R.L. Boyce is one of the longest active performers in the traditional music of the North Mississippi Hill Country. For three decades, he played bass and snare drums in the Como-based fife and drum group led by fife player and vocalist Otha Turner (1907-2003). Since the early 2000s, he has received international attention for his work as a guitar player and vocalist.  In 2017, Boyce was nominated for a Grammy award for his album Roll and Tumble (Waxploitation), and in 2023 he received the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Boyce was born in Como, Panola County, on August 15, 1955, and says that R.L. simply stands for “R.L.” He was the 6th of 13 children of his parents, Charles and Annie Mae, and grew up picking cotton. He was the only one in the household who took to actively playing music, but his parents hosted house parties that ran well into the night. Local musicians who performed at his home included Como-based vocalist and guitarist Mississippi Fred McDowell (1904-1972), who achieved international fame during the 1960s blues revival.

In the documentary about McDowell, Shake ‘em On Down, Boyce said that musicians would play all weekend. McDowell, he recalls, would arrive at the house in Otha Turner’s mule-driven wagon.

“You could hear the guitar two miles down the road, all the way to the next county. That mule—bop, bop, bop, bop [imitates the rhythm of its hooves]. Fred sitting in the wagon; guitar was getting down.”

In 1970, when Boyce was 15, he began playing drums with Turner’s group, initially performing at one of the many fife and drum picnics held in the field behind L.P. Buford’s store in the country east of Como. Boyce also played in a group led by Napolian Strickland on fife that also featured Otha Turner on drums. This band was recorded in 1970 by ethnomusicologist David Evans, and songs featuring Boyce were issued on the LPs Traveling Through the Jungle: Negro Fife and Drum Band Music (Testament 1974) and Afro-American Folk Music from Tate and Panola Counties, Mississippi (Library of Congress 1978).

Boyce continued playing with Strickland and Turner locally at picnics and in the occasional festival, and in the 1980s, he began playing a drum kit for legendary guitarist/vocalist Jessie Mae Hemphill, who had previously played drums in local fife and drum bands. They performed together at events including the Delta Blues and Heritage Festival in Greenville, and in 1991, they were featured at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival along with Turner, Strickland, and drummers Bernice Evans (Turner’s daughter), Abe Young, and E.P. Burton.

Boyce played on Hemphill’s album Feelin’ Good (Highwater 1990) and later appeared on recordings featuring Otha Turner—notably the albums Everybody Hollerin’ Goat (Birdman 1997) and From Senegal to Senatobia [by Otha Turner & the Afrossippi Allstars] (Birdman 2000), as well as with the artists Twenty Miles and Corey Harris.

Boyce began playing guitar around age 25 (circa 1980), and credits as his inspirations McDowell, R.L. Burnside, with whom Boyce sometimes played drums at Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint in Chulahoma, and Luther Dickinson, with whom he frequently played at informal gatherings at the home of Otha Turner.

Boyce says he first began playing guitar in public together with Dickinson’s group, The North Mississippi Allstars, and he soon became a staple at local festivals. In 2007, he recorded his first album, Ain’t the Man’s Allright (Sutro Park, 2013), which featured Dickinson and drummer Cedric Burnside. The album revealed Boyce’s distinctive style of long and loping improvisatory blues, clearly rooted in the music of R.L. Burnside and others but distinctly his own.  His self-produced live recording from 2019 Boogie w/ R.L Boyce Live (WoodB Records), was nominated for Best Traditional Album in the Blues Music Awards, and in 2023 he appeared on a compilation album produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach.

He gained broader attention through his appearance in documentaries including “M For Mississippi” (2008), which captured one of his frequent house parties in Como, and “I Am the Blues” (2015). In addition to playing festivals across North America, Boyce has also performed in England, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, and Columbia (together with Columbian blues artist Carlos Elliot, Jr. and the Cornlickers, with whom he has recorded).

Since 2017, he’s hosted the annual, multi-day R.L. Boyce Picnic, held in Como every September. It includes a “Hill Country blues workshop” and features many other artists from North Mississippi including the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, members of the Burnside family, and Eric Deaton. The jovial Boyce ensures that the festival retains the same informal character that characterized his old house parties, with many other artists joining him on stage.

Boyce’s commitment to continuing and bolstering regional traditions was expressed through his participation as a mentor to Kody Harrell in the Mississippi Arts Commission's 2020-2021 Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program, and he’s a regular performer at the annual North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic in Waterford. After over 5 decades as a musician, Boyce’s career is a testament to his passion and dedication to his community’s Hill Country blues legacy.

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Introduction

Katie Clark defines crochet as “a process of making fabric with yarn, or sometimes thread using a series of loops, using a hook.” Her apprentice, Sarah Rose Govero adds, “It’s loops, a hook, and patience!” Both crocheters since childhood, the two met through their church. Katie invited Sarah Rose to be her apprentice and to develop a portfolio of work that reflects a high degree of competence, professional standards, and artistry suitable to present for jury review in the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi. Sarah Rose completed four projects for her portfolio over the course of the apprenticeship, including garments, blankets, and a Christmas ornament. 

Master Artist: Katie Clark

Katie Clark learned the basics of both knit and crochet from her mom, but she “took to crotchet because it was faster,” explained Katie. In crochet, each stitch is completed before the next one is begun, whereas knitting keeps many stitches open at a time. From those basics, Katie began experimenting with single-crochet and double-crochet stitches. Then, she taught herself to read patterns, learning through books and trial-and-error. She spent many years trying out techniques and patterns on various types of projects. She learned how different methods of construction inform a final garment, such as a raglan sweater versus a sweater with set in sleeves. 

After becoming more confident in her craft, she began to mix patterns and re-employ stitches to make something of her own. While she understands and appreciates the traditional roots of crochet, she likes to keep up with current styles of knit design to incorporate into her work. Beyond crochet and knit aesthetics, she also finds inspiration in “nerdom”, like early Atari video games. Katie enjoys creating unusual, asymmetrical shawls and figuring out how to create different shapes, darts, angles, and curves. She now designs her own patterns. Speaking on her process, Katies explained, “Once you get the stitches, the geometry, and basic structures down, it’s really easy to own it.”

Katie has always appreciated that the skills came to her ultimately from her grandmother, who taught her mother to crochet. She recalls seeing her uncle, a woodworker, turn artful bowls and build beautiful dulcimers in Berea, Kentucky, and realized “what an honor it is to be part of a tradition of craft that spans generations.” Continuing the legacy of her grandmother and mother, she sees her role in passing the tradition of crotchet to future generations. She started teaching at a local yarn store in 2009 and has taught at regional fiber festivals around the South. In 2013, she joined the Craftsmen’s Guild, where she now teaches locally at the Bill Waller Craft Center in Ridgeland, Mississippi. She also serves on the board of the Craftsmen’s Guild, chairing the Education Committee. Reflecting her mastery, the classes she teaches “aren’t project based, they’re design based.” Katie added that her classes “show and encourage people how they can make crochet their own.” 

