Fiddler John “Buddy” Crocker was born and raised in rural Greene County. He first got interested in the instrument as a teenager. Crocker went to the same church as the local fiddle legend Jode Denmark and was able to convince the older musician to sell him a fiddle. He learned some tunes from Denmark and […]
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Durant native Walter Cooper got his start as a performing musician at the age of nine. After a few years following the Mississippi bluesman tradition of starting out on homemade one-string diddly bows, he got a guitar from the local Western Auto Store and was soon asked to perform in his grandmother’s church. St. Allison’s
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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