West Memphis Kicks Off its Annual May Celebration of the Blues with Ra’Shad the Blues Kid
The city of West Memphis, Arkansas is a youngster as American cities go, having been founded really about the time of World War I, and …
musicology
Big Memphis: Big Don Valentine is a Living Link with Memphis’s Blues Past
Long before rap music was a thing or synthesizers, drum machines or sequencers were invented, Memphis was a blues town, but despite the city’s long …
A Night of Hill Country and Cotton Patch Soul Blues in Olive Branch For the R. L. Burnside Museum
1836 Grill and Bar-B-Que is a new bar and grill in Olive Branch, Mississippi and on February 15, 2026, it was the scene of a …
A Bit of Mardi Gras in Downtown Memphis
On February 2, 1872, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia landed in Memphis, Tennessee, having come by boat down the Mississippi River from St. Louis. …
Mason, Tennessee Celebrates Its Heritage With The Annual Fall Jubilee
Every fall, the small town of Mason in Tipton County, Tennessee holds an annual fall festival with vendors food trucks and live music. It generally …
On the Patio with Joshua McCain and the Soul Seven at the Greyhound
After I walked up to the Dollar General Store on the Main Street Mall to buy batteries for my camera, I was closer to Union …
Suavo J and the M-Town Band at Alley Dayz in Downtown Memphis
Originally, I had just planned to go downtown and see my friends Joshua McCain and the Soul Seven, who were playing at a bar called …
The Blues’s Last Outpost in an Out of the Way North Memphis Bar
Visitors to Memphis’s Beale Street are usually disappointed. Although the street is famous for blues, blues is rarely heard there these days; the street’s fate …
The Black Fire Band Brings the Fire to Los Cabos in Hickory Hill
Los Cabos is a Mexican Restaurant on Quince Road in the Hickory Hill neighborhood of Memphis. It’s not really a nightclub per se, but it …
A Beautiful Day and Great Fun at Coldwater Day
The phenomenon of “town days” is fairly unique to the state of Mississippi, and occurs mainly in predominantly-Black towns. It is possible that they began …