May 2008 Issue #79

Featured Blues Video

Jessie Mae Hemphill - You Can Talk About Me
at Jr. Kimbrough's juke joint

Jessie Mae Hemphill was surrounded by music from the moment she was born near the Tate and Panola County lines in northern Mississippi. Her great-grandfather was a renowned fiddle player in Choctaw County, Mississippi and her grandfather, Sid Hemphill, was a blind fiddle player and bandleader. The Hemphill’s were multi-instrumentalists with her grandfather also playing panpipes, drums, guitar, piano, banjo, and fife. Her aunt Rosa Lee was also a well-known performer who recorded several albums. Rosa Lee, like her sisters Sidney Lee and Virgie Lee Hemphill (Jessie Mae’s mother) played stringed instruments, as well as drums. As a young girl in the early 40’s, Jessie Mae was heavily influenced by the music at family and community gatherings; both church music and the blues. She began playing guitar at age seven or eight, and later played bass drum and snare in her grandfather’s fife and drum band.

Read More http://www.jmhemphill.org/index.html

Return to Index