{"id":11310,"date":"2019-01-12T10:20:50","date_gmt":"2019-01-12T16:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/198.252.102.210\/~micklabr\/?p=11310"},"modified":"2019-01-12T10:20:50","modified_gmt":"2019-01-12T16:20:50","slug":"mississippi-fred-mcdowell-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/micklabriola.com\/mississippi-fred-mcdowell-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Mississippi Fred McDowell Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fred McDowell<\/b> (January 12, 1906 \u2013 July 3, 1972),<\/sup> known by his stage name Mississippi Fred McDowell<\/b>, was an American hill country blues<\/a> singer and guitar player.<\/p>\n

McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee<\/a>. His parents, who were farmers, died in his youth. He started playing guitar at the age of 14 and played at dances around Rossville. Wanting a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926, where he worked in the Buck-Eye feed mill, which processed cotton into oil and other products.<\/sup> He also had a number of other jobs and played music for tips. In 1928 he moved to Mississippi to pick cotton.<\/sup> He finally settled in Como, Mississippi<\/a>, about 40 miles south of Memphis, in 1940 or 1941 (or maybe the late 1950s), and worked steadily as a farmer, continuing to perform music at dances and picnics. Initially he played slide guitar<\/a>, using a pocketknife and then a slide made from a beef rib bone, later switching to a glass slide for its clearer sound. He played with the slide on his ring finger.<\/sup><\/p>\n

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Although commonly regarded as a Delta blues<\/a> singer, McDowell may be considered the first north hill country blues<\/a> artist to achieve widespread recognition for his work. Musicians from the hill country \u2013 an area parallel to and east of the Delta region \u2013 produced a version of the blues somewhat closer in structure to its African roots. It often eschews chord change for the hypnotic effect of the droning single-chord vamp<\/a>. McDowell’s records offer glimpses of the style’s origins, in the form of little-recorded supporting acts such as the string duo<\/a> Bob and Miles Pratcher, the guitarist Eli Green, the fife player Napoleon Strickland, the harmonicist Johnny Woods<\/a> and Hunter’s Chapel Singers. McDowell’s style (or at least its aesthetic) can be heard in the music of such hill country figures as Junior Kimbrough<\/a> and R. L. Burnside<\/a>, who in turn served as the impetus behind the creation of the Fat Possum<\/a> record label in Oxford, Mississippi<\/a>, in the 1990s.<\/p>\n