Apprentice: Sarah Rose Govero

Sarah Rose grew up in Clinton, Mississippi. Now a recent high school graduate, she has been crocheting since she was 10. Sarah Rose admits that the way she picked up the art form is “kind of a funny story.” Her sister ran track at Mississippi College and brought her teammates over one night. One teammate was knitting, another was crocheting. Sarah Rose was fascinated watching them, and the crocheter said she would teach her. She then gave Sarah Rose a hook and a small ball of yarn and showed her the basic chain and single crotchet. From there, Sarah Rose learned the craft by watching YouTube videos. Katie cites an “interesting” generational gap between herself and her apprentice. Where Sarah Rose and her contemporaries learn from YouTube, Katie learned everything from books. The pair commented that this difference is “really cool,” and they see great potential in these two ways of learning. 

Apprenticeship Experience

As a member of the Craftsmen’s Guild, Katie is often looking for ways to expand their membership and to give anyone with the desire the opportunity to expand their skill set. After learning about the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program, she knew right away that Sarah Rose would be an excellent candidate to work with in the program.

Sarah Rose said one reason she wanted to be an apprentice was to learn how to change crochet patterns and develop her own, like Katie. After completing the program, she feels that she has become more advanced in that regard. She made her first pattern during the apprenticeship – a 3D train Christmas ornament. The design was inspired by her hometown of Clinton: steam trains were historically economic drivers in her area. While the stitches were not new to her, she had never made a 3D design, which requires sewing different pieces together.

Their twice-monthly meetings sometimes took place in their houses but mainly occurred in their local coffee shop. They also texted a lot – especially with pictures of their projects. Sarah had a good foundation, she knew how to read patterns and core stitches, but Katie passed on knowledge of more stitches, how to introduce different textures, stitch gauges, how different fibers work and when to use them, and how to stitch together panels of crotchet to make garments. Their meetings were not as structured as a regular class Katie would lead because there was less of a time constraint in the weeks-long apprenticeship format. The sweater project meetings were longer than usual because Sarah Rose had not made a garment before, so the two had to work on measurements and sizing together. The sweater uses a traditional bobble stitch, but the balloon sleeves, raspberry color, and edging, make it a modern garment. Katie loves how Sarah Rose has employed traditional techniques in a “fresh” way. Sarah Rose is now working on a baby sweater which is entirely her own design. This new sweater project will also give her experience using hand-dyed wool, a fiber she has never used before. 

According to Katie, there are decisions to be made in making every piece when crocheting – from big decisions like what yarn to use, down to tiny ones like what needle to employ. She notes the importance of having some foresight when crocheting, “Different joining techniques yield different results,” said Katie. “You have to know what it’s going to look like in the end to know which one is going to be most appropriate, or which you would be happiest with.” The two explained that patience, a willingness to try, and learning from your mistakes are key to being a good crocheter. 

Conclusion

When asked what the apprenticeship means to her, Sarah Rose said, “It’s super exciting to branch out and try new things.” Being part of the guild and being part of a younger generation of crocheters means a lot to her. She imagines she will teach as she gets older to continue the craft. She also plans on majoring in interior design and hopes to put a piece of her crotchet in every home she designs as a kind of maker’s mark. Towards the end of their apprenticeship, Sarah Rose successfully submitted her application to the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi, and like her mentor, she is now a guild member.  

When Katie reflects on the apprenticeship experience, she said “it’s been super fun guiding [Sarah Rose] through these processes of trying these new things. I’m super proud of what she’s learned and has been able to accomplish on her own and her problem solving and decision-making. She started with the skills of a crochet hobbyist, but now she has the foundation and attitude of a crochet designer!”

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Introduction 

“Someone once told me that you know you’re a master jeweler when you can fix everything you mess up,” Brian Beckham said. He operates Beckham Custom Jewelry Co. in Jackson, Mississippi, where he and a team of four artists design and fabricate bespoke jewelry. He hired Martha Scarborough to work in his shop as a bookkeeper, but also because of her skills in chainmaille – everyone on his team is some kind of artist. When seeing the repairs, fabrication, and creation that are all done in-house, Martha was keen to learn more and so became his apprentice through the 2022-2023 apprenticeship program. 

Master Artist: Brian Beckham

Although his great-grandmother pushed him in the arts, the passion did not really fall into place for Brian until he hit the jeweler’s bench. He was first introduced to his craft through his mother, who owned a jewelry store. While working in her store, he fell in love with the creative side of the business and began his education in silversmithing. First, he completed an apprenticeship in Macon, Mississippi where he developed traditional techniques of hand fabrication, casting, and metalsmithing. He studied metalwork at the Memphis School of Art, learning about the composition of metals that are used in making jewelry, the temperature that each melt, and how to join two metal pieces together using a process called soldering. He earned a graduate degree in gemology from Santa Monica’s Gemological Institute of America and studied at the Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences in Bangkok, Thailand. He also studied customization and hand carving in Kansas City and worked for an antique jeweler in New Orleans, absorbing the history of jewelry making while learning restoration and appraising. 

Brian explained that he learned jewelry making “the old way,“ which means employing hand fabrication rather than any electric or mechanized processes. This helped him to acquire a deep respect for the original methods of silversmithing and has remained foundational to his process. He has been in some form of the jewelry business for the past 29 years, whether buying and selling precious stones to designing and making fine jewelry. He added, “Jewelry rarely stands for itself. It represents something. Finding that and getting to it is what’s important to me.” 

Apprentice: Martha Scarborough 

Martha grew up in Mississippi learning handicrafts like quilting, embroidery, and sewing. She also loved watching her dad repair farm equipment and implements using blacksmithing techniques, which can be similar to silversmithing, as they both involve heating and shaping metals. Martha became interested in making jewelry about twenty-five years ago after she attended a gem and mineral show that featured a demonstration of someone soldering two pieces of metal together. About five years later, she attended a school in Georgia that taught silversmithing and then took several classes from different shops and craftspersons over the years to learn what she calls “the basics.” Martha also said that she advanced her skills by “a lot of practice.” In the twenty years following her first class, Martha worked to become an accomplished chainmaille artist. Chainmaille is an ornate type of jewelry technique “that is like weaving metal rings together into different patterns,” explained Martha. In 2009, she joined the Craftsmen's Guild of Mississippi as a chainmaille artist and has been a part of the guild ever since. She often finds inspiration from fellow guild members as well as watching YouTube videos, being in nature, and observing other artists in Brian’s store.

Apprenticeship Experience 

Martha had been following the Mississippi Arts Commission for many years and decided to approach Brian about participating in the apprenticeship program. She wanted to learn silversmithing techniques including different ways of soldering silver, torch control, melting methods, finishing techniques, and hand forming metal into jewelry. In observing Brian’s work at his store, Martha realized how the apprenticeship could add other skills to her repertoire. Martha was especially interested in learning more about “making jewelry from scratch.”

Their meetings were held in the workshop at the back of Brian’s store. The pair started their apprenticeship with lots of talking. They outlined what Martha wanted to learn, her existing skills, and her processes of jewelry making, so Brian could build upon that. They developed their apprenticeship over ten lessons that usually lasted between three to four hours each meeting. The pair’s apprenticeship did not involve working on sample pieces, but instead the majority of the projects that Martha and Brian worked on together were for the store’s line of jewelry inspired by Mississippi’s landscape. 

