Playing the Juke Joint Festival at Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale with good friend Derek St. Holmes, who is also the singer for Ted Nugent.

I was lucky to be a child during the 1960s. Through the eyes of my older sister, I experienced the exciting first wave of rock and soul music that was exploding across the globe at that time. I heard the very first songs of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and other rock and pop records of the day through her, as well as the wonderful Motown records. To see live rock music, I watched my sister’s boyfriend, T.C. Hicks, practice with his band in our backyard summer house. Music was everywhere and I was completely hooked. I still am, and playing the guitar has been the great pastime of my life.

We all know the story by now…blues music, born here in the Mississippi Delta, gave birth to rock music. And, lucky for the Delta, blues music is growing each year in popularity. Fans from all over the world come to see where this art form was born. They also come here to soak up the sounds of our current blues artists.

Now we are seeing another form of music rising: modern day country. This music is being shaped and created by notable musicians with Mississippi roots like The Band Perry from Madison County, Charlie Worsham from Grenada, Randy Houser from Lake, and former Delta State student, Liz Davis from Madison County, who is on the edge of stardom. In the May/June issue, we celebrate Liz’s success in our Music section. This new breed of country artists are adding a pop flavor to country music, making this genre more accessible to the masses.

Because Mississippians have played a significant role in country music history, the state of Mississippi has created a Country Music Trail for fans to follow, much like the Blues Trail. These markers pay homage to our native sons and daughters, such as Jimmie Rodgers from Meridian, Charley Pride from Sledge, Conway Twitty, Bobbie Gentry, Paul Overstreet, Faith Hill, LeAnn Rimes, and other Mississippians.The Country Music Trail commemorates their varied contributions and influences, as well as the local places that cradled their creativity.

Country music was one of only two genres that experienced a jump in record sales this past year. Impressively, fans purchased 44.6 million physical copies of country albums and 162.1 million individual digital tracks. Country music is growing by leaps and bounds and Mississippi artists are helping make this happen. The new Mississippi car tags carry the same motto that appears on billboards that welcome everyone to our state on major highways: “Birthplace of America’s Music.” Our state gave the world blues, and without the blues there would be no rock, jazz, or R&B. We also gave the world country music, and our state continues to produce some of the greatest musical creativity in the world.

Let’s take pride in the incredible creativity reverberating from our home state and be sure to check our Events calendar for ongoing festivals and live music opportunities like no other—right here in our own backyard.

Scott Coopwood
Delta Magazine May/June 2013

Somehow, I always fall back to the words of my favorite regional author,
the late Willie Morris, when reflecting on almost all things Delta. It’s
an oft-quoted passage of Willie’s when referring to the “small, deep southern town” where he grew up, Yazoo City: “The town itself was half hills and half Delta and all crazy.”

Half spring, half summer, the May/June issue is all Delta—and maybe just a little crazy, in the passionate sense anyway. True to both seasons, we yearn for their bluer skies with puffy clouds and brighter sunshine from sunrise till sunset, that daily phenomenon that every living soul should experience while gazing out into the horizon across the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta. Those
magical minutes just before sunset inspired the Food feature in this issue, a grab-and-go picnic starting at that universal wind-down
cocktail hour, five o’clock.

Just as summertime carries a powerful aura of nostalgia so do many
of the features in this issue. We harken all the way back to the 1930s, but
primarily the 1950s and ’60s, of childhood summers spent at Camp Ki-Y,
near Hot Springs, Arkansas. My own parents, who grew up in
different Delta towns, were campers at Ki-Y, and through Teresa Nicholas’
interviews, we delight in the memories of a place still dear to so many of
our readers. Hank Burdine takes us back to a less innocent time, the hippie
halcyon days of the 1970s, when a little Delta bistro opened ‘one block east’
of the levee in Greenville and set the social scene on fire.

If you’ve laxed on renewing your own subscription to Delta Magazine at
home, now is a really good time to hop back on board. The next issue,
July/August 2013, will commemorate our 10 Year Anniversary with a
special collector’s edition not to be missed. Cheers to the rest of spring, the
start of summer and a crazy-fun time sharing and celebrating our Delta
culture with each other.

Melissa Baker Townsend
Delta Magazine May/June 2013

For our latest sojourn in a new season, we navigated our way through fields and cemeteries and up and down bayous and rivers to trace the civil warfare in the Mississippi Delta upon the 150-year anniversary of the Yazoo Pass Expedition (page 44). We thank the Museum of the Mississippi Delta (formerly Cottonlandia) for sharing materials, history buff and friend Bob Bailey for enlightening us on Yazoo activity, and Delta Magazine’s Noel Workman and John Montfort Jones for meeting this unusually tight deadline. Read about the events we’ve highlighted, then take advantage of our travel tips on where to get out and explore our regional civil war history this spring. Unfathomable, yes, but intriguing.

