Graveyards, Though Quiet, Speak to Life

Don't tarry

Gregg Allman and his brother, Duane.

I have a predilection for walking through old graveyards, for there's a certain calmness enveloping a cemetery that can't be reproduced anywhere else. Never do I feel more in tune with history and my heritage. 

Because graveyards provide a tranquil, pensive experience, I've never feared such places, not even at night. Fear of the graveyard is a manifestation of our dread of death. By avoiding a cemetery, we avert facing our own mortality. But I loved graveyards long before such concepts entered my head. 

As a small boy, I would explore the cemetery across from our house. It seemed a gray, white and green amusement park, with its multiplicity of small stone shapes through which to navigate. When I got bigger, I hunted lizards in a church cemetery where several of my ancestors are buried. You can tell a lot about the deceased, and their heirs, by where and how they are laid to rest. 

Racial, class and religious segregation prevail more in cemeteries than almost anywhere else. How pathetically ugly when families dig up their departed to escape a graveyard's integration. Some rich people wear their wealth to the end, with gaudy crypts that tower over other plots. But all families can be fiercely clannish and property-conscious. Walled family plots seem to be saying, "Hey, we may not be well-off, but by God, this speck of land is eternally the Jones's, and you'd better not trespass or we'll haunt you." 

Who's remembered and Who's not 

It's also clear who's revered by their descendants and who's not, as nicely trimmed plots bor-der others strewn with weeds. I can't help but laugh when old relatives insist that they've purchased the "perpetual care" plan. Cemeteries display the eccentric and the tacky. Heart-shaped double-tombstones send the saccharine meter soaring. Stranger still is the graves sporting photos; often it's of an unshaven, hung-over Uncle Ray — just the image he would want us to remember.

Always noteworthy are the souls providing messages. My favorite such engraving was from an old lady who wrote, "Hi there. I knew you would come!" More ambitious are taped messages from beyond the grave, heard at the push of a button. Sadly, sexism reigns supreme. While men are commemorated with long lists of achievements chiseled into mini-monuments, women's graves typically mention only their husbands and children. 

Some of my most memorable graveyard experiences involve departed rock stars. To find the plot of Allman Brothers Band members Duane Allman and Berry Oakley in Macon's Rosehill Cemetery, I lagged behind a couple of hippies. Sure enough, the late rockers' headstones had engraved mushrooms — and the hippies lit up when they got there. The graves were atop a small natural amphitheater ringed by railroad tracks, a wonderful place to have a concert. 

There's also the grave of B-52s' guitarist Ricky Wilson in Oconee Hills Cemetery in Athens, with its unique pyramid tombstone. 

Barry Oakley

Jim Morrison's resting place, the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, is the most enchanting I've experienced. Old graves of every architectural style sit under gorgeous trees. My friends and I found Morrison's grave by following the arrows and signs penciled on other tombs ("Jim this way," and "Lizard King next right"). It turned out to be a little piece of graffiti-scrawled concrete dwarfed by larger crypts and swarming with stoned French teenagers.

The headstone was missing, and we laughed ourselves silly later at the thought of fried granola-heads making off with "Jim's head, man." I'd like to be buried in a placid setting, perhaps at a spot of special significance in my life. I'm glad that my great-great-grandfather chose to be planted under his favorite oak tree, near the place where he went fox-hunting. 

A cemetery is a future as well as the past. It reminds us to get on with life and do all the things we have been dreaming about. The older I get, the less impressive are those granite inscriptions and the more urgent the will to achieve my goals. 

JOHNNY WINTER, 1944 - 2014

BY STEVE CHAWKINS

Johnny Winter, a rail-thin blues guitarist known for his scorching riffs, flowing white hair and gravelly, hard-times voice, died in Switzerland at the end of a European tour. He was 70. His death in a Zurich hotel room was confirmed by John Lappen, his public relations manager. Winter, who had emphysema, was recently diagnosed with pneumonia, Lappen said. Over the years, Winter had battled drug and alcohol addictions that made him appear prematurely frail. In 2005, he weighed 90 pounds, but with the help of fellow musician Paul Nelson he managed to shake his drug dependencies, gain 60 pounds, and resume a vigorous touring schedule. "He's stopped drinking and he's talking to people and is more accessible," Nel-son told the Jerusalem Post in 2013. "He walks out on the stage unattended now —this is huge! He was sitting down for 15 years." Winter performed from time to time with his young-er brother Edgar. Both were born with albinism, a disor-der that keeps the body from producing the pigments that color the skin, hair and eyes. The condition also leaves albinos with severe vi-sion problems. 

