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The historic influence of Mississippi
The historic influence of Mississippi
The historic influence of Mississippi
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Mississippi has a fascinating history is full of people who made an impact on others through their music or their activism. A few of these people are Charley Patton, Medgar Evers, and David Banner. Patton and Banner have made their mark in music, but in different genres. Evers was an activist who was murdered for his efforts to fight segregation and racism in Mississippi.
Charley Patton is known as the father of Delta Blues. Charley Patton was born between the years 1887 and 1891. He wasn’t born in the MS, Delta however, his family moved there and he spent much of his life there. His Blues came from the fact that he was mixed heritage having black, Cherokee, and white ancestry. As such he may never have been fully accepted in the
Cherokee Nation and certainly not in the dominant white culture. His family moved to Delta
Plantation favorable treatment of its sharecroppers and lenience on the musical indulgences
Of its residents.
At the Dockery Plantation, Patton and the others gave birth to the Delta Blues. He learned from a man named Henry Sloan and worked on his own music into the Delta Blues
Style. He influenced many other artists at the Dockery Plantation including younger protégé’s like Robert Johnson and Howlin Wolf. Although Patton was of a much bigger man which is said to have influenced the distinctive raspy voice of a Wolf.
Medgar Evers was born July 2, 1925, and he was assassinated June 12, 1963 at the age of 37. Medgar was an African American Civil Rights activist from Mississippi. Evers was a former serviceman whose only crime was in being Black in Mississippi and trying to fight the
White establishment. Evers was also involved in efforts to integrate Mississippi society through school and in voting ri...
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...r society. Hip hop is sick because America is sick.”
The history of Mississippi has many people who have made an impact in one way or another. Three men link the past and present of Mississippi through their activism, music, or both. Charley Patton began playing the Blues on the Dockery Plantation and influenced so many other Blues musicians, he became known as the father of Delta Blues. Medgar Evers was a Civil Rights activist who paid the ultimate price for his work in fighting segregation and oppression in Mississippi. David Banner bridges the past and future of Mississippi’s music and activism. He is someone the younger generations can look up to for everything he has accomplished in the world of music, movies, and charity.
Works Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Banner en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charley_Patton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medgar_Evers
“Tracing a single Native American family from the 1780’s through the 1920’s posed a number of challenges,” for Claudio Saunt, author of Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family. (pg. 217) A family tree is comprised of genealogical data that has many branches that take form by twisting, turning, and attempting to accurately represent descendants from the oldest to the youngest. “The Grayson family of the Creek Nation traces its origins to the late 1700’s, when Robert Grierson, a Scotsman, and Sinnugee, a Creek woman, settled down together in what is now north-central Alabama. Today, their descendants number in the thousands and have scores of surnames.” (pg. 3)
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, more commonly known as Jelly Roll Morton, was born to a creole family in a poor neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. Morton lived with several family members in different areas of New Orleans, exposing him to different musical worlds including European and classical music, dance music, and the blues (Gushee, 394). Morton tried to play several different instruments including the guitar; however, unsatisfied with the teachers’ lack of training, he decided to teach himself how to play instruments without formal training (Lomax, 8). ...
“Sam was a prince of a man” were the words used to describe the late great by “the Queen of Soul” Aretha Franklin (Crossing Over). Sam Cooke was far more than a prince he was a king. Cooke’s life and legacy is one that will never be matched. He was a pioneer in the music business, an unmatched vocalist, the voice of the civil rights movement, and a man with an insatiable appetite for women. He was a musical pioneer creating a sound that the world had never heard before. Cooke successfully crossed pop music and gospel to create soul music. The mastermind that is Sam Cooke created a song that would “…exemplify the sixties' Civil Rights Movement” (Wikipedia). Sam Cooke was at the height of his career when he was murder. Cooke was an extraordinary man with an ordinary weakness, his desire for women. These desires ultimately lead to his untimely death. Sam Cooke was a man of many faces the artist, the activist, the administrator, and finally the adulterer.
Samuel Cornelius Phillips was born in 1923 in Florence, Alabama to a family of tenant farmers (Sam Phillips Obituary. 3) He grew up around the songs of his parent’s, primarily black, coworker’s songs as they were tending to the cotton fields. Phillips said that he “felt an awakening of [his] spirit when [he] heard the singing of African Americans who worked alongside him”. This early exposure to racial equality stuck with him for the rest of his years. When Phillips grew older, he took a job as a disc jockey for an “open format’ radio station (Sam Phillips Bio. 2). He experienced first-hand the reaction of the listeners to black rhythm and blues, and that led him to founding Sun Records. Sam Phillips founded Sun Records in 1952 in the heart of the Memphis black music scene. Sun Records was created in attempt to “develop new and different artists, get freedom in music, and tape people that weren’t getting tapped; despite the boundaries” (Sam Phillips Bio. 5)
Motown Records was founded in 1959 by Berry Gordy who turned his music production company into history’s most successful black-owned record label company.
