In Search of Harlem Alley
In the spring of 1983, I was going to Central Baptist School in the Bartlett area, and I rode with our basketball team to Forrest …
night club
A Day of Blues at Fordyce’s Cotton Belt Festival
It is often hard to be a journalist or observer and also a working musician within the scene I am trying to document. But I …
Out in Memphis on a Friday Night
What does the music fan do in Memphis on a Friday night? On one particular December Friday, I headed down to the lobby of the …
A Veteran Memphis Drummer Celebrates His Birthday With A Concert
Memphis drummer Danny Peterson has played with any number of bands in both gospel and rhythm and blues music. Starting out with quartets like the …
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 …
Celebrating the Legendary Blues Researcher Axel Kustner in West Point, Mississippi
German blues researcher Axel Kustner was one of the last blues field workers to comb the southern United States looking for bluesmen, and he was …
Earl the Pearl’s Authentic Blues on Historic Beale Street
Memphis bills itself as the Home of the Blues, and markets Beale Street as “the street where blues was born.” But since the street’s redevelopment …
Dining With Ghosts: Dinner Is Served Again at Tennessee Williams’ Old Haunt on Moon Lake
Moon Lake, in northern Coahoma County, Mississippi is not actually a lake in the normal sense. It is a wide expanse of water that was …
Easter Afternoon at a Blues Juke in the Hill Country
Holly Springs, Mississippi is home to one of the state’s youngest juke joints, the Burnside Bar and Grill, which belongs to Hill Country bluesman Duwayne …
Duwayne Burnside at The Lamplighter in Midtown Memphis
The Lamplighter Lounge is one of Memphis’s classic dive bars, but it is not a place I had ever been. As a bar and not …