Mt. Zion Memorial Fund Preserves 'Holy Ground' Landmarks

Mt. Zion Memorial Fund

Preserves 'Holy Ground' Landmarks 

By Panny Mayfield - 1990 

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In the first EVER newspaper article written about the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund (Panny Mayfield, Clarksdale Press Register, November 24, 1990), founder Skip Henderson makes it plainly known that the obelisk

near Morgan City was never intended to mark a grave.

"It's a great shame Mississippi has endured an unfair reputation," for events that happened 60 to 80 years ago. These are "faded snapshots people carry in their mind. There’s more violence in two days in New York City than in a whole year in Mississippi." 

These comments are from a telephone interview with vintage guitar dealer Raymond "Skip" Henderson of New Brunswick, N.J. Henderson, who is featured in the Nov. 12 issue of Newsweek Magazine in a Prominent article "There's Blues in the News" will be in Clarksdale this weekend. 

An avid blues enthusiast who first came to Clarksdale a number of years ago at the urging of ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons to visit the Delta Blues Museum, Henderson is personally responsible for a blues preservation campaign of his own. 

Its focus is the blues giant Robert Johnson immortalized as the modern-day Faust who sold his soul to the devil at the "Crossroads" to play the guitar. Although much of Johnson's life and death in 1938 is a mystery, his intense music is legendary. The recent remastering of his records by Columbia Records has been a surprise best-seller, sky-rocketing on the Billboard charts and drawing national media attention. 

Describing Johnson's music in the recent Newsweek article, Columbia producer Lawrence Cohn says "There is so much emotion there, I find it .disturbing." What New Jersey blues fan Skip Henderson finds disturb-ing through all the hoopla is the possible exploitation of blues sites in Mississippi. 

What New Jersey blues fan Skip Henderson finds disturbing through all the hoopla is the possible exploitation of blues sites in Mississippi.

In awe of 10 counties of Mississippi which Henderson says produced the roots of America's major musical culture, he labels the landmarks, "holy ground." 

In his business he's witnessed European and Japanese collectors zapping up American-made guitars. "They're a active and rabid group of collectors." 

"One night I sat straight up in bed," he said. 

What if some obsessed collectors found about the lien on Mt. Zion Church where Robert Johnson is supposed to be buried, bought it and put up a gift shop advertising 'See Robert Johnson 's grave." 

The threat of this potential desecration sent Henderson into action.' 

Through Clarksdale attorney Walker Sims, Henderson organized a non-profit corporation to raise donations to pay off the church's indebtedness. 

According to Sims, CBS Records has pledged $10,000 and a number of smaller donations have come in. 

Mt. Zion Church, pastored by the Rev. James Ratliff of Hollandale, has services once a month. Sims says it is located in a bean field in Leflore County between Morgan City and Itta Bena. 

Donations to the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund: Inc. will pay off the church's debt for repairs, plumbing work, and pews, Henderson says. Funds also will be used to clear the cemetery and put up a marker. 

"The marker an obelisk will not claim to be Johnson's grave site. It will be an historic marker placed near the highway," says Henderson. 

Although Henderson admits he may be viewed by many of the congregation as someone "who walked off a spaceship" he's looking forward to attending church services there. 

"I'm trying to return something to the people of the Delta. People will come to realize the area's vast richness." 

On his visits here Henderson says he has been struck by the state's poverty, but also by its "great beauty." "I'm taken by Mississippi." 

Donations to the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund Fund may be sent to P.O. Box 1114, Oxford, MS 38655. OR www.gofundme.com/headstonebluesinitiative

Click here to read the story behind the marker

RIP Calep Emphrey

We are deeply saddened by the news that Mr. Calep Emphrey, Jr. passed away. Mr. Emphrey was one of the best drummers, and he played with Mr. King for over 30 years. He also played with Little Milton, Albert King and others prior to joining Mr. King’s band, and played in his own band in his hometown, Greenville, Mississippi.

We remember that B.B. King fondly referred Mr. Emphrey as a fellow Mississippian as well as a fantastic drummer on the stage.

Our heartfelt condolences go out to Mr. Emphrey’s family, band members, friends and fans.

Calep Emphrey was born in 1949 in Greenville. Mississippi, and he started out playing the French horn—megaphone, baritone horn, and a lot of brass instruments. He started playing with the high school swing band—the Coleman High School Band.  The high school band director Wynchester Davis had a band called the Green Tops, which went all around the state. He went on to play in a concert band in college at Mississippi Valley State, where he was a music major in the late 1960s.

Professionally, he started off with Little Milton about '69 in Greenville. Milton used to hang around there a lot. So he needed somebody to fill the drummer position and he called Calep, who admitted, "I couldn't make no money with the French horn. [laughs]."

