Growing up next door to her grandfather–the late master fife player Otha Turner–Sharde Thomas was captivated by his music and how he could “cast a spell” on his audience. Turner first showed Sharde how to hold a fife and how to breathe into it, but he set her loose on the instrument after that. She […]
Vishwanath N. Shenoy is a sitar player living in Clinton, Mississippi. He was born in India, and in 1988 he moved to Ohio to study to become a physician. In his professional life, Shenoy is an MD FACP Internist and Gastroenterologist, and in 2004, Shenoy moved to Mississippi for a job in this field. While
Larry Veal, Sr., was born in 1966 and grew up in the small southwestern Mississippi town of Gloster. He now lives with his wife and children near his in-laws about twenty miles from Gloster in the Buffalo community east of Woodville. His parents worked in the local lumber industry, and he has worked for the
Louis Arzo Youngblood, aka “Gearshifter,” is a Jackson-based guitarist and vocalist who performs a unique blend of country blues, modern soul-blues, and everything in between. Louis was born in Picayune and grew up in Jackson, Bogalusa, and, mostly, Tylertown. There Louis was raised in a simple rural environment surrounded by older relatives. As a young
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Terry “Big T” Williams has dedicated his life to his music. Born in Clarksdale in 1960, he spent his early years on a plantation in Farrell, Mississippi, hearing stories about Muddy Waters attending Sunday picnics in his grandmother’s yard. These influences, as well as the music he was hearing on the radio by Deltans such
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Elmore Williams lives with his wife in a comfortable home in the suburbs of Natchez and is retired after years of working in sawmills, a bakery, and a dairy. Although he’s played music for nearly sixty years, Williams only spent about two years working full-time as a musician, and today he mostly plays at festivals,
Reverend John Wilkins is a gospel blues guitarist and vocalist based in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the son of the influential prewar blues musician Reverend Robert Wilkins, and also currently serves as the pastor for the Hunter’s Chapel Church in Como, Mississippi. Wilkins was born in Memphis in 1943 and remembers his father discussing his
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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