Born with albinism like his brother Edgar, Johnny Winter said his unusual appearance helped him identify with African American blues musicians.  In Beaumont, Texas, the brothers' hometown, it left Johnny feeling isolated and angry. He later said it helped him identify with African American blues musicians, whose music was kept off mainstream radio stations at the time. "We both had a problem with our skin being the wrong color," he told author Mary Lou Sullivan in her 2 010 biography, "Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter." In 1988, Winter became the first white musician named to the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. More drawn to jazz and rock, Edgar Winter became famous in his own right. 

Johnny was to have ap-peared with him on a U.S. tour next month, including an Aug. 22 performance at the City National Grove of Anaheim. However, Johnny's July 12 show at the Lovely Days festival in Wie-sen, Austria, turned out to be his last. Bruce Conforth, a University of Michigan profes-sor of American culture and a founding curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, said Winter blazed a musical trail by blending down-home blues and progressive playing. "Johnny was playing this unbelievably fiery guitar, but he was trying to do it within this very traditional context, which was so mind-blowing to most young, white blues aficionados at the time," Conforth said. 

"Any [blues artist] who picked up the guitar after 1968 was influenced by Johnny Winter." Born in Beaumont on Feb. 23, 1944, John Dawson Winter III grew up comfortably middle class, the son of a cotton broker-turned-building contractor. He took music lessons and sang in the church choir. At 10 or 11, he was transfixed by what he heard on a black radio station that was a fa-vorite of the family's maid. "It was real raw," he recalled, "completely different than the music my parents and grandparents listened to. I started listenin' to blues on KJET because I liked what I heard in the kitchen." Doing a ukulele act, Johnny and Edgar won a local contest that qualified them to audition in New York for "Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour." The judges were unim-pressed. As he got older, Winter played clubs around his hometown. After two years at Lamar State College, he quit, heading for Chicago to sing the blues. Within a few months, he was back in Texas, performing at bars and recording on small la-bels. Still an unknown, he drew the attention of Rolling Stone, which featured him in a 1968 story on the Texas mu-sic scene: "Imagine a 130-pound cross-eyed albino bluesman with long fleecy hair playing some of the gutsiest blues guitar you have ever heard." The next year, Columbia Records signed him to a $600,000 contract. That summer, Winter played at Woodstock, but his set was excluded from the epochal Woodstock film; his manager at the time refused to allow it because "he thought we wouldn't make any money," Winter later said. By the late 1970s, Winter had released a string of popular albums combining classic blues and original compositions. A master of lightning-fast finger work, he was named 63rd on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest guitarists. He also produced four al-bums for his boyhood idol, bluesman Muddy Waters. 

With an on-again, off-again career, Winter appeared to be on at the end. Set for a September release, a new album, "Step Back," features Winter's collabora-tions with legendary guitar-ists Eric Clapton, Billy Gibbons and Mark Knopfler. In addition to his brother Edgar, Winter's survivors include Susan Warford Winter, his wife of 22 years. 

FOUND! The Grave of Harmonicist Bud Spires and his Family

Benjamin Bud Spires 
Photo © Bill Steber

The Grave Marker of Arthur "Big Boy" Spires

The Graves of Other Members of the Spires Family

    

The Fading Nameplate on the Grave Marker of Bud Spires

Bud Spires: Bentonia Bluesman Plays only as Half of the Partnership

By Lisa Nicholas for the Yazoo Herald in 1978

Bud Spires can blow a blues harp, but only with one man, Jack Owens. They've been playing together for about 15 years.

Spires says Owens just "ran up on me playing the harp and we started fooling around until we commenced to play notes together."

