Jessie Mae Hemphill (c. 1923–2006) was one of the few female performers of country blues, a multi-instrumentalist who performed in local fife and drum bands before gaining international recognition in the 1980s as a vocalist and guitarist. She came from a deeply musical Senatobia-area family: her great-grandfather Dock Hemphill was a fiddler born a slave; her grandfather Sid Hemphill, a leading local musician, played fiddle, guitar, banjo, drums, fife, mandolin, organ, and quills; and his daughters, including Jessie Mae’s mother Virgie Lee, all played drums and stringed instruments. As a small girl, inspired by her grandfather, she took up guitar, harmonica, and drums, and although she sang briefly with bands in Memphis during the 1950s, most of her early musical experiences were local. Folklorists Alan Lomax and Lewis Jones documented the Hemphill family’s broad repertoire in Sledge in 1942, and Lomax later returned to record Hemphill in 1959, recalling her fife and drum music as the “main find of my whole career.” George Mitchell recorded her in the late ’60s, and her first 45 rpm single, produced by Dr. David Evans, was released on the University of Memphis’ High Water label in 1980. Hemphill then toured the U.S. and Europe, recorded several albums, won several W. C. Handy Awards for traditional blues, played drums behind Otha Turner on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and reached broader audiences through the 1992 documentary Deep Blues. After a 1993 stroke prevented her from playing guitar, she continued to sing, and in 2004 she was featured singing and playing tambourine on Dare You to Do It Again with many local musicians. Remembered for her colorful personality, attire, and choice of instruments, she embodied deep and rich Senatobia-area traditions and is buried at Senatobia Memorial Cemetery.