One of their first projects was to create a ring through a method called lost wax casting. The oldest known examples of this method are approximately 6500 years old. “Technically, that technology has not changed since Jesus,” noted Brian. “We have tools that have gotten better and better, but it’s the same process.” Lost wax casting is a method of casting metal from a sculpted piece of wax. When put into a kiln and heated, the wax melts and forms a cavity. Molten metal is then poured into the cavity to create a hand fabricated ring. 

In addition to casting, the pair explored other facets of silversmithing. In summarizing her apprenticeship experience, Martha said: “To begin with, I was taught the basics of operating the torch and other tools safely to help prevent accidents. Brian taught me the difference in the types of solder to use and showed me the different techniques of soldering silver beginning with simple rings. I soldered many rings together to make several chains. From there, I was taught to solder components together to create necklace stations. I was then taught the proper techniques to clean up the pieces after soldering using hand tools and a flex-shaft with attachments to make the pieces shiny or to create textures.”

In their lessons and in the shop, Brian and Martha worked well together due to their similar approaches to the craft and their love of nature. “I really like organic styles and natural, flowing things," added Martha. “Mississippi is so diverse in what we have from the Coast to North Mississippi, we have just about every kind of terrain. We have so many natural resources, it’s easy [to draw inspiration].”  During their apprenticeship, she experimented with natural forms in her casting including branches, acorn tops, and pistachio nut shells. For example, she made several sets of earrings from pistachio shells. 

Conclusion

Martha described the apprenticeship as a great partnership. “For [Brian] to have the time to teach me these skills is very rewarding. He’s gone beyond the lessons.” Even after the apprenticeship ended, Brian and Martha have continued to work together. “He’s still teaching me,” said Martha. “I’m [at the shop] to do books, but whenever I’m not busy with that I go and watch Brian, or some of the other artists in the store.” Over the course of the apprenticeship, the pair worked on pieces for two new jewelry lines that they hope to have available by Christmas 2023. In keeping with the pair’s inspirations, the line is “heavily organic and it’s very Mississippi,” explained Brian. Beyond the work for the store, the apprenticeship helped Martha develop her own style of jewelry that incorporates elements of the natural world.

“I have been able to learn so much about the art of silversmithing in the short time I worked with Brian. He was so encouraging during the process and was so open to sharing all the techniques he uses in creating his jewelry,” said Martha. “I gained an appreciation for all the time and talent it takes to become an accomplished artist such as him. I also learned that this is an on-going process, and I will always be learning more.” Like Martha, Brian also had a positive experience in the program, and hopes to teach others in the future. “I thoroughly enjoyed sharing that passion with Martha and have watched her develop skills that will help her in creating her own style of jewelry,” added Brian. “She is the go-to when I want a new link design for a chain because she’s really good at that. It’s quite impressive.” 

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I Ain’t Lying was a cultural journalism magazine exploring local life in Claiborne County, Mississippi. It was published in four issues between 1980 and 1989 by Mississippi Cultural Crossroads (MCC) in Port Gibson. I Ain’t Lying grew out of a project that was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to survey the Claiborne County area for folk arts and folkways that had been or still were practiced by the community.  

The magazine featured a variety of topics including quilting, corn shucking, hat-making, midwifery, remedies, children’s games, riddles, songs and stories, tales of enslavement and the civil rights movement. The survey was conducted by high-school-aged students who interviewed community elders after school. With the guidance of MCC staff and volunteers, the students recorded the interviews on cassette tapes and photographed both the interviewees and any appropriate artifacts. The students also transcribed the audio files and wrote a short introduction to each interview. The purpose of the project was to document the folklife that had largely been ignored in previously published accounts of the county and make it available to the public. After the first four volumes, Mississippi Cultural Crossroads moved onto other programs and did not publish other interviews that had been conducted by the students. 

In addition to the first four published issues of I Ain’t Lying, MCC founder Patty Crosby also included five interviews that would have appeared in a hypothetical Volume 5 to this digitization project. The first three interviews (Celia Anderson, Charles Miller, and Lydell Page) were edited by the I Ain’t Lying team in the 1980s when the magazine was active, and they are presented here as completed projects. The two other interviews (Edgar May and Martha Buie) exist only as transcriptions of the interviews along with associated photographs. They have not gone through the intended editing process and should be considered incomplete work products. 

Disclaimer: I Ain’t Lying is presented as originally published and may include language which would be considered offensive in today’s context.

Each issue of I Ain't Lying has been digitized from its original printed format and are presented here as PDF documents. To read Volumes 1-4, please click on the cover photo icon for each issue on this page below. To read the interviews from Volume 5, please click here.

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I Ain’t Lying was a cultural journalism magazine exploring local life in Claiborne County, Mississippi. It was published in four issues between 1980 and 1989 by Mississippi Cultural Crossroads (MCC) in Port Gibson. I Ain’t Lying grew out of a project that was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to survey the Claiborne County area for folk arts and folkways that had been or still were practiced by the community.  

The magazine featured a variety of topics including quilting, corn shuck hat-making, midwifery, remedies, children’s games, riddles, songs and stories, tales of enslavement and the civil rights movement. The survey was conducted by high-school-aged students who interviewed community elders after school. With the guidance of MCC staff and volunteers, the students recorded the interviews on cassette tapes and photographed both the interviewees and any appropriate artifacts. The students also transcribed the audio files and wrote a short introduction to each interview. The purpose of the project was to document the folklife that had largely been ignored in previously published accounts of the county and make it available to the public. After the first four volumes, Mississippi Cultural Crossroads moved onto other programs and did not publish other interviews that had been conducted by the students. 

In addition to the first four published issues of I Ain’t Lying, MCC founder Patty Crosby also included five interviews that would have appeared in a hypothetical Volume 5 to this digitization project. The first three interviews (Celia Anderson, Charles Miller, and Lydell Page) were edited by the I Ain’t Lying team in the 1980s when the magazine was active, and they are presented here as completed projects. The two other interviews (Edgar May and Martha Buie) exist only as transcriptions of the interviews along with associated photographs. They have not gone through the intended editing process and should be considered incomplete work products.   

Disclaimer: I Ain’t Lying is presented as originally published and may include language which would be considered offensive in today’s context.  

Volume 5 of I Ain't Lying has been digitized from the original interview transcriptions completed in the late 1980s and are presented here as PDF documents. To read the interviews from Volume 5, please click on the cover photo icon for each interview on this page below. To read the content from Volumes 1-4,  please click here.

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Introduction:

Sammy Long and Craig Killens met each other weekly in Long’s woodturning workshop for Killens’ apprenticeship lessons. While Long has been woodturning for quite some time and serves as the master artist in this relationship, Killens has always had an interest in art and creation. Killens says that he became interested in pottery during college, but couldn’t convince himself to sign up for the class. Years later, he attempted to rekindle his relationship with art through woodturning. After joining the Magnolia Woodturners, he met Sammy Long–a turner who has mentored many of the club members.

Master Artist: Sammy Long

Sammy Long began woodturning twenty years ago after being gifted a wood lathe (a motorized machine that spins wood) by his father-in-law. Although he was initially nervous about learning the craft of woodturning, his wife Maureen eventually signed him up for his first turning class at the Appalachian Center for Craft in Tennessee. After this experience, Long decided to further his knowledge by attending the Magnolia Woodturners club meetings every Saturday. Developing as a turner, Long began making candlesticks, pens, baby rattles, and pots. He also continued to attend the Appalachian Center for Craft every summer–bringing Mississippi-based turners along with him for the opportunity to learn together and bring new ideas back to the Magnolia Woodturners meetings.

