Marcus Bottom

The historic African American community of Marcus Bottom in Vicksburg was an important center of early blues, jazz, and gospel music activity. Pianist Eurreal “Little Brother” Montgomery, one of the premier blues artists of the 1920s and ’30s, performed there and elsewhere in Vicksburg, and his song “Vicksburg Blues” became a blues standard recorded by many other performers. Vicksburg’s position as a lively river port between New Orleans and Memphis, its status as Mississippi’s most populous city in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and its large African American community made it a place where many musical traditions mingled in clubs and cafes in Marcus Bottom and nearby riverfront areas. The city at one time served as a base for Delta blues pioneer Charley Patton, Bo Carter, Honeyboy Edwards, and many pianists led by Little Brother Montgomery, and it was also the birthplace of noted early musicians including Willie Dixon, Milt Hinton, Johnny Young, Walter Barnes, and Thomas Pinkston. In the 1920s Montgomery played at the South Side Park Dance Hall on Lane Street and at Zach Lewis’s and Bell’s Café on Washington Street, and his music strongly influenced the young Willie Dixon, who later hired him for recording sessions and club dates in Chicago. Montgomery also recalled playing in Vicksburg with pianists Earnest “44” Johnson, Sam “Cracking Kid” Johnson, Tommy Jackson, Walter Lewis, Nub-Fingered Son Cook, and Stiff Arm Eddie Scott. According to music historian Earnest McBride, jazz figures Earl “Fatha” Hines, King Oliver, Bennie Moten, and Louis Armstrong also played at the South Side Park Dance Hall. Later, while the Blue Room and the Cotton Club booked major acts elsewhere in town, musical life continued in Marcus Bottom through local performers including Willie Johnson, Billy Jones, and Leon Dixon, and through blues heard on jukeboxes at places such as the Playboy Club, the El Morocco, Delia’s Do Drop Inn, the Open House, Big Will’s, the Red Dot Inn, and the Melody Lounge. Members of Vicksburg’s Red Tops band, including trumpeter Willard Tyler, grew up nearby. In 1954 folklorist Frederic Ramsey, Jr., came to Marcus Bottom seeking traditional African American music and recorded string band musicians Tom Johnson and John Copeland for Folkways Records’ Music of the South series. Former resident C. K. Chiplin later chronicled the community before and during the civil rights era in his 1996 book Roads From the Bottom: A Survival Journal for America’s Black Community.

Vicksburg, Mississippi · United States