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Hill Country Blues
Hill country blues (also known as North Mississippi hill country blues or North Mississippi blues) is a regional style of country blues. It is characterized by a strong emphasis on rhythm and percussion, steady guitar riffs, few chord changes, unconventional song structures, and heavy emphasis on the "groove", which has been characterized as the "hypnotic boogie". The hill country is a region of northern Mississippi bordering Tennessee. It lies in the counties of Desoto, Marshall, Panola, Tate, Tippah, and Lafayette and straddles the ecoregions of the North Hilly Plain (Red Clay Hills or North Central Hills), the Loess Plains, and Bluff Hills. The hills have poor agricultural soil and wide forested areas, which led to the development of a lumber industry but only small farms. Holly Springs and Oxford, Mississippi, are often cited as centers of hill country music. The style is regarded as distinct from the blues of the Mississippi Delta, which lies west of the hill country. An an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the west. An initial seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and, in 1861, forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. Led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Mississippi Allstars
North Mississippi Allstars is an American blues and southern rock band from Hernando, Mississippi, founded in 1996. The band is currently composed of brothers Luther Dickinson (guitar, lowebow, vocals) and Cody Dickinson (drums, keyboards, electric washboard, vocals). Their most recent album '' Set Sail'' was released in 2022. History The group was formed in 1996 by brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson (sons of Memphis musician/producer Jim Dickinson), along with bassist Chris Chew, with the intention of combining the blues and bluegrass of the North Mississippi region with rock and other modern forms. Their first album ''Shake Hands with Shorty'' was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Their later albums '' 51 Phantom'' and '' Electric Blue Watermelon'' have received nominations in the same category. The group also won a Blues Music Award for Best New Artist Debut in 2001. Starting in 2000, the Dickinson brothers and Chew have also participated in sup ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fat Possum Records
Fat Possum Records is an American independent record label based in Water Valley and Oxford, Mississippi. At first Fat Possum focused almost entirely on recording previously unknown Mississippi blues artists (typically from Oxford or Holly Springs, Mississippi). Recently, Fat Possum has signed younger rock acts to its roster. The label has been featured in ''The New York Times'', ''New Yorker'',McInerney, Jay. "White Man at the Door: One Man's Mission to Record the 'Dirty Blues' - before Everyone Dies." ''The New Yorker'' (February 4, 2002): page 55 ''The Observer'', a Sundance Channel production, features on NPR, and a 2004 documentary, ''You See Me Laughin''.''You See Me Laughin': The Last of the Hill Country Bluesmen'' (2003). Produced and directed by Mandy Stein. Fat Possum also distributes the Hi Records catalog. History Fat Possum was founded in 1991 by ''Living Blues'' editor Peter Redvers-Lee, who went to the University of Mississippi for his MA studies in Journalism. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deep Blues
''Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads'' is a British documentary film, released in 1991, and made by music critic and author Robert Palmer and documentary film maker Robert Mugge, in collaboration with David A. Stewart and his brother John J. Stewart. The film provided insight into the location, cast and characteristics of Delta blues and North Mississippi hill country blues. Filming took place in 1990 in Memphis, Tennessee, and various North Mississippi counties. Theatrical release was in 1991 and home video release in the United Kingdom, the next year, as was a soundtrack album. A United States consumer edition came in 2000. Stewart initiated and financed the project, inspired by Palmer's 1981 book of the same name. Palmer provided many of the insights into the background and history of the blues, as a guide to Stewart and the film narrator. Musicians Musicians appearing in the film are: Roosevelt Barnes, R. L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill (with Napoleon St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jessie Mae Hemphill
Jessie Mae Hemphill (October 18, 1923 – July 22, 2006) was an American electric guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist specializing in the North Mississippi hill country blues traditions of her family and regional heritage. Life and career Hemphill was born near Como and Senatobia, Mississippi, in the northern Mississippi hill country, just east of the Mississippi Delta. She began playing the guitar at the age of seven. She also played drums in local fife-and-drum bands, beginning with the band led by her paternal grandfather, Sid Hemphill, in which she played snare drum and bass drum. Aside from sitting in at Memphis bars a few times in the 1950s, most of her playing was done in family and informal settings, such as picnics with fife-and-drum music, until she was recorded in 1979. Her first recordings were field recordings made by the blues researcher George Mitchell in 1967 and the ethnomusicologist David Evans in 1973, but they were not released. She was then known as Jes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Othar Turner