After developing his craft, Long began to sell his work around the state and teach other hopeful turners. He has also been recognized and granted awards by craft organizations such as the Tennessee Association of Woodturners and Kentucky’s Glema Mahr Center for the Arts. Long has discovered that teaching is his favorite part of his woodworking journey.

I love it. I love doing what I do. I love seeing the appreciation of when people pick it up and ooh and awe, but being able to teach it and share with someone else is very important to me. I get a good high at the end of the week when my students have a finished product. It makes you feel good and warm and fuzzy on the inside.

So when Killens approached Long with hopes of applying to the 2022 Folks Arts Apprenticeship program together, there was no hesitation on his part to agree to another opportunity to teach.

Apprentice: Craig Killens

Always having an interest in woodwork, Killens eventually built an at-home shop where he began to make rustic, wooden furniture. One of the first things he made in his shop was a king sized bed. He was shocked and humbled to learn that people were interested in this piece of work because he had no “formal” training. The interest in his work inspired Killens to regularly build furniture.

After building furniture for some time, Killens developed an interest in woodturning. He was advised to join a club since he would likely meet and be mentored by more experienced turners. Killens joined the Magnolia Woodturners club, borrowed a wood lathe, and began learning the craft of turning.

Although initially learning from turners on YouTube, Killens soon realized that he needed more help with the basics–mainly proper tool control. He noticed that Long was one of the most experienced and sought after members in the club. He approached Long with a wish to serve as his apprentice.

Apprenticeship Experience:

Killens learned a great deal from Long during the apprenticeship. Although he envisioned advanced training, he soon realized he needed to revisit the basics–particularly skills such as tool sharpening and learning to develop form for bowls, boxes, vases and ornaments.

According to Long, there are a few characteristics woodturners look for when selecting materials for a project. Although one could select from hard or soft wood, turners typically gravitate towards soft wood because it is easier to “turn” or shape into the desired object. Turners also have to consider the differences in working with dry and green wood. Dry wood is what one might buy in stores, while green wood still has moisture in it, so it is more pliable. Long says that turners will often harvest and clean their own wood because it is free, it is easier to shape, and, most importantly, one cannot buy wood that is 80 inches square and 10 inches long–the amount of wood a turner might need for a project.

When asked what he gains from taking on students and apprentices, Long says the following:

This is my second apprenticeship, but every time I teach I learn more and more about teaching. I tend to skip the basics because I assume the student might know, but each time I teach I learn to better myself as an instructor to make it easier for them. I remember how hard it was to turn a bowl when I did not have all the steps in front of me. So what I gain is to learn how to better teach the art of woodturning.

Conclusion:

Speaking on his experience, Killens states, “I had the best teacher our area has to offer. I am very happy that I have had this opportunity.” He also hopes he has the opportunity to pass along the craft of woodturning one day. He says the following:

I can’t wait to be there one day. I’m my biggest critic and I have had folks ask me to teach them woodturning, but I turned them down because I don’t feel like I’m qualified. I don’t want to teach someone a bad habit. I can teach them how to turn a bowl or make a pen, but not [anything] beyond that. But [teaching’s] my goal at the end of the day. I want to be the guy that Sammy is in our shop now—the person that people turn to for questions and answers, but I’m a long ways from that. I just started a bit late. I’m 57 now and I should've started when I was 25 or 30.

To which Long replies, “Never too late. Never too late.” 

 

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Introduction:

Experienced quilter and mixed media fiber artist Rhonda Blasingame and her apprentice Brenda Davis navigated their apprenticeship during the pandemic. As one can imagine, teaching someone this artform typically requires the master quilter to be in close contact with the apprentice. Prior to the pandemic, Blasingame often found herself leaning over her students to demonstrate quilting techniques such as stitching, piecing together and cutting fabric, binding corners of the fabric, and more. When they were not socially distanced within a room together, Blasingame and Davis successfully adapted to their circumstances by staying in communication over the phone and sending plenty of pictures back and forth.

Master Artist: Rhonda Blasingame

Learning to quilt from her grandmother at the age of four, quilting has always been a central part of Blasingame’s life. One of Blasingame’s earliest childhood memories is watching her grandmother and her seven great aunts sit under a quilt frame and work together with a needle and spoon. She picked up the artform in earnest about twenty years ago and worked exclusively as an art quilter for five to six years before returning to traditional quilt making. Over the last five years, she has realized that she enjoys working with antique and vintage quilts. A fair amount of her business involves repairing quilts from the 1920s and 1930s. When working on these quilts, Blasingame says that she feels like she is returning to those early memories of her grandmother: “I recognize the fabrics, I recognize the patterns…that part of [what I do], my grandmother comes out a lot stronger with quilting [hand repairs] than what I’m doing now with the fancy machine because they didn’t really do that.”

Learning how to quilt in a community herself, Blasingame maintains to this day that quilting is a communal artform. “The hardest thing in the world is to teach yourself to quilt from a book or YouTube,” says Blasingame, “The easiest way to do it is to work with somebody else.” For this reason, Blasingame happily teaches students the craft of quilting and has passed on her skills to nine apprentices—with Davis being her latest.

Apprentice: Brenda Davis

Brenda Davis began quilting about four years ago. She grew up being gifted quilts and always desired to learn the artform. She remembers being in awe of how people could make something beautiful out of sacks and old clothes. Shortly after her retirement, she leapt at the opportunity to learn about quilting. After learning the basics, Davis soon started to run her own beginners quilting class. She takes pride in seeing her students complete their own projects and take them home. Since learning how to quilt, Davis has taught her daughters the craft, as well. She hopes that they will teach their children and their children’s children so that quilting will always remain within the family. Davis also enjoys gifting quilts to family and friends. She is currently working on a quilt to give to her daughter’s friend as a college graduation gift.

Apprenticeship Experience:

Wanting to expand her skillset, Davis approached Blasingame to participate in the apprenticeship program. Davis wanted to learn about new patterns and the techniques required to craft a more advanced quilt. She was also curious about free motion quilting and how to perform this on her machine at home. Free motion quilting is a quilting style where the quilter creates stitch designs without the aid of feed dogs–the part of the sewing machine that lifts the fabric and passes it along to produce a stitch. Having taught and mentored her share of students, Blasingame met Davis’ desires by honing in on quilting skills such as how to apply decorations to the top of the quilt and how to properly make blocks and piece them together. Blasingame believes that “teaching to the technique” allows for students to walk away from their lessons with the ability to execute multiple patterns.

Blasingame typically will pick a pattern, or design, that requires executing multiple techniques so that her students will be able to build off what they learned in their own work. During their apprenticeship, Blasingame taught Davis about quilting by working on a snail trail quilt together. The snail trail quilt pattern requires the quilter to be familiar with making blocks for their quilt, while also being able to add on triangles to each edge as the quilter sews around the block.

