Doing research for the Mississippi Blues Trail

Writing texts and researching the history for the Mississippi Blues Trail markers is my main blues project these days. Scott Barretta of Living Blues and I, along with the rest of the editorial and design team (including Dr. Sylvester Oliver in Holly Springs, Chrissy Wilson of the Mississippi Department of Archives & History in Jackson, and Wanda Clark in Greenwood) are generating the text and photos for these historical markers – 52 so far, with about 80 more to do over the next three years.

This has turned into a much more intensive process than any of us imagined when we compiled the marker site list with the Mississippi Blues Commission. Rather than just repeat and rehash previous biographies and histories, we’re using the ever-increasing wealth of data available from online searches, genealogy databases, libraries, local community sources, musicians and their families, the BluEsoterica archives of interviews and subject files, and a super crew of international blues heads including Bob Eagle in Australia, Eric LeBlanc in Canada, and Howard Rye, Alan Balfour, Chris Smith and others in the U.K., as well as the collections at Delta Haze Corp. in Greenwood and the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi’s John D. Williams Library. Collectors such as Richard Nevins of Shanachie and Yazoo Records, Paul Garon, Woody Sistrunk, and Ken Oilschlager have also provided images of record labels and other material. At the top of the back side of the Son House marker at the site of the old Clack Store in Tunica County, for example, is a photo of the only copy known in blues collectors' circles of Son House's "Preachin' the Blues."

The affiliation of this project with the state of Mississippi has opened up new streams of information from the source, as various local officials, tourism directors, historical societies, and chambers of commerce have aided in the search and put us in contact with musicians, relatives, and others involved in the blues (most recently, for example, a cousin of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup in Forest, Mississippi, who took it upon himself to compile Crudup’s family history). In the process of this, we’re finding out that a number of blues artists weren’t born when or where the previously published bios say, and histories are being revised and sometimes constructed virtually from scratch. We’re currently in the throes of unraveling the mangled and tangled tale of Otis Spann, self-proclaimed second lieutenant, medical college student, and pro football quarterback.

We’d like to turn the marker texts and graphics into a book with expanded comments about everything we DIDN’T get to on the markers - - - publishers, please contact us if you’re interested.

Jim O'Neal, September 2008