Othar "Otha" Turner (June 2, 1907 – February 27, 2003) was one of the last well-known fife players in the vanishing American fife and drum blues tradition. His music was also part of the African-American genre known as Hill country blues. Early life and education Othar Turner, nicknamed "Otha", was born in Canton, Madison County, Mississippi in 1907. He moved further north, living his entire life in northern Mississippi hill country as a farmer near Como, Mississippi in Panola County. In 1923, aged 16, he learned to play fifes fashioned out of rivercanes and gradually learned other instruments as well. Musicmaking In the late 1960s and 1970s, scholars from nearby colleges made field recordings of Turner and his friends' music, as examples of local traditions, but did not release these. Turner's Rising Star Fife and Drum Band (which consisted of friends and relatives) primarily played at farm parties. In the early 1970s the band was called "The Gravel Springs Fife & Drum Band" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sid Hemphill
Sid Hemphill (1876 – 1963) was an American blues multi-instrumentalist and bandleader who played in his own string band mainly in Mississippi. He recorded for Alan Lomax in 1942 and again in 1959. Born in Panola County, Mississippi, Hemphill was the son of a slave fiddle player, crafted instruments, and was a blind musician. Trained as a multi-instrumentalist, he could effectively play fiddle, banjo, guitar, jaw harp, piano, organ, quills, and the cane fife, while also penning songs. Hemphill and his string band, composed of Alex "Turpentine" Askew (guitar), Lucious Smith (banjo), and Will Head (fiddle), played a combination of blues, popular music, and spirituals for both black and white audiences mainly in Northern Mississippi. The same group also identified as a fife and drums band, with music infused in European military drum tradition and African polyrhythms, talking drum influences. According to blues writer Edward Komara, Hemphill's quill playing was highly syncopate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calvin Jackson (drummer)
Calvin Jackson (January 22, 1961, Holly Springs, Mississippi – February 10, 2015, Senatobia, Mississippi) was an American drummer from north Mississippi. He is considered an innovator in the Hill country blues style of drumming, having incorporated elements of the regional Fife and drum bands style in the blues band setting. Robert Palmer. Liner notes to ''Too Bad Jim'', 1994. (Fat Possum 80307scan As a young teen he sang in the choir, and then joined the Jubilee Hummingbirds. At age 16, Jackson was drumming with bluesman R. L. Burnside. Burnside's daughter Linda had Jackson's son 1978, Cedric Burnside, and they would later marry. Jackson appeared in recordings of Burnside's band, sometimes called The Sound Machine, starting in 1979. Beside the traditional influence, David Evans credited him with bringing in the modern funk, RnB and soul influences of the band.David Evans, notes to High Water 410 EP, 1980scan, and to ''Sound Machine Groove'', 1981/1997scan. Later Jackson appe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Belfour
Robert "Wolfman" Belfour (September 11, 1940 – February 24, 2015) was an American blues musician. He was born in Red Banks, Mississippi. When he was a child, his father, Grant Belfour, taught him to play the guitar, and he continued his tutelage in the blues from the musicians Otha Turner, R. L. Burnside, and Junior Kimbrough. Kimbrough, in particular, had a profound influence on him. His music was rooted in Mississippi hill country traditions, in contrast to Delta blues. His playing was characterized by a percussive attack and alternate tunings. When Belfour was thirteen, his father died, and music was relegated to what free time he had, as his energy went to helping his mother provide for the family. In 1959, he married Noreen Norman and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he worked in construction for the next 35 years. In the 1980s, Belfour began playing on Beale Street. Eight of his songs are included on the musicologist David Evans's compilation album ''The Spirit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Junior Kimbrough
David "Junior" Kimbrough (July 28, 1930 – January 17, 1998) was an American blues musician. His best-known works are "Keep Your Hands off Her" and "All Night Long". Early life Kimbrough was born in Hudsonville, Mississippi, and lived in the north Mississippi hill country near Holly Springs. His father, a barber, played the guitar, and Junior picked his guitar as a child. He was apparently influenced by the guitarists Lightnin' Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Eli Green. Career In the late 1950s Kimbrough began playing the guitar in his own style, using mid-tempo rhythms and a steady drone played with his thumb on the bass strings. This style would later be cited as a prime example of hill country blues. His music is characterized by the tricky syncopation between his droning bass strings and his midrange melodies. His soloing style has been described as modal and features languorous runs in the middle and upper registers. The result was described by music critic Robert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Como, Mississippi
Como is a town in Panola County, Mississippi, which borders the Mississippi Delta and is in the northern part of the state, known as hill country. The population was 1,279 as of the 2010 census. History In a 2007 article about the area, Wayne Drash, a CNN.com senior producer, described Como as "a hard-hit rural community."Drash, Wayne"Granddaughter of slave: I was 'afraid' for Obama" ''CNN''. 16 January 2009. Quote: "Como is a town of 1,400 people 45 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee, along Interstate 55. It is a hard-hit rural community, home to a school with the dubious distinction of being among the worst-performing schools in the nation." Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and 0.53% is water. It is south of Memphis, Tennessee. Demographics 2020 census As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 1,118 people, 590 households, and 284 families residing in the town. 2000 census As of the census of 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