Patterns for a quilt are often extremely repetitive, so in their lessons Blasingame and Davis worked the entire time making quilt squares. Blasingame then sent Davis home with the stack of squares that they made and asked her to make 50-100 more squares like the ones they made together. According to Blasingame, this helped Davis develop the muscle memory needed to complete tasks without her supervision. In later lessons, Blasingame focused on and pointed out the abilities Davis would need to master in order to complete the pattern. Davis found Blasingame’s approach to teaching helpful. She left the lessons feeling excited that she could begin to self-identify problems and work on quilting by herself.

Conclusion:

Davis says that the apprenticeship process was challenging but she wanted to produce a quilt that Blasingame would be proud of. “I wanted to show people my final product and say this is something Rhonda taught me how to make,” says Davis. Blasingame responds by saying “The worst thing I could do as a teacher is demand perfection…you want to make it where they feel like ‘Man this is the best thing in the world, I want everyone to learn how to quilt.’” When asked about the finished quilt that Davis produced towards the end of the apprenticeship, Blasingame proudly declares, “You cannot look at [Brenda’s] quilt and say anything other than ‘that is a beautiful quilt’.”

 

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Introduction:

Hill Country blues–alternatively known as North Mississippi blues–is a subgenre of country blues that is distinct from Mississippi Delta blues. Centered within the region surrounding Oxford and Holly Springs, Hill Country blues is defined by minimal chord changes, percussive motifs, and a driving rhythm or groove. R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, who both began recording in the 1960s, became champions of the style. Both the Burnside and Kimbrough families are considered to be stewards of the musical style and have mentored their share of musicians, including Eric Deaton, who has been playing within the tradition for nearly thirty years.

While teaching at a guitar workshop, Deaton met Kody Harrell–an aspiring Hill Country musician. Deaton invited Harrell to sit in on a few of his shows and play bass. Impressed by Deaton’s playing style and approach to teaching, Harrell suggested the two participate in the Folk Arts Apprenticeship program together.

Master Artist: Eric Deaton

Picking up the guitar at thirteen, North Carolina native Eric Deaton was initially interested in listening and learning to play along with artists such as Elvis and Chuck Berry. When going through records and cassette tapes, he found himself drawn to the liner notes. Deaton wanted to know who wrote the lyrics, who composed the music, if the artist sampled any part of the song from another musician, and so on. He began to notice that a lot of his favorite songs by his favorite bands were not actually written by them, but–as he later came to find out–blues musicians.

Soon after getting his guitar teacher to help him learn how to play the blues, he saw folklorist Alan Lomax’s The Land Where the Blues Began on PBS. This program introduced him to Hill Country blues, and he immediately became enamored with the sound. Seeing that there were living practitioners of the tradition in Mississippi, Deaton decided he would move to the area after graduating high school with the hopes of learning from the masters.

Deaton eventually saw himself being welcomed by the Burnside and Kimbrough families. Every Sunday night, he would sit in with R.L. Burnside and the Kimbroughs at Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint. Deaton served as a bass player for the juke joint in the last three years of Junior Kimbrough’s life. He considers the time he spent around these families and being immersed within this space to be his “main apprenticeship”.

Deaton says that he is thankful for this experience–moving to Mississippi and working with the Hill Country masters. Although he says he would have pursued learning this music to the best of his ability if he never left North Carolina, he believes there is a “huge difference in what [he] got personally being out at Junior’s juke joint every Sunday night” and having the opportunity to learn in public. He says the following:

Playing with those guys, in person, being surrounded by that music, being in front of a live crowd. Basically, my education happened in front of people. I didn’t spend a lot of time with those guys just sitting at their house learning from them but on stage in front of people. There’s so much that you absorb as a musician from that in-person, ensemble experience that I would have no way gotten without playing with the Kimbroughs and Burnsides in person. The progress that I got in those years was huge and there’s no way I would have gotten where I am today without that.

While this is Deaton’s first official apprentice, he has taken on plenty of his own students in the past with hopes of passing on this tradition.

Apprentice: Kody Harrell

Kody Harrell was first exposed to Hill Country blues at the Shed BBQ in Southern Mississippi. The restaurant regularly invited the Burnside grandchildren to perform for a local crowd. While he was interested in the sound, he did not pursue playing in this style until years later. He re-encountered Hill Country blues at performances in the Oxford area while attending college. The North Mississippi Allstars would regularly play Burnside and Kimbrough covers around town, and Harrell realized he wanted the ability to play just like those guys.

Over the next two years, Harrell’s interest in the music grew, and by 2015, he was regularly playing in the bands of Duwayne Burnside and Garry Burnside. During one of these performances, Harrell managed to impress R.L. Boyce, a musical protege of R. L. Burnside and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Harrell later entered his first apprenticeship with Boyce for the 2021 Folk Arts Apprenticeship program. The following year, Harrell decided to begin another apprenticeship with Eric Deaton to further his skills as a Hill Country blues guitarist.

Apprenticeship Experience:

At each meeting, Deaton encouraged Harrell to come in with a specific song or artist he had in mind. Deaton would then go over the specific techniques and skills Harrell felt he may have been lacking. A specific area Harrell wanted to focus on during their time together was alternate guitar tuning (cross note tuning in Hill Country terms) that make up the Hill Country sound. Cross note tuning involves the guitarist tuning the guitar to an open minor chord.

Deaton was incredibly impressed with Harrell as a student and apprentice. Particularly in his ability to quickly learn new material and techniques. “He’s not going to absorb what I teach him in a lesson and forget it two days later,” says Deaton, “He practices it every day and the next time I see him, he has it down. With Kody, he’s always going to another level and it is inspiring to see.”

Harrell feels extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Deaton, as well. While he initially practiced playing the Hill Country style with Hill Country musicians during performances and on his own through YouTube videos, Harrell believes that “learning those songs through Eric is almost like the next closest thing from learning it from R.L. Burnside or Junior Kimbrough.”

Conclusion:

Receiving a great deal of knowledge from Deaton, Harrell hopes to further establish his own Hill Country band, Proud Hound. He also hopes to eventually teach others the tradition as he continues to be accepted by and play with the Hill Country blues families.

When asked why passing this tradition along to others is important to him, Deaton takes a beat before saying the following:

This music is my life. It took over my life when I was in high school and has been the focus of my entire adult life. So, these Hill Country masters like Kimbrough and Burnside, only a small group of people have only learned from these guys directly. There’s a lineage of [Hill Country musicians] going back further than we can document. So to me teaching this to Kody makes him a part of this lineage. Kody learned directly from me, who learned it directly from them, who learned it directly from their mentors and ancestors…there really is something to these direct lineages for musicians that you won’t get any other way.

Both musicians look forward to the possibility of booking a show together soon and continuing to learn from and play with one another.

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Otha Turner (1908–2003), who received a National Heritage Fellowship in 1992, was the patriarch of the African American fife and drum tradition in northern Mississippi. Ethnomusicologists including David Evans suggest that this musical practice appears to have emerged after the Civil War, with African American musicians infusing the Euro-American military fife and drum tradition with distinctly African polyrhythms, riff structures, and call-and-response patterns.

The tradition was popular across the South, but remained particularly strong in North Mississippi, where fife and drum bands performed at annual community picnics and attendees danced well into the night.

