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

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 

2015 ~ Saturday, June 27, Helen Keller Festival Tuscumbia, Alabama

Today I went to the Car Show in Tuscumbia were on display was a variety of antique cars, 
White & black Rally Sport Camaro, black Belair trimmed in white, several MGB's, Corvettes, trucks and some motorcycles. There were Mustangs, Camaro's, Chevrolets, & Fords. 

Car Show Mustangs 

Driving down Main St to be Parked.

Volkswagen

The New Ford V8 Coupe Utility 

I took the hour walking tour, our guide talked about the founding of Tuscumbia. He talked about the founding of the railroad, the many hotels that were in Tuscumbia because of the Railroad, the rival between Colbert County and Lauderdale County.

The Colbert County Reporter 

The Train Depot and Museum 

Why the people from Tuscumbia would travel by train to Decatur to the bank, and shop instead of Florence.
John Coffee a surveyor laid out the founding of Tuscumbia in a Commons. Tuscumbia was sold to the US Government by the Indians.
Our guide talked about the different churches on Dickson Street that started out as Main Street.

St Johns Episcopal Church on Dickson Street 

Walking group 

House behind St Johns Episcopal Church on Dickson Street 

Touring Bus 

Walking group

The street where the Cold Water Book Store now is was once Grain Row and Main Street was once Mechanical Row.
This was the main shopping area of Tuscumbia in the early days.
He said the water flowing in Spring park comes from an underground spring and the area was once the hunting grounds for the Indians.

Met this very sweet dog, his owner had him sit and pose for me. So cute, and lovable

Our tour ended at First Presbyterian Church in Tuscumbia where everyone was invited inside to listen to a Helen Keller Festival Mini Concert featuring Dinie Stone pianist, Blair Reinlie oboist, & the great, great, great-nieces and nephews of Helen Keller. 

First Presbyterian Church in Tuscumbia 

First Presbyterian Church in Tuscumbia 1824-1904

Dinie Stone pianist, Blair Reinlie oboist, & the great, great, great-nieces and nephews of Helen Keller. 

Guitar player

The great, great, great-nieces of Helen Keller she did  a solo accompanied by guitar

Blair Reinlie oboist

Helen Keller born June 27, 1880, died June 1, 1968 "Happy Birthday Helen".
"Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the finger of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living."
Helen Keller
Songs 
Over the rainbow, Etude, To a wild Rose, We gather, We praise, The Lord is in His Holy Temple, Surely The Presence of the Lord is in this place  In your arms Lord Jesus Christ, Children of the Heavenly Father, Down at the River we shall gather, Let us break bread together and remember you, Behold the lamb, Amazing Grace, I dream a dream, You raise me up, God Bless the USA, God Bless America.
Everyone joined in singing God Bless America.
After the concert, everyone was invited for light refreshments.

I stopped at the Tuscumbia Art Museum to view the art on display by disabling students of Alabama and watercolor paintings from all over the USA. There were some very interesting pieces on display. 
One of the volunteers came into the museum with a notebook about the art and we discuss several pieces. 
Ate lunch at Ruby Tuesday with two new friends I met at the Art Museum. I was telling my husband about my day, he laughed and said nothing you do surprises me.