Jimbo Mathus, photo by Scott Barretta

I’m looking forward to seeing Jimbo’s musical (described in the article below) on Friday in Sardis, which just off of I-55 north of Batesville, and a little less than an hour south of Memphis.

For the musical Jimbo has gathered together local musicians including Justin Showah, bass; Eric Carlton, piano and accordion; Austin Marshall, drums; Bill Abel, guitar; Jim Ellis, guitar; Jamie Posey, guitar; and, on vocals, Gin-Gin Abraham, Rosie Posey, and Jennifer Pierce.

Here’s the article I wrote for today’s Clarion Ledger.

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Mathus bringing ‘Mosquitoville’ to Panola Playhouse in Sardis

This Friday Jimbo Mathus is presenting his musical Mosquitoville: Mississippi Songs and Stories at the Panola Playhouse in Sardis. There will be two shows, at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m., and Mathus hopes to soon take the production on the road across the state.

Equally comfortable playing blues, jazz and country, Mathus is the leader of the Tri State Coalition and the owner of the Delta Recording Service in Como. He was a founder of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, and in addition to recording many of his own CDs, played guitar on Buddy Guy’s Grammy-winning CD, Blues Singer.

“Mosquitoville is based on some local history around the 1880s in Quitman County in the early timber industry before the cotton was planted,” explains Mathus. “It’s based on a journal of a guy from Sledge, Miss., named John Parrot. He worked at a camp north of South Lake called Mosquitoviille. We’re basing it on the events in that (journal) and how they’re related to the folk music in the area.”

“I should have a six-piece band and about a six-piece chorus. We’re doing everything from Sid Hemphill, Stephen Foster, Jimmie Rodgers to a lot of indigenous Mississippi music. It’s kind of like the Squirrel Nut Zippers in that it’s conceptualized, but still very Mississippi in its approach.”

For additional information, visit the Panola Playhouse’s website.

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Here’s a “video” of Sid Hemphill, the grandfather of blueswoman Jessie Mae Hemphill, who was recorded by Alan Lomax in Sardis in the early ’40s, and then again in the same area in 1959.

The following is Jimbo performing at a “Music in the Hall” concert in Oxford last year.

Jimbo Mathus - “Who’ll Sop My Gravy” at Music in the Hall: Episode Five from Daniel Morrow on Vimeo.

Sandra Murchison is an associate professor and chair of the art department at Millsaps College who I met last year in Cleveland, MS, at the dedication of the “Chrisman Street” Mississippi Blues Trail marker.  Her latest project is a series of mixed media prints that include rubbings from Blues Trail markers — like some gravestones, the markers have raised lettering on the front side, and her individual pieces incorporate parts of the text.

On Thursday, March 4 from 5 - 8 p.m. there’ll be an opening reception at the Fischer Galleries in the Fondren neighborhood of Jackson. It will be running through early April. Here’s her statement about the exhibit:

“This series of prints and mixed media pieces features information from the Mississippi Blues Trail historical markers in the Delta region. I began collecting this information and working on this series earlier this year. After capturing the text from the markers, I layer the fragmented stories into collagraphs and painted collages. This work with the Mississippi Blues Trail markers builds on my previous work with historical markers and my general interest in how America remembers its past. I have committed myself to making a rubbing for each marker in the Delta region for this ongoing project. My focus is specifically on the state of Mississippi and the way that the state aims to construct a specific past and identity rooted in music. I am interested in how we memorialize a culture. At the same time, I seek to raise questions about the effectiveness of these markers. Is the trail too little, too late, or exactly what has been needed for some time?”

More of Murchison’s current work can be seen here.

From left: King Edward, Grady Champion, and Honeyboy Edwards. Photo by Peggy Brown

Another recent notable event involving a Mississippi blues musician was Ben Payton’s recent visit to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. They flew him in to perform at the “Roots and Reason” concert on February 4 at the Berklee Performance Center, which celebrated traditional roots music from the Mississippi Delta and around the world. As the photo below demonstrates, he also worked with students during his two-day visit.

Ben Payton, right, performing for Berklee students. Photo by Jennifer Shanley

Photo by Steve Mannheim, courtesy Earwig Records

One of the honorees at today’s annual Governor’s Awards For Excellence in the Arts ceremony is Delta bluesman David “Honeyboy” Edwards, who turns 95 later this year. Earlier this month Edwards received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award; several years ago he received his first Grammy for his participation on the CD Last of the Delta Bluesmen.

On Friday he’ll be performing at the 930 Blues Cafe in Jackson on a program called “Three Generations of the Blues,” which also features Jackson’s King Edward (Antoine) and Canton’s Grady Champion. The latter recently won the band segment of the International Blues Competition in Memphis. Tickets are $15, and Edwards’ performance is being underwritten by the Central MS Blues Society and the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame.

On Saturday Edwards will be performing at the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, which is hosting “Happy Hour with Honeyboy” at 6pm. Admission is $5 for members and $10 for visitors, with complimentary beer.

A native of Shaw, Edwards set out on the road to play music in his teens together with Big Joe Williams, and he’s never stopped rambling. In the 1930s he played with artists including Sonny Boy Williamson II and Robert Johnson; Edwards recalls that they were all three at the same juke joint in Greenwood the 1938 evening when Johnson was reputedly fatally poisoned by a jealous man.