Turner was born in Rankin County, and as a child he moved with his mother to northern Mississippi, where Sid Hemphill (1876-1963) was the patriarch of the local fife and drum scene at the time. Turner taught himself to play the fife, drums, and guitar as a teen, and for decades Turner and his wife Ada hosted picnics at their farm in Gravel Springs, located in rural Tate County. In addition to leading his own fife and drum group, Turner also played drums in bands led by fife players Napolian Strickland and Abe “Cag” Young, and sang at local house parties with blues guitarist Mississippi Fred McDowell.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Turner’s music was recorded by folklorists David Evans and George Mitchell, and he was featured in the 1972 documentary Gravel Springs Fife and Drum, made by Evans, William Ferris and Judy Peiser. In its wake Turner began performing regularly at events including the Delta Blues Festival in Greenville, the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. In 1982 he also appeared on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Turner’s music gained international acclaim in the 1990s, and his annual picnics, held in late August, attracted many people from outside the region. He recorded the albums Everybody Hollerin’ Goat (1998) and From Senegal to Senatobia (1999), and was featured in the Martin Scorsese-produced documentary Feel Like Going Home (2003). Scorsese also used Turner’s music on the soundtrack to the film Gangs of New York (2002).

Turner’s bands included drummers Jessie Mae Hemphill (Sid Hemphill’s granddaughter) and R.L. Boyce, as well as multiple members of his family. Turner’s daughter Bernice played drums with him and served as his manager. Several of his grandchildren played in his Rising Star Fife and Drum Band including Aubrey Turner, Andre and Rodney Evans, K.K. Freeman, and Sharde Thomas.

In an interview with the author in December 2021, Sharde Thomas recalled her relationship with her grandfather.

“I was seven when I started actually playing. I don’t really remember it, but from the videos I see I was the angel, I did no wrong to his eyes. He let me do my own thing, whatever I wanted to do playing the fife. I would ask him about it, but he just let me be me. That’s why I really wanted to play the fife, because I had the chance to be free instead of him sitting me down and teaching me how to do it his way."

“I don’t ever remember him telling me that he wanted me to play the fife. But deep down I think he wanted me to be the one. Of course, he told others that if something happened to him that I would be the one to continue the tradition, but he never just said, ‘I want you to do this.’ We never had that."

“But he would brag about me—I was the smallest grandchild, I was tiny—so he would show me off at the picnics, and let me add my little swag. In one of the videos I watched online, he was saying that he was going to let me play later that night, and I was so excited but I don’t remember that moment at all. Because you know at night there’s more people there, and everybody wants to hear the drums."

“I only remember him playing music during the picnic time or at practices when he was getting ready for a show. Other than that he was a hunter, he loved to go rabbit hunting, deer hunting, fishing, he was a nature guy. But mainly it was family with him. He was the man who taught the girls to be independent and do basically whatever they needed to do without depending on a man to get it done. That’s how he raised the family.”

When not performing or recording, Turner spent most of his time working on his farm, where he and his wife Ada raised five daughters. Turner continued to play music until shortly before his death in 2003. His passing did not mark the end of the tradition, as many feared might happen. Notably, Turner had started mentoring his granddaughter Sharde Thomas when she was just seven, and after he died, she took on the leadership of his Rising Star Fife and Drum Band.

Thomas first led the group during Turner’s funeral procession and became the tradition bearer at the annual Otha Turner Goat Picnics at the family farm. The band appeared at events where the Turner-led group had been a staple, and Thomas has also carried the torch on her own through solo albums and multiple collaborations with the North Mississippi Allstars. Thomas feels committed to continuing Otha Turner’s legacy.

“After he passed, that’s when I started taking it more seriously,” says Thomas. “At first I was just enjoying playing the fife with my granddaddy, but it became more of a job because I know he wanted it to continue and not die out. I felt like I owed it to him to keep the tradition going. I keep his name alive, I keep the picnic going, because that’s what I feel like he wanted."

“I honestly don’t feel his presence until I’m playing around with the fife. I’ll get my drummers to start off with a beat, and I’ll say, ‘Hey granddaddy, what you got?’ And magic comes out of the fife. He’s playing through me. Every time I pick up the fife, Otha, he comes out.”

 

To learn more about the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) or to nominate a Mississippi traditional artist for a NEA National Heritage Fellowship, please visit their website. 

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Jack Owens (1904-1997) was a practitioner of the distinctive “Bentonia school” of blues, named after the small town in the hills of Yazoo County just southeast of the Delta.  The style, often described as “eerie,” is most closely associated with the early 1930s recordings of Nehemiah “Skip” James (1902-1969), who was introduced to an international audience during the “blues revival” of the 1960s. Owens, as well as a handful of other artists, demonstrated that James’ sound was indicative of a shared tradition, and Owens was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship in 1993.

Owens was born in Bentonia and began learning to play guitar as a small child. He was inspired by his family members, including his grandfather and uncle. He taught himself to play the blues, worked as a sharecropper and for many years ran a “juke house” in his home or at an adjacent building where he and his wife, Mabel, sold pork and goat barbecue sandwiches and bootleg liquor. The juke was open Friday through Sunday and featured a juke box and live music by Owens and his longtime partner, harmonica player Benjamin “Bud” Spires (1931-2014).

The Bentonia style is thought to have originated with Henry Stuckey (1897–1966), who never recorded. Ethnomusicologist Dr. David Evans, who made Owens’ first recordings in 1966 and documented others in the local tradition, described the style as “haunting, brooding lyrics dealing with such themes as loneliness, death and the supernatural . . . Altogether it is one of the eeriest, loneliest and deepest blues sounds ever recorded.”

Owens’ repertoire included dark-themed songs associated with Skip James, notably “It Must Have Been the Devil” and “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” But he also regularly played songs from outside the tradition while entertaining patrons at his juke and at local parties. In addition to Delta standards like “Catfish Blues,” Owens also played songs he likely learned from records by artists including the Mississippi Sheiks, B.B. King, Robert Lockwood, Tampa Red, and Bumble Bee Slim.

Evans’ recordings of Owens first appeared on a compilation in 1968, and in 1971, Testament Records issued the album It Must Have Been the Devil: Mississippi Country Blues by Jack Owens & Bud Spires. Owens gained broader attention in 1978 when he appeared in the documentary The Land Where Blues Began, shot by Alan Lomax with Worth Long and John Bishop, and via his performances in Robert Mugge’s 1991 documentary Deep Blues. During these years, Owens became a local celebrity, visited often by blues fans, and he was featured in a Levi’s 501 Blues TV commercial. Although reluctant to travel his whole life, he began attending festivals outside the state in 1988 and later performed in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy. 

Owens’ increased exposure inadvertently led to an expansion of the distinctive Bentonia tradition. Jimmy “Duck” Holmes (b. 1947), proprietor of the juke joint Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, began studying Owens’ music more actively after seeing all the attention focused on Owens. “Within maybe a ten-year span,” Holmes told Jim O’Neal, “Jack said he made more money sitting on his front porch playing his guitar than he made in a lifetime working in a cottonfield.” Holmes would subsequently record multiple albums, receiving a Grammy nomination for his 2020 album Cypress Grove (Easy Eye Sound), and become a spokesperson for the local music tradition.

During his last decade Owens continued to perform at local festivals and for visitors to his home, many of whom paid for lessons and/or performances. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker was later dedicated at the site of Owens’ home, joining two other markers in Bentonia--whose current population is less than five hundred--for Skip James and the Blue Front Cafe. Owens’ legacy also continues to grow with the popularity of the annual Bentonia Blues Festival, which celebrates the distinctive Bentonia style. Many performers at the event play songs that they learned from his recordings; as of March, 2022 over 100,000 people had watched a Youtube video of him from 1978.

