Delta Blues Newsletter

As we head toward the end of this year, I'm taking stock of a great 2015 at the Delta Blues Museum while looking forward to another great one in 2016.

What's made this year so rewarding is that more of you are coming to visit us than ever before: 4,000 more this year than last year. It's that kind of interest and support from you, our visitors and fans, that keeps us working on new ways to make a visit to the Museum a fun, educational, and all-around exciting experience.

It starts on the road to see us. Many of you come to see us by driving south on Highway 61 from Memphis. When you do, look to your left near the Coahoma County Line and you'll see our new billboard:

Thanks to a Visit Mississippi MDA Tourism Development grant, we were able to launch a mobile site. Just visit www.deltabluesmuseum.org on your mobile device to check it out. Also, we've just reprinted our brochure and are excited to welcome Yazoo Pass as one of our tourism partners. Look for a brochure in one of the 13 Mississippi Welcome Centers or download a copy from our website. Thank you Yazoo Pass and Shack Up Inn for helping us get the word out!

Education is a key function at the Museum. This summer, we partnered with the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Living Blues Magazine, and the Blues Archive to present a three-day teacher workshop, which was supported by the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Mississippi Arts Commission, Atmos and the We Shall Overcome Fund. The workshop included presentations by blues scholars; performances by musicians Kenny Brown and Bobby Whalen; tours of the Delta Blues Museum; and a walking tour of the Mississippi Blues Trail markers around downtown Clarksdale. This initial effort was pronounced a success, and we've been asked to repeat the workshop. Thanks to all the presenters and teachers who made the workshop a success. We recently received a grant from the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi to create an "Explore and Learn" feature on The Great Migration. Work has begun on this project and we hope to have it "live" on our website by late spring. If you're not familiar with our Explore and Learn Series, check it out on our home page.

We are working diligently on our new permanent exhibits which will celebrate and honor Mississippi's blues artists by telling their story, not the story of an industry or an individual. The new exhibits will offer an even deeper look into the life and work of these men and women and showcase their legacy to new generations of visitors hereby creating new audiences for the blues.

Thank you all for making possible the work we do. All the ways in which you support the Museum - through your attendance, your donations, your online interaction - have helped us have a wonderfully successful year of fulfilling our mission.

Thanks again for your support, and have a happy holiday.

"Anthony Mostrom: Paramount Portraits"
Drawings from the Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, Vol. 1 and 2

Anthony Mostrom, cartoonist, illustrator, and writer, created hundreds of ink portraits of Paramount's recording artists for Jack White's Third Man Records' reissue of the entire Paramount catalogue. The ink drawings were originally published in two "Field Manuals," 700 pages of encyclopedia-style biographies and discographies of 347 musicians.

Paramount Records is one of America's most important record labels. The company's open-door recording policy led it to the nation's blues, jazz, gospel and folk musics, capturing a comprehensive anthology of what the country sounded like in the 1920s-30s.

"Blues Portraits in Steel: Works by Scott Cawood"

Scott Cawood is a self-taught sculptor with a background in blacksmithing and metal fabrication. He reuses and re-purposes scrap and found steel to create his sculptures. For this Museum show, he created portraits of Skip James, Furry Lewis, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Son House, and Howlin' Wolf. Says Cawood, "I've always felt that these Delta Blues musicians were 'Artists' in the truest sense of the word. This series is meant to broaden that understanding. Each of these portraits is an attempt to capture what I hear in each individual's music and express it in their faces."

Cawood has received wide recognition for his sculptures, showing his work in galleries and museums in New York City, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Miami, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Mesa, AZ, and Maui, HI.

Right: Furry Lewis

"Negro Protest Songs"

Lawrence Gellert, born Laslow Gruenbaum in Budapest, Hungary, collected field recordings in the 1920s and 1930s. He began by making audio recordings, using a makeshift, wind-up recording machine and paper-backed zinc discs; later, he used a Presto tape recorder. Gellert wrote a column for Masses in the '30s, titled "Negro Songs of Protest", which his brother Hugo illustrated with images of lynchings. The columns were eventually collected in a book of the same title. In 1936, Time magazine lauded the "lean, scraggly haired New Yorker" for "collecting Negro songs that few white men have ever heard."

"Gone but Not Forgotten"

Photographs by Billy Johnson, Founder, Director, and Curator of the Highway 61 Blues Museum in Leland, MS. These pictures capture musicians in behind-the-scenes action at the annual Highway 61 Blues Festivals. Johnson focuses on the musicians backstage and on stage, capturing intimate moments before and after performing, when the artists are enjoying themselves, apart from their onstage personas as public entertainers. Many thanks to the exhibit's sponsors: the Mississippi Arts Commission, Covenant Bank, WADE Incorporated, Oxbow, Mississippi Delta Blues Society of Indianola, Friends of the Delta Blues Museum, and Hunter Paper.

Pictured: T-Model Ford, Paul "Wine" Jones
Photo Credit: Billy Johnson

"27 Years of the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival"

An exhibit of posters that spans the 27 years of the annual Clarksdale event. Lots of names, lots of color, lots of archival photoslots of memories - an eyeful of blues history in a collection of Festival ephemera that are now a valuable record of blues performers and performances.

"Give My Poor Heart Ease"

This exhibit features photos from the book of the same name by pioneering southern folklorist William Ferris who toured Mississippi in the 60s and 70s, documenting African Americans as they spoke about and performed the diverse musical traditions that form the authentic roots of the blues. Here are the stories of blues musicians who represent a wide range of musical traditions--from one-string instruments, bottle-blowing, and banjo to spirituals, hymns, and prison work chants. The book comes with a DVD of rare film of Delta life in the early '70s and a CD of music from the same period. You can buy from our Gift Shop here.

John Holmes, DBM Instructor: Living and Teaching the Blues

John Holmes has taught in the Museum's Arts and Education program since 2013. Richard Crisman, current Gift Shop Manager and a former teacher in the program himself, interviewed Holmes about his life in the blues and his interest in passing on his knowledge of the music and the history through the A&E program.