mississippi

“The taledragger, from Greeeenville, Mississippi; I’m the boss of the blues. Can’t read can’t write ain’t never been to school a day in my life.” – Opening line of T-Model Ford’s “Bad Man”, 2002

“It was a beautiful experience to go on that [Mississippi] Blues Trail.” – Director Ryan Coogler, (“Sinners”, “Creed”, “black Panther”)

“I’m pleased to include Dockery Plantation on the Mississippi Blues Trail. Apart from the town’s unique historical legacy, which includes printing its own money, Dockery was home to famed bluesman Charley Patton and played a significant role in the development of the Delta blues” – Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour

“Got a brand new razor and a .44 gun, gonna cut you if you stay, gonna shoot you if you run. Oh my babe, why won’t you come home…” – Mississippi John Hurt

“I’ve always been in love with that Delta-flavored music the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.” – Robbie Robertson, The Band

“B.B. King was a lovely chap. His early stuff was stupendous and he’s just kept going. I first met him in New York. He came up to me and said, “Hey boy are you sure you weren’t born in Mississippi?”” – David Gilmour, Pink Floyd

“Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place I could feel all old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody ever saw.” – Elvis Presley to The Charlotte Observer, June 26, 1956

“That was my introduction to T-Model Ford. It had a big influence on me, and I thought I could have fun doing this kind of music. Later, a friend and I went down to Greenville, Mississippi, to find T-Model Ford.” – Dan Auerbach, The Black Keys

“Avalon, my home town, always on my mind” – Mississippi John Hurt, “Avalon Blues”

“And I have a little opening piece, it’s a little fast piece. You know I told you I do not play no rock n roll. But it kinda sound like it.” – Mississippi Fred McDowell, Shake ‘Em On Down

“You know I told you I do not play no rock n roll. But it kinda sound like it.” – Mississippi Fred McDowell, Shake ‘Em On Down

“We right back here again doin’ the same thing.” – Mississippi Fred McDowell

“I want you to bury my body, out on Highway 61” – Mississippi Fred McDowell

“Lord, when you see me comin’, pretty Mama, I’ll be on Highway 61” – Mississippi Fred McDowell

“When I was down in Mississippi, there was just three things I wanted to be – a heck of a preacher, a heck of a ball player or a heck of a musician.” – Muddy Waters

“I do not play no Rock n Roll. But this one sounds a little bit like it.” – Mississippi Fred McDowell

“Don’t die ’til you’re dead” – Mississippi John Hurt

“Lord, that 61 Highway is the longest road I know” – Mississippi Fred McDowell

“I do not play no Rock n Roll” – Mississippi Fred McDowell

Jerry Lee Lewis used to operate a drive-through liquor store out of his house in Mississippi.

Muddy Waters said the only time he saw Robert Johnson play was on the front porch of Hirsberg’s Drugstore in Friars Point, Mississippi.

Some 40 years after an inmate at Parchman Farm Prison in Mississippi named James Carter was recorded singing a work song, it was used in the opening of the 2000 movie “O! Brother Where Art Thou?”. When Carter received a $20,000 royalty check, he didn’t even remember singing the tune.

Mississippi Fred McDowell was from Tennessee.

John Lee Hooker was born in (about) 1917 in the extremely tiny, rural town of Tutwiler, Mississippi — coincidentally the very same town where W.C. Handy first heard & documented a man singing what he called “the blues” in 1903.

The name of Jimmy Page & Robert Plant’s 1998 album “Walking Into Clarksdale” was an homage to the significance of Clarksdale, Mississippi’s outsized impact on American music.

Howlin’ Wolf was born Chester Arthur Burnett on June 10th, 1910 in White Station, Mississippi.

Born to sharecroppers on Mississippi, Howlin’ Wolf was illiterate into his 40s, when he earned his GED and took college courses, and in 1972, received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Chicago’s prestigious Columbia College.

Though Howlin’ Wolf had a huge hit with his 1956 song “Smokestack Lightnin’”, he said he’d been playing it since the 1930s, when he and Charley Patton (father of the blues) performed in small Mississippi Delta towns.

Thanks to his legendary musical performances, the father of the blues, Charley Patton, famously owned a new car in the 1930s Mississippi Delta, an extreme rarity which helped inspire a younger generation of black men who idolized Patton to also become performers — including Howlin’ Wolf, Son House, Robert Johnson, Willie Brown, Pops Staples, Tommy Johnson, Honeyboy Edwards & many others…

John Lee Hooker was born in (abouts) 1917 in the extremely tiny, rural town of Tutwiler, Mississippi — coincidentally the very same town where W.C. Handy first heard & documented a man singing what he called “the blues” in 1903.

When Elvis Presley triumphantly returned to his Tupelo, Mississippi hometown, 14 year old Wynette Pugh, later known as Tammy Wynette, can be seen in photos in the front row.

The Mississippi Sheiks’ extremely influential 1930 song “Sitting on Top of the World” has been covered hundreds of times in many genres, including by Bob Willis and his Texas Playboys, Jack White, Grateful Dead, Cream, B.B. King, Doc Watson, Don McLean, et al.

B.B. KING was born Riley B. King on September 16, 1925 near the small town of Itta Bena, Mississippi — though he always referred to the nearby Indianola as his home town.

Blues Guitarist B.B. King’s hometown of Indianola, Mississippi founded the BB King Homecoming Festival in 1980, bringing the artist back home every year, and continuing the tradition after his 2015 death.

Otha Turner, the renown Mississippi fife player. released his first album, “Everybody Hollerin’ Goat”, at 89 years old. It was produced by North Mississippi Allstars’ Luther Dickinson.

On September 26, 1956, Elvis Presley, now a world-famous rising star, returned to his hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi to perform at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair & Dairy Show – the very same place where he performed in public for the first time at just ten years old.

B.B. King, accompanied by Medgar Evers’ brother Charles, gave a prison performance on June 8th, 1983 for the inmates at the notorious Parchman Farm in the Mississippi Delta — about 35 miles from King’s childhood home. The next day, he would be the guest of honor in his Indianola, Mississippi hometown for the third annual B.B. King Homecoming Festival.

Johnny Cash once belligerently spent the night in the Starkville, Mississippi jail for the high crime of picking a flower late at night — an event he famously memorialized on “Live at San Quentin”. It spawned a local flower festival named after Cash, a Country Trail Marker commemorating the event, and 42 years after the late singer’s arrest, he was pardoned by the town government.

The first photo of Elvis Presley was taken while visiting his father in Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm prison — the same farm which housed blues musicians including Bukka White, T Model Ford & Son House.

It was Bonnie Raitt’s 1970 performance with Mississippi Fred McDowell at the Philadelphia Folk Festival that earned her first recording contract with Warner Brothers.

Clarksdale, Mississippi native Christone “Kingfish” Ingram released his debut album “KINGFISH” on Alligator Records in 2019.

Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi.

When 1930s’ era band The Mississippi Sheiks weren’t playing music that would eventually change the world, they would return to work the Mississippi Delta farm fields.

Allegedly, Robert Johnson was poisoned at the Three Forks Store in Leflore County, Mississippi.

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