The King Biscuit Blues Festival and the Decline of Helena
Like all of Eastern Arkansas, Helena had seen better days by the late 1970’s, but the worst was yet to come. When the Mohawk Tire …
Event
Bikes and Blues On Historic Ground near Como
On the last weekend of September, Memphis-based blues and southern soul singer Gerod Rayborn asked me if I would play keyboards with his band for …
Uptown with the Young Men Olympian and the TBC Brass Band
Sherena had never been to a second-line, so on our weekend trip to New Orleans, I wanted her to experience one first-hand. And by chance, …
An Afternoon in Biloxi and Ocean Springs, Dinner in Gulfport
My friend and I had visited my cousin in the Handsboro neighborhood of Gulfport, and then we had headed on east into Biloxi. We noticed …
The Kimbrough Blues Legacy Lives On At Rooster’s Blues House in Oxford
Robert Kimbrough Sr. calls his style of music “cotton patch blues”, but he is the son of one of the biggest legends of what blues …
Music on the Square in Somerville, Tennessee
Due north of Marshall County, the quintessential county of the Mississippi Hill Country is Fayette County, Tennessee, which perhaps could be considered Tennessee’s only Hill …
Around the Tennessee Delta on Labor Day Weekend
After Bradley Hanson of the Tennessee State Archives sent me a link to recordings made of a fife and drum band in rural Fayette County …
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 …
Eric Deaton Trio & Garry Burnside Live at Proud Larry’s
Although Proud Larry’s is first and foremost a rock club, Oxford, Mississippi is deep in the Mississippi Hill Country, and has been the scene of …