Leo Welch remembered well the day his cousin’s guitar came in the mail. Welch and another younger cousin brought the package to their house on a long walk up from the mailbox and were forbidden to play with it while the older cousin was away. But they could not resist and when the guitar’s owner […]
Every Wednesday evening, the members of St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Meridian begin their prayer meeting with a long-standing musical tradition. The group sings a series of long meter or “Dr. Watts” hymns. The hymns are sung in a slow, ornamental style, with each line being “lined out” (chanted in a quick, rhythmic manner)
Starkville resident Larry Wallace is one of the nation’s top bluegrass banjo players and has been active for over thirty years. He was born in 1961 in McCall Creek (west of Brookhaven) in Franklin County and grew up listening to the fiddle playing of his maternal grandfather, Lewis Rushing. According to Wallace, Rushing was one
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