Harold “Doc” Comby, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, was born and raised on the Choctaw Reservation near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he lives today. He has a degree in social work from Jackson State University and has taken graduate courses in vocational counseling at the University of Southern Mississippi. He first worked […]
Spooky Cole, born Britton Douglas Cole, on July 18, 1942, in Stonefield, Miss. is a blues vocalist based in Calhoun City. He was reared in Cascilla, Miss., a small community on the edge of the Delta and the Hills, west of Grenada. The son of a sharecropper, Spooky and his family worked crops up and
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Originally from the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, Pete Castorena came to Mississippi in 2002 where he currently owns a company that sells and installs satellite dish services. But these days, Castorena may be better known throughout the state as “The Tejano Cowboy,” for the distinctive style of country music that he performs. Castorena,
Wayne Carter was born outside of Aberdeen in 1944 and grew up in a family that has produced a number of talented musicians. Carter is the grandson of “Fiddling George” Carter who recorded for several different recording labels in the late 1920s and who some credit with composing the standard “Cotton Eyed Joe.” He attended
Bobby Carter is carrying on a family tradition of fiddling. Carters have been making music in the same part of northeast Mississippi for several generations. Carter’s great uncle, George Carter, led Carter Brothers and Sons, a string band that recorded several 78rpm records in the late 1920s (which can be heard on Mississippi String Bands,
Widely acclaimed as one of the best drummers in the blues, Sam Carr was born Samuel Lee McCollum in 1926 outside of Marvell, Arkansas. His father was the influential blues guitarist and vocalist Robert Lee McCollum, who recorded under the names Robert Lee McCoy and Robert Nighthawk, but Carr didn’t meet him until he was
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Every Sunday morning at 11:00, St. Anne Catholic Church in Carthage fills with the sound of music from Guatemala. The band, led by Efrain Lopez and featuring his brother, two other brothers, a cousin, and their friend Hector Augustine, provide the music for the weekly Spanish Mass at the church. The group uses a drum
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Woodville bluesman Robert Cage was born in New Orleans on March 23, 1937, but his family, which has roots in southwestern Mississippi, soon moved to Natchez, where he spent his first six years. They then moved to the Percy Creek community, about ten miles west of Woodville near Lake Mary, where he lived for several
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Kenny Brown has been a student of the Mississippi hill country blues for most of his life. Born in Selma, Alabama, in 1953, his family moved to Nesbit, Mississippi, when he was less than a year old. Kenny developed an interest in playing guitar at the age of ten and began teaching himself the basics.
The Jason Boone Band is a bluegrass group with members from throughout central and southern Mississippi, as well as one from southeastern Louisiana. It includes Jason Boone (tenor and guitar), Don Robinson (baritone and banjo), Johnny Rawls (upright bass), Lee Ely (mandolin, sings harmony), and Jeffrey Boone (fiddle, sings harmony). They count themselves lucky that
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