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 Como in Panola County, Mississippi and Gravel Springs in Tate County, and I really wanted it to be true, so despite the extreme heat, I drove out from Memphis to Senatobia, and on the winding backroads. Initially, I didn’t see much of anything going on at all, and I soon ended up on Como’s Main Street. There were crowds of people at Como Steakhouse and Windy City Grill, but nothing of a festive or celebratory nature going on in the town. Driving back out the Compress Road north of town, I eventually found that three different houses were having large parties. But all of them were using recorded music; there was no sound of a bass drum beating.
North of the Compress Road along Gravel Springs Road are the ruins of L. P. Buford’s store and ballfield, where on the average July 4 in the 1970s, one might have encountered a fife and drum band, a baseball game and perhaps even a blues guitarist like R. L. Burnside. In later years, it had been the scene of southern soul shows and car shows, and finally rap shows, one of which occasioned the shooting that led to its closure. The former store sits abandoned, as it has been for many years; it had briefly been a juke joint called the Soul Zodiac Club in the early 1970s. Behind the building, the former ballfield is so overgrown with tall grass and weeds as to be basically invisible. This is where the folklorist Dr. David Evans first encountered Black fife and drum at a picnic in 1970, and the place where Alan Lomax recorded and filmed fife and drum in 1978. It is a sacred and important site of the blues, now abandoned and sadly quiet.
From there I rode down to Sardis, where everything was as quiet as Como, and I drove out Highway 310 west to the Mount Level Road, wanting to see if anything was going on at Burdette Hill. One Fourth of July, I had encountered the Hurt Family Fife and Drum Band there. But there was nothing at all going on at Burdette, the picnic grounds there tired and worn as if they had not been used in many years. Nor was anything going on along Old Panola Road, where on another Fourth of July, I had seen fife and drum at the house of one of the Hurt family members. It became apparent that I would not get to enjoy the Fourth with fife and drum.
I rode one last time through Gravel Springs, and then gave up my search and headed to Senatobia for dinner. AfterwardsI made my way back to Memphis and caught Big Don Valentine’s regular performance at Wild Bill’s. I had a good time there, but it is clear that the fife and drum tradition in North Mississippi is very much endangered.