Fife and Drum Returns to West Tennessee at the Sleepy John Estes Blues Jam
Although fife and drum bands once were common in West Tennessee, the phenomenon had largely died out by 1980. The Tennessee State Archives created a …
Drums
Debut of the Lucky 7 Brass Band at Growlers
I got an invitation on Facebook a week or so ago from a musician friend, trombonist Victor Sawyer, to come to the debut performance of …
A Fife-and-Drum Workshop in Brownsville, Tennessee
Fife and drum music once flourished in West Tennessee, but similar to what happened in Georgia, disappeared rapidly in the 1970’s. The last evidence we …
Celebrating the Hill Country Tradition at Como’s Annual Day
Each October, the City of Como, Mississippi sponsors a large, daylong festival and picnic called Como Day, featuring vendors, food trucks, custom cars and excellent …
Preserving the Fife and Drum Tradition With The Hurt Family at Burdette Hill
After a full day at the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival in downtown Memphis, we headed down into Mississippi for the Hurt Family Picnic in …
R. L. Boyce, Cam Kimbrough, Joyce Jones and the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band at the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival
New Orleans’beloved Jazz Fest celebrates the wide diversity of New Orleans music, but the Memphis equivalent, the Beale Street Music Festival generally does not feature …
Gravel Springs Block Party and Day 2 of the Otha Turner Picnic
The second day of the annual Otha Turner Picnic was much more crowded than the first, as crowds came out to hear such artists as …
Keeping The Legacy Of Fife and Drum Music Alive
Each year, Sharde Thomas, the granddaughter of legendary fife-and-drum band leader Othar Turner, holds an annual picnic in her grandfathers’ memory at Gravel Springs, a …
The Brunswick Picnic and the Independent Order of Pole Bearers
The modern concept of life insurance did not come to the South until after the Civil War, and when it did come, the early Southern …
The Hurt Family Celebrating The 4th of July With Fife and Drum
As I have discussed before in this blog, Black fife and drum music is an endangered form of pre-blues that probably played a role in …