Blues Experts Forensic Reviews of recent Robert Johnson Books

In January 2021, I posted a promotional article about the book Brother Robert on Facebook, and I received some interesting responses. First, Bruce Conforth tells us what' he thinks about Lauterbach's instant classic, and then ethnomusicologist David Evans details his thoughts about Up Jumped the Devil. It should be a fun ride!

Bruce Conforth Reviews Brother Robert, January 18, 2021

Brother Robert: Growing Up With Robert Johnson by Annye Anderson and Preston Lauterbach has gotten considerable media attention since it is the recollections of Johnson’s “step-sister” (she was actually no blood relation) about the blues musician and provides a legitimate third photo of Johnson. Greil Marcus wrote a review of it in the December 3, 2020 issue of the New York Times Review of Books. Based on his and other reviews many in the general public will be purchasing and reading this book not as a memoir, but for biographical information about Johnson. And indeed Anderson does provide some details about Johnson’s favorite foods and entertainers, brands of tobacco, and pomade. Beyond that, however, there is scant new information about Johnson and more about Anderson’s life and her resentment for not being able to take advantage of Johnson’s considerable estate. 

Most reviewers of the book rightfully consider it a memoir and not a biography and seem to have little or no knowledge of Johnson’s life or blues scholarship. They therefore tacitly accept the stories she tells without question: stories that quite frequently are completely factually wrong. They also give her credit for busting myths about Johnson that any Johnson scholar knew were busted years, or even decades ago. 

For instance, most reviews state that the book does away with the crossroads and other myths about Johnson, but that was already accomplished by numerous authors over the years. It is no revelation to hear that Johnson didn’t sell his soul to the devil. But since this book is about a relatively recent historical figure, a giant figure in blues history, it needs to be treated as more than a memoir, and the stories Anderson tells need to be fact-checked by someone who does know Johnson’s life and blues scholarship. 

It is time that someone more familiar with the life of Robert Johnson review Mrs. Anderson’s book and points out some of the glaring errors and omissions that are in it. Errors that are proven to be so because of facts, not opinion. This article will do just that and will discover just how much is factually wrong within its pages.

1) Mrs. Anderson is wrong about the house she claims Robert was born in. 

On page 17 of her book, she says Robert was born in the house Charles Dodds/Spencer built. On pages 145-147, she repeats the claim that she went to Hazlehurst to visit the house Robert was born in. She may have visited the house that Hazlehurst was going to claim was Robert's birthplace and use as the center for a tourist attraction, but they quickly gave up on that idea as local historians proved that it could not be Robert's birthplace. In our biography, Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson, we discuss how it is a matter of record, as found in the Copiah County Chancery Office, that in 1906, five years before Robert’s birth and twenty years before Mrs. Anderson’s birth, Charles Dodds defaulted on indebtedness and the house was lost (p. 28). Julia was evicted from that house for non-payment of taxes before Robert was even conceived, let alone born, and the house was turned over to one L. E. Matthews (p. 30). There is no conceivable way that Robert Johnson was born in the house identified by Mrs. Anderson.

And that's not even counting Rosa Redman's recollection of Noah Johnson's shack on the Mangold Plantation, where she lived as a child, as Robert’s actual birthplace.

2) Mrs. Anderson is wrong about when Robert left the Spencer family in Memphis to live with his mother and stepfather Dusty Willis.

On pages 25-26 of her book Mrs. Anderson says that “Brother Robert was becoming… mannish… In his teens, Brother Robert learned that my father wasn’t his real father. This is how I interpret them sending him back to his mother. My father sent him there.” And on page 157 she states: “He (Robert) was a teenager when he left my father.” “He was fourteen when he left my father. Then he went to his mother’s house.”

This is completely wrong and again was something that took place almost 10 years before Mrs. Anderson was born.

Robert was not sent away for being an unruly teenager. He wasn't a teenager and he was "collected" by his mother Julia to come work on her new husband's farm BEFORE he was a teenager. The 1920 census record shows Robert living with Julia and Dusty in Arkansas. He would have been 9. How does Mrs. Anderson account for that? The 1920 census DOES NOT show Robert living in Memphis with the Spencers. How does Mrs. Anderson account for R. L. Windum, Wink Clark and other childhood friends of Robert recalling playing with him and going to school in Commerce as a child? Or the Indian Creek school records in Commerce, Mississippi that show Robert attending school there when he was 12 and 14?

3) Mrs. Anderson is wrong that Charles (the father) taught Robert the rudiments of music and guitar.

Robert’s half-sister Carrie was on record as saying it was the son (who Mrs. Anderson calls "Son") Charles who taught Robert some music. That's a simple mistake I think. Mrs. Anderson mistook one Charles for another since she wasn't alive to actually see it, only hear stories. She even admits (p. 24) that “When he was teaching Brother Robert, I hadn’t been born. I got that from Sister Carrie. Evidently, my father quit music when he married my mother.” Carrie, on the other hand, described the son Charles as teaching Robert some music, and that she helped Robert make his first cigar box guitar, and then, in 1927 she helped him buy a cheap guitar with only 4 strings. Wink Clark recalled that Robert’s earliest musical endeavors were on a diddley bow he built on the side of the Willis shack.

4) Mrs. Anderson is wrong about Robert's height.

Robert may have looked tall to a child but he wasn't. On page 66 of her book, Mrs. Anderson says that Robert "was tall." Every adult who knew him, including his girlfriends, said he was little. All accounts make it clear that Robert was "at most" 5'8" and weighed 140 pounds.

