B. B. King, a Mississippi man, a Mississippi Delta man. In those days, to get off another man’s plantation tractor, one had to make some footsteps on down the line. He did, and those first foot, or should I say finger, steps led him to Memphis. From there, those same steps led him [...]

Around 1965, It happened that, with my guitar bought in “Memphis Tennessee, Jug band music sounded so sweet to me. Well, it sounds so sweet. Oh, Oh, Oh, It’s hard to beat. Jug band music certainly was a treat to me”.¶ Another \”Jug Band Music\” Lover
Here is an example of the Real Deal.  Again a [...]

A Classmate from RHW in 1965.  My first business vendor charging a very fair price of $100 for my first business cards, stationary, and invoice forms.  He, like always, was optimistic that I would need them one day.  A believer in our community, he was with me a Charter member of Sertoma, Service to Mankind.  [...]

 It’s hard to live by Rules.  Rules conjure up images of Authority.  They cut away at being free.  Still, we all do to one degree or another. If one looks aside at the particularly painful side to rules, there is a brighter side where one finds a few that are a pleasure to follow.  One example [...]

A strangely shapped UK pay phone hung on the yellowed papered wall beside the front door of the small hotel in the burgh of Girvan in Carrick, South Ayrshire, Scotland. There were small glass windows either side of the huge, raised panel door so that while using the phone, the caller could view the beach and [...]

It was around 1962 when my mother, who had worked for years to get me interested in playing music, decided that Santa was going to bring along a guitar on the sled. It stuck. My sister, Mary Virginia

Sister Mary Virginia

taught me some songs that allowed the chords I had learned to be of some [...]

This past weekend, I drove up into the Mississippi Delta where I met my friend at his fine cabin along the levee.  Over the levee, there is some woodsland that crawls with wildlife.  The land involved is a strip of woods 40 acres wide (1/4 mile) by 2 miles deep reaching to the River. The [...]

Great live popular music performed for those untrustable ones of us over 30 is alive & well in Mississippi.  It exists in Meridian lately.  A tall well dressed character wearing a Roy Rogers style cowboy hat named Jacky Jack White provides the opportunity in one of the great music venues left anywhere in Mississippi.  The [...]

So far these Blogging efforts have not made much progress in the Music category.  A Passion for Music was included because through so much of my life, my mind is full of it, music that is.  The guitar became the instrument of choice when my mother, recognizing that there was music in me, purchased one [...]

Absent for more than fifty years this icon of 20th Century Jass and arranger of Music Scores for Hollywood Cinema came home to Laurel bringing masters to sit beside him and produce world class music that made the audience feel like adults in the company of world class talent.  To Mundell’s side was another master, Floyd [...]