In 1942 Edwards made his first recordings for Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress in Clarksdale, an experience that Lomax described at length in his book The Land Where the Blues Began. Edwards began recording commercially after WWII, and recorded at both Sun and Chess, though the recording weren’t immediately issued. In the early ’70s Edwards recorded with Fleetwood Mac, and started his long relationship with his manager (and occasional harmonica player) Michael Frank, who has recorded multiple albums of Edwards on his Earwig Records label.

Edwards is known for his great skills as a storyteller, and his fascinating life was captured in the documentary Honeyboy and his autobiography The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing, which I think is essential to every blues library. He’ll be returning to Mississippi on April 17 to perform once again at the annual Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale.

Here’s a clip of him performing “Gambling Man” and talking about being a hustler, from the documentary Lightning in a Bottle.

Wilroy (or Will Roy) Sanders, who was a leading figure in Memphis’ largely underground blues scene for decades, died on Tuesday, February 16 at age 76. An obituary from the Memphis Flyer is here; another from the Commercial Appeal is here. His funeral will take place on Thursday, Feb. 25 at the Parkway Gardens United Presbyterian Church, which is located at 1005 East Shelby Drive. Viewing will start at 9 a.m., and the service at 11 a.m.

Sanders recorded both under his own name and as a member of the Fieldstones, a very funky, downhome band who played at venues including Green’s Lounge. In 1999 Sanders was was the subject a documentary film, CD, and small book, all entitled “The Last Living Bluesman.” Shangri-La Records, whose then owner Sherman Wilmott produced the documentary, has set up a charity fund for Sanders, and anyone who donates $25 or more will receive a copy of the CD, book, or video.

Sanders’ first recording was a 1963 single by “Willie Sanders and the Binghamton Blues Boys” on the East Side label featuring his version of the song “Crosscut Saw,” which had been recorded decades earlier by Mississippi bluesman Tommy McClennan. Albert King’s cover of the song for Stax several years later credited the songwriters on Sanders’ single. The Fieldstones came to broader attention when they were recorded by Dr. David Evans for the High Water label as part of his efforts to document the downhome Memphis blues scene. Their album “Memphis Blues Today!” is a modern-day blues classic, and like the first album by Clarksdale’s Jelly Roll Kings alerted many blues fans to the lively electric blues scene down South.

I have many great memories of seeing the Fieldstones and Sanders performing both with and without the band at the sadly departed Blue Worm juke joint in Memphis. He was a real character, and will be greatly missed.

According to the Commerical Appeal obit, he is survived by over two dozen children!

A fundraiser for the family of Little Dave Thompson will be held at the Walnut Street Blues Bar in Greenville on Thursday night beginning at 7pm, and lasting until late into the nights. Artists who are listed as performing include Eden Brent, the Walnut Street Allstars, Mississippi Slim, Mickey Rogers, Jessie Clay, Billy Smiley, and Young Guns.

Thompson’s funeral will be held at 2:00pm this Saturday at the Bell Grove Missionary Baptist Church at 1301 B.B. King Road in Indianola

A support fund has been set up by Thompson’s family; he left behind his wife of fifteen years, Susan, and five children ranging in age from 13 to 20.  Contributions to the family can be mailed to:

Community Bank, PO Box 28, Indianola, MS 38751, or by sending a wire transfer to routing # 084204301

Direct mail to the family can be sent to John Thompson, PO Box 512, Moorhead, MS 38761. John Thompson’s e-mail is: thomp964@bellsouth.net

I received the terrible news today that Delta blues guitarist and vocalist Lil’ Dave Thompson died early this morning in an automobile wreck. According to a news report, he died in Aiken County, SC when the van in which he was traveling lost control on I-20 around 6am.

Lil’ Dave was one of the most talented of the younger blues artists in Mississippi. His father was a bluesman, and as a teenager he began working with Greenville’s Roosevelt “Booba” Barnes. He recorded his first CD for the Fat Possum label when he was in his ’20s, and I recall seeing him on one of their early Fat Possum Caravan tours along with R.L. Burnside. For the last decade Dave spent most of his time out on the road, both across the nation and abroad. Looking over his schedule at his website, it appears as though he played over 200 dates a year, and he was scheduled to tour for a week in Romania next week.

As a result we didn’t see him here in MS too often, though he did seem to keep a busy schedule when he was at home. He was a regular performer at the annual Highway 61 Blues Festival in Leland as well as at informal event in Holly Ridge the following day. I always enjoyed talking to Dave about his travels, and had fully expected that he would have been an integral part of the Delta scene for decades to come.

I’ll keep the site updated with information about memorial services.

This Thursday banjo master Béla Fleck will be visiting Oxford’s Lyric Theater together with a group of top-notch African musicians as part of a 30-stop national tour. This kind of show simply doesn’t come to Oxford too often, and I think it will be one of the highlights of the year.

It appears as though his backing band is N’goni Ba from Mali, featuring Bassekou Kouyate, a master of the n’goni, a small, stringed instrument, and Kouyate’s wife, vocalist Amy Sacko. The show will also feature Tanzanian thumb piano master Anania Ngoliga, accompanied by guitarist John Kitime. Ngoliga, who is blind, was one of the highlights of Fleck’s recent documentary Throw Down Your Heart, which followed him across five African nations.

As Fleck explains in the trailer for the documentary below, his trip to Africa focussed on finding the ancestral roots of the American banjo, but he also simply played with a wide variety of master musicians.

Here’s a video of Bassekou Kouyate’s band N’goni Ba from the Womex festival in 2008:

Bassekou Kouyaté & N Goni Ba concert au Womex 2008

Here’s some recordings from Throw Down Your Heart, courtesy of Fleck’s website