The Headstone of Sonny Boy Williamson II: The Foundation of Blues Tourism Sits in Tutwiler
The back of Williamson's Grave
In the early 1900s, the only way across the Mississippi at Helena. Ark., was a ferry run by Harold Jenkins, father of country singer Conway Twitty. The ferry closed at midnight. "which was good in my favor," says Mrs. Hill. who still runs the hotel, when they were playing juke joints in Clarksdale or nearby towns.
"When they had to stay over, they stayed with me," she says. The musicians kept a piano on the premises, and the place rang with music.
Mrs. Hill was a good friend of Sonny Boy Williamson, a flamboyant harmonica player and singer who was featured on the popular live radio show King Biscuit Time on station KFFA in Helena. The show's sponsor, Interstate Grocery Co., manufactured Sonny Boy Corn Meal, featuring a drawing of Williamson playing his harmonica while sitting barefoot on an ear of corn.
During the 1960s, Williamson became popular with the rock generation. He played extensively in Europe and considered moving there. But, sensing that he was dying, he returned home a few months before his death in 1965.
Mrs. Hill recalls that Williamson stopped by one Sunday afternoon and found that she was taking a nap. "Wake her up." he demanded. "I want to play some music."
"He played in front of my window, on my porch," she recalls. "Oh he had a crowd that Sunday. It didn't take him long to draw a crowd. He went on, and a few days later he was dead."
Williamson's body was found in the second-floor apartment he kept over a business in downtown Helena. According to King Biscuit Time announcer Sonny Payne, the downstairs business in those days was the Dreamland Cafe. If that sounds like a touch worthy of Tennessee Williams, you'll be interested to know that the late playwright once lived in Clarksdale.
Williamson's grave is near Tutwiler, which is on U.S. 49. about 15 miles southeast of Clarksdale. No signs point the way, but it's not hard to find someone to direct you down a country road to the churchyard. Unlike in the 1980s, you won't find the musician's grave overgrown.
McMurry's Rough Draft (c. 1976)
The idea for the headstone came about in Jackson, Mississippi. Lillian McMurry and the board of
directors of Globe Music Corporation met in Jackson to discuss promotions and
the music business on December 3, 1976. Since she wanted to
“to get some publicity” for its blues catalogue, McMurry made a motion “to
design and purchase a headstone/memorial” to place on the grave of Sonny Boy Williamson
II in Tutwiler. She estimated that the
marker and memorial service might cost as much as $1,500. The motion was seconded and carried on a
vote. On December 14, 1976, McMurry commissioned Davidson Marble
& Granite Works, of Canton, to provide an upright granite monument for
placement on the blues musician’s grave in Tutwiler.It cost $654.75. On March 5, 1977, McMurry reported to the board that the
“headstone was in the process of being set as per her conversations with
Davidson Marble Works.”The board,
however, decided “to do nothing definite right now about a memorial service.”
The grave is in Tutwiler because his two surviving sisters, Mary Ashford and Julia Barner, lived and died in the city. The late blues researcher Bill Donoghue erected a marker in their honor following their deaths in the 1990s.
Tutwiler is a fitting place for a great bluesman's final resting place because it's also the place where W.C. Handy claimed to have had his first encounter with the blues, around the turn of the century.
SBW II's Sister's Graves
Handy, who orchestrated and popularized the folk music of his people and created such standards as St. Louis Blues, was a classically trained musician who had expressed little interest in the work songs and field hollers he'd heard. But he later recalled that his interest was piqued when. on a visit to play at a Tutwiler hotel. he was introduced to the weirdest music I'd ever heard."
During a long night of waiting for a late train in the Tutwiler station, a ragged-looking man sat beside him and began playing a guitar. sliding a knife up and down the strings to produce a moaning, voice-like sound. Picking out a complex rhythm, he sang. repeating a line about "going where the Southern cross the Dog." a reference to the intersection of two railroads in Moorhead, Miss. Handy incorporated that line into his Yellow Dog Blues.
In the 1980s and 1990s, tourists often made unsuccessful attempts to find the grave of the legendary harmonica player, and the gas station attendant often steered them to the small Whitfield Baptist Church.
