82-Year Old L. C. Ulmer Wows the Crowd at Bentonia

L. C. Ulmer has been playing the blues for over 50 years, but he didn’t record an album until 2008’s Blues Come Yonder on Justin Showah’s Hill Country Records imprint. Whitty and whimsical, his music exudes a youthfulness and playfulness that belies his advanced age, as he plays and sings through a homemade effect chamber made out of a can. While Ulmer is from Ellisville, Mississippi in the southern part of the state, his music has more in common with Hill Country artists like Little Joe Ayers or Robert Belfour, and the crowd at this year’s Bentonia Blues Festival was both appreciative and amazed.