"You know how a kid plays a harp? He just sucks the air in and blows out. Well, I could play like that before I met Jack, but no notes. After I heard him, I could play notes. It's got to where now anything he can pick, I can blow. And it's getting better, too. Some other guys tried to blow with him, but they couldn't."

Spires feels training with one partner for a long time allows them to play like one person. Although Spires can't play the guitar, he knows when Owens is playing wrong and usually can tell what he is going to do next.

When they first started playing together, Owens had an electric guitar. Spires had a double noted harmonica. He's never played an electric harp, but thinks he could.

"I could play that double noted harp so hard and loud that you could hear it over that guitar."

The two sit close together to play. Spires says he has to sit close to Owens so he can hear what notes to play. They've sat like this in houses and clubs, in Luckett's Club and the Blue Front in Bentonia.

"I can't play by myself. They'll be waiting for me to play all the time, but I can't get Jack. I'll blow the best I can, but I can't blow with nobody else."

Spires cups both his hands over his harp to play, conjuring a whining, wistful sound. He can't tell anyone how to play harmonica, because "you just have to know."

"Sometimes I volunteer and come on in there and sing a little, too. Me and Jack take turns. Like in 'Catfish Blues,' first it's his turn, then mine. 'Your Buggy Don't Ride Like Mine,' too."

Spires will stop and talk o Owens while he's playing, commenting on his verse, or telling him to speed up the music.

When Spires was young, listening to the blues was all he had in mind. His daddy used to pick a guitar, and blow a harp.

"He could sit on a sidewalk and play. He used to draw the people out of the stores. He was named Authur Spires. I guess I could do it, too."

He got his first harmonica as a child for 25 cents. He doesn't know what brand he plays, and doesn't care. Sometimes he dips his harp in water to loosen up the keys. He plays them until they wear out.

"I've blowed the sides off this one. I had to nail them back on."

Before they play, they tune. Some nights it's easier to get it right. When things aren't going fast enough, Spires says either the guitar is drunk, or the harp is sober.

Spires’ favorite harp is an A. He will blow a C if he can't get an A. If he plays a G, Owens has to "drop his strings way low, almost loose" to get in tune. The high notes on Spire's harp are like brand new because they are never used. They just don't play songs that go up in that range of notes.

"I ain't got nothing to do but this here. I grew up in Mississippi, ain't hardly been out. I'll get together with Jack anytime to play. I could play everyday."

Spires jokes around a lot when he plays, and usually catches the listener off guard with some belly cracker. When he starts grinning, he's set to play. 

Larry Hoffman remembers getting directions from Bud Spires:

I remember being dispatched by Jim O'Neal in Clarksdale, to take our friend photographer Jim Fraher down to Bentonia to pick up Jack and Bud and bring them back to Clarksdale to play in the Sunflower River Festival. We were told to first stop at Duck Holmes' store and get directions from Mr. Holmes to get through the winding brush-laden roads leading to Bud's house, and he would take us to Jack. The interesting thing about this errand was that Bud was stone blind! "Naw, don't worry about that, Bud will take you right there," promised Holmes. After a brief visit with Duck we traveled on to meet Bud and his mom who lived a few miles from the store. From there--as promised-- Bud gave us flawless directions to Jack's place. I have to smile thinking about Jack and Bud and the conversation that ensued as we speeded from Bentonia to Clarksdale. I was in a speedy mood, and was really trucking down those smooth Mississippi highways when Jack shouted out, "I feel like im flyin'!!" It was a great trip, and it was hard not to become immediately taken by both of those great bluesmen. RIP -- one thing that unites the really fine bluesmen is that -- to a man or woman-- each is one-of-a-kind, and never forgotten.

The Last Known Bull Ride of the Delta Blues

Sam Chatmon's Long & Hard Road

by T. DeWayne Moore

Sam Chatmon's memorial page

Born in 1899 outside of Bolton, Mississippi, Sam Chatmon was one of 24 children born to well-known fiddler Henderson Chatmon and guitarist Eliza Jackson. First introduced to music at an early age, Sam played the bass in his family’s string band, which performed rags, ballads, and popular dance tunes at parties in the immediate vicinity of Bolton. As a young man, he developed into a versatile musician, who could play bass, guitar, banjo, harmonica, and mandolin. 