"I did a thing in WattStax with him. I did a couple—three tunes on an album. We also did WattStax Two. I left Milton and went with Freddy King. He was paying more money. Yeah, and I left Freddy King and went to Albert King. Albert gave me a call and I was with Albert and then B.B. gave me a call. The bass player recommended me. His bass player at that time was Joe Turner. Big Joe Turner. they called him. I knew him from the Little Milton days. We used to play together there. The drummer [before me] was—his last name was Starks, but everybody called him "Jabo," his nickname. He used to play with James Brown. I've been with B.B. since '77. I jumped right into it. I studied it and listened to it. Yeah, I'm still nervous. [laughs] I'm a musician. I try to play all four corners. Compared with the Mil-tons and the Albert Kings, [the B.B. King Band] is more fulfilling because you get a chance to play a lot of places ordinary musicians don't get a chance to go—a widespread audience." 

The Delta Democrat Times, Jan 17, 1975

The Delta Democrat Times, Jan 14, 1977

Mt. Zion in SCLC: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference National Magazine

Marking the Blues (1998)

By Anne Rochelle

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Duncan, Miss. — Rosetta Patton Brown wasn't there when they buried her father, Charley Patton, the first great Delta blues man, in an unmarked grave at the edge of a plantation in Holly Ridge.

“We got lost,” she recalled, still surprised 64 years later.

It was 1934, and Brown was a teenager when her father died after a gig one night—from a heart condition—at age 43. Her mother and stepfather were driving her to the funeral when they lost their way. By the time they made it to the cemetery, the body was covered up.

"I cried so hard," says Brown, now 80 and a widow living among her children and grandchildren in Duncan, a Mississippi Delta town not far from Holly Ridge. She spits a wad of chew into a basket next to her fuzzy-slippered feet. "I wanted to see the body."

Brown didn't miss the second service honoring her father.  It was in 1991, when a new headstone was placed at his grave in the corner of the old cemetery, between railroad tracks and a cotton gin.

Rock star John Fogerty didn't miss it either. Nor did Delta blues legend Pops Staples. There were cameras and speeches, and a new fancy headstone decorated with a black-and-white photograph of a young Charley Patton. The carved epitaph reads, "The Voice of the Delta: The foremost performer of early Mississippi blues whose songs became the cornerstones of American music." The stone stands out like a Cadillac in a junkyard; the graves around it are marked with names carved crudely into concrete slabs or wooden crosses, and many of them have fallen over or sunk into the soft, black soil.

Also at the ceremony was the blues fan who made the new marker possible: Skip Henderson, a former social worker and music store owner from New Jersey who founded the Mount Zion Memorial Fund in 1991 to honor deceased blues musicians from the Mississippi Delta.

"It was just going to be Robert Johnson, but there were so many of these blues legends with no headstones," Henderson recalls, explaining how the project got started. He named the fund for the little church in Morgan City where, a few months before the Patton service, he placed the first memorial, which was to Johnson, the blues singer who inspired the Rolling Stones and other rock greats and who claimed he sold his soul to the devil to get his guitar-playing gift.

The Mount Zion Fund has erected eight markers and unveiled the ninth March 14 in Hollandale, for Sam Chatmon. Henderson has at least four others in mind.

"It's a well-intentioned project," says Howard Stovall, executive director of the Blues Foundation in Memphis. "It has focused attention on the fact that even though these musicians are well-known, and their music is still popular, their fame is not reflected in their final resting place."

The Whole Story of John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson

John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson
By Dan Morris - 2012

On a hilltop, under an oak in southwest Madison County, a tombstone is adorned with harmonicas and coins left by visitors.  Aside from songbirds and gusts of wind that rustle the leaves, it is a quiet place, far removed from the boisterous nightclubs of south Chicago in the 1940s.  John Lee Curtis "Sonny Boy" Williamson is buried beneath that stone, but his legend lives on in the world of blues music. He made his name in Chicago as a musician, singer and songwriter and is regarded as the first great blues harmonica player.  Sonny Boy was born 100 years ago today near his grave. Artists still record his songs and at-tempt to duplicate his magic with a harmonica.

He was 34 and enjoying another nationwide hit with his recording of "Shake the Boogie" when he was murdered in Chicago in 1948.His wife, Lacey Belle Davidson, brought him home, granting the request he made known in a verse of one of his songs: "I want my body buried in Jackson, Tennessee."

Mentor Mourned

William "Billy Boy" Arnold was 12 when Sonny Boy died. Hearing the news was the most shocking moment of his young life.

"I rang the doorbell of his apartment house on Giles Street here in Chicago," Arnold said. "He lived on the second floor. A lady stuck her head out of a window and asked who I was looking for. I said, 'Sonny Boy.' She said, `Oh, baby, ain't you heard? He got killed.'"

"I was so sad," Arnold said. "Sonny Boy was my buddy. He was going to show me how to play the harmonica like he did."

Arnold had heard Sonny Boy's records and was in love with the music. He got a harmonica and tried to play like his idol. When he discovered that Sonny Boy lived nearby, he recruited a cousin and friend to go with him to try to meet Sonny Boy. They rang the doorbell, and Sonny Boy answered.

"We had never seen him, and we said, `We want to see Sonny Boy.' He said, 'I'm him. Come on up.'"