Friday Night at The Blue Front in Bentonia
Bentonia, Mississippi is not a big town. It’s not even the biggest town in Yazoo County, yet the unique blues style of musicians from this …
Folklore
Mayor Jane Rule Throws a Birthday Party For David Katznelson With Blues and Fife and Drum
San Francisco-based David Katznelson is the owner of Birdman Records, a really cool group of blues and roots labels, which includes subsidiary labels Birdmanophone and …
Delta Easter: Desecration of Po Monkey’s, One of the Holy Sites of the Blues
From Drew, I decided to head across to Merigold. I had wanted to see Po Monkey’s juke joint for the first time in real life, …
A Wet And Busy Juke Joint Fest in Clarksdale
I usually enjoy myself quite a bit at the annual Juke Joint Fest in Clarksdale, but this year’s festival was both wet and harried, as …
Headstone Dedication for the Late Memphis Bluesman Charlie Burse
It had rained all day, but T. DeWayne Moore of the Mount Zion Memorial Fund had sent me an invitation to the dedication of a …
Breakfast, Worship And Black History at Salem Missionary Baptist Church at Mason, Tennessee
A while back, I had crossed paths on Facebook with the Rev. T. Ray Greer, pastor of Salem Missionary Baptist Church in the countryside just …
A Day in Lauderdale County, Tennessee
Lauderdale County, Tennessee, and its county seat of Ripley have a significant blues tradition. Petey Wheatstraw was from Ripley, and Noah Lewis and John Henry …
Together We Stand: Como, Mississippi Celebrates Its Vibrant Legacy
“Can’t One Make One” read the shirts with the iconic image of the Como water tower on the front, and the legend “Together We Stand” …
Celebrating Mason, Tennessee’s Important Legacy
Mason, Tennessee, located in Tipton County by geography, but more socially and culturally linked to adjacent Fayette County, is the dead center of what might …
The Blues Has A Future
Elsewhere in this blog, I have commented on Clarksdale’s excellent coffee roasting firm Meraki Roasting Company, but on a recent trip to meet with a …