Beside it, in what looked like nothing more than weeds from the road, was the headstone with Williamson's picture cut into it. The grave was decidedly off the beaten track, but others had made the trek too. Fans often left harmonicas, guitar picks, even a pint of whiskey on the headstone.
"It's this diamond of headstone, yet it's overgrown with weeds," said Joe Zochowski, host of Nothing But the Blues on WFYI-FM (90.1) in Indianapolis. "You have to look for it, to tramp through the weeds and cut through the briars and the B.S. to get to the heart of it. But people are willing to do it because they care that much about the music. That's a metaphor for the blues to me."
The Charleston (MS) Sun Sentinel, Nov 29, 1990.
The 1st Annual Tutwiler Blues Festival
The first Tutwiler Blues Festival was held in late November 1990 in the town's Railroad Park. Mayor Gary Shepherd and the city sponsored the fundraising event and proceeds from donations were supposed to help memorialize Sonny Boy Williamson II, the well-known blues musician who grew up in Tutwiler and was buried in a nearby plantation cemetery. "We plan to buy a bronze plaque to go in the park in his honor and to put up road signs on the highway showing how to get to the place he is buried," said Shepherd. The headliner was none other than will be T.J. Wheeler of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the famous breeding ground of farmers who sold their souls to the devil and got an honest defense from an attorney named Daniel Webster - "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1937).In an attempt to undo the legacy of these weak-minded farmers from his home state (that's a joke about soul-sellers), Wheeler traveled the country performing and delivering his anti-drug message of "hope, not dope." (not a joke, just a good man) The mayor said the blues artist plans to make an appearance in several local Tallahatchie County schools while in the area. As a part of Saturday's activities, the Tutwiler Lions Club had the sight van in the town to screen festival-goers for eye diseases such as glaucoma. Lions members also manned the concession stand to provide refreshments. "I'm hoping it'll be a big success," said Shepherd. "I'm looking for several thousand people to show up." He said he expects blues followers from out-of-town. The mayor noted that the festival, if successful, could become an annual event in the town. In the end, $100 was raised for the Sonny Boy Blues Society, which maintained the site for a while. Some folks gave lip service to disinterment and reburial in Helena, but the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund obtained a grant for local nuns, who maintained the property into the new millennium.
Ignorance, Priviledge, and Self-Interest Equal Exploitation Not Honor: The Activism and Victimhood of Johnny Tombstone and the Intellectual Foundations of the Killer Blues Headstone Project In late 1990, Living Blues magazine published an article suggesting, among other things, that Johnson was buried at Payne Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Quito--about 2 miles from Mt. Zion MB Church--Morgan City. One woman, at least, remembered it that way. Known as Queen Elizabeth, Ms. Elizabeth Thomas claimed she was once Robert Johnson's girlfriend and she recalls his burial at Payne Chapel. She even pointed out the gravesite--about 30 yards from the white-frame church, near an old tree stump. "It's my gut feeling that it's at Payne," exclaimed Peter Lee, editor of Living Blues, "but I could never prove it. Who knew for sure?" Skip Henderson wasn't sure, but he planned to erect a marker at Payne Chapel as well as install a brand new PA system--donated by Harley Peavey. He had the PA installed inside the white-frame church, but a band from Atlanta had plans of their own for the burial ground....
"Admirers Mark Blues Musician's Grave"
by Tiffany Tyson
Delta blues king Robert Johnson no longer lies in an unmarked grave. A group of Johnson's admirers, musicians from Atlanta, Ga., placed a marker on his reported gravesite in the cemetery at Payne Chapel Missionary Baptist (MB) Church. They were accompanied by Johnson's boyhood friend and fellow blues singer, Johnny Shines.
Stevie Tombstone, lead guitarist for the Atlanta-based band the Tombstones, said, "It's a shame that there wasn't a marker there already. (Johnson) was a big influence on our music and we just decided to do it. Once we had the opportunity, we just did it.
When Stevie says opportunity he means money. Although the Tombstones have been playing together for about six years in clubs and colleges, they just signed their first big recording contract with Relativity Records. With their first advance check from the contract the three-sometimes four-member band bought the 125 pound marker for the grave of Robert Johnson.
The Tombstones purchased this flat stone grave marker in honor of Robert Johnson, which sits on the spot pointed out by Queen Elizabeth.