Beyond his early performances at local parties, Sam also worked as a solo act for small fees and tips on street corners and cafes in cities across Mississippi. In the 1920s, two of his brothers formed a popular string band the Mississippi Sheiks, which at the time of their first recording session for Okeh Records in 1930 included Lonnie Chatmon on fiddle, Armenter “Bo Carter” Chatmon on guitar, and Walter Vinson on guitar and lead vocals. 

While the Mississippi Sheiks recorded as many as seventy songs over five years for the Okeh, Paramount, and Bluebird labels, the band’s most commercially successful record was “Sitting on Top of the World,” (1930 Okeh 8784), which became a standard of traditional American music. It’s popularity inspired several derivative recordings by a host of musicians, such as Bob Wills, John Lee Hooker, Nat King Cole, Harry Belafonte, Bill Monroe, Frank Sinatra, the Grateful Dead, and the Jeff Healey Band. The song also served as the musical basis for Robert Johnson’s later recording of “Come On in My Kitchen.”

In the late 1920s, Sam and his wife Palyetta Chatmon moved to Washington County in the Mississippi Delta, where he worked on occasion as a farmer on the plantations outside the town of Hollandale. He continued to perform during this period, sometimes alongside eminent blues guitarist and singer Charlie Patton, who also grew up in Bolton. After the Mississippi Sheiks disbanded in 1935, Sam and his brother Lonnie went on to make their final recordings, twelve duets, for the Bluebird label in 1936, which signaled the end of his career as a professional musician. He subsequently returned to his wife and children and settled down to farming in Hollandale. 

“I kept farming until 1950,” Chatmon recalled, “I rented that land and worked until I quit with my own team and all. Then I went to work as a night watchman and bought me a house and a half acre.” 

Ken Swerilas, a folk music enthusiast who had acquired several 78 rpm records of the Mississippi Sheiks, managed to track down the versatile blues musician in 1965. “I didn’t play much music until 1965 when Ken Swerilas came by and asked me to come out to San Diego,” he recalled, “So I came out West and wound up getting a whole new chance to play at colleges and coffeehouses and a whole new chance to make records.” Starting a new chapter of his career as folk-blues artist, Sam Chatmon recorded that same year for Arhoolie Records, and he later recorded for several other independent blues and folk labels. He toured extensively during the 1960s and 1970s. 

Hacksaw Harney, 
Sam Chatmon, 
and Eugene Powell

At Sweet’s Mill Music Camp in California, he made several recordings with a new band called The California Sheiks, which included such musicians Sue Draheim, Kenny Hall, Ed Littlefield, Lou Curtiss, Kathy Hall, and Will Scarlett. In the mid-1970s, Chatmon performed at some of the largest and most popular folk festivals, including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, the Mariposa Folk Festival in Toronto, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. 

Music critic John Wilson, in one 1971 article for the New York Times, described the finger-picking guitar and moaning vocal style of Chatmon as a “living summation” of the Delta blues tradition. 

Even though he enjoyed an extended resurgence in popularity that took him to venues across the country, Chatmon always came back home to Hollandale. His presence in the Delta, indeed, served as a major promotional force and inspired a new respect for blues music in Mississippi.

The Mississippi Parks Commission, the Mississippi Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts combined forces to initiate the Classroom in the Parks Program in the summer of 1976, which included “A Tribute to the Delta Blues” at Leroy Percy State Park, featuring Chatmon and several other Delta-based musicians. 

Beginning in 1977, he also performed at different blues concerts and events sponsored by Mississippi Action for Community Education (MACE), a community action organization headquartered in Greenville, which organized the first Delta Blues Festival at Freedom Village in 1978. 

Chatmon was a featured performer for five years at the annual Delta Blues Festival. He was even honored with a reception at the Governor’s Mansion in 1982, the day before his final public performance on stage in Freedom Village. 