5) Mrs. Anderson is wrong that both Julia and Dusty used to visit them in Memphis.

Carrie said that Julia after taking Robert was not welcome in the home.

6) Mrs. Anderson supports the idea that Robert actually wrote a deathbed confession.

Yet she offers no real evidence other than it was supposed to be part of Robert's belongings. According to who? Not very convincing.

7) Mrs. Anderson makes no mention of Callie Craft, Robert's second wife.

Mrs. Anderson would have been 7 years old when Callie died, certainly old enough to remember her. If she knew Robert so well why is there absolutely no mention of her?

8) Mrs. Anderson makes no mention of Robert having any illness that caused Carrie to force him into going to see the doctor before he went to Greenwood.

Carrie told many people (including Mack McCormick and Steven LaVere) that Robert was sick prior to leaving for Greenwood and that she forced him to go to the John Gaston Hospital to see a doctor where he was diagnosed with severe ulcers being ultimately responsible for his death. Mrs. Anderson would have been 11 at the time and this would have been a big event: Robert was ill. Why is there no mention of that?

9) Mrs. Anderson makes no mention of Carrie and the family having Robert exhumed and reburied in a proper coffin.

The undertaker who was hired to exhume and rebury Robert was interviewed and his records found. Why is there no mention of this?

10) Mrs. Anderson supports the idea that Robert actually wrote a deathbed confession.

Neither Anderson nor anyone else has ever offered any real evidence to support this claim other than the belief that it was supposed to be part of Robert's belongings. Other stories state that it was found in a Bible in the house of a sharecropper where Robert died. Any claim that the note is legitimate is highly questionable.

11) Mrs. Anderson is wrong when she claims that Johnson’s death certificate says that Johnson died of syphilis.

This is another attempt to discredit Claud Johnson from being Robert’s son, for she claims that if he had syphilis he would have been infertile and unable to father a child. In fact the death certificate list No Doctor as the cause of death. A note on the back of the certificate states that “The plantation owner said it was his opinion that the negro died of syphilis.” This statement was made to avoid a murder inquest. Luther Wade, the white representative of the plantation who made the statement, in all probability never even met Johnson.

12) Mrs. Anderson makes no mention of Carrie and the family having Robert exhumed and reburied in a proper coffin.

The undertaker who was hired by Carrie to exhume and rebury Robert was interviewed and his records found. 

12) Mrs. Anderson claims she never knew Robert to be a drinker or blasphemer.

Every other single person who knew Robert as an adult (Johnny Shines, Robert Lockwood, Honey boy Edwards, Calvin Frazier, Henry Townsend, Memphis Slim, etc) all said that Robert drank more than he was sober. When asked as to whether Robert drank Shines laughed and said "Don't ask IF he drank, ask what he drank! " Likewise no one who knew him as an adult ever knew him to go to church and many said that he blasphemed so badly that when he would start cursing God everyone would leave for fear of being struck down. Her stories are the recollections of a little girl who only saw Robert when he visited family and was probably on his best behavior.

13) Mrs. Anderson claims she never knew Robert to be a drinker or blasphemer.

Every other single person who knew Robert as an adult (Johnny Shines, Robert Lockwood, Honey boy Edwards, Calvin Frazier, Henry Townsend, Memphis Slim, etc) all said that Robert drank more than he was sober. When asked as to whether Robert drank Shines laughed and said "Don't ask IF he drank, ask what he drank! " Likewise no one who knew him as an adult ever knew him to go to church and many said that he blasphemed so badly that when he would start cursing God everyone would leave for fear of being struck down. Her stories are recollections of a little girl who only saw Robert when he visited family and was probably on his best behavior.

14) Anderson is wrong when she invokes her anger at Johnson contemporaries Johnny Shines, David "Honeyboy" Edwards, Robert Jr. Lockwood as men who sold often spurious information to an eager and careless press.

Anderson’s claims here are simply vitriolic and unfounded. Shines and Lockwood, in particular, knew Johnson far better than Anderson ever could have and their information about Johnson has been verified and cross-checked against other information. They told the truth about him and frequently did so for no financial remuneration.

15) Why did no one fact check any of Mrs. Anderson’s stories?

Neither her co-author, Preston Lauterbach, their editor, nor anyone else chose to fact check information that could have easily been disproven.

There are numerous other errors and omissions, but I think Mrs. Anderson was absolutely correct when she said "I don't know, I didn't have him in my pocket" as a way of explaining that she really didn't have many facts about what Robert did or didn't do apart from the few times she saw him when he visited the family in Memphis.

Anderson saves her greatest animosity for Johnson’s acknowledged son Claud Johnson. She spends six and a half pages attacking Claud and his family as the rightful heirs to the Johnson estate and in the process makes numerous erroneous claims. In general Brother Robert is filled with some legitimate recollections, but primarily with Anderson’s factual errors and anger at anyone who dealt with Johnson before her. Her frustration and anger over what Steve LaVere did to Carrie and how he basically defrauded her of a fortune are warranted, but her attacks on the Johnson family are simply crude and uncalled for. She also basically refutes and/or tries to denigrate the work of anyone who ever did any research about Robert Johnson.

[Editor's Note: The story of how Crystal Springs attorney Jim Kitchens, who also represented Klan assassin Byron de la Beckwith,  managed to convince a Mississippi Judge to award his client (60% and therefore his law firm receives 40% of) the royalties for the music of Robert Johnson is very curious (click HERE to read all about it), and even the descendants of Claud Johnson have now turned on the Kitchens firm (click HERE to read all about that), an interesting development that may, in the end, prove to attract curious attention to the case.]

