I am fascinated by the places that music comes from, like fife-and-drum blues from Mississippi or Cajun music out of Lafayette, Louisiana, shape-note singing, old harp singing from the mountains – I love that stuff. It’s like the beginning of rock and roll: something comes down from the hills, and something comes up from the delta.
— Robbie Robertson
Photo from Downtown Memphis by Butch Boehm
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Well, I’ll be darned! Fife & drums blues? In Mississippi!! Who knew??? Mercy me!
I stand corrected!
Enjoying a nice plate of crow,
Randall
I thought you’d enjoy the articles, but no need for crow. Worse than bbq goat, I imagine. :-/
“Fife and drum blues from Mississippi?” Maybe in Lexington or Concord, Mass, huh? Blues ‘be like’: “cries from the whip,” or “cottonmouth in the cotton fields,” from the Miss Delta, right? But nice phrase RR turns: “something comes down from the mountains, and something rises up from the Delta.” Sounds archetypal, mythological, haunting yet soothing.
I pulled this up for you which is a better description than I can give of the Mississippi fife and drum scene. http://www.msbluestrail.org/blues-trail-markers/otha-turner Also, here’s an article I did for Porchscene about the North Mississippi All Stars a few years ago that sheds some more light on it. http://porchscene.com/2016/02/15/spreadin-the-blues/
A friend and I went down there one Saturday afternoon during the annual Labor Day Goat Barbeque that the article references. We were way early for any music that would come much later that night, and the only indication of a barbeque was some stacks of Wonder Bread, presumably to serve as a vehicle for the roasted goat. Hopefully, they were “importing” the goat to be roasted, because the goats on the property were as broken down as the mule that I photographed that’s at the beginning of the article. That photo will give you a good idea of the backdrop for the music and barbeque that was to follow later that night. All kidding aside, I think they have a great turnout for that weekend of music. One of Otha Turner’s granddaughters sings periodically with the North Mississippi All Stars.