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
Many of the immigrants from Mexico to Mississippi’s Gulf Coast attend Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, which welcomes many international parishioners. There’s a Filipino mass every Wednesday evening, and a Spanish-language mass every Monday, at which Mario Garcia, Lalo Herrera, and Leopoldo Villegas sing and play their guitars, along with a rotating crew of
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Charles Fairley, Jr., was born in 1932 on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Moss Point. He began playing saxophone at eight years old and received his first instrument, an alto saxophone, from his paternal uncle Ollie John “Boss” Tatum, who had worked in minstrel shows with artists including Bessie Smith. Fairley later received a tenor
Natchez-based drummer, harmonica player, and vocalist Hezekiah Early was born on October 7, 1934, on a farm in the community of Anna’s Bottom, located about a dozen miles north of Natchez adjacent to the Mississippi River. Some of the first music that Early heard as a young man was that of local fife and drum
YZ Ealey—“YZ” is his given name—was born in Sibley, about 14 miles south of Natchez on March 8, 1937, and grew up on a self-sufficient farm where his family raised crops and livestock. He is the middle of eleven children, with three sisters and two brothers both older and younger than him. He first began
Born in Sunflower, Mississippi, in 1943, David Lee Durham was raised in the blues. He never darkened the door of a schoolhouse and moved from farm to farm to pick cotton. He could pick 400 pounds of cotton by the age of thirteen. Music was his release. Durham was a self-taught musician. Like many other
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Driskill Mountain is one of the top bluegrass bands in Mississippi, though the two senior members of the group live over the border in Louisiana. The band got its name several changes of personnel back. The senior members of the band are Adolphus Warren and Vic Watts, both of whom both sing and play guitar.
Eddie Cusic was born January 4, 1926, in the Wilmot community south of Leland, Mississippi. He grew up farming with his family and was first inspired to play the blues from hearing men play at suppers and other get-togethers in his community. Like many Delta musicians of his generation, his first attempts to play were