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 …
venues
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 Legacy of Gulfport’s Shady Grove
Hewes Avenue, named for the first mayor of the modern city of Gulfport, Mississippi, was and is a major thoroughfare that leads from the East …
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 …
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 …
Brass Bands Clash on Frenchmen Street
Later in the evening, my homebody Darren Towns of the TBC Brass Band had a gig with a pick-up band of musicians from various brass …
The TBC Brass Band Plays For A Funeral Uptown
Funerals in New Orleans are fairly strange. It is common for the family members to hire a brass band for the funeral, and those in …
A Birthday Party Uptown at Sportsman’s Corner With TBC Brass Band
After getting off work, I changed clothes, packed my car and headed out Interstate 55 into Mississippi. My friend, the trombonist Edward Jackson had asked …
An Authentic Blues Experience in the Wilderness of Fayette County
If you travel due north from Holly Springs in Marshall County, Mississippi, you will come to Fayette County, Tennessee, a rather similar county in many …