In the Music section, we meet the award-winning Grady Champion, an atypical Mississippi bluesman who sings the happy blues! When we met Grady in Yazoo City for the photo shoot, we stumbled upon an open shell of a former brick building downtown, colorfully painted with flowers and rays of sunshine! Grady acquainted us with his harmonicas and red guitar, Mabel (“That’s my sweetheart”), by giving us a little private concert. That makeshift amphitheater had incredible acoustics when he sang “The Thrill is Gone” and “Sweet Home Chicago,” my heart. I also enjoyed a visit in the home, studio and office of DSU art professor Pat Brown, whose work I have greatly admired since the early years of the magazine when I interviewed Chester Kossman in his funky Merigold home and saw the famous “smoking jacket!”

We also expect the arrival of the reprinting of THE DELTA: Landscapes, Legends and Legacies of Mississippi’s Most Storied Region this season, so call us if you want dibs on the revised second edition!

Happy spring.

Melissa Baker Townsend

Delta Magaine March-April 2013

Part of the war came to my county. The small Mississippi River town of Prentiss was the largest community in Bolivar County during the conflict. According to The History of Bolivar County, a young Walter Sillers, Sr., whose family would later become a part of the state’s political machine for decades, stood on a levee in Prentiss in August of 1862 and watched as Union gunboats approached the town. From some woods located below Sillers, gunfire suddenly rang out from Confederate soldiers and a skirmish ensued. After the fight, Union officers from the 33rd Illinois landed at Prentiss, giving the town’s residents only minutes to vacate. The soldiers then burned Prentiss to the ground. The history of my area also includes Bolivar County resident, General Charles Clark, who served as Mississippi’s Governor during the Civil War. The Burrus home in the southern end of our county, known today as the “Baby Doll House,” also figures into the war. This grand home was used as headquarters for many of the soldiers who passed back and forth from the Confederate army during the war.

All of this research made me curious about my family’s involvement in the Civil War. I found some old family history researched by my relative, Lin B. Clark, who has traced the Coopwood line back to England. My seven times great-grandfather, Benjamin, brought the Coopwoods to the U.S. (Virginia, early 1700s) and he fought in the American Revolutionary War taking up arms against the “Mother Country.” Benjamin’s son, Thomas Coopwood, is the ancestor who brought our line to Mississippi and also served in the Confederate Army. Thomas took his last breath at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky. According to family writings, a Mason and his wife were walking through the battle field as Union forces were withdrawing. Recognizing that Thomas was also a Mason, the couple stopped to see if they could do anything for him. Realizing the end was near, Thomas gave them the address of his sons and a letter. He instructed the couple to keep his sword and Masonic watch until they could deliver them to his family. Not long after his death, one of Thomas’ sons “…went to Perryville where the man and his wife pointed out the grave, gave the sword and watch to him, and then Thomas Coopwood’s body was returned to Mississippi and placed in the soil he loved so much,” writes a relative.

What is that saying, “The past is always present?” This is certainly true for many Southerners.

We hope you enjoy the spring edition of Delta Magazine!

Scott Coopwood

March-April 2013

Excerpts from Delta Magazine’s 2013 Spring Issue of Photo Ops and Funky Stops in the ON THE ROAD section.

I especially like documenting scenes that reflect the past. Here was something ‘old’ along old U.S. 61 in Tunica County near Clayton. The setting sun lights up the sky just south of Tunica along old Highway 61, near Flower Lake, an old oxbow of the Mississippi River.

The old Greyhound bus station in downtown Clarksdale opened in the 1940s and closed in the 1980s. Its Art Deco style has been restored and the building now serves as a tourist information center.

Photos of Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and other artists occupy the upstairs windows at Sun Studio, where both Lewis and Presley made some of their first recordings. The studio near downtown Memphis is open to tours and has an adjacent café.

The Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale has been in business since 1944. It’s a Mississippi Blues Trail site; artists including Sonny Boy Williamson, Ike Turner and Robert Nighthawk stayed here. The building, on the Sunflower River, previously housed the G.T. Thomas Hospital. Bessie Smith died here in 1937.

What appears to be an abandoned country church still stands along Mississippi Highway 4 west of Little Texas, southeast of Tunica.

