2023 November 4, "Walking with the Saints" a Saints Walking Tour of Historic Downtown Florence House of Worship

Today, hubby and I did a walking tour with a group at (10:00 AM) at the Florence Library led by Lee Freeman. 

We visited the the former Popular Street Christian Church now Wood Avenue Church of Christ (1970) which is across the street from the Florence Library. 

Wood Avenue Church of Christ 

Cavalry Fellowship Church

424 E Tombigbee St Florence, AL 

From the library, we walked to Tombigee St and Popular Streets. 

We stopped at the Cavalry Fellowship (former Popular Street Christian Church)

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church 630 N Poplar St
Florence, AL

From Cavalary Fellow Ship we walked several blocks up Popular St to Our Redeemer Lutheran Church (1938)630 N. Popular St.

First Baptist Church 209 North Walnut St.

We walked back up several streets to Walnut St. The Baptist church which is across the street from the Florence Library. 

We stopped at the Gothic Style First Baptist Church (1888) 209 North Walnut St.

First Presbyterian Church 224 E Mobile St

Next, we walked to East Mobile Street the First Presbyterian Church is across the street from the Florence US Post Office. 

We stopped at First Presbyterian Church (1818) 224 E Mobile St. The Oldest Christian Church is the “Mother Church” Florence’s oldest church. 

Tennessee Valley Community Church AME
119 N Pine St Florence, Al 

 

We walked down the one-way street of Mobile St to Tennessee Valley Community Church AME on Pine St. There is construction going on near this church as you can see in the picture. 

Trinity Episcopal Church 410 N Pine St Florence, Al 

We walked up Pine St to Trinity Episcopal Church (1824)Florence’s third oldest Christian congregation church, which is a couple blocks from Tennessee Valley Community Church. This church faces Pine St and faces North Seminary St. We walked up a couple blocks to the United Methodist Church.

First United Methodist Church 415 N Seminary Florence, Al 

Our last stop was First United Methodist Church (1822) 415 N Seminary, the second oldest church in Florence. 

Wilson Park Fountain 

Wilson Park is near the United Methodist Church and across the street from the Florence Library. 

We stopped to take a few pictures of the fountain at Wilson. The wind was blowing the water from the fountain and wet us as we walked by.

There were a couple of children enjoying the sprinkles from the fountain.  

Also took pictures of the Florence Library and The Kennedy Douglas Art Center. 

We ate lunch at St Florian Pharmacy Soda Shop. We sat at the bar and watched as they took orders for dipped ice cream and made sandwiches. 

Hubby ordered a ham and cheese Sandwich with Cheetos and a Strawberry Milkshake. 

Reuben Sandwich with chips

I ordered a Reuben with Sun Chips whole grain Harvest cheddar and diet Coke. 

After lunch, we headed for home but there was a traffic jam on Highway 72 where there was a lot of construction going on. 

We took Middle Road to the Old Jackson Highway to US 43 home. 

 

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 

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 

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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

2016 March 8, Tuesday, Waynesboro, Lawrenceburg, Mt Pleasant, Columbia, & Spring Hill, Tennessee

Yesterday was a gorgeous, breezy day for traveling and to take pictures.
Our first stop was at Randy's One Stop to purchase lottery tickets for two weeks and to grab a quick snack of cheese crackers and soda
Next, we travel up Hwy 43 taking the new overpass west on hwy 64 to Waynesboro, Tennessee.
From Waynesboro we traveled thru Lawrenceburg taking hwy 43 north.
From Lawrenceburg we took the scenic route through Sandy Hook and through several small un-incorporated towns along the old Lawrenceburg highway.

Lawrenceburg Old Highway

Next, we traveled through Mt Pleasant stopping just long enough to take a few pictures of old historic homes and buildings.

We stopped at St John's Episcopal Church and Cemetery where many of President Jame A Polk relatives are buried.
Four of the Polk brothers donated the land and built St John's Episcopal Church.
Now a historic building and site no longer used for services.
I walked along the grounds stopping to take pictures of the church and cemetery.

St John's Episcopal Church and Cemetery  in Mt Pleasant

St John's Episcopal Church and Cemetery 

Next, we took highway 243 into Columbia.
We stopped at Columbia Academy, now a private Christian Academy but once was called Columbia Military Academy.
The Academy was built as an arsenal for the US Army in 1891.
There were several building built in the Colonial Revival Romanesque, Georgian Revival style sitting on sixty seven acres on West seventh street.
The first building had three levels with a red slate roof, white brick or stone, lots of windows, and rounded arched door ways.
One of the buildings had two chimneys, triangle roof with black shingles, and a tin covered porch.
The last historic building also had three chimneys, triangle roof, open porch on the first and second levels with lots of windows.

Columbia Military Academy

Columbia Military Academy

We stopped to take a picture of an historic white building built 1859 that had been used as a bank now abandoned and for sale.

Built 1859 home but used by a bank 

Next, we rode into the historic downtown area of Columbia  stopping along the way to  take a few pictures of historic building and homes.
Columbia is the home to our President James K Polk.

Downtown Columbia

Maury County Courthouse

First Presbyterian Church 

President James K Polk Home/Museum 

St Peters Church in Columbia

1835 The Rectory of the Athenaeum School for Girls 1852-1904 now a museum 

We finished the day by riding farther north to Spring Hill.
We stopped at Moe's Southwest Grill for dinner.

I ordered a fully dressed taco it was a crispy corn tortilla with chicken, pico de gallo, corn chowder, homemade Guacamole, sour cream and and cheese dip with chips.

 Hubby ordered a Home-wrecker  

It was served on a flour tortilla with seasoned rice, beans, shredded cheese, pico de gallo with lettus, sour cream and guacamole.
fu.

Taco with chips and cheese dip

We walked next door to Sweet CeCe's Frozen Yogurt.
$3.99 was the cost to fill your cup with yogurt and goodies.
I filled mine with strawberry yogurt and five chocolate covered almonds.
What a way to end the day.