Lee Chester “L.C.” Ulmer was a native of South Mississippi who for 50 years played music all over the U.S.—“like horse manure, everywhere!”—before returning home to the Ellisville area in 2001. He was a multi-instrumentalist who played guitar, keyboards, drums, fiddle, banjo mandolin, kazoo, and harmonica, and performed for many years as a “twelve-piece” one-man-band. […]
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John Stuart was born in 1932 in the Bellevue community west of Hattiesburg, where he still lives today. His great-great-grandfather had emigrated from Scotland, moving across the southern United States to Texas. His great-grandfather, a Civil War veteran, bounced back to Mississippi. John’s father farmed and was a Baptist minister with responsibilities for several churches.
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The Sparks Family Singers have been playing a blend of traditional gospel songs and their own compositions since 1972. The group is led by mandolin player and singer Bryan Sparks and it has featured several of his siblings over the years. Currently, he is joined by brother Dalton Sparks on guitar and vocals and their
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Country and rockabilly singer Mack Allen Smith was born in 1938 in Carroll County. He spent his early years in the community of “Little Texas” ten miles outside of Carrolton, where he and his parents lived together with his maternal grandparents. His first experiences singing were at the Hickory Grove Baptist Church, and he was
Charles T. Smith was born in 1922 in Webster County and began fiddling in childhood. He got started on an old fiddle that his father had brought broken and pieced back together. After teaching himself his first tune, his father (who had played the instrument as a younger man) showed him the basics of the
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Twenty-one-year-old Clarksdale native Anthony Sherrod grew up in a musical home. His father, E.J. Johnson, is a gospel singer and still performs with the group The Golden Stars. At the age of six, Anthony picked up his first guitar and hasn’t stopped playing. In fact, he not only plays guitar but bass, drums, and keyboards—and
“Big” Joe Shelton was born in the Black Belt Prairie region of northeast Mississippi in 1951. The region is the birthplace of several legendary blues performers and Shelton was exposed to a wide range of African American music while growing up. He went to barbecue picnics that featured local music, and listened to blues musicians perform
Joyce Shearer is a good example of a person who becomes involved in the arts later in life, but who is transformed by them. A native of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Shearer sang older country songs and listened to her mother tell jokes while growing up, but she did not perform in public until she
Bill Rogers grew up in the house next door to his current home in Collins, Mississippi. It is an old family house built on land his great-grandfather bought in 1897. Rogers is a public health environmentalist from nine to five, then goes home and plays bluegrass and old-timey fiddle. He didn’t start fiddling until he
Jesse Robinson has been playing blues and jazz for over four decades. Born in Benton and raised in Mileston, Mississippi, Robinson was “the seventh son, thirteenth child, baby boy, and a preacher’s son.” He first picked up the guitar at six and was soon backing his father at church. As a young boy, Jesse also