Hill Country Blues - Graves

David Kimbrough, Musician

Obituary, The Clarion Ledger, 1998

HOLLY SPRINGS — David "Junior" Kimbrough, 67, a professional musician and a former employee of Holly Springs John Deere Tractor & Equipment Co., died of heart failure at Holly Springs Memorial Hospital on January 17, 1998. 

Services were noon the following Saturday at Doxey Auditorium, Rust College, with burial in Kimbrough Chapel Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery in Hudsonville.

Visitation was at eleven a.m. the following Friday at J F Brittenum & Son Funeral Home.

Kimbrough was a Holly Springs native. He was a member of Kimbrough Chapel M.B. Baptist Church. According to his daughter, Patricia Hawthorne of Memphis, he played blues guitar since the 1950s, but his music gained popularity in the 1990s after recording his first album, Do the Rump.  He played blues festivals throughout the United States and Europe and was featured in Newsweek and National Geographic.

“He loved people and playing in juke joints,” she said. “His life was playing for the audience.”  She said her father's last recordings will be released this year. "He is a legend in North Mississippi blues," she said. "Through his music, his legend will live on."

Survivors include: wife, Mildred; sons, the Rev Larry Kimbrough of Abilene, Texas, Da-vid Malone of Memphis, Kent Malone of Chulahoma and Robert Malone and Larry Washington, both of Holly Springs; daughters, Addie Boga and Patricia Hawthorne, both of Memphis, Effie Gray of Aurora, Ill., and Shirley Richmond of Byhalia; and 42 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

So You Want to Visit?

To get to Kimbrough Chapel Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery from Holly Springs, head north on Highway 7 going towards Bolivar, Tennessee. After about ten miles take a slight left onto Clear Creek Road. The look for Kimbrough Chapel Road on the left and  the address is 1182 Kimbrough Chapel Rd, Lamar, MS 38642.  

Good cemetery hunting!!

The Grave of Johnny Woods 

Hill Country Harmonica Legend 

So You Want to Visit?
He is buried at 

1327 Aiken Road

Carter Sunset Memorial Gardens 

Tyro, Tate County, Mississippi

3866834.634267, -89.721498

The Grave of R.L. Burnside 

(23 November 1926-1 September 2005)

R.L. (Rural) Burnside is buried in the cemetery behind Free Springs C.M.E. Church in Harmontown, Panola County, Mississippi. To get to the Free Springs C.M.E. Church, turn south from Highway 310 onto County Road 511. The GPS location of the turn off is N 34º 32.213’ W 89º 39.018’. 34.519227, -89.652285.

The Grave of Doll Calicott

The Grave of Doll Calicott

Doll Calicott lived a full life. Despite her death certificate listing her date of birth as Nov 19, 1890, Doll appears in the 1930 US Census aged 15 years, which would put her birthdate closer to Nov 19, 1915.

Born November 19, 1890 - Died April 2, 1996 - per death certificate

[Nov 19, 1915 - Died Apr 2, 1996] - per 1930 US Census

Her remains were buried at Bethlehem Baptist Church Cemetery
in Hernando, DeSoto County, Mississippi, USA 

Bethlehem Baptist Church Cemetery

970 Hwy 51 South in Hernando
DeSoto County, Mississippi, 38632

This cemetery sits on the church grounds, located west of I-55, east of Hwy 51 and south of the Nesbit crossroads (Hwy 51 and Pleasant Hill Rd.). The access road is just north of the Hernando Fire Station #2.

Note: An older, abandoned Bethlehem Cemetery sits on the East side of I-55 at the south end of Fronie Dr. It is no longer maintained.

Welcome and Project Updates

On-going Campaigns:

Belton Sutherland
Project History
GoFundMe

 

 

 

Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church (f. 1909) 

The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund (MZMF) is a Mississippi non-profit corporation named after Mount Zion Missionary Baptist (MB) Church (f. 1909) outside Morgan City, Mississippi. Organized in 1989 by Raymond ‘Skip’ Henderson, the Fund memorialized the contributions of numerous musicians interred in rural cemeteries without grave markers, serving as a legal conduit to provide financial support to black church communities and cemeteries in the Mississippi Delta. The MZMF erected twelve memorials to blues musicians over a 12 year period from 1990 to 2001. 