The marker is tasteful. It says simply:
"Robert Johnson, Born -May 8, 1911, Died - August 16, 1938, Resting in the Blues."
Rick Richards of the band Georgia Satellites was also at the service. `The way I see it, if it weren't for the blues we wouldn't have a job."
Greenwood Commonwealth, Feb 28, 1991
Shines, who lives in Tuscaloosa, Ala., said, think he should have had a headstone a long time ago. His influence meant a lot to a lot of people and I'm glad to see this finally happening."
While there are many rumors that blues music is associated with voodoo and Robert Johnson was reported to have made a pact with the devil, Shines said that blues is the basis of all other modern music. He explained that slaves used music to get messages across the fields to each other. This lyrical communication became a way of life that is now called the blues. I have a God given talent to play the blues," he said. "If you don't use your talents they'll be taken away from you." Shines says he has proof of that. "In 1978 I quit playing the blues, and in '80 I suffered a stroke that paralyzed my left hand. I've started playing again now and my hand is coming back."
Greenwood Commonwealth, Feb 28, 1991
Shines played one of the most famous Robert Johnson songs, "Crossroads," at the gravesite after the stone was laid. Stevie, Richards, folklorist Charles Locke and Tombstone manager Andrew Adler stood by silently, heads bowed, listening with the reverence usually reserved for religious services.
And it was a religious service of sorts. While Robert Johnson has had a cult following among blues enthusiasts, the myths about his associations with the devil have kept his life and death shrouded in mystery. He was buried without a funeral service and no stone was ever placed a the gravesite. The only marker there was a small pot, rumored to be a sort of collection plate. People place money in the pot to buy Johnson's soul back from the devil. At last count, someone had contributed one penny.
But now, 53 years after he with reportedly poisoned, he has been properly laid to rest with a marker and a service befitting the man known best as 'The King of the Delta Blues."
Shines passed away the following year, Greenwood Commonwealth, Apr 20, 1992.
Johnson was reportedly poisoned at a have down the road from Payne Chapel church, located a few miles from lila Bena. 'there have also been reports that he was stabbed, although the cause of death is officially pneumonia.
No one in the group wanted to speculate about his deals with the devil or the varied myths about when and where he was killed. They just wanted to remember a man they consider a friend.
The 1992 Robert Johnson Memorial Blues Festival (Greenwood) was dedicated to Shines.
Click HERE for more on Johnny Shines Shines explained Johnson's death this way. "Robert was versatile and he was way ahead of his time. That's why he had to die and that's why someone will come back and be as great as Robert Johnson was. I don't know who it will be yet, but someone will come back."
Johnson's music is still alive and well. Columbia Records, who has been releasing Johnson's music regularly since his death, recently put out a two CD reissue set. "Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings," has gone gold.
The Tombstones, a band from Atlanta, had signed a record deal after several years on the road. The band used some of its advance to purchase a flat marker for Robert Johnson and dedicate it at Payne Chapel. Johnny Shines attended the graveside service, and despite his ill health, even performed a few songs. The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund had already planned to commission a separate cenotaph to erect at Payne Chapel, but the Tombstones and a retired Johnny Shines did the honors themselves. Everyone at the time felt it in their bones that his remains were at Payne Chapel.
by John Butch (in the Greenwood CommonwealthDecember 29, 1999)
Arthneice Jones has played the blues most of his life and doesn’t expect it to live much past his generation of musicians. Truth is, said Jones, a Glendora native in his mid-50s, the younger folks don’t know the blues he knew growing up in a rural, segregated, dead-end Mississippi. And they wouldn’t want to. Walking down Issaquena Avenue during Clarksdale’s Sunflower Blues Festival this fall, Jones looked toward the refurbished train station that will house the expanded Delta Blues Museum. He then pointed beneath the railroad trestle to the decay of what used to be the “black” downtown where President Clinton stood for his photo opportunities during his July visit.
“The blues ain’t on this side of those tracks,” Jones' said. “It’s on that side.”
