Two Steps From The Blues

Choctaw County lay somewhat apart from Mississippi's better-known blues routes, yet it produced blues artists who gained wide acclaim, especially Ackerman native "Texas" Johnny Brown. Born February 22, 1928, Brown was the son of Ackerman bluesman Cranston Exerville "Clarence" Brown, a blind street singer-guitarist and former railroad employee who traveled with his son through towns in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, with stops in New Orleans and Natchez, and in 1940 appeared with him and their dog Carburetor in the opening sequence of the film "Virginia." After returning to Natchez, where Billboard reported in 1950 that Clarence Brown had recorded for Sultan Records, Clarence died a few years later in Ethel, Mississippi. Johnny Brown had moved to Houston, Texas, in the 1940s, played guitar in Amos Milburn's band, took part in a 1949 Atlantic Records session for Ruth Brown in New York, and made his own debut recording under the name Texas Johnny Brown. In Houston he did session work and songwriting for Duke Records and toured with Bobby "Blue" Bland and Junior Parker. His best-known composition, the blues ballad "Two Steps from the Blues," became the title track of a 1961 Bland album. After recording several singles in the 1950s and 1960s, Brown released his first album, "Nothin' But the Truth," in 1997 on a label named Choctaw Creek in honor of his native county, and in the 1990s he traveled the U.S. and overseas blues festival circuit. Other Choctaw County blues artists included Levester "Big Lucky" Carter, R. Lee Miller, and Therley "Speedy" Ashford, an Ackerman-area singer-guitarist born February 4, 1910, who later settled in Memphis around 1949 and whose only recordings, made in 1973 with Willie "Little Red" Holmes as Speedy and Red, were released in England in 1984 on the album Downhome Blues.

Ackerman, Mississippi · United States