WINTER 2020 Celebrating 50 Years of Living Blues Let It Roll With the Big Three Trio LB #174 Cover 9/6/04 3:37 PM Page 2 LB #182 Cover_Rockie 1/25/06 5:49 PM Page 2 INSIDE: 2004 Living Blues Awards Winners Vasti Jackson Issue #264 Vol. 50, #6 Henry Butler IrmaIrma ThomasThomas Issue #174 vol. 35. #5 Issue #182 Vol. 37. #1 Rockie Charles ® © George Porter Jr. THE Lionel Ferbos Sr. Little Freddie King The Legacy Of Deacon John Moore LOW DOWN Eddie Bo Bobby Charles ON THE OWLIN WOLF Phil Frazier uet ulin e Tune d illias Mem Shannon Clarence Frogman Henry Walter Wol fman Washington LOW END $4.95 US $6.95 CAN $4.95 US $6.95 CAN •Jerry Jemmott www.livingblues.com www.livingblues.com Also Featuring... Joe Jonas • Parchman Women’s Blues •Pookie Young SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE! 2015 Living Blues Festival Guide Living Blues Awards Winners Inside! 25th Annual Living Blues Awards Winners Inside! •Larry Fulcher Issue #236 Issue #233 Vol. 46, #2 Vol. 45, #5 ® © ® © •Nellie Mack ® © ® © •E.G. McDaniel Issue #244 • Vol. 47, #4 Issue #256 Vol. 49, #4 thE JaCKson bluEs sCEnE •Tanya Richardson TRAVELING •Joe Pratt THE BLUES & •Chuck Bush Mississippi PROTEST Rhiannon Giddens $6.95 US $6.95 CAN www.livingblues.com BLUES Fantastic Negrito TRAIL! WOMEN Otis Taylor OF THE BLUES Reverend Sekou Jewel Brown Reggie Garrett Ardella Williams • Jesi Terrell FEATURING: Diunna Greenleaf • Terrie Odabi King Edward • dorothy MoorE $6.95 US $6.95 CAN $6.95 US $6.95 CAN $6.95 US $6.95 CAN $6.95 US $6.95 CAN www.livingblues.com Veronika Jackson www.livingblues.com www.livingblues.com www.livingblues.com JEssE robinson • grady ChaMpion 50 Reviews Inside! Your Guide to the Rhiannon Giddens EddiE Cotton • JJ thaMEs Blues in Mississippi gEarshiftEr • JarEKus singlEton Over 40 Reviews Inside! DIRECTOR’S COLUMN Writing “2020” still feels to me like the beginning a In our vision, students come from science fiction novel. Yet here in our fifth decade, the Center a variety of backgrounds, receive for the Study of Southern Culture is looking to a future full financial support, and grad- even beyond the monumental year we are beginning. Last uate to fulfilling employment. August, we held a “visioning” session involving all thirty of Investing in People means the people whose work is primarily connected to the Center, that not only do we continue to attract and retain top including everyone at the Southern Documentary Project, faculty and staff, but we also hire with an eye toward the Southern Foodways Alliance, and Living Blues maga- diversifying our makeup and remain committed to zine, as well as all faculty and staff. Under the direction of nurturing the creativity of everyone who works in the incomparable Ari Weinzweig of ZingTrain, our guiding Southern Studies once they get here. We build our areas question was straightforward but not simple to answer: what of expertise by hiring additional faculty who study the will the Center look like ten years from now, in 2029? history and experiences of African Americans, Latinx Our brainstorming began over two days in late summer, people, and Native Americans in the South. but the results have sustained us through the fall as we Creating Transformative Learning and Engaging continued working in smaller groups to hone our priori- Communities takes the Center’s knowledge, tools, and ties. Ari encouraged us not to get our feet tangled in details resources off campus both to share our work and to just yet but to use thick description as means of seeing the learn more about the work we can and should be doing. Center as it could be a decade hence. We have been circu- Here the potential arises for partnerships with the UM lating drafts of our vision internally for several months, and School of Education and the UM Division of Diversity we are excited now to share an abbreviated version of it and Inclusion as ways of deepening our relations with the with you. Over the course of our extended conversations, immediate communities of Oxford and Lafayette County, seven commitments emerged as central to our shared future. but also with broader audiences in Mississippi. Eventually Developing Meaningful Collaboration leads us we hire a Community Engagement staff member who to seek both internal and external partners. Within the facilitates work like the projects we already have on the Center, units work together on common themes uniting ground in Yalobusha and Marshall Counties. our programming and our classrooms. Beyond the Designing Inclusive Infrastructure allows our Center, we initiate partnerships with other offices and physical space to reflect our unified mission. First, we groups on campus, with other colleges and universities, upgrade our current facilities in Barnard Observatory to and with community groups who hold a stake