Many say the blues are as dead as the legendary Robert Johnson in the Delta, killed by the mechanical cotton picker and technology, the depths of yesteryears pain soothed by todays easy comforts and universal civil rights. Musically, it has given way to hip-hop, soul, country - nothing resembling the piteous moan of Johnson’s vocals. A few older players still teach, but more in the manner of historians keeping a traditional craft alive than as a living, evolving art form. Socially, Jones maintains, life has become too comfortable and predictable for even the most down-and-out. James Thomas Jr., whose father Son Thomas was one of the Delta’s more well-known latter-day bluesmen, said he sings to honor his father’s memory. Thomas hopes the next generation of African Americans rediscovers the blues and adopts it as its heritage. “When I go play, it’s something for him and me to go promote his music--to get everybody to feel the blues,” Thomas said of his father. “Like he said, there’s a lot of ways to feel the blues. Have a good woman, she quits you, that’s the blues. Ain’t got no money, that’s the blues. You know if you’re broke you got the blues right there. I’m living a life of music I hope will mean more later on. A $10,000 cenotaph honors a person buried elsewhere--the legendary Delta bluesman Robert Johnson--at the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church cemetery in Morgan City. The other side has a photo of Johnson (right). NO BIRTH OR DEATH DATES--a prime indicator of grave markers.
Tom Hagenaars, 33 (left) and Irene Smits, 31, both of the Netherlands, share stories about Johnson with Bert Robertson, Greenwood fire-fighter and former Morgan City. catfish farmer, and Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church pastor the Rev. James Ratliff Jr. (right). while looking through guide books in the Mt. Zion cemetery where Johnson is not buried but honored like a BOSS. “He died back in 1938, and I didn't even get on this earth until 1948," said James Ratliff Jr., pastor of Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, where Robert Johnson is reportedly buried. Ratliff said he believes Johnson's body would have been buried away from the church near the highway. “lt he was out here at all,” he said. What’s left are the memories, museums and the music. And the legacy of the musicians. In Morgan City, for instance. they come from around the world to pay homage to Robert Johnson. Once there, visitors like Dutch couple Tom Hagenaars and Irene Smits do the things common to modern-day pilgrims who seek cultural icons where their ancestors might have sought religion. They compare notes with their travel guide. Pose for pictures with the “King of the Delta Blues Singers” monument erected in Johnson’s honor, and chat with the Rev. James Ratliff`Jr. of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, where a $10000 stone obelisk stands on the spot where Johnson's ole evil spirit would have caught that afterlife Greyhound Bus, and took off smooth into the never...... Hagenaars. 31, doesn’t play an instrument, Smits confided as her boyfriend circled the monument. Smits, 25, watched as Hagenaars carefully stepped over plastic flowers, beads. cigarette butts, guitar picks and other flotsam left as Johnson’s tribute - reading every word of the rich engraving. He lives for the music, she said. “lt`s because I`m a big Rolling Stones fan that we came. If you dig deeper into their music, you have to come here," Hagenaars said. He was delighted to find Love In Vain, which the Stones covered on their 1969 album Let It Bleed, at the top of the list of Johnson’s songs etched into the marker
Don‘t Get Their Due
With few exceptions - the obvious being BB. King, who has transcended the genre by recording with major stars across the rock and pop universe, and John Lee Hooker, who no longer records because of ill health -- white musicians from the Stones to Erie Clapton to the late Stevie Ray Vaughn to Johnny Lang have become the blues guitar heroes.
"Disco and rap music got the rap generation with Boom! Boom! Got the one beat to it." Thomas said. "Lot of young whites play good blues and are really interested in it. I think the white players like it because of the feeling they have, something really fascinating – the sound. The feeling is different, but a good blues sound is good music and they like to listen to it.”
Wade Walton. 76, a Clarksdale barber for 55 years. signed his first blues recording contract in 1958. He said many of the white players like Vaughn and the local bands that circulate through Southern blues festivals have the music. But they don’t have the personal experience to make it original. “The way we lived was a lot of it. When they come to town, they had a curfew, 12 o’clock. That was for black people,” he said “I’ve been mistreated in this town. The police, they was all white then, used to go upside my head with a blackjack.”
Walton said he began wearing his trademark barber’s coat as a form of identification, hoping police would recognize him and leave him alone: “The blues come from that kind of stuff. Hard times. Good times. No money. The blues come from that. I wouldn’t think a lot of the kids understand. A lot don’t pay attention to it. They don’t seem to get into the blues.”
