The Tennessee Delta IV: Tipton County
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in June, I decided to head out around some of the backroads in Tipton County in search of things to …
History
The Tennessee Delta IV: Ruins of George Ellis High School in Munford
Abandoned schools in the South always depress me. There is hardly a region of the country that needs education more than ours, and I can …
Celebrating West Tennessee’s Lost Fife and Drum Tradition
Last summer, the Tennessee Arts Commission began a Folklife Apprenticeship program to preserve endangered folkways in the state, and one of the areas of interest …
Fayette County Easter Sunday
In my ongoing research on West Tennessee fife and drum music, I have focused a great deal on Fayette County, largely because of its demographics …
The Lost Town of Mercer and the Bridges at The End of the Road
In December of 1979 or so, my parents had taken me to Jackson, Tennessee for my birthday. We had eaten at the Old English Steak …
“They Got To Sew, Sew, Sew”: Mardi Gras Indians Uptown and Downtown
The traditional Mardi Gras parades can be fun, but my favorite part of carnival is in the ‘hoods and backstreets, where the gangs of Mardi …
To New Orleans Across The Mississippi Delta
Originally, I was to have headed out to New Orleans on Saturday, which would have enabled me to go to Houma for a parade with …
Celebrating Women in the Blues at Rust College
Amy Verdon, the New York-based owner of the online magazine Fancy! and its record-label offshoot Go Ape Records has been quite a contributor to the …
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 …
Remembering the Legacy of Bartlett’s Shadowlawn High School
Back in 1979, I had attended Shadowlawn Middle School in a rural area along Shadowlawn Road north of Ellendale. I was in the sixth grade …