Many of the champions of this book have been quick to mention that Mrs. Anderson is a sweet 94-year-old. That may be the case, but it does not excuse her for the many errors and attacks she makes in her memoir. Brother Robert is a reminiscence that tells us what this woman thought about Robert but the keyword is "thought." Let the buyer beware: most of Anderson’s stories are about what she “thought,” what she believes she was told or heard, and as such there are just too many factual errors (not my opinion, but provable, empirical facts) to make Brother Robert of any definitive value.

By Bruce Conforth

Okay, Bruce. Thank you for giving your ten cents about Brother Robert.

Up Jumped the Blues: A Review

by David Evans

Bruce Conforth is correct in most, if not all, of his criticisms of Annye C. Anderson’s recently published book, Brother Robert. The book does indeed contain factual errors that Conforth points out, and Ms. Anderson, although she was a member of Robert Johnson’s family, because of her youth at the time, was not in a good position to know a lot of factual detail about Johnson. Nevertheless, I think Conforth is too quick to reduce the value of Ms. Anderson’s book to a new photograph of Johnson and “some details about Johnson’s favorite foods and entertainers, brands of tobacco and pomade.” For one thing, the book also contains a reproduction of a postcard that reveals Johnson’s signature and handwriting. The latter could be compared with that of Johnson’s alleged “deathbed confession” to see if it matches. But beyond the factual biographical details, there is a wealth of information about Johnson’s family (one branch of it at least) and his physical and social environment in Memphis where he partly grew up. The book definitely serves to humanize Robert Johnson and make him more than just a musician who recorded twenty-nine songs and died tragically at an early age. Conforth also criticizes Ms. Anderson for downplaying Johnson’s time spent living with his mother and stepfather in and near Robinsonville, Mississippi, and instead exaggerating his time spent in Memphis with his other stepfather’s (and Ms. Anderson’s) family. I don’t think we can ever accurately determine how much time Johnson spent with each branch of his family, but by the time he was in his mid or late teens, he was very likely in a position to go wherever he wanted to. He was also beginning to play music in public by this time. Memphis and Robinsonville are only about twenty-five miles apart, and one could easily travel between them by bus, train, bicycle, hitchhiking, or even walking. Although Robinsonville may have been his “official” home most of this time, he could easily have gone into Memphis on weekends and on summer and holiday breaks from school. It’s not at all uncommon for black children not raised in a strict nuclear family (and even some who are) to experience a lot of visiting and “passing around” among relatives. Similarly, Conforth’s assertion that Ms. Anderson had no basis for claiming a share of Johnson’s considerable financial estate is based solely on laws of inheritance established by the western European legal tradition and disregards customary understandings of family, kinship, property, and inheritance in African American culture.

Reviews of both Ms. Anderson’s book and Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow’s recently published Johnson biography, Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson, have mostly been highly favorable. Conforth criticizes the reviewers of Ms. Anderson’s book for not being “Johnson scholars with an eye to fact-checking the work.” That may be the case, but I wonder how many reviewers of the Conforth/Wardlow book are “Johnson scholars.” The fact is that most reviewers, except sometimes those who write in academic and specialist journals, are not very expert in the subjects of the books they review. I don’t know that I can claim to be a “Johnson scholar,” but I have devoted a lot of research to his type of music and blues from his general environment in Memphis and Mississippi, and I got to know pretty well at least two of Johnson’s fellow musicians, Son House and Johnny Shines and knew through interviews two other associates, Houston Stackhouse and Peck Curtis. My only substantial writings on Johnson have been some encyclopedia and handbook entries, most notably the one in Samuel Floyd, ed., International Dictionary of Black Composers, and my three-part exploration and interpretation of the supernatural references in Johnson’s songs in Blues Revue 21-23 (1996). With that background, I’d like to offer a discussion of the Conforth/Wardlow book, which might be considered as a review of sorts. 

First let me state that, in my opinion, Up Jumped the Devil is the best and fullest biography of Robert Johnson to date, and for this, the authors are to be congratulated. I don’t think it’s the last word on Johnson’s life, however, and it does have some flaws. The operative word here is “biography.” In this respect, there is a wealth of new information on Johnson’s early life (i. e., before his recording career that occurred only in his last three years of life), and the authors have made extensive use of official documents and published and unpublished interviews of people who knew Johnson. There is, however, rather little discussion or interpretation of Johnson’s recorded songs. This is somewhat surprising, given the fact that his recordings are the main reason why anyone is interested in Johnson. The authors also largely avoid any detailed discussion and analysis of the other main reason why many people are interested in Johnson. That is Johnson’s relationship or attitude toward the supernatural, including the theme of an encounter with the devil at a crossroads. They simply try to rationalize the evidence or dismiss it as superstition. Whatever role superstition and the supernatural played in Johnson’s real life, it is an overwhelmingly pervasive theme in his songs, unmatched in its percentage of occurrence in the repertoire of any other blues singer, with the possible exception of J. T. “Funny Paper” Smith, where it occurs frequently but in a far more comic and less intense manner than in Johnson’s songs. Along with Johnson’s extraordinary musical talent, it’s one of the main things that makes him so distinctive a personality. It’s especially surprising that the authors downplay this theme while at the same time using it for the title of their book! They also ignore a number of statements made in interviews by others about Johnson’s life that could not be corroborated or verified but yet are plausible or worth considering. Conforth has claimed that he and Wardlow were forced or pressured by their publisher to cut a number of pages from their manuscript that examined some of these biographical byways and other non-biographical and interpretive themes, but I’m sure most readers would have willingly paid the few extra dollars to see this discussion in their book.

