Red Clay Hills

Melvin “House Cat” Hendrex has been an active musician and performer for several decades. He grew up in Jackson, close by to Jackson State College (now University). He was influenced early on by the music of the choir at College Hill Missionary Baptist Church. His grandmother was a member of the choir and would often […]

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

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

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,

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

Kenny Brown has been a student of the Mississippi hill country blues for most of his life. Born in Selma, Alabama, in 1953, his family moved to Nesbit, Mississippi, when he was less than a year old. Kenny developed an interest in playing guitar at the age of ten and began teaching himself the basics.

Earl “Little Joe” Ayers is a blues guitarist and singer based in Holly Springs, Mississippi. For over thirty years, he was a member of the Soul Blues Boys, Junior Kimbrough’s long-time backing band. Ayers was born in nearby Lamar and began performing at house parties in the area when he was 15. When asked what