

Though he came to be revered by many musicians for his thumb and fingerpicking, Powell gained a reputation for customizing his instruments, either adding an extra string or attaching pie plates to his guitars to attain a somewhat resonator sound. His guitar was a Silvertone, in which he inserted an aluminum resonator similar to those found on National guitars. Inspired by the twelve-string models, he added a seventh string and tuned it an octave higher than conventional tuning. He played lead most of the time when accompanied by another musician, but he could also discourse the most beautiful music on the banjo, horn, mandolin, violin, and harmonica.
In 1936, Powell traveled to New Orleans and recorded six sides for Bluebird Records, including such classics as “Street Walkin’ Woman” and “Pony Blues.” He also provided guitar accompaniment on four songs of his vocalist wife, Mississippi Matilda, and ten songs for harmonica player Robert Hill. Powell would not record again for almost thirty-five years. In 1970, Gene Rosenthal and Mike Stewart recorded some songs in Greenville for Adelphi Records. In 1972, he performed alongside many of his former playing partners at the Festival of American Folklife in Washington D.C. Alan Lomax included Powell in his 1978 documentary The Land Where Blues Began. While he went on to perform at numerous other blues festivals before his death in November 1998, Italian Albatross Records released Powell’s only full-length album, The Police in Mississippi Blues, in 1975.
Installing the headstone of Eugene Powell
Photographs by Euphus Ruth and Axel Küstner




In 2015, the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund organized a benefit featuring Tyler Keith, Davis Coen, Cadillac Funk, and Eric Deaton at the Blind Pig in Oxford, MS. The money raised at the event paid for the raising and leveling of his flat headstone in the northwest section of Evergreen Cemetery outside the town of Metcalfe.