The Field Is Empty, The Drums Silent
A friend of mine in Senatobia had heard that there might be fife and drum going on at a party on the Compress Road between …
Blues
Bull Day in Covington’s Frazier Park-A Day of Peace and Community
Orlandus “Bull” Cobbins of Covington, Tennessee was only 29 years old when he was senselessly murdered at a relative’s home by two men who wanted …
Terry Wright Throws A Party on the Backroad in Fayette County
West Tennessee southern soul artist Terry Wright has sung a lot about backroads and backyard parties, so it is only appropriate that he set up …
Como Revisited
The small Mississippi town of Como in Panola County is a most unlikely dining destination. Traditionally a cotton and market town, Como came by its …
Boots on the Muddy Ground, But A Good Time
It has been my goal this year to go to a trail ride, and while the Michigan City Blues Festival in Benton County, Mississippi wasn’t …
The Marianna Cut-Off: Singing the Blues in Hughes
The St. Francis County, Arkansas town of Hughes looms large in the blues world. Alan Lomax visited in 1959, recording musicians like William Brown, Roland …
A Delta Afternoon: The Sad Death of Parkin
The Cross County, Arkansas town of Parkin is yet another rural town ravaged by Arkansas’s forced school consolidation law. The loss of its local schools …
A Delta Afternoon: Wynne’s Abandoned Childress High School
I had been told that Wynne, Arkansas once had a number of juke joints in its northwestern section, which was the town’s Black community. But …
Wilson: The Jewel of the Arkansas Delta
The Arkansas Delta has definitely seen better days. The decline of the cotton economy, the loss of industry in the 1980s, and a declining population …
Iyuana Patrice and Jonathan Ellis Bring the Blues to Broadway in West Memphis
Blues Off Broadway is a weekly blues concert every Thursday evening in the month of May in West Memphis, Arkansas, usually held on a portable …