Hot Weather and Hot Blues at the Mississippi Hill Country’s Biggest Weekend
Each year, on the last weekend in June, blues musician Kenny Brown and his wife Sarah host the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic at Betty …
Fife and Drum
Preserving The Black Fife and Drum Culture in Coldwater
For 73 years, people in North Mississippi have been going to the Goat Picnic for goat sandwiches, music, dancing, and one of the rarest and …
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 …
Coldwater: A Struggling Town Celebrates Its Legacy
The original town of Coldwater, Mississippi was founded in Tate County, Mississippi in 1872 along the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad, which ran from Memphis to …
Big Don Valentine and the Hollywood All-Stars at a Fayette County, Tennessee Juke
Juke joints are a dying breed, but they loom large in blues history as well as in the popular image of blues culture. Eagerly sought …
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 …
Together We Stand: Celebrating the Soul of Como, Mississippi
The Hill Country blues season generally begins with the Juke Joint Festival in April, and ends with Como Day in Como, Mississippi, which is usually …
The Mason Family Reunion: Great Weather, Good Food, Fun and Fellowship, But No Musicians
Predominantly-African-American towns in Mississippi have a tradition of annual “days,” named for the towns, in which there are live performances, and in which people from …
Juke Joint Fest: Murals and Vendors
Although we had been told to expect a “modified” Juke Joint Fest due to the pandemic, the actual event proved to be not much different …
Fisherville and Cordova, Tennessee on a Summer Afternoon
The Fisherville and Cordova communities in eastern Shelby County, Tennessee are among the few places in the Memphis area that have retained something of their …