in our showcase more fully the scope of our work. Second, we focus areas. As a starting point, our programming theme add a Documentary Arts Wing, complete with teaching for spring 2020 is “Movement and Migration in, to, and labs, multimedia production facilities, gallery space, and through the US South,” and topics proposed for the an auditorium that houses multiple events. In this part of future include voting rights and climate change. the vision, the Center has an in-house library and digital Building Student Community grows the enroll- archive, as well as a full-time archivist. ment in our BA in Southern Studies, our three-track MA Funding the Future acknowledges that innovation (thesis, documentary, and internship), and our MFA in comes at a price. Here we envision a full-time Center Documentary Expression, all while emphasizing the value development officer, as well as a reconfigured Center of interdisciplinarity in a profoundly interconnected world. Advisory Committee whose members continue to have broad interests and creative ideas that span fundraising, THE outreach, and alumni relations. SOUTHERN REGISTER Finally, Earning Global Recognition dedicates the A Publication of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture • The University of Mississippi Center to raising its regional, national, and international STT S ATERLY OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI, U.S.A T Published by profiles so that both scholars and nonscholars find our The Center for the Study of Southern Culture work to be groundbreaking and useful. Not coinciden- The University of Mississippi tally, the Center has revitalized our Future of the South Telephone: 662-915-5993 • Fax: 662-915-5814 initiative, which focuses on questions and issues imme- E-mail: [email protected] • southernstudies.olemiss.edu diately relevant to the region’s current challenges and Winter 2020 anticipates those that may arise in coming years. On the cover: A detail from Memories and Time, by KC. We will be regularly measuring our decisions and our REGISTER STAFF opportunities against the ambitious vision we outlined together, and we invite you to join us in thinking about Editor: James G. Thomas, Jr. the now and future South. 2029 will be here before we Editorial assistants: Rebecca Lauck Cleary and Margaret Gaffney Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee know it. Page 2 Winter 2020 The Southern Register Let It Roll With the Big Three Trio Living Blues News Issue #264 Vol. 50, #6 ® © THE The bass may be the Rodney a drummer, and vice versa. You lay Dangerfield of the blues band—it the foundation harmonica players, LOW DOWN ON THE just doesn’t get any respect. It is the guitar players, even keyboard players most unheralded and misunder- can spring off of.” And bass legend LOW END stood instrument on the bandstand. Jerry Jemmott who, due to a crushed •Jerry Jemmott •Pookie Young Many fans don’t really get the role cochlea, can’t really even hear the •Larry Fulcher of the bass and its place in music. bass. His unique approach has been: •Nellie Mack To put it simply, the bass provides “I mainly followed horn players and •E.G. McDaniel •Tanya Richardson the connection between rhythm and singers . not being able to hear •Joe Pratt melody, holding down the bottom what everybody else was playing. I •Chuck Bush $6.95 US $6.95 CAN end with the drums while helping had to make up what I thought should www.livingblues.com to propel the melody with the be played.” So here is our take on guitar and vocals. LB has dedicated the blues bass player—the low down 50 Reviews Inside! issues to every other instrument on the low end. in the blues (even two drummer We recently lost one of the sweetest issues), and two bass players have persons in the blues world. Beverly I also want to give graced our cover (Willie Dixon and “Guitar” Watkins, who died on our readers an update on writer Lee Willie Kent), but this is our first October 1, was a gem. She was an Hildebrand. As many of you know issue devoted exclusively to the eighty-year-old grandmother, but Lee suffered a stroke two years ago bass player. With this special issue she was also one badass guitar player and has been unable to write since we have now paid tribute to the and stage performer. Watkins came then. I caught up with him a couple complete blues band. into the blues at a time when female weeks ago, and he is living comfort- Inside, we cover eight of the top guitar players were a rarity. While ably in VA housing (Lee is a Vietnam bass players in the blues today, plus she never achieved stardom, she veteran) in California, still passion- this issue’s Let It Roll column focuses did follow her dream and affected ately listening to music and reading, on Willie Dixon’s Big Three Trio, everyone who ever saw her play.