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Cigars, Wine, Blues and Soul at Chulahoma

If anyone is familiar with Chulahoma, Mississippi at all, it is probably as the location of the late blues great Junior Kimbrough’s long lost juke joint, which burned in the 1990s. True, the small crossroads has an annual blues festival, sponsored by singer and entrepreneur Beverly Davis, whose family owns the community grocery store and gas station. But aside from that, Chulahoma is basically just a four-way with a convenience store and an old former store across the road, and a Dollar General on the opposite corner. Near the border of Tate and Panola Counties in the Mississippi Hill Country, it is deep in an area known for blues, Black gospel, picnics and fife and drum music.

The annual Chulahoma Blues Festival is held in October, but in September of 2022, some promoters decided to try a new event called the Cigar and Wine Festival at Columbus Park, a large and spacious park south of Chulahoma just off the Tyro Road. The event featured a number of vendors, plenty of food trucks, motorcycle clubs, live music and a DJ. What it did not have, at least at first, was very many attendees, which was all the stranger since the weather was absolutely gorgeous. One of the three acts scheduled to perform had cancelled at the last minute, and Hill Country bluesman Garry Burnside was called as a replacement. Garry is well-known in Marshall County and in Oxford, and if he had been advertised on the event flyers and posters, there might have been a larger turnout. As it was, a singer named Cassandra the Soulchild from Memphis opened up the stage with her band, and Garry Burnside and his band followed, before Courtney Little from Memphis came on with his band, by which time there was at last a good-sized crowd, line-dancing in front of the stage.

Altogether, it was great food, great fun, a wonderful family atmosphere, and great weather. Here’s hoping the Cigar and Wine Fest returns for many more years.

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