Quilter Janice Mitchell was born in Texas, and grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In junior high and high school, she took home economic courses where she was taught to sew clothes. She loved the possibilities of creating and decorating with fabrics far beyond dressmaking. In 1988 she moved to Mississippi to attend college and […]
Located north of downtown Vicksburg on old Highway 61, Margaret’s Grocery is a unique vernacular art environment created by Reverend H.D. Dennis. Margaret Rogers Dennis ran the former country store for years. When she met and married Reverend Dennis in the early 1980s, he promised her that he would transform her simple store into a
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Anyone who has traveled on Highway 49 West through the Mississippi Delta has seen Larry Grimes’ work. His home is on the east side of the road, about halfway between Parchman Penitentiary and Rome, Mississippi. Grimes’ home is the only house for miles each way, and the place beckons like a neon sign. You notice
Bob Coleman was born in Doddsville, Miss. in 1928. The youngest of five children, Coleman grew up working on a farm alongside his brothers. As a child, Coleman stuttered which kept him in the background at school and church. In 1946 he started college and played football for Sunflower Junior College in Moorehead (now Mississippi
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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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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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
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
“Cadillac” John Nolden is a blues harmonica player, songwriter, and vocalist from Renova, Mississippi. He was born in Sunflower on April 12, 1927, one of ten children. The family worked on various plantations in the area, including one owned by the mayor of Sunflower, W.L. Patterson. Nolden, who emphasizes the value of hard work, picked
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The Kattawar Brothers consist of Jerry Kattawar on piano and Mike Kattawar on drums. The Greenville-based duo plays a unique blend of boogie-woogie, blues, country, and classic rock & roll. The brothers grew up in Greenville, listening to blues late at night on WLAC from Nashville. They got interested in the music of B.B. King,
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