The Dedication of Bo Carter's Headstone and Celebration in Nitta Yuma

Directions

Nitta Yuma is located on Highway 61. From the north, once you enter Nitta Yuma, turn right after the chapel onto the road in front of the home of Henry Phelps' sister. If you follow the road around the house and to the field, you'll see the cemetery on the right side of the cotton field. The dedication will begin until 5:00 p.m. But folks are more than welcome to come early and have some dinner, which will be setup in one of the buildings (like the commissary) on the street in front of the chapel. These building will also be used for the ceremony in the event of evening showers. If it is raining, do not attempt to drive through the field. Visitors can walk around the ghost town of Nitta Yuma, but do not enter any of the older unless invited inside to look around.

July 29, 2017 - 5:00 p.m.

The Headstone Dedication and Celebration of Bo Carter
Nitta Yuma Cemetery

Nitta Yuma Plantation - Sharkey County, Mississippi

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Join us for the headstone dedication and celebration featuring the original fiddle used by Alonzo Chatmon, the actual National Style N guitar once owned by Bo Carter and all of the amazing musicians who plan to perform at the event in Nitta Yuma, MS on July 29, 2017, such as....

- Ron Bombardi (who like Armenter Chatmon, or Bo Carter, adopted a new name as a musician, "Jersey Slim" Hawkins) is a professor and philosopher with dextrous mental abilities, which he readily transfers through his body so he can walk around town, talk to people, and even write a few simple words every now and again in the academic journals and monographs. The longtime fiddle player for the Stompers, in fact, models his playing style after the Mississippi Sheiks most-accomplished fiddle player, Lonnie Chatmon, the brother of Bo Carter (The two brothers stand to the left of Walter Vinson in the below photo). It is very fitting then that his hero's fiddle will be available for his use in Nitta Yuma.  Lonnie Chatmon's fiddle may be heard once again with the steel-bodied National Style N guitar of Bo Carter.

- Bill Steber is the photographer who got the good shots of the most recent group of the blues legends, whose work you may have seen at the local university or in Oxford American magazine, but he doubles as one of the potent musical forces behind the Murfreesboro, TN-based Jake Leg Stompers.

- Blues musician Andy Cohen's amazing career has spanned decades so I have prepared a collection of content for your reading and viewing pleasure HERE or you can visit his website HERE

- Blues traveller and musician Steve Cheseborough's admiration and enthusiasm for the music of Bo Carter is all but limitless. He has informed the owner of the National Style N guitar of Bo Carter!!!! And he is Nitta Yuma bound and down!!! Click HERE to read Cheseborough's epic quest for his own personal Holy Grail of the Blues!

- Moses Crouch is a hill country musician of the most committed order who is often heard cooking up his liniments and draining out special orders of snake oil juice with the Memphissippi Medicine. Despite being the youngest musician to confirm thusfar, his repertoire includes plenty of music with an old soul...

Henry Phelps, the landowner of the small hamlet, plans to have a large celebration and reception with food and refreshments following the dedication. He has done many excellent renovations of the historic buildings in Nitta Yuma, and the commemoration of Bo Carter's headstone offers everyone a chance to experience this jewel of the mid-Delta through the lens of a unique celebration.

Mississippi's Mt. Zion: Keeping Power and Control over Black Cultural Traditions in the Rural Church Communities of the Delta

Mississippi's Mt. Zion: Keeping Power and Control over Black Cultural Traditions in the Rural Church Communities of the Delta

By Barry Kerzner - July 24, 2017

The Defaced Cenotaph in Morgan City circa 2000

As a Lead Boy for Blind Musicians, the Blues Aesthetic Emerged:

As a Lead Boy for Blind Musicians, 

the Blues Aesthetic Emerged:

Remembering Josh White

Funeral services were held for world-renowned blues singer Josh White at the Epworth Methodist Church in the Bronx where he and his widow Carol were married 34 years ago. White died Friday Sept. 5 while undergoing surgery at Northshore Hospital. He was 61 years old.

Josh White Jr.. son of the illustrious entertainer delivered the eulogy and recited a poem written by one of the deceased's surviving four daughters.

White, who was to have a defective valve in his heart replaced by the surgery, was born in Greenville S.C. He it moved to New York in 1932 where he began a career that revolutionized folk singing, and made it the music of urban cabarets in the 1940s, when he reached the height of his popularity.

His amiable, suave, and sophisticated renditions, coupled with his casual charm created his individual authoritative, sensual style, that made his listening audience consider him a leading popularizer of the blues.

His trademark was a casually worn sportshirt, always invariably opened at the neck, and his performance was always offered while sitting on a stool, with his foot resting on the rung. Another of his trademarks was the presence of a lit cigarette, always tucked neatly behind one ear.

The big husky singer had a —smooth firm, baritone voice, and a broad confiding smile. He phrased his songs with a wide range of emotions, from sheer joy, to anger defiance, accompanying himself on the guitar. Josh White was named Joshua, by his mother who hoped that a name like that would inspire him to become a minister. He used to say that to become a preacher you had to know an awful lot and Josh dropped out of school while in the sixth grade. but when he was only seven, he helped a blind singer home and inadvertently started his singing career. 