In the interest of future Johnson biography or the possibility of a revised and expanded edition by the same authors, I offer the following commentary on some incorrect or questionable passages in Up Jumped the Devil.

A frequent trait of their writing that I found annoying was the practice of creatively reconstructing and describing in some detail scenes from Johnson’s life, including his thoughts on various occasions. I noticed this on pages 9-10, 19, 75-76, 88, 95-96, 110, 115-117, 124, 128, 152, 154-155, 156, 162, 210, and 247. This practice may make the book more “readable” and seem less like a dry academic account, but it also pushes it in the direction of historical fiction. In my opinion, the authors should have resisted any impulse or pressure to adopt this style of writing. In fact, I found it rather jarring when it did occur since most of the book attempts to stick to the facts.

Up Jumped the Devil is also
the popular title of other books.

p.3 - It is stated that Gayle Dean Wardlow provided “the first factual information about Johnson’s life.” Wardlow was certainly on the case early in the 1960s and has provided a good deal of information through interviews and the uncovering of official documents, but he was not the first to investigate Johnson’s life. Not overlooking Frank Driggs’s notes to the first Johnson LP (1961) and the more speculative earlier accounts of Rudi Blesh and Samuel Charters, there was actual biographical research conducted by Alan Lomax way back in 1941-42, only a few years after Johnson’s death. This research is found in Lomax’s unpublished field diaries, which Conforth claims to have viewed but has dismissed as fabrications. It’s true that Lomax fabricated or “creatively reconstructed” from memory the findings of his early field research on Johnson in his 1993 book The Land Where the Blues Began, but there was no reason for him to do so in his actual diaries written some fifty years earlier at a time when there was hardly any public interest in Johnson. It was a small first step, but Lomax should be given credit for realizing that there was value in knowing about a blues artist’s life at a time when even jazz biography was in its infancy.

p.6 - The authors claim that the Sony box set of Johnson’s complete recordings has sold more than fifty million copies in the United States alone. That would amount to a copy in about every third household in the country!

p.8 - They state that “no book before this one has included all of the reminiscences of Johnson by the people who knew him personally.” That’s certainly not true, as there are no statements from Houston Stackhouse and James “Peck” Curtis in the book. They also seem to have used only one or two of the many variant statements given by Son House about his encounters with Johnson. Some of the variants contain important details not found in other variants.

p. 30 - The authors seem to mistake the notation “c” after Charles Spencer’s name in the Memphis City Directory as meaning “carpenter,” whereas it simply means “colored.”

p.39 - They call the Beale Street Sheiks a “jug band,” but they were merely a guitar duo.

pp.44-45 - The authors state that “Johnson’s ability to read and write was atypical” and that “most of Robert’s musical contemporaries were largely functionally illiterate because they were black plantation children.” Even Son House, who was a decade older than Johnson, was literate (and claimed to be able to read musical shape notation), as were artists closer to Johnson’s own age, such as Johnny Shines and Robert Lockwood, neither of whom grew up on a plantation.

p. 52 Henry Sloan is identified as possibly the guitarist heard by W. C. Handy playing in the knife style at the Tutwiler train station ca. 1903. Almost nothing is known about Sloan other than that he lived on Dockery Plantation and was an early influence on Charley Patton. Handy’s guitarist could have been anybody.

[Editor's Note: We actually know quite a bit about Sloan's family and early life in Hinds County. His parents are listed in the US Census as Salome, and Henry lived in the same area as the parents of Charley McCoy, the Chatmon family, and the Patton family in 1900. Henry apparently moved to Dockery around the same time as the Pattons, but we have no documents proving this move actually occurred. Despite the serious research efforts of Charles D. Roscopf, who found the death certificate of one Henry Sloan in Arkansas, and my own discovery of another Henry Sloan who was arrested in Helena in the aftermath of the 1919 Elaine pogrom, we have failed to trace this early influence on Patton after 1918.]

p. 88 They have Son House moving to Robinsonville in June 1930, but in fact, it was some time after House’s recording session in August of that year. On pp. 92-93 they also discount House’s claims that Johnson wasn’t a very good musician around this time. The fact is that we don’t know how good Johnson sounded at that time. We do know what House sounded like, and he set a pretty high standard!

p. - 94 The authors print without commentary H. C. Speir’s stereotypical characterization of male blues singers (“low class . . . smelled a little and had to have a drink before he could play . . . he wasn’t going to work”). Playing music for money isn’t work?

pp. 142-143 - They state that H. C. Speir was “responsible for the recordings” of Charley Patton, Son House, Willie Brown, Bo Carter, and Blind Joe Reynolds. This is simply untrue or unproven. Speir made a later test session of Patton with House and Brown, but there’s no solid evidence that he was responsible for their first recordings. He might have been involved in a later session by Carter but not his first, and Reynolds was from the St. Louis area, far from Speir’s territory in central Mississippi.

p. 150 - They claim that Speir was involved, with Polk Brockman, in a 1928 Okeh session in San Antonio, yet none of the artists recorded at that session were from Mississippi or Brockman’s Atlanta base. This implausible information is said to come from an unrecorded 1964 interview of Speir.

