Bassist, vocalist, and bandleader Wesley Jefferson has been a stalwart of the Clarksdale blues scene since the mid-1960s. He was born in Roundaway in Coahoma County on March 23, 1944, the oldest boy of thirteen children. As a youth, he picked and chopped cotton, plowed with mules and later with a tractor, and lived in […]
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Jamie Earl Isonhood was born in Benton in Yazoo County in 1944. An only child, he grew up in the Yazoo City area with his grandparents while his mother worked in Jackson and then later Memphis. He learned to play the piano on his own when he was five years old, and his first music
Bud and Hazel Huddleston were working musicians in Tippah County and across North Mississippi for over 50 years. Music brought the couple together; they played country and bluegrass throughout their years together at local dances, festivals, and on the radio. Bud was a native and lifelong resident of Tippah County. Hazel, a Tennessean by birth,
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Blues guitarist, vocalist, and bandleader John Horton was born in Arcola in 1959. His family initially lived in Holly Ridge, and then moved to the outskirts of Greenville, where he currently resides. He grew up with his father, who worked as a bulldozer driver, a job that Horton has had since shortly after graduating from
Jimmy “Duck” Holmes is the proprietor of one of the oldest juke joints in Mississippi, the Blue Front in Bentonia. In the mid-2000s he began performing blues actively after many years of performing casually and has already garnered several awards and many accolades. He is a practitioner and conscious advocate of a distinctive blues style
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Melvin “House Cat” Hendrex has been an active musician and performer for several decades. He grew up in Jackson, close by to Jackson State College (now University). He was influenced early on by the music of the choir at College Hill Missionary Baptist Church. His grandmother was a member of the choir and would often
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Saucier resident Bernadette Goodness began learning the traditional dances of her native Philippines while attending high school in her hometown of Davao City. Traditional dance is part of physical education classes in the Philippines, just as square dancing used to be in many American schools. Francisca Reyes Aquino had conducted systematic research on Philippine national
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As a child growing up in Puerto Rico, Manuel “Cucho” Gonzalez’s mother introduced him to the music of the Beatles. Gonzalez knew that he wanted to make similar music one day. Gonzalez’s father, on the other hand, preferred that his son follow in the footsteps of a Harlem-based musician of Puerto Rican descent, Tito Puente,
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Raised in the sprawling metropolis of Sao Paulo, Brazil, bossa nova singer and dancer Renata Gil moved with her husband to the Belhaven neighborhood of Jackson, Mississippi in 2001. As a child in Brazil, Gil was raised listening to an eclectic variety of music. But as she grew into adolescence, Gil was drawn to Sao
Wendy Garrison is an 8th generation Marylander. She is the middle child of three girls and grew up in a post-World War II subdivision where community life was centered around the local school. Wendy took piano lessons as a child, and her grandparents later gave the family a grand piano where she would practice her