The Marianna Cut-Off: Singing the Blues in Hughes
The St. Francis County, Arkansas town of Hughes looms large in the blues world. Alan Lomax visited in 1959, recording musicians like William Brown, Roland …
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The Forgotten Town of Madison, Arkansas
Madison, Arkansas likely seems just a small crossroads to those who travel down Highway 70, and does not even register at all to those on …
A Day of Gospel Music in West Tennessee at Mason’s Zodiac Park
Black baseball fields were tremendously important in rural Black communities into the early 1970s. Every community had baseball teams and softball teams, but the ballfields …
Grooving On A Sunday Afternoon
It was the first really warm Sunday afternoon of the year, and one where I had a rare Sunday afternoon gig with Big Don Valentine …
A Delta Journey: Early Sunday Morning in Rayville and the Ruins of Thomastown
As I headed east on Old Highway 80 from Monroe on a sunny Sunday morning, I decided to spend some time looking for things to …
An Old and Forgotten Rural Community on Memphis’ Henrietta Road
It was a blistering hot summer’s day, probably about 1977 or so. The ice cream truck had come past our house but I missed it, …
Toll Gate: A Hidden and Historic Cemetery in Bartlett
While browsing online one afternoon, I came upon a 1965 United States Geological Survey topographical map of the Ellendale area east of Bartlett, and along …
A Breakfast At Rossville
Rossville, Tennessee, in Fayette County, was once called Lafayette Depot, but there was another Lafayette in Middle Tennessee, so sometime during Reconstruction, the town was …
Haute Cuisine and Hill Country Blues at Home Place Pastures in Como
Home Place Pastures was originally founded in 1869 or 1871, depending on the source, as a cotton plantation in the wilderness east of the railroad …
A Void in Vaiden
Vaiden, Mississippi is a town on Highway 51 in Carroll County, and since 1873, the county seat of the second judicial district of that county. …