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

Pops Staples -WINONA Miss US 51 South Haven, MS

Miss US 51

Pops Staples *1914-2000)

Roebuck “Pops” Staples, one of the foremost figures in American gospel music as a singer, guitarist, and patriarch of the Staple Singers family group was born on a farm near Winona on December 28, 1914. Staples began playing blues as a youngster in the Delta, but by the time he left for Chicago in 1936, he had embarked on a gospel singing career.  He and the Staple Singers later enjoyed crossover success in the rhythm & blues and pop fields. Staples died on December 19, 2000.

Roebuck “Pop” Staples 

Roebuck “Pop” Staples

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Roebuck “Pop” Staples fused old-time religion and the blues with an activist commitment to peace, equality, and brotherhood to create inspirational “message songs” that transcended the traditional boundaries of gospel music. Under his guidance, the Staple Singers not only earned the title “the first family of gospel music,” but also developed followings among blues, soul, folk, rock, and jazz audiences. Staples traced his style back to the hymns and spirituals he learned from his grandfather and the blues he heard in Mississippi. Roebuck and his older brother Sears, the last two of fourteen Staples children, were named after the Chicago mail-order company that numbered many rural African Americans among its millions of customers. Another Staples brother, David, played blues guitar before becoming a preacher, and a famous relative born years later was Oprah Winfrey, whose great-grandmother was Roebuck’s aunt, Ella Staples.  The Staples lived around Mayfield and Kilmichael until they moved to Dr. Joseph David Swinney’s plantation west of Minter City (c. 1918) and then to Will Dockery's near Drew (c. 1923). Inspired by Delta blues kingpin Charley Patton, a Dockery resident, and Howlin’ Wolf, who often performed in Drew, Staples took up a guitar and began frequenting local juke house parties, but also sang in church and at local gospel gatherings, sometimes with the Golden Trumpets in Carroll and Montgomery counties.  Although he chose to stay on the gospel path, he remained a lifelong blues fan and was a friend to many blues singers, from Wolf and Muddy Waters to Albert and B. B. King.

Staples’ children Cleotha and Pervis were born at Dockery, followed by Yvonne, Mavis, and Cynthia after the family moved to Chicago.  Staples put the guitar aside for several years while he worked as a laborer to support his brood, although he sang locally with the Trumpet Jubilees. Around 1948 he decided to put together a family group, and soon the Staple Singers were performing at area churches and gospel shows.  Their 1956 recording of “Uncloudy Day” brought them widespread attention, both within and outside the gospel world. Among their many later hits, most of them featuring Mavis Staples’ powerful lead vocals, were “I’ll Take You There,” “Respect Yourself,” and “Let’s Do It Again.” Pops Staples professed not to be a blues singer, but he did collaborate with guitarists Albert King and Steve Cropper on the Stax album Jammed Together, and he won a GRAMMY® in the Contemporary Blues category in 1994 for his final CD, Father. “It’s just my way of playing,” he explained.  “I can’t get away from it – it’s gonna have a little touch of blues.” The Rhythm & Blues Foundation honored Staples with a Pioneer Award in 1992, and in 1998 he was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Staple Singers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999

Caption
The Staple Singers' "Too Close" featuring Pop's down-home guitar, was recorded live at a concert at Clarksdale's Higgins High School in 1960 by WROS deejay and gospel promoter Eary Wright. Revenant Records later included it on the Grammy-winning box set The World So Charley Patton. Staples was heard to play Patton's blues note-for-note at home or backstage, but would not perform the song onstage.
All right, rock star John Fogerty joins Staples at the Mt Zion Memorial Foundation's dedication of Patton's headstone in Holly Ridge on June 20, 1991. Both performed at a Pops Staples Park Festival in Drew later that day.

Sear, Roebuck & Co catalog from the year Pops Staple was born in 1914.
The original Staple Singers Pervisk Pops, Cleotha, and Mavis in the later (right)Yvonne Staples replaced Pervis.

Among the blues performers who have called Winona their birthplace although all were born in rural areas outside of town are from let Pianist LafayetteLeak (1916-1990), a premier studio musician and longtime member of Willie Dixon; 's Chicago Blues, all-star guitarist LC McKinley (1917-1970), who was active on the Chicago blues scene in the 1950s and '60s and harmonica player Littel Say Davis (born c1928) a well-traveled recording artist known for hi appearance son New Yori radio personality Don Imus's syndicated program Ims in the morning. McKinley and the Staples Singers were labelmates at Vee-Jay Records in Chicago. His son Rev. McArthur Mckinley, later pastored at Little Zion <B Church in Greenwood the site of blues legend Robert Johnson's grave.

Record “Too Close"
 by Staple Singers
 on
VEE JAY label 

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

Visit us online at www.MSBluesTrail.org 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6636264/roebuck-staples

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

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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

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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

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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