The singer later asked his mother if he could accompany him to Florida for the winter. His mother gave him permission to go because he felt that to lead the blind would be "doing God's work." He became the protege of Joe Taggert and for four years the two wandered from town to town Taggert singing and White playing the guitar. The boy, Josh White, began leading other blind minstrels on their tours. One of them was the noted blind Lemon Jefferson. White often said that it was then that he really began to hear and learn songs but they were different songs, songs only Lemon knew, songs he had heard old old people sing when he was a small boy. Pre-Civil War songs and eery rare spirituals. This was the beginning of Josh White's folk singing career.

Lemon Jefferson was famous for moans and shouts but Josh remembered him when he sang lonely songs---songs that one man must sing alone binding his heart to all hearts of all who hear him. Many people felt and have said that White absorbed this gift from Lemon. Although White was only 16 when Lemon died, his close', association with the great minstrel was not forgotten for in 1932 he had an offer to go to New York and record many of Lemon's songs. Once there, he quickly got a contract with a folk song group known as the Southernaires for three performances a week for $84. He then won a recording contract and was billed as the "Singing Christian". He also sang under the name of Pinewood Tom. His many famous songs included "One Meatball" "Out-skirts of Town" "Hard Time Blues" and John Henry." He became nationally famous with his "Chain Gang" album and as a result of it earned the title a "repository of rare 'Southern music." He is survived by a widow, one son, and four daughters.

His remains were buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York.

OLE FIDDLER: SHUCKING CORN

OLE FIDDLER: SHUCKING CORN 

by Wayne Walker - Thursday, November 8, 1973

We called him the Ole Fiddler. Back in the 20's it was a big thrill for us kids when the Ole Fiddler would pay us a visit. He rode an old grey mule, Maude, he called her, with a rheumatic gait. She seemed to kinda stagger along with the old man's weight almost too much for her to bear. I can see the Ole Fiddler now astride ol' Maude and huggin' his fiddle case across his chest like an infant in his arms. 

His long, white beard waving in the breeze -- not from Maude's great speed, however, Maude could trot no faster than a man can walk. Before coming to the house the 01' Fiddler would stop and feed, water and put ol' Maude away for the night in a spare stable in the barn. With a stiff, rheumatic gait that was worse than Maude's, he'd come amblin' up the lane, still baby-totin' his fiddle. Us young'uns would dash out to meet him. We'd catch up to him and begin pullin' and tuggin' at his loose clothing for goodies like jelly beans, peppermint sticks and orange gum-drops we knew he had for us. 

Teasingly, he would scold us as we felt about his person for the candy: "Git, you young'uns! I ain't got no candy this time. Git along with you now. Stop it. I say – y’all gonna make me drap my fiddle. Go on -- shoo!" We'd get the candy when inside the house and the Ole fiddler got settled down and stated that he had just come to set a spell -- that meant he'd stay all night. Carefully he would place the battered old fiddle case down beside his chair and start the conversation with little unimportant bits of news that was a stall until someone would re-quest that he play the fiddle.

In the Ole Fiddler's estimation, he was a great fiddlin' man; but alas, he could not even tune it properly, and more alas, than that, he only knew two pieces (his word for a song) -- Turkey In The Straw and - Leather Britches. , Finally us young'uns would yell for him to play the fiddle -- he gave us candy didn't he? Talkin' about fast: The Ole fiddler could quick-draw that -fiddle from the case quicker 'n -,, any wild west hired gunman could draw and smoke a 38! My daddy, Doctor Walker, was quite a fiddler in his youth and when the Ole Fiddler held his fiddle up next to his good ear and plunked those out-of-tune strings, daddy would cringe and wince like a dog being whipped. 

The Ole Fiddler adjusted a string or two professionally, rosin' up the bow, and Mama, being allergic to bad fiddlin', excused herself, "to fix supper," she said and departed forthwith. After one piece, the doctor would depart forthwith. With a twinkle in his eyes, the 01' Fiddler would chin that fiddle and shout with gusto: "How'd ya'll like to hear Ole Joe Clark'?" Before anyone could answer he'd rack out with (I'm sorry to say) absolutely and positively the world's worst rendition of -- guess what? yeah, Turkey In the Straw. "Look out now! Here comes the 'Yaller Rose of Texas'!" 

Shouting the Rebel yell, The Yaller Rose of Texas sounded exactly like -- you guessed it --Leather Britches. After supper, it was a repeat performance same as before supper, only more so. He must have had 40 titles for Turkey In the Straw, and 40 titles for Leather Britches! How I loved to "Watch him go," mainly because of his honest sincerity and the way he stomped his foot, off-beat and also out of time to boot. He wore brogan shoes and when he raised that right foot a foot off the floor, the crash made the floor vibrate and the sound mercifully drounded out most of his fiddlin'. 

No. I ain't makin' fun of the Ole Fiddler. He put on a honest and sincere show. I was amazed at how he mesmerized himself with his own fiddlin'. He seemed to go into some kind of trance with wide open mouth, rollin’ his eyes and a lot of crazy head rollin' and shakin’. I know that somewhere in Great Beyond, the Ole Fiddler is playing up a storm out of tune fiddle and out of time stompin'. But maybe, by now, he has learned him a new piece (song) and that will add 40 more titles to his already expansive repertory.