An Early Lesson
Marco Stewart, a Clarksdale native, learned about the blues sitting in Walton’s barber chair as a kid. The older man played harmonica and the strop, beating out time as he sharpened his razor on the thick leather.
A successful West Coast rap and R&B producer, Stewart is attempting to showcase some of the old blues artists as well as expose the Delta to other live music through Mingles Sports Bar & Coffee House. The first of what he hopes will become a Delta franchise has opened in Clarksdale’s train depot, which he’d like to see turned into a miniature Beale Street.
Stewart said he plays around with the blues but never plays it. It does, he said, influence his musical style as a producer. "lt takes listening to someone who created it and was around it years and years. You never get the full understanding of it in a week or two weeks: it`s impossible. That’s why you’ve got to have so much respect for old blues," Stewart said.
“I don’t see that much of it anymore. Not that that’s bad, but you can’t take away from what was real. Years ago, in the '50s and ’60s. it was real. Now, basically, we’re just copycats. We’re trying to copy the style, trying to copy Muddy Waters and Ike Turner. If we want to keep that tradition alive, it takes time, practice and dedication. You really have to be sincere with it.”
To countless thousands of visitors from around the world, the Delta, with its vast cotton fields, cypress swamps and rich, flat land, is the blues. This is the land that spawned King and Hooker. Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon. Son House and, of course, the man whose grave Hagenaars came to see.
It can be argued that without Mississippi’s bluesmen, seminal British rock bands like the Stones, the Yardbirds, Cream and Led Zeppelin never would have existed. Their albums carry songwriting credits by Mississippi-born bluesmen, many of whom left to form the core of the Chicago blues scene.
Ratliff had never heard of Johnson until 1991, when a New Jersey music preservationist approached his congregation with the idea of placing a monument in the cemetery where Johnson was once rumored to be buried. That’s after the Payne Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Quito, a couple of miles north on Mississippi 3, which [IS NOT HIS BURIAL SITE], turned down the opportunity. Johnson, as history tells it, was poisoned by a jealous woman after performing in a Three Forks honkytonk. [PROBLEM WAS THAT THREE FORKS IS UP NEAR FORT PEMBERTON NOT QUITO]
“Some of the older people don`t think the blues ought to have no connection with religion,” said Payne Chapel church deacon Richard Johnson, no relation. And certainly not with Robert Johnson, whom legend has it sold his soul to the devil at a Delta crossroads.
Mount Zion had no such qualms regarding Johnson, Ratliff said. “He died in 1938, and I didn’t even get on this earth until 1948,” he said. “I’ve always been open-minded. Blues don’t have nothing to do with salvation. If you believe in Jesus, that’s all you need to do. There’s no harm in this monument out here. Folks could use churching up.”
Ratliff believes Johnson’s body was probably buried by an old oak tree near the road in the Mount Zion cemetery. “if he was out here at all." The Payne Chapel contingent, who have since laid a small headstone with Johnson’s name on it in their cemetery, have the word of one of Johnson’s old girlfriends “before she got too old and started forgetting.” Richard Johnson said. The dispute is friendly enough. Both churches get their share of visitors. [NOT TOO MUCH ANYMORE]
International Language
Bert Robertson. a Greenwood firefighter and former Morgan City catfish farmer had never heard of Johnson either until the tourists began coming in. Though Robertson has met visitors from all over the world two bewildered Japanese tourists encountered in the Morgan City post office rank among the most memorable.
Robertson speaks no Japanese. Their English wasn’t much better. After failing to understand “Where grabe?" - repeated loudly a number of times apparently to overcome the language barrier. Robertson said one of the tourists tried another phrase. Only later, Robertson said, did he figure out it was air attempt at "blues singer."
Frustrated. one finally began playing an air guitar. “I said, `Oh, Robert Johnson. Come with me. I`ll show you where he is.` " Robertson said, laughing at the memory. “They came all this way and couldn’t even speak English. They flew from Japan to Los Angeles and drove a car to Morgan City to see this. “It happens all the time."
Coleman Narmour of Carrollton recounts this story his father,
fiddler Willie T. Narmour, told him about the origin of his enduring hit tune,
"Carroll County Blues: "
"He said he was leaving Leflore one fall. He'd taken
a wagonload of cotton to the gin that morning. You'd have to wait your turn in
line, so between sundown and dark his cotton had been ginned, and he and his
mules were heading on back home. A little black boy was sitting on a train
depot with a jew’s harp, trying to mock a train. From that, he got the tune and
got to fiddling the next day on the 'Carroll County Blues."
