Robert Nighthawk, born Robert Lee McCollum in 1909 in Phillips County, Arkansas, was one of the foremost blues guitarists of his era and one of the Delta’s most famous blues artists during the 1940s and ’50s. Though he rarely stayed long in one town, he called Friars Point home at various times from the 1920s to the 1960s, sang in a 1940 recording of “going back to Friars Point, down in sweet old Dixie Land,” and was among the musicians who played at local juke joints, house parties, and in front of stores such as Hirsberg’s. He learned guitar from Houston Stackhouse on a farm in Murphy Bayou, Mississippi, in 1931 after first playing harmonica, recorded in 1937 as Robert Lee McCoy on “Prowling Night-Hawk,” and used several recording names, including Rambling Bob. He lived in Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, Florida, and elsewhere between periodic returns to the Delta, and became known for radio broadcasts on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas, and WROX in Clarksdale, as well as for his recordings, wide-ranging travels, cool composed vocal style, and influential slide guitar sound made by sliding a piece of brass pipe along the guitar frets. His best known records included “Annie Lee Blues,” “Black Angel Blues,” “The Moon is Rising,” and “Crying Won’t Help You,” and B.B. King named him one of his ten favorite guitarists. Nighthawk died in Helena on November 5, 1967, and his renown spread internationally after his death; he was elected to the Blues Hall of Fame in 1983, and the 1980 album Robert Nighthawk: Live on Maxwell Street 1964 was named one of the ten best rock ’n’ roll albums of the year by critic Greil Marcus. Friars Point during his time was a lively blues setting in plantation juke joints, the New Town area, downtown stores, and street corners, where merchants sometimes hired musicians to attract customers and sometimes complained when crowds blocked store entrances. Robert Johnson reportedly played there as well, including at the Blue and White Club, and Friars Point also produced later recording performers such as the Sons of Wonder, Robert Diggs, and Blind Mississippi Morris Cummings.