 

To learn more about the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) or to nominate a Mississippi traditional artist for a NEA National Heritage Fellowship, please visit their website. 

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North Mississippi Hill Country blues musician Cedric Burnside was in his early 40s in 2021 when he was named a National Heritage Fellow. Despite his young age, Burnside had three decades of rich experience performing in the Hill Country blues tradition, notably playing drums for many years with his grandfather, Hill Country blues legend, R.L. Burnside (1926-2005). Cedric would later become active as a vocalist, guitarist and songwriter, receiving Grammy nominations for work that both honored local traditions and broke new ground musically.

Cedric Burnside was born in Memphis on August 26, 1978. He grew up in the Holly Springs area in a large household headed by R.L. Burnside and his wife Alice Mae, the parents of Cedric’s mother Linda. His father, Calvin Jackson (1961-2015), began playing drums and recording with R.L. Burnside in his mid-teens.

Cedric Burnside’s first exposure to blues was via house parties hosted by his grandfather that included Jackson and Cedric Burnside’s uncles Daniel and Joseph Burnside. Other family members, including his uncles Junior, Dexter, Duwayne, and Garry (who is close in age to Cedric), would also perform occasionally at the house parties. Cedric was also immersed in rural traditions, helping the family raise crops and tend to their animals.

In the early 1990s, the Burnside family moved to a home in Chulahoma, southwest of Holly Springs, that was next door to “Junior’s Place,” a juke joint run by Junior Kimbrough. Until this point, Burnside had mostly played drums on buckets, pans and cans; he now took every opportunity to play the drum kit in the club. In the mid 1990s, Calvin Jackson moved to the Netherlands, and Cedric Burnside became the regular drummer for his grandfather’s band. In addition to playing at Junior Kimbrough’s, Cedric Burnside began touring nationally and internationally with his grandfather, who had gained fame via his recordings on Fat Possum Records. He appeared on multiple R.L. Burnside albums and played drums on the recordings of other artists from the region, including the North Mississippi Allstars, his uncle Duwayne, and Kenny Brown (R.L. Burnside’s guitarist); he also toured with Brown as a duo.

His first albums were Burnside Exploration (2006), recorded with Garry, followed by two collaborations with Lightnin’ Malcolm. As the Cedric Burnside Project, he recorded The Way I Am (2012), featuring rap lyrics by his brother Cody (1982-2012); and the Grammy-nominated Descendants of Hill Country (2015), featuring Garry Burnside and Trenton Ayers, son of Hill Country blues veteran Earl “Little Joe” Ayers. His first solo album was the Grammy-nominated Benton County Relic (2018), followed by the critically acclaimed and GRAMMY winning album, I Be Trying (2021), which features him on guitar and mixes traditional hill country sounds with new compositions.

Burnside gained acclaim among blues fans for his powerful and enthusiastic drumming, as well as his off-stage charm and poise. He is the recipient of multiple Blues Music Awards and Living Blues Awards. Shortly after receiving the NEA National Heritage Fellowship, he began appearing in the touring musical Voices of Mississippi, based on the fieldwork of folklorist William Ferris. The musical, which was staged at Lincoln Center in early 2022, celebrates Burnside’s and other younger artists’ deep roots in Hill Country traditions.

“I’m glad to make my own mark,” says Burnside of his current music. “That’s something [my grandfather] would want me to do. Even though Hill Country is embedded in my heart, embedded in my blood, I kind of do what’s inside of me. Sometimes it might sound real old school Hill Country, and sometimes it may sound modern, but I just play what I feel. I’ve got so much music inside of me and I doubt if I’ll get it all out before I leave this world, but I just want to put it out there so people can relate to it and understand it.”

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  Mary Pallon, secretary of the Rodney History and Preservation Society. Photo by Ashleigh Coleman, 2019. 

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  Renee Way Duffy (right) and a friend. Renee was born in Rodney in the early 1960s. Photo by Ashleigh Coleman, 2019. 

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  Bill Lowrance, Vice President of the Rodney History and Preservation Society. Photo by Ashleigh Coleman, 2019.

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To learn more about the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) or to nominate a Mississippi traditional artist for a NEA National Heritage Fellowship, please visit their website. 

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This essay was produced in partnership with the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. 

During his fifty-plus-year recording career B.B. King (1925 -2015) scored multiple hits, was the recipient of 15 Grammy awards, and was recognized with many awards including a National Heritage Fellowship in 1991. A premier showman and ambassador for the blues, King and his guitar “Lucille” influenced scores of musicians, and he was for many fans around the world the premier icon of the blues.

Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925 in the tiny hamlet of Berclair in the Mississippi Delta, and spent the majority of his youth in the Hill Country to the east of the Delta flatlands. While living in the Kilmichael area he was inspired to take up the guitar by his pastor, Reverend Archie Fair, and he first listened to blues via 78 rpm records by artists including Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson.

King became more active in music after he moved in his late teens to the Delta city of Indianola, where he played blues for tips on a street corner and was a member of The Famous St. John’s Gospel Singers, who had a weekly radio show in nearby Greenwood. In Indianola, King listened to local blues artists including Sonny Boy Williamson, but the main influences he credited as shaping his music were from outside the region who he encountered via records. The most notable of these were guitarists T-Bone Walker and Django Reinhardt and bandleaders Count Basie and Louis Jordan.

In 1949 King moved to Memphis, where his career took off quickly. He was hired as a disc jockey on WDIA, which had just become the first station in the nation to feature all African American on-air personalities. His deejay name “The Beale Street Blues Boy” would later be shortened to B.B., and King’s affiliation with WDIA led to more live performances as well as a recording contract. In the wake of his huge 1952 hit “3 O’Clock Blues” on Los Angeles’s RPM Records he took to the road, beginning decades of over 300+ performances a year.

King filled his busy calendar playing on the “‘chitlin’ circuit,” the informal name for the national network of African American nightclubs during the segregation era, as well as at major theaters such as Chicago’s Regal Theater, where he recorded a popular live album in 1964. In the late 1960s King began experiencing crossover success, and his appeal to new audiences was sealed with his 1970 hit “The Thrill is Gone.” He was soon traveling across Europe, to Japan, multiple African nations, and the Soviet Union.

King’s new celebrity was expressed through appearances on popular TV programs such as the Tonight Show, and he also became a public advocate for social justice issues, including prison reform.  On his recordings, King increasingly explored a wide range of styles and collaborated with stars from other genres (rock, contemporary R&B, jazz, country, and rap), most prominently U2 and Eric Clapton.

King received honorary doctorates from institutions including Tougaloo College and Yale University, and was hosted by dignitaries around the world—his numerous White House visits included a “duet” with President Obama.

King always remained dedicated to his home state, and beginning in the early 1970s took out time from his touring schedule for annual celebrations of the legacy of Civil Rights icon Medgar Evers. He would later return annually to Indianola for “homecoming” celebrations that included an outdoor show during the day and intimate performances at Club Ebony, a local venue where King had played since the 1950s. In 2008, King attended the opening of the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, a $15 million, state-of-the-art facility that uses King’s remarkable career to explore broader issues in African American culture and history.

