The Field Is Empty, The Drums Silent
A friend of mine in Senatobia had heard that there might be fife and drum going on at a party on the Compress Road between …
juke joints
The Marianna Cut-Off: Singing the Blues in Hughes
The St. Francis County, Arkansas town of Hughes looms large in the blues world. Alan Lomax visited in 1959, recording musicians like William Brown, Roland …
A Delta Afternoon: The Sad Death of Parkin
The Cross County, Arkansas town of Parkin is yet another rural town ravaged by Arkansas’s forced school consolidation law. The loss of its local schools …
Juke Joint Love in Whitehaven at the VIP
Memphis, Tennessee is a fairly common destination for tourists, and Beale Street is the usual attraction that many want to see. Memphis does a considerable …
In Search of Harlem Alley
In the spring of 1983, I was going to Central Baptist School in the Bartlett area, and I rode with our basketball team to Forrest …
The Forgotten Town of Madison, Arkansas
Madison, Arkansas likely seems just a small crossroads to those who travel down Highway 70, and does not even register at all to those on …
A Day of Blues at Fordyce’s Cotton Belt Festival
It is often hard to be a journalist or observer and also a working musician within the scene I am trying to document. But I …
Out in Memphis on a Friday Night
What does the music fan do in Memphis on a Friday night? On one particular December Friday, I headed down to the lobby of the …
A Day of Community and Fun in Mason, Tennessee
Mason, Tennessee was once known for the Lower End, a collection of juke joints on Front Street, colloquially known as “cafés,” but these days most …
Celebrating the Legendary Blues Researcher Axel Kustner in West Point, Mississippi
German blues researcher Axel Kustner was one of the last blues field workers to comb the southern United States looking for bluesmen, and he was …