Deacon Booker T. Young and MZMF director 
DeWayne Moore in front of the present day 
Mt. Zion MB Church on the same site

The renewed efforts of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund since 2010 have been spearheaded by T. DeWayne Moore, a historian and scholar based out of Oxford, Mississippi. The relatives of Tommy Johnson and other interments in Warm Springs CME Church Cemetery obtained a permanent fifteen foot wide and half-a-mile long easement to the important site due in large part to efforts and compelling arguments of Moore, who took over as executive director in January 2014. Under his leadership, the military markers of Henry "Son" Simms and Jackie Brenston were located and restored. The MZMF has dedicated five six memorials--the headstone of Frank Stokes in the abandoned Hollywood Cemetery, Memphis, TN; the flat companion stone of Ernest "Lil' Son Joe" Lawlars in Walls, MS; in Greenville, MS, the flat markers of T-Model Ford and Eddie Cusic, and the unique, yet humble, headstone of Mamie "Galore" Davis. On July 29, 2017, the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund dedicated a marker for Armenter Chatmon, aka Bo Carter, in Nitta Yuma Cemetery.

Barbecue and Blues in Bayport

The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund wants to thank Chris Johnson for holding a benefit in support of our efforts to honor blues musicians by keeping their graves clean in Mississippi.   Here is a laudatory piece from the Minnesota Tribune from Summer 2014.  The restaurant has since exploded in popularity, but no longer serves as a live music venue/juke joint. Not since Nov 2015.

Barbecue and Blues in Bayport

Not your daddy's blues at St. Croix River area barbecue joint.

By Anthony Lonetree - Aug 31, 2014

Not far from the Andersen Windows plant in Bayport is a barbecue place that billed itself (until November 2015) as a juke joint, and while not quite raucous, it's most definitely loose.

One night last week, there was no cover for the music, and no charge for a buffet of Texas-style barbecued chicken, pork and ribs. Everything but the beer, the wine and the moon-shine could be had for tips only — if customers were so inclined, of course. Jars were positioned onstage and on the band's merchandise table.

Minnesota
Star Tribune
Oct 17, 2014

And, yes, you read it right — moonshine, or white corn whiskey. There is no gin-and-tonic, and no light beer, either, at Bayport BBQ, 328 5th Av. N.

Free barbecue is not standard at the club; there were special circumstances involved on Tuesday night. Still, one gets the sense that Bayport BBQ owner Chris Johnson likes to improvise. Whether a band plays inside or outside — or, in the case of the group Gravel-Road, of Seattle, an hour earlier than scheduled — you can't be too sure.

Not to be questioned, however, is Johnson's love for the music of the passionate outsiders who fall under the wide umbrella of "deep blues." Johnson gambled and lost — financially — when he staged a few deep blues festivals before he opened his barbecue joint on Halloween 2010 to support and showcase the acts and their hard-edge sounds.

Seven days a week, Bayport BBQ offers a lunch buffet, and on a recent Friday afternoon, the clientele included a father and his son and a few groups in crisp casual work attire. Playing on a TV in the corner of the room was a live music performance featuring local roots-rocker Molly Maher. Under the screen was taped a message that read: "We are a music venue and will not turn down the music. You are certainly welcome to take your food to go."

Asked if his goal is to gain attention for the quality of the barbecued meats or to sim-ply offer them up to make the music possible, Johnson said that he sometimes will hear people say, "Pick who you are," restaurant or music venue.

To that, he replies: "We are what we are. If you like Texas barbecue and have an interest in food, we have that for you. And if it's the music, we've had bands call us from around the world to play here. We are a destination." Another way to look at it, he said, would be: "We aren't for everyone?' That's the slogan on the back of the club's T-shirts.