Hickory Street, known locally as "The Hollow," was a center of social life, commerce, entertainment, and blues activity for the African American community of central Mississippi for several decades through the 1970s. In Canton, Elmore James performed often in local cafes and clubs on Hickory Street and learned electronics by working at Robert’s Radio Repair, where his experiments with sound technology helped him develop a powerful and original electric blues style. Hickory Street was one of several blues centers around Canton, with performers including Elmore James, B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson II appearing at places such as Bessie’s Hideaway and the Star Lite Café, as well as at Club Delece, Club Desire, the Blue Garden, grocery stores, and on the streets. East of town, the Sawmill Quarters, where Denkmann Lumber Company employees lived in shotgun houses, was another blues hot spot, while in rural Madison County string bands and guitarists played at country suppers and dances. Noted local performers included guitarist William “Do-Boy” Diamond and fiddler Theodore Harris, whose crowds were so large that streets had to be blocked when he played in town. In the 1920s and 1930s, Little Brother Montgomery was a prominent performer at the sawmill and in Canton nightspots; he shared piano duties at the sawmill camp with Sunnyland Slim, traveled with Eugene Watts’s Serenaders, and belonged to a family of musicians that included pianists Joe and Tollie Montgomery and nephew Paul Gayten. In the early 1950s, Elmore James became popular with the sawmill crowd while living and working in Canton with guitarist Robert Earl Holston, owner of Robert’s Radio Repair at 153 Hickory Street, who helped him find ways to amplify his slide guitar. James made some of his first recordings at Club Desire, and the distinctive sound that came to fruition in Canton made his records influential with slide guitarists around the world. Hickory Street’s blues tradition was celebrated later by the Hickory Street Festival beginning in the 1980s and by Jessie Primer, Jr., on his 2002 CD Dancin’ On Hickory Street (The Hollow), and Canton has also been home to blues, jazz, guitar, and gospel artists including Johnnie Temple, John Lee Henley, Grady Champion, Jessie Primer III, Sonny Landreth, Bucky Barrett, Cleophus Robinson, Sister Thea Bowman, and the Canton Spirituals.