p. 162 They state that Johnson’s alternate takes of a recorded song were “almost identical.” This was sometimes true, but not always, as in the cases of “Kind Hearted Woman Blues,” “Traveling Riverside Blues,” “Cross Road Blues,” and “Come On in My Kitchen,” where there are some significant musical or lyrical differences. On pp.162-163 the authors even state that it was a general policy and practice of Johnson to perform his songs the same way every time. Robert Johnson was certainly more consistent than some of the earlier artists for whom we have alternate takes, such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Tommy Johnson, or Charley Patton, but it’s clear that some of his songs were still in a state of flux when he recorded them.

p. 168 They claim that Mexican laborers in the Delta used the open G guitar tuning that blues musicians came to call “Spanish.” There’s no evidence, however, that this tuning is used in Mexican music, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the name of the tuning is derived from the guitar showpiece “Spanish Fandango” that was composed (not by a Mexican) with instructions to be played in that tuning. Mexicans did bring hot tamales to the Delta, and that’s likely where Johnson got the inspiration for his song “Hot Tamales,” rather than from where he had lunch at the time of his San Antonio recording session (p. 175).

p. 200 It is stated that Blind Lemon Jefferson was “discovered” by J. Mayo Williams. Williams became his recording manager, but the best evidence indicates that R. T. Ashford or someone working for him in Dallas was the first to connect Jefferson with Paramount Records.

p. 215 They claim that the refrain of Johnson’s “Stop Breaking Down” was earlier recorded by Luke Jordan and Dick Justice. This is untrue, although a variant of the song was later recorded by John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson.

pp. 271-272 The listings of the other artists at Johnson’s sessions unaccountably omit blues pianist Black Boy Shine, the artist at these sessions whose music was the closest to Johnson’s.

There are a number of other places where my disagreement with the authors is more arguable or where I think their interpretation has little or questionable support, but I won’t try to argue them here. I offer the above as an indication that there is still more to be said, and hopefully more yet to become known, about Robert Johnson.

David Evans

"Pimpin' The Blues": Systemic Racism, Heritage Tourism, and the Mississippi Blues Commission

By Tim Kalich, editor of the Greenwood Commonwealth - originally published as "Vendor Selection Dissapoints Jordan" on Sept 17, 2019.

The Greenwood legislator who spearheaded the creation of the Mississippi Blues Commission is unhappy about how the commission selected its vendors. "When you don't follow bid laws, you cut off other people who could have had a slice of the pie," said Sen. David Jordan. The Democratic lawmaker was responding to the report released in the fall of 2019 by MS State Auditor Shad White that heavily criticized the spending practices of the Blues Commission. In the performance audit, White found that the commission--since it began operations 13 years ago--had paid out nearly $2 million to vendors without a valid contract on file and failed to retain documentation to support almost another $1 million in spending. It also questioned why Greenwood ad agency Hammons & Associates as well as some other vendors were awarded work by the commission without putting the business up for bid. 

Hammons, the project coordinator for the creation and placement of more than 200 Blues Trail historical markers, has been by far the commission's largest vendor. The ad agency has received a little more than $1 million of the $2.9 million the commission has generated largely from state and federal grants and private donations. The commission incorrectly designated Hammons as a "sole source provider," according to the audit. That finding, said Jordan, has rankled other African Americans who feel that Black-owned enterprises were not given the opportunity to benefit financially from promoting the music that originated in the African American community. 

"Hammons may have been the best bidder, but there's no opportunity for us to know when he was the only one that was selected," Jordan said. Allan Hammons, president of Hammons & Associates, said it is incorrect to suggest that his agency was "just handed the business" by the Blues Commission. Early on, according to Hammons, the commission was leaning toward hiring as project coordinator a Virginia firm that had put together a Civil War trail in that state. Hammons said his agency designed a prototype marker, including the concept of using a printed vinyl insert on the back to allow for illustrations as well as more text, and paid to have it cast before pitching it to the commission. "We competed for (the business) in my mind and actually invested in it quite heavily on the chance that we could convince them we could do this work," he said.

The "printed vinyl insert on the back" has since faded and peeled away in the Mississippi sun, causing the commission to address the widespread dilapidation of older markers.

The Blues Commission was created in 2004 when Gov. Haley Barbour signed into law a bill on which Jordan was the lead author. Fred Carl Jr., the founder of Greenwood-based Viking Range, was named the commission's inaugural chairman by the Republican governor, although it was apparently two years later before the commission began its work in earnest. 

Jordan, Carl, and a predominantly African American delegation had actually gotten the idea of a blues commission rolling in 2003 while Democrat Ronnie Musgrove was serving as governor, the senator said. Ruben Hughes, president of Team Broadcasting, which owns Greenwood radio stations WGNL and WGNG, was part of that delegation that met with Musgrove. After the Democrat was defeated by Barbour in the 2003 election, "people like myself were pushed back ... and other people came in and took control like Mr. Hammons," said Hughes.

Sylvester Hoover, a blues promoter who is African American, said he has been displeased with the Blues Commission for a while, claiming it deviated from what those who initially advocated for its creation envisioned it to be. "It was supposed to enrich the neighborhood and teach the history of the blues here in the Mississippi Delta, but it didn't work out that way," said Hoover, who operates a blues museum in Greenwood's Baptist Town neighborhood and gives blues tours. "It went to the people that didn't know anything about the blues. They just took it over." 