Willie Narmour and his partner, Shell Smith, recorded the
song in 1929 and went on to make a slew of other records before the Depression
nearly squeezed life out of the recording industry and then changing times
altered the quality and tastes of it.
"Carroll County Blues" became a legend and was
subsequently recorded by many other musicians. Regionally at least, it's in
live repertoires, a rousing hillbilly, then redneck standard. Yet Narmour's
daughter, Hazel Wiggins of near Holcomb, will say quickly and decisively,
"Nobody else can play 'Carroll County Blues.' And there wasn't a 'Carroll
County Blues' until they went to the studio and recorded it."
Smith and Narmour, buddies, dirt poor fanners, played
guitar and fiddled for country dances. They were a county item long before they
were discovered by scouts from Okeh Records at a fiddling contest at Winona in
1927. Such contests, Wiggins recalls, "Daddy always won, until they
wouldn't let him enter anymore."
Neither wanted to go on tour. While stories of how they
entertained their fellow passengers during train trips to recording sessions
regaled their families and friends, the truth is, Narmour and Smith were home
boys.
Narmour's daughter shared memories of her father working
out tunes, for which he and Smith had no names and which they couldn't commit
to paper, because neither could read nor write music. Names of these nostalgic
tunes were created simply because there had to be titles for the record labels.
Titles, such as "Captain George Has Your Money
Come," "Where the Southern Crosses the Dog", "Sweet Milk
& Peaches Breakdown," "Winona Echoes Waltz" and 'Who's Been
Giving You Corn?' were products of discussions between the recording people and
the artists "on the spot", Wiggins said.
Several tunes bear the root, “Charleston,” referring not
to the type of tune, but to a town in neighboring Tallahatchie County, and
"Carroll County Blues" came because Narmour and Smith thought it
appropriate to name one of the tunes for where they lived.
To Carroll Countians, Narmour and Smith were true, and at
home their fame never waned. It would be the connoisseurs and the record
collectors in decades to come, however, who would rediscover the old Narmour
and Smith recordings and assure their niche in American music history.
“Carroll County Blues" became a legend
and was subsequently recorded by many other musicians. Regionally at least,
it's in live repertoires, a rousing redneck standard.
Among those are Joe Bussard of Frederick, Md., whose
25,000-piece collection includes most of the N&S records as well as early
records by the partners' neighbor, John Hurt, who became internationally known
after a blues historian named Tom Hoskins found him in 1963.
Narmour and Smith were responsible for Hurt's first brush
with the record industry They recommended their neighbor when talent scouts
asked them if they knew any good black guitarists. (for more on N&S and Hurt, click here)
In 1963, it was too late for Narmour's second chance. He
had a minor stroke in the mid-1950s and a massive stroke killed him March 24,
1961. He was born March 22, 1889.
During his exploratory trip into Mississippi in the 1960s
Hoskins spoke with Smith, who had been working as custodian at nearby Valley
High School, a country school that closed in the late 1960s. It was also too
late for Smith, whose "boom-chang" guitar underscores his and
Narmour's now-precious recordings. Smith, born Nov. 26, 1895, died Aug. 28,
1968.
Greenwood Commonwealth Mar 24, 1961.
Their graves are marked by modest headstones in cemeteries along the road from Valley. Narmour, whose day to day work included driving a school bus, farming, and in the 1930s, running a mechanic's garage at Avalon, is buried in the Pisgah Cemetery alongside his widow, Velma Carroll Narmour, who died in 1978. Smith is buried in Moore's Memorial Cemetery behind Pisgah Church. His widow, Lillian Kirby, died April 17, 1985, and is buried next to him. Narmour's last job was on the District 2 road crew. In Carroll County Miss., of course. Hurt, who died in 1966, is buried in a wooded glade along the edge of Valley Hill, overlooking Avalon. The cemetery was associated with St. James Church No.1, and people are still being buried there.
Born poor, Narmour (pronounced similarly to
"armor") and Smith died poor and played out their lives true to the
bone among the people for whom they played at socials and picnics and especially,
the country dances which prevailed as primary entertainment. They had little
formal education and couldn't read music.