Native Americans, namely the Cherokees, had been living on the lands of the eventual Americas without European contact for years until the 1700s. After contact was made and America had gained freedom, people like President Andrew Jackson, believed that the Cherokees should be removed from the land that was rightfully the United States’. President Jackson even hired Benjamin F. Curry of Tennessee to help with the removal of the Cherokees from east of the Mississippi River. Curry believed that his job was to try to drive the Cherokees to either want to leave without a second thought or sign a treaty agreeing to America’s terms. Curry’s actions led to the natives of the Cherokee nation’s objections of being removed so miserably. Many complained about how their significant others or children were either forcibly removed or held to get the natives to agree to leave. Some of the natives decided that they would try to fight their way out of being removed, but some, like Rebecca Neugin, a member of the Cherokee nation’s father were persuaded not to resist so that they or their families would not be harmed more than necessary. When some of the Americans, like Evan Jones, saw this, they tried to spread awareness of how the Cherokees were being treated,...
Before the war started, a wealthy white man by the name of John Hammond worked to integrate black and white music.1 Since his childhood, he enjoyed the music of numerous black artists, and he wanted to share his love with the rest of America. He used much of his inherited fortune to make this possible. He went against the general opinion of society and his parents, who despised black people. Hammond refused to ignore black artists’ musical abilities because of their color, “I did not revolt against the system, I simply refused to be a part of it.”2 He used his money to organize the most eclectic group of musicians ever assembled, for an integrated audience of his time. Hammond’s efforts made an indelible impact on the music industry. The musicians Hammond introduced in...
Not known to many, the genre of rock music originated from gospel music sung on the slave plantations in early Mississippi. A common musical device used in rock music is known as “call and response”. This is where the singer sings the line and everyone else involved in the chorus repeats that line. This came from slaves working in the fields and singing songs to get through the day. Theses hymns are fondly referred to as “negro spirituals”. In Anne Moody’s novel, Coming of Age in Mississippi we revisit African Americans in Mississippi struggling not through slavery, but through the oppression of the Civil Rights Era. At the same plantation but in a different time, Jim crow has made life almost impossible for blacks to get by in the South. In a country were all men were created equal, laws were put in place to ensure that blacks could never achieve equality. Through Anne Moody’s work and through the work of musical artists Johnny Cash, and Nas, we will discover just how far we may or may not have come.
But the Delta Blues wasn’t created until 1903, when W.C. Handy overheard a traveler on a train platform in Mississippi. W.C. Handy, considered the “father of blues”, was born in Florence, Alabama, on November 16, 1873. Handy’s love for music showed at an early age. African American folk traditions inspired the blues Handy contributed in.. He had a few up and downs in his life, but his big break came in 1896 when he joined the W. A. Mahra’s Minstrels as it’s bandleader. He stayed with that group for many years until he grew tired of life on the road.
However, the Napoleons of the Blues shall never be forgotten because they fought a war America had at one time decided it could never win. The music instilled faith into the hearts of many black Americans and at the same time instilled empathy and passion in the white Americans. It not only congregated people, it congregated two separate cultures, both as different as black and white.
Rag time as it is most commonly know was the type of fast paced music played around 1885 in St. Louis. Scott Joplin was born in 1868 and lived until 1917, but has done a lot in his life span. He was one of the first African Americans to be know as a composer. Born in Texarkana, Texas to a large family with musical background, he began learning to play the guitar and beagle, and gained free piano lessons by showing such fast progression to his teachers. After death of his mother, he left the house at age fourteen. He learned much form traveling through Mississippi playing in local spots and learning form what was offered to him. In 1885 he arrived in St. Louis, at the time a center for a new music phenomenon called ragtime.
He had exposure to several different genres growing up in his St. Louis, MO hometown. He heard country from the whites, rhythm & blues (R&B) from mostly blacks, even Latin music. His family environment set him up well for future success while growing up in a middle class home in the middle of the Great Depression of the 1930s. His parents sun...
Charles Eastman made great strides to bridge the gap between the Native Americans and the white man. Born a Santee Sioux, Eastman excelled in his assimilated life, thereby gaining the respect of the white man, which he used to assist the Native American. He was able to give a voice to the culture and its people, which was quickly being silenced by a Eurocentric government. Eastman exemplified the abilities of the Native American through his accomplishments as an author, lecturer, physician, and activist. His capacity to live between two diverse cultures furthered his unprecedented endeavors.
The first country blues that was written and published was "Memphis Blues" by W.C. Handy in the early 1900's. The first recorded blues was " Crazy Blues" by Mamie Smith in 1915. Most country blues were played with an acoustic guitar and with someone singing. It also has a definite call and response between the voice and guitar.
Like Barlow, Palmer notes the association between the blues and folk in which the latter was converted to the former over time. Indeed, Palmer’s explanation of the blues’ origin notes that the emergence of common subjects including women and hard luck signified the process of folk songs becoming the blues. Such common subjects can be described as related to personal experiences, and Barlow noted this by explaining the blues’ standard form revolves around personal experience. This means the blues most probably originated out of experience African-Americans were subjected to and this formed the