He objects not only that Hammons & Associates got the bulk of the commission's work but also that Jim O'Neal of Kansas City, Missouri, and Scott Barretta of Greenwood were selected as the two main historians on the project. O'Neal co-founded the nation's first blues magazine, Living Blues, for which Barretta was a former editor. For their research and writing for the Blues Trail markers, O'Neal was paid $136,000 and Barretta almost $55,000, both as sole source providers. O'Neal and Barretta are white, as is Allan Hammons. 

"We said from the start they pimpin' the blues. They making money off the blues."

Sylvester Hoover Knows all About Systemic Racism

"We said from the start they pimpin' the blues. They making money off the blues," Hoover said of the Blues Commission and those involved with the creation of the markers. "That's not fair. They're not distributing money in the black neighborhood. None whatsoever. None. Zero." 

In addition to questioning the commission's spending practices, White has recommended that it be dissolved and its responsibilities turned over to the Mississippi Blues Foundation, a private, non-profit organization that has contributed financially to the commission. The current chairman of the commission, J. Kempf Poole, is receptive to the idea. So is Jordan. A member of the Senate Tourism Committee, Jordan said he would want to know more details before support-ing legislation to make such a change, but he is open to considering it. "If that is going to lubricate the wheels and make it run better for everybody, sure," Jordan said. 

Prakash Slim is Nepal's Blues Power

Ram Prakash Pokharel (aka Prakash Slim) is an international artist/performer and educator of the blues. 

He was born in a field on June,17th, 1980. Yes, a field. It was during the rainy season, in a small village called Lamatar, in the Lalitpur district, of Nepal. The village saw its first electric light bulb in 1983, and its first motor car in 1995. Slim was raised by a loving family of modest means, but his father died at the young age of 29, leaving his mother with three children to raise on her own. Slim had an older brother and sister, and his mother worked in the neighbors’ fields, gathering what food she could get to feed her kids. Slim waited until the village's annual festival celebration, an important time in his world when his uncle would give him a set of new clothes. 

Unlike most early blues artists in the American South, Slim got to go to public school, but instead of desks and benches, his school had dirt floors and straw mats. When asked about his ambitions when he was young,  Slim replied, 

"Ambition was a privilege that only rich kids had. 

The only ambition I had was staying alive."

He was interested in music since he was a child.  Slim would use the wood and other materials around their house to fashion his own instruments, he'd play music by drumming against a gallon water jug. He'd also drive his mother crazy singing songs all day.  

Music became his world. 

It called out to him, and he could not resist. His most prized possession back then was a bicycle that his sister gave him after she landed a job. Slim wanted to learn to play the guitar but he did not have one, and he had no money to buy one. He bought his first guitar by selling his bicycle. He told his family that a friend had taken it for a few days. He lied.

For two years, Slim gave up everything to search for a mentor who could teach him what he needed to know about the guitar. He found a teacher, a legendary musician named C.B. Chhetri, but he lived 10 kilometers away from Slim. Nevertheless, Slim never missed a lesson. It stormed; it rained, but he always showed up, usually ahead of time, and ready to learn.

After a little while, Slim became pretty good on the guitar, and he accepted Chhetri‘s offer to join a band. He cut his teeth gigging in a circuit of restaurants and playing rock music. At the same time, he started teaching music in schools. 

In 2008 he participated in a workshop entitled Teaching Music Effectively"  conducted at Kathmandu  Jazz Conservatory by the US  Cultural Embassy envoy, Dr. Gene Aitken. He enjoyed playing in rock n' roll bands for all those years, but Slim's thirst for musical knowledge, and a deeper musical experience, could not find satisfaction. The hole in his soul started to heal when he heard his first BB King record. Overwhelmed by what he heard, Slim started to research the Blues.

He became obsessed with Blues history. He also added Blues licks & grooves to his existing repertoire and gradually learned music theory. He developed a deeper understanding of how chords and progressions were formed both physically and numerically. From 2003 - 2015 he served as the lead and rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, and vocalist for various bands throughout Nepal.

At 2015, he received an invitation to attend a musical retreat at Walden School of Music, San Francisco, California, USA. But a major earthquake hit Nepal in 2015. Buildings crumbled down to dust and Slim's hopes were shattered as he was unable to attend the retreat. The devastation hit him deep and hard. For the next several years, fear and pain were constant in his life. The Blues became his solace, his best friend.

In February, 2017, he fell sick and was confined to bed rest. While he was scrolling through his news feed aimlessly, he came across a facebook page named “Acoustic Blues Pickers." He was intrigued on seeing a world of blues lovers like himself. There he listened to Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil Blues." He practiced playing it for a week and shared what he played on the page. A Facebook friend, on seeing his post on the page, offered to help him and magnanimously sent him a resonator guitar and some slides.

For now, Prakash Slim is not only playing and doing research in Blues, but also teaching BITS aka Blues in the schools. He's recently finished a Blues exhibition for his school in Nepal. No doubt... he's committed to playing forward BITS programs, and hence, is living, by example the axiom "keeping the blues alive" in Nepal & beyond. 

He's now a recognized, internationally affiliated Artist/Performer and Educator of the Blues with the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund (Executive Director Dr. T. DeWayne Moore) since January 2019. Slim is also active in a Blues mentorship program with T.J. Wheeler, a long time pioneer, advocate, activist teacher/performer of Blues, Jazz & related music and educator, from the USA. As a member of International Singer and Songwriters Association (issasongwriters.com) Georgia, USA Slim's own original Blues composition are also gaining him further attention.

 

Prakash Slim - "Villager's Blues"

Prakash serves as a member of the 

board of associates for Mt. Zion MemorialFund.