Son House, Charley Patton, Frank Frost and Sam Carr made their homes in the Lula area, in Coahoma County north of Clarksdale, and Patton sang about Lula in his songs “Dry Well Blues” and “Stone Pony Blues.”

An old Model A Ford sits outside a business on Tunica’s south side.

Sailing the Delta on a sea of cotton: The setting sun paints the sky near Clayton in southeastern Tunica County.

Delta Magazine March/April 2013

In a Mississippi Public Broadcasting radio interview in November, Mary Margaret Miller White of the Mississippi Arts Commission asked Delta Magazine editor in chief Melissa Townsend: How does publishing a book differ from publishing a magazine issue? Great question. Let’s see. Well, the new book is a bigger, bolder and WAY heavier version of DELTA Magazine, so there was a LOT more layout and “white space,” as we call it. Melissa is also the art director so she had to create a completely fresh layout with new fonts and style guides for the book. In a book, there are no ad pages, so 200 pages is TWO HUNdred pages! And since you won’t be mailing these books blindly to thousands of paid subscribers, the immediate marketing and sales plan is being executed as the book is being finalized. So the book was definitely a different animal, but creatively very similar—all inspired by the Delta. And by the way, why don’t we just go ahead and capitalize the spelling of our beloved region? Inspired by The Delta, with a capital “T.” More respect. Kinda makes sense.

The new coffee table book was inspired to commemorate Delta Magazine’s Ten Year Anniversary next summer, in July 2013. All of the content chosen from our archives was in keeping with the theme of “legacies” and “legends” with beautiful “landscapes” in the mix. Imagine the breadth of content from which we had to draw upon from 60 Delta Magazine issues! Can you believe it—ten years?! So let’s take a look inside a few chapters of THAT NEW BOOK!

CHAPTER 1: The Delta Mystique
Some of the best essays published in Delta Magazine’s Final Word section are featured in this chapter as well as in Chapter 2, “Highways and Horizons,” with selections by William Dunlap, Tom Rankin, William Bearden, Marilyn Hemphill Tinnin and others, along with passages culled from Delta Magazineinterviews and other essays. The opening spreads to both of these chapters are images by John Montfort Jones (cover photographer, see below). The one above of the sun setting over Bourbon Plantation you may remember from The Ultimate Fall Issue in 2012 in Noel Workman’s feature “What’s in a Name?” on the Delta’s plantation history.

quixotic adj. Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality.

Mary Jayne Whittington used the word “quixotic” in the original Delta plantation essay. Great descriptive word when it comes to the reputation of Mississippi Delta folks. We digress. Back to the book.

CHAPTER 3: Landmarks and Legendary Haunts 
Think Po’ Monkey’s Lounge (killer photo by Jerry Holt, right), the Crossroads, the Baby Doll House, Willie and the Witch’s graves, McCartys Pottery and so many other hot spots and historic landmarks around the Delta. Very lively and colorful chapter. Makes you wanna ice down a cooler, slide open the moon roof, and ride around the Delta with your camera.

CHAPTER 5: Legacies, Icons and Unforgettable Interviews
This chapter will blow your mind if you have not yet fully grasped The Delta’s influence upon American pop culture. Excerpted from Delta Magazine, find salutes to Pup and Lee McCarty, B.B. King, Morgan Freeman, Craig Claiborne, Jim Henson, Robert Johnson…as well as our incredible legacies: the impetus to the making of the Teddy Bear, the invention of bottled Coke in Vicksburg, Delta Airlines born in a Delta cotton field, The Marlboro Man…plus the best of the best quotes from DM interviews.

“People who have not been to the Mississippi Delta don’t have any idea just how cool it is. The best storytellers in the world are right there in the Delta.”- Hoda Kotb, NBC co-anchor

CHAPTER 7: Delta Characters
Raucous bluesmen and colorful town characters “no reader of Delta Magazine would soon forget.” A selection of our funkiest features on the likes of T-Model Ford (Photo above by Lou Bopp), Jerry Clower, shoe-shining Cotton Row Club fixture Hambone Howard, Booga Bottom, iconoclast Willa Johnson, DD-T columnist Brodie Crump, the most (in)famous moonshiner in the country, Perry Martin, and others. It’s a hoot. Would a book on The Delta be complete without characters? We think not.

CHAPTERS 11 and 12: The Good Ole Days and Classic Delta Cuisine 
A whole chapter devoted to DM’s flashback features on sock hops, dance hall days and cultural figures of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. The final chapter makes your mouth water with a roundup of regional classics from Delta hot tamales and floating hamburgers to colossal steaks and mile high pie. Food photography by Jay Adkins/Delta Magazine.

