North Mississippi Hill Country Blues from 1967 documented in a new book

Folklorist George Mitchell began making blues recordings and interviewing artists in the early '60s when he was still in high school -- reading Sam Charters' book The Country Blues led him and a friend to head up to Memphis from their home in Atlanta to look up blues veterans.

In 1967 Mitchell, then in graduate school, returned to the greater Memphis area to document local music, and among his great "discoveries" were R.L. Burnside and Jessie Mae Hemphill. The recordings of Burnside initially came out on the Arhoolie label, and Hemphill was one of the subjects of Mitchell's now very difficult to find book Blow My Blues Away.

Over the last decade Oxford's Fat Possum label reissued all of the recordings made by Mitchell in Memphis, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and elsewhere via CDs, LPs, and a boxed set available either on CD or 45rpm singles.

This fall the University Press of Mississippi will issue a new book by Mitchell titled Mississippi HIll Country Blues: 1967.  Last week they blogged about the book, and included nine wonderful photos contained in its pages as well as a video of R.L. Burnside.

Here's the blog post.

T-Model Ford yard party this Saturday in Greenville

Photo by Scott Barretta, Dec. 2006

T-Model Ford has been sick and unable to perform for some time, and over the past months there have been a number of fundraisers to help him and his wife Stella cover basic expenses. 

Here's the announcement from Roger Stolle of Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art in Clarksdale about the gathering this Saturday:

… Are you a musician? Please contact Mrs. T-Model Ford (Stella) at 662-931-1087 to volunteer your performance at this very special blues event… or just show up and plug in!. Miss Stella and T-Model are celebrating their wedding anniversary and an early T-Model birthday. (I think he'll be around 126 years old this time around…) Are you "just" a fan? Then, c'mon down, and have some fun from 2 pm to 7 pm. It's a FREE event, though donations to the Ladies' Man are appreciated. See y'all there!!

ADDRESS: 216 North Delta Street Greenville MS 38703
ADDRESS: 216 North Delta Street Greenville MS 38703

North Mississippi Allstars & Sons of Mudboy pay tribute to Jim Dickinson this Thursday in Memphis

Luther and Cody Dickinson

This Thursday Luther and Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars pay tribute to their late father, Jim Dickinson, with a show at the Levitt Shell advertised as the 50th anniversary of the "first Jim Dickinson Folk Festival at the Shell in 1963." The elder Dickinson was an important member of the Memphis folk community, a story that's well documented in Robert Gordon's book It Came From Memphis. There's a really good article about the 1963 show as well as Thursday's event by Bob Mehr in this week's Commercial Appeal 

Keyboardist/vocalist Dickinson later formed an electric blues-rock band called Mudboy and the Neutrons together with Jimmy Crosthwait (washboard), Lee Baker (guitar), and guitarist/vocalist Sid Selvidge, a native of Greenville who died last month. The "Sons of Mudboy," who will also perform Thursday include Crosthwait, Luther and Cody Dickinson, Sid Selvidge's son Steve, Lee Baker's son Ben, and Paul Taylor, who played together with Luther and Cody in DDT.

I spoke with Luther today, and he told me that he'll be performing a special show at the upcoming North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic together with Lightin' Malcolm (who has been playing bass with the Allstars regularly since Chris Chew left the group for health reasons), T-Model Ford's grandson "Stud" on drums, and Sharde Thomas--Cody will not be appearing. The Allstars' new CD, which will come out August on their own Songs of the South label, will feature Chew, Lightnin' Malcolm, Sharde Thomas, Kenny Brown, Duwayne Burnside, and some vintage sounds from Otha Turner--Luther produced both of his solo CDs.

* * *

Thursday's show kicks off the Spring season of the concert series at the Levitt Shell, a wonderful outdoor venue in Memphis' Overton Park that sits right behind the Brooks Arts Museum. The non-profit organization puts on dozens of shows during their late Spring and Fall seasons, with groups booked every Thursday through Sunday night.  Fall events at the Levitt Shell will be included in the Bridging the Blues calendar.

For blues/roots music fans, highlights of this season include

June 1 - City Champs - classic soul instrumental group from Memphis

June 7 - Big Sam's Funky Nation - New Orleans funk

June 8 - The Slide Brothers - sacred steel super group incl. Robert Randolph and Chuck Campbell

June 9 - Eden Brent - pianist from Greenville, Mississippi

June 13 - George Porter & Runnin' Pardners - New Orleans funk

June 14 - Chubby Carrier - zydeco

June 22 - Cedric Burnside - North MS Hill Country blues

July 5 - Sonny Landreth - Louisiana blues

New novel chronicles the great 1927 Mississippi River flood

New York City-based author Bill Cheng's new novel Southern Cross the Dog takes place in Mississippi in 1927, just as the Mississippi River burst the levee down near Scott, Mississippi -- a Mississippi Blues Trail marker is there, and it also acknowledges Big Bill Broonzy, who said he was from Scott (though he was actually from Arkansas). 

Tonight (Mon. May 20) Cheng will be signing at Lemuria Books in Jackson, and on Tuesday at Square Books in Oxford. The book has already garnered a lot of critical attention even though Cheng has -- until today -- never set foot in Mississippi. Inn a recent article in the New York Times, Square Books owner Richard Howorth -- an authority on Southern literature -- said, “I was highly suspicious of this book when I first started it [but] I was won over.” 

The term "Southern Cross the Dog" is a reference to Moorhead, Mississippi, where the Southern  and the Yazoo and Mississippi Delta (aka "Yellow Dog") railway lines crossed. In his 1941 autobiography "Father of the Blues," W.C. Handy recalled that his first encounter with the blues was at the railway station in Tutwiler--about 40 miles north of Moorhead--where he heard a man playing a slide guitar and singing about this crossing.

“A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of a guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly. ‘Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.’ The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I ever heard.” 

Below is an image of the unveiling of the W.C. Handy Mississippi Blues Trail marker in Tutwiler, which was attended by Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. From left: Jerome Little (Tallahatchie County Board of Supervisors), Tutwiler Mayor Genether Miller-Spurlock, Jim O'Neal of the Blues Trail, Robert Plant, former mayor Robert Grayson, and Mississippi State Senator David Jordan -- photo by Melanie Young.

Juke joints featured in the New York Times

The travel section of today's New York Times has a longish article about the contemporary state of juke joints in the Deep South, addressing not only those remaining in the Delta (notably, Red's and Po' Monkeys), but also Teddy's Juke Joint in Zachary, Louisiana (just north of Baton Rouge), and Gip's Place in Bessemer, Alabama, which was just officially shut down for zoning/noise violations after operating for decades. Apparently Gip decided to keep going, though....

Here's the New York Times story: http://travel.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/travel/driving-the-juke-joint-trail.html?pagewanted=all