 

Prakash featured with American Blues Merchandise Wang Dang Doodle Tees, Illinois, USA.

Other exposure has included, being mentioned in America's first and leading Blues magazine - Living Blues in August 2019. A Nepali magazine called Yuwa Hunkar, published his autobiography where he says that Blues can be a music of healing for the people who’ve been through pain in life. His quote "B.B. King globalized the blues" is mentioned by the Phenomenal Scholar, Author and Storyteller Diane Williams in her new book’s presentation - The Life and Legacy of B.B. King at Mississippi Department of Archives and History - 22 January 2020.

He was interviewed in The Nepali Times Australia magazine, Australia, October 2020.

He was interviewed by Tucson Unified School District teacher Patrick Brenan and shared blues knowledge  for 5^th grade students of John E White Elementary School Arizona USA in September 2020.

He was interviewed on The Phoenix Radio, Florida, USA with Big Low in September 2020.

He was interviewed on Kalakarmi Broadcasting & Media Production Company, Nepal in September 2020.

He was interviewed in Blues & Co magazine, France in September 2020

He was featured in Washington Blues Society’s Bluesletter magazine, August 2020 issue.  

He was interviewed for Grateful Web media/news company, Colorado, America in July 2020.

He was interviewed for Down At The Crossroads, Ireland  by Dr. Gary W Burnett on 26 June 2020.  

He represented  Nepal in International Blues Festival of Lima, Peru and published his biography in Almas Raices Productions, Lima, Peru.   

He played for the Crossroads Confined Countdown Festival (France) on 4^th June 2020.

He performed for 5^th Posadas Blues Festival, Argentina, on 6^th November 2020. 

He played for Seventh Bleus Festival En El Rio, Argentina.

He has played for “Blues for a Cause” Nepal.

American Blues Scene magazine mentioned him “a living history of the blues” while premiering his instrumental track “Blues Raga” in November 2020.

A major Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color referred to him as a “Nepali Robert Johnson” and published his interview in May 2020.  

He played for International Blues Festival of Asuncion, Paraguay (indoor)2020.

He represented Nepal in “World Unity Open Mic” virtual event hosted by The Fire – a legendary live music venue, Philadelphia, Pennylsilvania, USA on 18 May 2020.

He was interviewed for American Blues Scene magazine, Florida, America in May, 2020.

He was interviewed on Blues Radio International Viral Anti-Viral world Tour,Florida, USA on 17 April 2020.

He was featured as an international blues educator in Central Iowa Blues society for the month of Februrary, 2020 at Where in The World : A Blues Ambassador’s Travel series.  

He was featured on KFMG Radio 98.9 FM Des Moines, Iowa on 11 February 2020.

He was interviewed for www.blues.gr, Greek Blues Union with Michael Limnios in October, 2019

A feature story on him was part of a Vicksburg Blues Society’s screening and presentation at Vicksburg Blues Challenge held in September 29, 2019. This was presented by Mississippi, Ambassador of Hall of Fame and president of Vicksburg Blues Society, Shirley Waring.  

His country blues originals and covers were aired on July 2020 and July 2019 for an entire month on Blind Dog Radio (Blues Hall of Fame Radio) Ukraine, and featured on Highway Blues 2NVR - FM 105.9 (2nvr.au.org), Australia on July 4, 2019.  His music is now increasingly being heard by in different countries in the western world, like USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Ukraine, Brazil, Israel, Chile, Ethiopia and in many others.

He did collaboration with a renown Italian harmonica player, Grammy nominee Fabrizio Poggi on Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil Blues”.

A legendary blues artist Rory Block watched his interview on Blues Radio International and congratulated Prakash for his wonderful slide playing and International feel, in her home concert series on 21 April 2020.

Prakash has it in his heart that one day, he will play the Blues with a national guitar in Mississippi. For him it's the Mecca of the Blues ...the land that gave birth to blues, the land in which  he says 'is sacred to him."

You may find some of his country blues originals, covers  and the "Blues in the schools" video clips on his Facebook page, ReverbNation and YouTube channel - "Prakash Slim".

Furry Lewis - and some 'Religious Songs'...

by Arne Brogger, organizer and road manager of the Memphis Blues Caravan in the 1970s, (blog post, "The Straight Oil From The Can: Tales from the Memphis Blues Caravan and other Stories,"  November 1, 2009)

© Norman Seeff, 1974

Walter “Furry” Lewis was born in Greenwood, MS in 1893, or so he claimed. It may have been 1900, or 1903, but who cares. He recorded his first side, ever, for Vocalion Records in Chicago in 1927. After some early success, he slid into obscurity and worked as a street sweeper for the Memphis Sanitation Department until he retired. He was 'rediscovered' in the late fifties and gained popularity in the early sixties through re-issues of his original recordings and new studio recordings.

Furry and I met for the first time, as mentioned, in 1972 when I flew him up to Minneapolis to appear at the University of Minnesota's Whole Coffeehouse for a concert. We were close friends and associates until his death some ten years later.

Furry was about as 'authentic' as you can get. He lived a life, in the classic blues tradition, of hardship and joy. He never married and had no children. His closest relative was a niece, Roberta Glover, who lived in Memphis nearby his home on Mosby Street. He lived quietly and played for friends and acquaintances whenever asked. He was able to supplement his meager income through his artistry, but, most importantly, his music gave him an opportunity to express himself in a way that few ever get a chance to do. I came to find that Furry played for himself as much as for anyone else.

