A Day of Community and Fun in Mason, Tennessee
Mason, Tennessee was once known for the Lower End, a collection of juke joints on Front Street, colloquially known as “cafés,” but these days most …
Gospel
A Day of Gospel Music in West Tennessee at Mason’s Zodiac Park
Black baseball fields were tremendously important in rural Black communities into the early 1970s. Every community had baseball teams and softball teams, but the ballfields …
Blues at Nightfall: How Dr. David Evans and High Water Records Tried to Secure A Future For The Blues
High Water Records was founded in 1980 by Dean Richard Ranta and Dr. David Evans, an eminent folklorist who was brought to what was then …
Coldwater: A Struggling Town Celebrates Its Legacy
The original town of Coldwater, Mississippi was founded in Tate County, Mississippi in 1872 along the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad, which ran from Memphis to …
A Friday Evening in Jackson, Tennessee
I was supposed to meet a friend for dinner in Brownsville, so I headed out Highway 70 from Bartlett, and stopped in Mason, Tennessee to …
A Hot Drum Shed on a Cold Night in South Memphis
Drum practice can be noisy, and in the early days of young people learning to play, whether snare drum or the set, parents demanded that …
Haute Cuisine and Hill Country Blues at Home Place Pastures in Como
Home Place Pastures was originally founded in 1869 or 1871, depending on the source, as a cotton plantation in the wilderness east of the railroad …
A Hot Evening of Blues for a Mississippi State Senate Candidate in Senatobia
Old habits die hard in Mississippi, and candidates for office still see a value in hiring the old-time blues musicians to play for rallies. With …
The Rev. John Wilkins at Beale Street Caravan’s Big Night
Lightnin Malcolm was playing in Merigold at Crawdad’s, and the original plan was for me to head to Senatobia and pick Sherena Boyce up, and …
A Busy Night for Live Music in Como, Mississippi
Sherena Boyce, daughter of the great Hill Country bluesman R. L. Boyce had told me that Deandre Walker and his band the Mississippi Boys were …