After an extended bout with pneumonia, Sam Chatmon died in South Washington County Hospital in the early morning hours of Wednesday, February 2, 1983. His funeral was held the following Sunday at Simmons High School Auditorium in Hollandale, and it featured the musical tributes of Dell Rico Jackson, the Hollandale Community Choir, and talented singer Barbara Howard. WNIX disc jockey Al Mike addressed the somber crowd and talked about his interviews with the eminent blues singer. “In an age of few true heroes,” Malcolm Walls offered, “Sam stood tall.” He represented a certain element of a state that “sometimes forgets or hides its cultural traditions,” as one staff writer for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger put it. His friend and student Libby Ray Watson also performed the Mississippi Sheiks standard “Sitting on Top of the World” at the funeral, a performance which, one attendee believed, “spoke quite eloquently for the swatch of sunbeams peeking through the clouds of an oppressively gloomy day.” 

There may be days you don’t know your name 

Why should I cry, why should I cry in vain 

But now you’re gone, and I’m not worried 

‘Cause I’m sitting on top of the world 

Chatmon was buried in an unmarked grave at Sanders Garden Memorial Cemetery until the late-1990s. It was not until a little more than fifteen years after his death that the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund marked his burial site with a flat memorial headstone. Indebted popular musicians Bonnie Raitt and John Fogerty contributed the majority of the $1,400 cost of the marker, which featured an engraved portrait of the blues artist as well as an inscription composed by MZMF founder Skip Henderson and former student Libby Rae Watson. Hollandale native Cousie Giglio, in conjunction with local officials, organized a dedication ceremony at the city auditorium in Hollandale, which attracted over two hundred people from all over the state on March 14th, 1998. Blessed with beautiful weather, the graveside service was a “pleasant one,” according to one observer. 

The Hollandale Fire Station hosted a subsequent reception in honor of Chatmon. With an abundance of food, including a cake in the shape of a guitar, the festivities included the screening of a film about the blues singer, a display of mementos relating to his life, several speeches of family and friends, and a live performance by Leland-based (Wilmot Born!) bluesman Eddie Cusic. Some folks, who wanted to continue the celebration, headed over to the Walnut Street Bait Shop in Greenville to enjoy libations as well as the musical stylings of T-Model Ford and the John Horton Band. The first headstone erected for Sam Chatmon was replaced in September 2015. 

Considering the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund decided to focus its efforts on 1) assessing the condition of markers and their surroundings and 2) taking the necessary steps to address any problematic discoveries. The most pressing and potentially costly problem we identified was the deterioration of Sam Chatmon’s headstone at Sander's Memorial Garden Cemetery in Hollandale, Mississippi. The commemorative marker had deteriorated significantly during the past seventeen years due to lawn mower damage and the unforeseen effects of erosion on the flat stone. The intense amount of weathering rendered the etched photograph of the musician unrecognizable—more like vanished in the dark black space. The marker, in addition, suffered from repeated attempts to correct a couple of words that a local monument company misspelled during the engraving process. Due to the extent of damage and vulnerable nature of the flat stone, the board decided to replace it with a more durable headstone, one less susceptible to damage from routine lawn maintenance and designed to resist the effects of weather. The suggestion was also made to erect a commemorative bench near his grave site. 

To assess our options in light of cemetery rules, MZMF board member Euphus Ruth discussed the installation of a more weather resistant marker with the manager the cemetery. Although he would not allow an upright stone, he granted permission to install a slightly raised, beveled stone, which will help prevent lawnmower damage as well as allow water to run off the front surface. He also agreed to allow the installation of a stone bench near the grave site, which serves not only to honor the versatile musician, but also provide a solemn performance venue for blues musicians and enthusiasts who visit each year from around the world! 

His Misspelled Marker

On March 28, 2015, the MZMF board of directors met in Greenville to discuss—among other projects—the progress of fundraising efforts to replace the damaged headstone of Sam Chatmon. Having asked for bids from four different monument companies, the board accepted the second lowest bid of Mortimer Funeral Home in Greenville, Mississippi. The board made this decision based on its conclusion that the experienced, Delta-based institution will provide the utmost in quality as well as show care and respect for this native artist. The quoted price for the beveled headstone is $1,915.06. The quoted priced for the simple, yet sturdy, stone bench is $739.37.