King remained active as a performer and recording artist well into his 80s, and on May 14, 2015 his funereal celebrations included a procession down Beale Street, a formal police escort down Highway 61 to Indianola, and a burial on the grounds of the Museum. King’s achievements, goodwill, and perpetual advocacy for the blues were singular. It’s impossible to imagine the genre without his remarkable legacy.

To learn more about the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) or to nominate a Mississippi traditional artist for a NEA National Heritage Fellowship, please visit their website. 

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In 1994, Elder Roma Wilson, a tireless 83-year-old itinerant preacher, gospel singer, and harmonica virtuoso, was honored with a National Heritage Fellowship award. It came with a $10,000 stipend and a trip to Washington, D.C., to receive the award from First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Roma Wilson was born on December 22, 1910 on a farm near Hickory Flat, Mississippi. He was the ninth of ten children. His father tried to eke out a living for his family by sharecropping on the poor red hills of Union County and working in sawmills. Though the work was rigorous, people managed to lighten the load with music. “Back at that time, you know, people would just sing, religious songs anyway, out in the fields. Like I used to play harmonica out in the fields when I was working. Cotton patch and the corn patch. Take my harmonica in my pocket and go up and down the rows blowing it.” 1 One song Wilson remembers his mother singing was “You Just Well to Get Ready,” which he adapted and recorded years later. 2

Roma came from a musically talented family. He recalled his father would “just sit out [on the porch] and blow after he’d come in from work. He’d get that old harmonica and start blowing. So we’d all sit around and we’d listen…And first thing you know there’d just be a crowd around the porch when he’d be blowing.” 3 Seeing how the harmonica could attract a crowd may have influenced Roma’s older brothers to buy their own harmonicas in the nearby town of New Albany, but they wouldn’t share with him until the instruments were almost worn out. “Well, then, I begin to kind of feel around and find the good notes. And then I learned…where to get my sounds at…And then after [that] I got old enough to work a little bit and buy me a harmonica…Sometime I’d work a whole day for 50 cents just to buy me a harmonica.” 4

Wilson recognized there were at least two ways of playing the harmonica: blowing, which he associated with his father, and choking, which he learned from a couple of older people in the neighborhood. Here is a clip of him demonstrating both styles. 5 The blowing style emphasizes major keys in the familiar do-re-mi scale, while the choking style favors minor keys using a scale with a flatted third and seventh.

Wilson was far more than just a harmonica player. His strong and flexible high baritone voice and his unfailing rhythm and quick mind made him well suited to gospel preaching and singing. In this clip he riffs on St. Paul’s assertion that Jesus would come again “like a thief in the night.” By substituting Death for Jesus he appeals to every person’s firsthand experience with loss. 6

Growing up Black in rural Mississippi meant hard work and little schooling. “We had to go into the fields in March, cutting ditch banks or cutting sprouts, or getting ready for the plow,” explained Wilson. “And we'd have to work in the field then until–oh, I don't know–after cotton picking time…We’d go to school then in November, and in March we had to start right back in the field again.” The schools he had to walk to were one room frame buildings with one teacher and 40 or 50 students gathered around a wood-fired stove to keep warm in the damp and cold Mississippi winter. Roma caught some good fortune when at 16 he went to live with a retired schoolteacher and her husband. “She would make me study my books, and she just took me up and taught me. And that's how I obtained what learning I have now from books. And so since that time…I just continued studying.” He believed he “made a good seventh or eighth grade.” 7

The most important event in Roma Wilson’s life came when he was called to preach. He described it as an anointing and a feeling. “That feeling'll come over you and seem like you can just share something speaking in you, you know.” He wasn’t sure that his calling to preach was real, so he asked God to bring back that same feeling to him. “He [God] would send that same anointing,” said Wilson, “and I’d catch myself out to myself preaching…So the first sermon I preached, they said I preached like I’d been preaching for years.” He was 17 years old. 8

At that time a lot of preaching was done in temporary structures, especially in summertime. “We used to build what they called a bush harbor [also known as brush arbor, or hush harbor].” Poles were cut and set in the ground, and a latticework roof was laid atop and covered with freshly cut brush. It would house pews made of planks across blocks, “and we would get under, out of the sun…People just loved to come…People would get saved under those bush harbors.” 9

He married his first wife, Birdie, when he was 19 and began to raise a large family. He described himself as a “working preacher,” because he didn’t want to be beholden to a congregation or a denomination for his living. “I don’t want my biscuit in your pocket, ’cause you can take it away from me when you get ready. I make my own biscuit, ’cause I work for myself.” 10

Thus began a long career of working, preaching, singing, and harmonica playing. Looking for a living wage carried him from farming and railroading in Mississippi and Arkansas to factory and construction work in Muskegon and Detroit, Michigan, and he always carried with him his commitment to the Lord and his music. He never played professionally or recorded, but in Detroit, he and three of his sons would busk on the streets for tips. “And the people would give us good money. We didn’t ask for anything. Just had a cigar box wired to the amplifier. Had a hole cut in the lid and people would put money in it. Sometimes on a Saturday, we would gain $300 or more in a couple of hours. That’s true!” 11

When Roma’s wife died in 1976, “and my children were all grown, I came back here to Mississippi where I was raised up.” 12 He soon married a widow, Esther Ruth McCoy, whom he had met years before when he first started preaching. He also reconnected with Leon Pinson, a blind singer and guitarist he had known first in New Albany and who joined him and his family in playing and singing in Arkansas. Pinson had become a radio personality in Cleveland, Mississippi, playing and singing live gospel music. There community scholar, Worth Long, 13 took an interest in him. As Pinson later recalled, “I been going around with Worth ever since '74. I went up in Washington, D.C. to the Smithsonian, you know, Festival up there. Out on the Mall. And I played up there '74, 5, and 6. Three years straight I went up there.” 14

When Pinson returned to New Albany in 1989, he got together with Wilson and they recorded some tracks on cassette tapes. When Long heard the session he began to book the pair of them at concert venues and festivals, paying gigs that took them around Mississippi and as far as Florida, Chicago, and New Orleans. In 1991, they played together in The Deep South Musical Roots Tour that brought their music back home to grass roots venues, such as the high school gymnasium in Port Gibson, Mississippi, where Wilson fired up a new generation of Black students with his version of the classic song, “This Train.” 15

After receiving his National Heritage Award in 1997, Elder Roma Wilson continued to play, sing, and preach in Mississippi until moving back to Detroit to reunite with his son, David, pastor of Blessed Redeemer Church of the Living God. One of Elder Wilson’s verses to his song, “Ain’t It A Shame,” echoed the name of the church:

People are quitting the churches.
Some say God is dead.
My God cannot die.
The people out of their head.
Ain't it a shame. 16

Elder Roma Wilson passed away on October 25, 2018, at the age of 107. For a beautifully produced online tribute by Detroit journalist Donna Terek, follow this link: https://vimeo.com/139518839.

 

To learn more about the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) or to nominate a Mississippi traditional artist for a NEA National Heritage Fellowship, please visit their website. 

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Hystercine Rankin

• By Dave Crosby
• ·
• April 17, 2022

Mississippi’s NEA National Heritage Fellows