One of the first things to strike me about Furry was the fact that he never did the same song the same way twice. In all the hundreds of Furry Lewis gigs I witnessed, never, ever, did I hear an exact repeat. His music was always timely and unique, reflecting how he felt or what he was thinking at a particular moment. Oftentimes, the changes he introduced in his repertoire were done solely to entertain himself. As mentioned, Furry was always his own best audience.

He began his career playing on the Medicine Show circuit selling, among other brands, Jack Rabbit Liniment from flatbed runways in small southern towns. His job was to attract and entertain a crowd so that the more serious business of selling the goods could be done by the Pitchman. The style he evolved was one that did not depend on a microphone to pick up the nuance of his performance, rather it was one that played to the 'back of the house' in broad form, unaided by electronics. Later, after the Medicine Shows were history, he played for dances and picnics where the production values were often confined to a stage, raised two feet or so above a dirt floor. The result was that Furry never learned the fine points of using a microphone and his performances relied on the physical. Dragging his left arm across the top few strings of his guitar and moving it up and down the neck, while his right hand kept the beat (check out the video below to see what I'm talking about - albeit fueled by a bit too much Ten High bourbon...), oftentimes resulted in live recordings of questionable quality, but drove audiences to cheers. That was the effect he desired. Coming off stage, his vision clouded by cataracts, he would ask, “Are they standin' up?” Nine times out of ten, they were.

The hallmark of any Furry Lewis performance was the emotional intensity he delivered on stage. It was not unusual for him to 'lose it' - breaking down in tears. He was equally as likely to dissolve in laughter at one of his oft-told jokes or an incident that struck him as amusing. When he finished a set, part of Furry the man, as well as Furry the performer, had been shared with his audience. I remember one incident when Furry 'lost it'. Listening to some tapes jogged my memory. We were in Texas, playing to a very enthusiastic house, when Furry, close to the end of his set, launched into “When I Lay My Burden Down”. He always liked to close with “some religious songs” and this was one of his favorites. The chorus begins with the line” I'm goin' home to be with my Jesus...” On listening to the tape, I noticed a shrill and unusual tone to his voice as he began the second chorus. Suddenly he stopped. A chocking sob rose. A second later, he called my name. My hurried footsteps can be heard as I came from the wing to down center. Following is the verbatim exchange as caught on tape. Furry: “I done broke down.” AB: “It's okay...don't worry about it. What do you want to do?” [i.e. which tune do you want to do next] Furry: “I don't know, what should I do?” AB: “Pick “Old Rugged Cross” and we'll hang it up.” I remember thinking at the time that we didn't want to risk another vocal, that it was best to take the set out with an instrumental.

Unaware of the details of this entire exchange the audience, to their credit had the good taste to applaud loudly and appreciatively. Furry picked the “The Old Rugged Cross” slowly and dramatically and, cane in hand, hobbled off stage to a standing ovation.

Furry lost his left leg below the knee in a railroad accident in the late teens or early twenties of the last century. He told me he had been in Chicago and had hopped a freight train back to Memphis. The train was rolling through southern Illinois and was about be begin a climb up a long grade. Furry was riding between cars and lost his footing. His leg slipped into the coupling just as the train started up the grade and was crushed in the mechanism. He spent four months in the Illinois Central Railroad Hospital in Carbondale, IL, and was released with a wooded prosthesis which he wore until his death some sixty years later. I have often thought of Furry lying in that hospital, enduring the loss of a limb, alone and uncomforted. I think of it particularly in reference to an incident that happened in Houston, TX in the mid ''70s.

I was attending a conference of music buyers from colleges and universities from across the country. As a part of this gathering, certain artists were selected to perform a thirty-minute 'showcase' of their talents for the benefit of these college entertainment buyers. Furry had been one of those chosen to perform. The only other traditional Blues performers so selected were Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee. Both Furry and Sonny & Brownie had been placed on the same bill, with Sonny & Brownie going on just before Furry. Evidently, the presenters of the conference thought such a pairing would result in a 'battle of the bands' among geriatric Blues performers. I thought it was idiotic. But what could we do?

I had a meeting with some folks who were interested in presenting the Memphis Blues Caravan at a group of universities and was rushing to get to the auditorium to attend to Furry. In my haste, I fell and badly sprained my ankle. I hobbled into his dressing room. He was very concerned about what had happened to my ankle. I told him it was nothing to worry about and that he should go out there and knock 'em on their ass. He smiled and repeated a line I had heard many times before. “Don't you worry, when I get to pickin', I'm like a rabbit in a thicket...it takes a good dog to catch me.”

After the show Furry would not leave my side. He offered me the use of his cane. He told me to lean on his shoulder for support. He insisted that we go back to my room so I could lie down. I was in no position to argue as the ankle was beginning to look like a small balloon.

It took us thirty minutes to clear the door of the auditorium because of the huge clutch of adoring fans. Furry worked the crowd like a seasoned politician. When we finally got back to my room, he sat on a chair opposite the bed. He said, “I ain't goin' nowhere. I'm gonna sit right here and sing you some religious songs that's gonna get you well.” He was without his guitar, it had been brought back to his room by one of my associates.

Furry Lewis sat with me and sang, a Capella, one hymn after another. The pain in my throbbing ankle slowly lifted and I fell asleep. I awoke an hour or more later. The room was dark. Furry was still sitting in the chair across from the bed...watching over me.

I often wondered if anyone sang for him, in that hospital in Carbondale.