The inability to read music meant they couldn't write the
compositions down, preserving them in that manner for the ages. Among their own, they long had validation.
Purists keep the faith around the globe now.
Hoskins, a resident of North Carolina, declared in 1997, “Narmour
was a darn good fiddler, with his own style, a distinctive style from the
Appalachian, Georgia, or Arkansas fiddlers. Smith was a 'boom-chang guitar
player, with a pick most likely, a flat sort of pick.”
A reviewer writing in the Spring 1996 edition of “Old Time Herald” about a
recent release in England which included selections from N&S, described
Smith's style as "steamroller" and promised listeners they would soon
fall in love with this old time music. Descendants of the pair wish N&S
recordings were more accessible to a new generation that has had the
opportunity to hear works by black blues artists such as Hurt and Robert
Johnson through, for example, high-powered record companies like Sony.
The same promotion, however, doesn't seem immediate for
the white country pioneers, such as the Carroll County duo.
Steve LaVere, a music historian, points out that the more
people e are exposed to N & S, the greater the demand for their records —
no matter the quality. He disputed some latter-day critics, who describe
Narmour and Smith as having a "bluesy sound."
LaVere said, "No, I’d call it old-fashioned country
fiddling, along with Smith's guitar 'Carroll County Blues' especially had a
tune that was quite infectious, and even the waltzes were lilting, attractive.
They played totally and entirely by feel, not how it 'should' be played."
This philosophy plays true to the folk-lore, the
"way it was" for these old-time fiddlers and their neighbors.
"If you had a strong enough house, you could have a
good 'stomp' there," said Coleman Narmour, Willie's son, who lives in Itta
Bena.
Country dances were routinely held in rural Mississippi
prior to World War H, especially. "I tagged along a lot myself, whether or
not Daddy was playing."
Narmour, 73 at the time of the interview in 1997, at age
18 left the county his father and Shell Smith fiddled and picked into legend 70
years earlier, but Carroll County stayed in his blood.
"You worked hard in those days," he said,
"you plowed with a middle-buster. We didn't have no jet planes. We got T
Models and A Models and didn't have no roads to put those on. Now you zoom
through Carroll County 70 miles an hour. I used to ride a horse from Valley to
Carrollton to the gristmill."
Arnie Watson, nearly 90 and uncle of U.S. Sen.Trent Lott,
says 1930s Carroll County was a wild place, and in the Val-ley area, where
Watson partly grew up, "there was a bootlegger in every hollow"
Harmon Mullins, in his 90s, recalls he "went around
with 'ern (Narmour and Smith) some. I couldn't dance. rd get drunk They were
supposed to get a lot of money and got messed out of it some way. I've heard
people try to play 'Carroll County Blues', but nobody could do it like they
could."
Keith Worrell of Greenwood grew up in the 1950s and 1960s
at Valley, where his father was school principal. Worrell, a musician and radio
engineer, well remem-bers Smith especially and endorses restoration or
digitalization of the old recordings.
Smith, he said, was "a man of few words, but his
wife was my best pal." Worrell also endorses establishing a memorial to
these musicians, largely unsung, who lived and modestly practiced their craft
within a few miles of each other at Valley.
Watson recalled, "You could stand out at the end of
a field on the old Narmour place and look out across Avalon. Willie and Shell
played at an all-night party on my 21st birthday, and John Hurt 'spelled' them.
The cultures, black and white, did-n't mix, but John Hurt had his style, and
they had theirs. Shell and Willie were just country boys; they went to New York
and put those songs out, but continued to stay home, play for country dances,
and make crops."
For making the records, Watson says, the story is they
"got $350 – and that's all they ever got."
Collector Bussard, who offers tapes from records in his
collection from his home at 6610 Cherry Hill Drive, Frederick, Maryland 21702,
telephone 301-662-6666, says a Narmour and Smith recording "in mint
condition is worth from $100-$200, maybe more."
Musicians of their time, he said, were paid about $50 per
side per record, and few got royalties.
