The Black Prairies of eastern Mississippi produced notable blues musicians including Howlin’ Wolf, Bukka White, and Big Joe Williams, and in Columbus, the region’s largest city, blues activity centered on places such as 4th Street’s Catfish Alley, a center of black business and social life where local fishermen once brought catfish to be cooked and sold and where musicians played in cafes, pool halls, and on the street. Bukka White celebrated the town’s pleasures in his 1969 recording “Columbus, Mississippi Blues.” The blues heritage of Columbus and Lowndes County drew on both local and outside influences reaching back to the eras of cotton plantations and traveling minstrel shows. The first Columbus musician to record was Ben Curry, also known as Blind Ben Covington and Bogus Ben Covington, who recorded in 1929 and worked the minstrel show circuit as a contortionist as well as a harmonica and banjo player. Lowndes County’s most prominent blues singer was Big Joe Williams of Crawford, who recorded prolifically, toured several continents, and in his later years still returned to play in Catfish Alley. Other early blues guitarists based in the county included Otto Virgial, Robert Blewett, Tom Turner, and at times Bukka White. Columbus also received touring acts including B.B. King, Bobby Bland, Little Richard, Louis Jordan, Louis Armstrong, and James Brown, who stayed at the Queen City Hotel, for many years the only hotel serving African Americans. Blues flourished at venues along Seventh Avenue North and in neighborhoods including Frog Bottom and Sandfield, with entertainment spots such as the Hut, Richardson’s Café, the Tic Toc, the Blue Room, the Night Owl, and the Blue Goose, while live gospel broadcasts also came from WACR radio in Catfish Alley. In later years music spread to venues such as the Elbow Room, Down at Joe’s, and the Crossroads, featuring area blues and R&B performers including Margie & Keith, Jake Moore, Big Joe Shelton & the Black Prairie Blues Kings, Brown Sugar, and the Flames, and blues became part of the annual Seventh Avenue Heritage Festival, begun in the 1980s. Another Columbus-rooted tradition, Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day, began with flowers placed on the graves of Civil War soldiers and was also observed in the African American community in remembrance of departed loved ones, inspiring blues songs including John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson’s “Decoration Blues,” on which Big Joe Williams played guitar, Williamson’s “Decoration Day Blues No. 2,” and later versions by Howlin’ Wolf, Bukka White, and Big Joe Williams.
