- photo by Bill
Steber
On Saturday August 29 at 11am a Mississippi Blues Trail
marker will be dedicated in downtown Como in honor of
the late fife and drum musician Otha Turner. The ceremony
is scheduled to include performances by Jimbo Mathus,
Mark Massey, and the Rising Star Fife and Drum band,
featuring Turner’s granddaughter Sharde Thomas
on fife and vocals. This will be the 82nd Mississippi
Blues Trail marker to be dedicated since the first was
unveiled in late 2006. A marker for Mississippi Fred
McDowell was unveiled in Como on May 7, 2009.
The marker, which was partially paid for with funds
raised at the annual North Mississippi Hill Country
Picnic in Potts Camp, is being dedicated in tandem with
the annual fife and drum picnic and goat roast held
on Turner’s property in nearby Gravel Springs.
Visitors to the marker unveiling are encouraged to attend
the picnic later in the day. The two-day event begins
early Friday evening.
Turner (ca. 1908 – 2003) was the most famous
exponent of the north Mississippi fife and drum tradition,
which was first documented by folklorist Alan Lomax
in 1942. Other local fife and drum performers noted
on the marker include brothers Ed and Lonnie Young,
Napolian Strickland, R.L. Boyce, Sid Hemphill, and his
granddaughter Jessie Mae Hemphill. The Hemphill family
is scheduled to receive their own marker in nearby Senatobia
in the future.
Although the local fife and drum tradition is often
described as sounding “African,” its origins
likely stem from African American musicians transforming
the Euro-American military fife and drum tradition with
African and African-American musical influences. The
local tradition is thought to have started shortly after
the Civil War. Unlike the military groups, the north
Mississippi fife and drum bands played mostly at social
events, often picnics held around the 4th of July and
Labor Day. The groups’ repertoires included spirituals,
instrumentals, minstrel songs, and blues, such as Sitting
On Top of the World and My Babe.
Otha Turner (his name is sometimes spelled Othar or
Other) was born in Rankin County, but moved as a small
child to north Mississippi. He received his first fife
from a neighbor as a boy, and was soon making his own
instruments, using a heated metal rod to bore out a
piece of cane and create mouth and finger holes. Turner
worked as a farmer for most of his life, and for many
years hosted annual fife and drum picnics and goat roasts
on his property in Gravel Springs. For many years he
played drums together with fife player Napolian Strickland,
and later formed his own group, which featured members
of his family including his daughter Bernice Turner
Pratcher and granddaughter Sharde Thomas. Turner was
first recorded in the late ‘60s and in the 1990s
recorded two CDs under his own name, Everybody Hollerin’
Goat and Otha Turner and the Afrossippi Allstars,
both of which were produced by Luther Dickinson of the
North Mississippi Allstars.
In the 1970s Turner was profiled in the documentaries
Gravel Springs Fife and Drum and The Land
Where the Blues Began, and he later became a regular
performer at events including the Delta Blues Festival
and the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival. In
2003 Turner was featured in the Martin Scorsese blues
film Feel Like Going Home, and his music was
also used in Scorsese’s film Gangs of New
York. Upon Turner’s death in 2003 his then
thirteen-year-old granddaughter and protégé
Sharde Thomas took over leadership of his Rising Star
Fife and Drum Band.
For more information about the Mississippi Blues
Trail please visit msbluestrail.org