THE COVER
For the spot-on cover photo, DM commissioned John Montfort Jones of Flat Out Delta photography to capture both a Delta cotton field and a Highway 61 sign in one shot. A photographer by night (literally, at sunset), John Montfort camped out for several hours in a field waiting for the exact moment—within weeks of going to press on the book during the 2012 harvest season. In his case, the clouds, not the stars, were aligned, and an iconic book cover on The Delta was born.

Several other photographers are represented. Melissa wrote and edited the book and selected the quotes and stories by DM’s contributing writers and editors. Luther Brown of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University wrote the foreword, solidifying the theme of the book as he poses the thought: “Try to imagine what America would be like today if there had never been a Mississippi Delta…It’s a Delta story that is an American story.”

Scouting shot of green barn 3 weeks prior to shoot.

In early August, we went on location to a Mississippi Delta plantation headquarters to shoot three fall menus for the September/October 2012 issue—an ambitious undertaking. After five weeks of scouting locations, menu planning, meetings, recipe testing, trips to the grocery store, borrowing and foraging, cooking till late hours, and, finally, packing it all up Clampett-style, we awoke on Saturday morning to ominous skies and conflicting radar reports from local farmers. Sunday looked even worse.

Our fearless leader was in such a tizzy she emailed WLBT meteorologist Barbie Bassett and explained the predicament. A good Delta girl, only Barbie knows the forecast better than a Delta farmer! Barbie’s reply from her iPhone: “I think you’ll be fine to do the shoot today. Just keep an eye to the sky and download our weather app!”

With that, three loaded down trucks headed for Tralake Plantation at the farm headquarters of Simmons Planting Company near Tribbett.

Bonehead dragging a 1973 Ford truck bed to a bean field for the tailgate shoot.

Luckily, farm labor was at our disposal: our new buddy “Bonehead,” who moves dirt, dragged the old Ford truck bed we had spotted behind the barn with a backhoe to a nearby bean field. Jaime, a nice young Mexican man, wheeled the red vintage McCormick Farmall tractor over to the old green barn, the inspiration for the chosen location. As for the 1950s Mack truck with a flat bed that was to be our dinner party table, it was out of gas, so under the water oak tree it stayed. A different angle was agreed upon with a view of grain bins in the distance—how very Delta! Another soybean field planned for a different menu had been cut, so we modified that angle, too.

Bonehead insisted on hopping in his dusty truck for a quick tour of the headed hybrid-seed rice fields and sunflower fields down the way. It was mesmerizing. But time was ticking. Our challenge would be to get five key shots set up, food and flowers prepared—and all photographed before sunset.

It. Was. Hot. Our photographer showed up moaning of a migraine. Four of us had food and platters and fabrics and boxes strewn all over the farm office. Mr. Simmons would come in from time to time and politely scoot around our mess to tinker with a machine that checks the moisture content of corn. It was a busy Saturday amid early harvest.

Nothing ever goes as quite as planned, so when the sunflower arrangement in a jade McCartys punch bowl wouldn’t sit upright on the springy tractor seat for the barn shot, our floral designer hid behind a big tractor tire and patiently held it in place through that sweltering shoot!

Throughout the day, we snacked nervously on beer and cheese dip, layered hot tamale dip and “gin trash,” even though it had been left in a 200-degree oven all night and was pretty much burned. The heat was definitely on!

Like Barbie said, we kept our eyes to the sky. With just spotty clouds, the late afternoon weather in question was picture-perfect; the light was absolutely beautiful. Someone burning a field in the distance streaked shades of smoky grey into our cerulean sky backdrop on the tailgate shoot, but the spread was glowing with the western sun as our natural light source.

The final shoot, however, timed near sunset, was not as poetically executed. The sun was dropping out of the sky with the biggest menu left to shoot, the table not even set nor food in the oven. Essentially we photographed the dinner party menu in that window of time in the early evening when the sun has descended but is still hovering enough around the horizon to paint the skies pale pink and blue. In the absolute knick of time, we got great shots: the apropos Delta sunsets (two-toned rum cocktails), tamales wrapped in bacon (so good!) and the beautiful pumpkin cheesecake one sweet helper meticulously labored over and tested three times! (Note: never use Kroger brand cream cheese in cheesecake)

Whew. We had succeeded in transforming a sweltering late summer day into late fall afternoon settings, Delta-style. Bonehead was so excited he showed up with his harmonica and a check for a Delta Magazine subscription. Several joked that our feet were still dirty a week later from all the dust in our flip flops. And that improvised shot of sunflowers on the seat of a red Farmall tractor against the old green barn? It made the September/October cover.