Choctaw County’s blues history was shaped especially by singers, songwriters, and guitarists Levester “Big Lucky” Carter and Texas Johnny Brown, and by a small African American community whose musicians gained international renown despite relative isolation from Mississippi’s main blues centers. In the Weir and French Camp area, the related Carter and Hemphill families laid much of the foundation for this legacy. Carter, born in Weir on February 10, 1920, was raised in French Camp, where his sharecropper father Charlie sang blues and gospel and where he heard music from relatives, local guitarists, fiddlers, and dancers’ homemade instruments. He attended Mt. Salem M.B. Church and school in French Camp, while Texas Johnny Brown attended a different Mt. Salem church and school near Ackerman. Carter later became a longtime singer, guitarist, and songwriter in Memphis, recording there in the 1950s, including 1957 sessions for Sam Phillips of Sun Records that were not released until the 1980s, and four singles in the 1960s, two for Willie Mitchell. His only CD, Luck 13, released in 1998 on the British label Blueside, won awards from Living Blues in the U.S. and Soul Bag in France. A documentary on him, Le Blues du Survivant, was produced by French filmmaker Marc Oriol. Carter died in Memphis on December 24, 2002. The area’s musical network also included Geet Hemphill, Dock Hemphill, Sid Hemphill, and Jessie Mae Hemphill, who became one of the world’s premier female blues performers, as well as Carter’s cousin Ed “Prince Gabe” Kirby, whose Memphis band often included him. Other Choctaw County-connected musicians included harmonica player Andrew Willie Brown, or Little Willie Brown, who recorded several singles in the 1950s and 1960s; Roebuck “Pops” Staples, whose family roots reached back to the county; and Rev. Archie Fair of French Camp, whose guitar playing inspired B. B. King.