"You could stand out at the end of a field on the
old Narmour place and look out across Avalon. Willie and Shell played at an
all-night party on my 21st birthday, and John Hurt 'spelled' them. John Hurt had his style, and they
had theirs. Shell and Willie were just country boys; they went to New York and
put those songs out, but continued to stay home, play for country dances, and
make crops."- Arnie Mason
Laura Oakes of Greenwood, Narmour's granddaughter, has
one of the N&S records, an Okeh. She recalls going to a blues festival in
Clarksdale, where one of the performers, "Philadelphia" Jerry Ricks,
embraced her appreciatively after learning her grandfather's identity.
Narmour left Mrs. Oakes' brother, Chip Narmour, also of
Greenwood, one of his battered, long-played fiddles, and her young daughter,
Anna Kathryn Oakes, dances kinetically to both the black blues recordings
brought home by her father, Richard Oakes, and to bootleg tapes of her great-grandfather's
music.
"What I would like," said Mrs. Oakes, "is
for people to always have access to Grand-daddy's music. It's so hard to find
copies of records that aren't badly scratched. This access I'd like especially
for my relatives, and for people who grew up in Carroll County and don't have
access anymore. Just like Anna Kathryn, they'll never meet him." (Born in
1955, she remembers her grandfather, but she never met Shell Smith.)
Wiggins said, "When Daddy did 'Carroll County
Blues,' he did it all in his head, like with my math problems, but he couldn't
write it down on paper.
"He got to whistling what he could hear in his head
and call me, Sis, listen to me, what I am playing, and had me whistle while he
worked it. I'd say, 'Why, that's pretty, what is it? He said, don't know, Sis,
but we're going to find out. Set here and whistle and fill in.'"
Wiggins, 79 at the time of the interview, describes her
father as a small man, about 5 feet, 5 inches tall, with deep blue eyes and
curly black hair "He was a Frenchman, you know," she said. His personality,
she says, was as engaging as his fiddle play. This claim is backed up by people
who knew him, like Arnie Watson. "Have you swept around your door?"
he'd say to people who'd criticize others, Wiggins said. He wasn't typically
religious, but he'd attend church at nearby Pisgah occasionally. His father,
John Narmour, was also a fiddler, who made Narmour learn on an instrument made
out of a cigar box before getting his son a real one.
Frequent musical evenings also provided an excuse, or
outlet, for music when Wiggins was growing up. "Uncle Henry (Narmour)
could also play fiddle, or he'd beat straws, we called it. It wasn't really
straws, but perhaps drumsticks in time, or play bass fiddle. Oh, Aunt Jimmie
could sing! Uncle Henry'd get up and buck dance up a storm. Now, they call it
'clogging', but it's the same thing."
Others can't recreate "Carroll County Blues" as
her father created it and played it with Shell Smith. "I've heard 'em
try," she allowed. The late Grover Duke, whose grave is also in the old
Pisgah Cemetery, could "play it as well as anyone else could," she
said.
Duke's widow, Sue Duke, born in 1947, married her
father's good friend after her first marriage failed. She has had her own band
for decades, playing keyboard and piano. She first heard "Carroll County
Blues" at age 3, on her great-grandfather Hamp Corder's front porch. Duke
was playing it on the guitar.
She explains what she considers the basic difference
between the original and more modern versions of the famous corn-position.
"What people are doing is adding more bars to a measure on the
turn-around, when another verse is to be done," she explained.
Duke follows latter traditions and routinely produces
rousing versions when the song is requested, which is often. Even if she and
others think their interpretations work better musically, truth is, she says,
to do "Carroll County Blues" exactly as Narmour and Smith did, an
artist has to be able to "hear" the subtle nuances. No can do, Duke
admits.
It's a piece of history, that song, above all the other
hits Narmour and Smith produced.
It's a standard, a rousing, redneck standard claimed on
occasion by Carroll Countians from other states whose make-up includes a
Carroll County – but isn't the right Carroll County. Just to set the record
straight.
"He
got to whistling what he could hear in his head and call me, `Sis, listen to
me, what I am playing, and had me whistle while he worked it. I'd say, 'Why,
that's pretty; what is it?' He said, 'I don't know, Sis, but we're going to
find out. Set here and whistle and fill in.'" - Sue Duke
During the 1960s, Williamson became popular with the rock generation. He played extensively in Europe and considered moving there. But, sensing that he was dying, he returned home a few months before his death in 1965. 
