Lonnie Pitchford (October 8, 1955 – November 8, 1998) was an American blues musician and instrument maker from Lexington,

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

, United States. He was notable in that he was one of only a handful of young African American musicians from Mississippi who had learned and was continuing the Delta blues and

country blues Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in t ...

traditions of the older generations. In addition to the acoustic and electric guitar, Pitchford was also skilled at the one-string guitar and

diddley bow The diddley bow is a single-stringed American instrument which influenced the development of the blues sound. It consists of a single string of baling wire tensioned between two nails on a board over a glass bottle, which is used both as a brid ...

, a one-string instrument of African origin, as well as the double bass, piano and harmonica. He was a protégé of Robert Lockwood Jr., from whom he learned the style of

Robert Johnson Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generati ...

. For a while, Pitchford performed accompanied by

Johnny Shines John Ned Shines (April 26, 1915 – April 20, 1992) was an American blues singer and guitarist. Biography Shines was born in the community of Frayser, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was taught to play the guitar by his mother and spent most of h ...

and Lockwood. His own debut album, ''All Round Man'' was released on Rooster Blues Records in 1994. Pitchford performed at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, and at the 1984 Downhome Blues Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. In November 1998, Pitchford died at his home in Lexington, from AIDS. A diddley bow is featured on his headstone which was paid for by John Fogerty and Rooster Blues Records through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund. His

grave A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as grav ...

is located near the grave of

Elmore James Elmore James ( Brooks; January 27, 1918 – May 24, 1963) was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter, and bandleader. Noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice, James was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ...

, in the New Port Baptist Church cemetery in

Holmes County, Mississippi Holmes County is a county in the U.S. state of Mississippi; its western border is formed by the Yazoo River and the eastern border by the Big Black River. The western part of the county is within the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. As of the 2010 ce ...

Film

* ''American Patchwork: Songs and Stories of America'', part 3: "The Land Where the Blues Began" (1990). Written, directed, and produced by Alan Lomax; developed by the Association for Cultural Equity at Columbia University and Hunter College. North Carolina Public TV; A Dibb Direction production for

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

. * '' Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads'' (1993). Directed by Robert Mugge.

References

External links

"Lonnie Pitchford"
from The Mississippi Writers and Musicians Project of Starkville High School

* Pitchford biographyat

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pitchford, Lonnie 1955 births 1998 deaths 20th-century African-American male singers AIDS-related deaths in Mississippi American blues guitarists American male guitarists American blues singers 20th-century American guitarists People from Lexington, Mississippi African-American guitarists

Film

See also

References

External links