, as did his protege Robert Belfour, a Holly Springs native who also recorded for the Fat Possum label.

Just as Burnside’s music reflected his jovial personality, the more introspective Junior Kimbrough produced singular music with a darker approach. Born into a musical family in Hudsonville, Kimbrough formed his first band in the late 1950s and recorded a single for the Philwood label in Memphis in 1968. In the 1980s his band, the Soul Blues Boys, featured longtime bassist Little Joe Ayers. In later years he was backed by his son Kinney on drums and R.L. Burnside’s son Garry on bass. Kimbrough’s multi-instrumentalist son David Malone devoted himself to carrying on his father’s legacy as well as developing his own style on recordings for Fat Possum and other labels.

High Water Recording Company 

“Jumper Hanging Out on the Line” 

 R. L. Burnside

See my jumper, Lord, hanging out on the line
See my jumper, Lord, hanging out on the line
Know by that something on my mind

Fix my supper baby, Lord, let me go to bed.
Fix my supper baby, Lord, let me go to bed.
This white lightnin' done gone to my head.
"Jumper Hanging Out on the Line: R.L. Burnside

dancing on the blues at Junior's
Junior Kimbrough (above)hosted house parties for years and ran his own Juke joint on Highway 4 in the 1990s. RL Burnside once lived in the house next door.
high water Records at the University of Memphis released 45s in the 1980s by Ranie Burnett (right) RL Burnside Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and others Mississippi blues artist.
a special 2007 issue of Living Blues magazine featured the "next generation" of hill country blues, including descendants of RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and Otha Turner.

Relatively few hill country blues artists had recorded prior to the Burnside-Kimbrough era. The most prolific was Mississippi Fred McDowell (1904-1972) who became popular on the "blues revival" circuit in the 1960s. Afife and drum tradition was also documented in Tate and Panola Counties led by did Hemphill, Napoleon Strickland, and Othar Turner. Hemphill's granddaughter guitarist Jessie Mae Hemphill (1923-2006) was the bill country's most prominent female blues artist. 

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

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11678507/r.l.-burnside

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10958703/david-kimbrough