Mississippi’s music is the blues, and though African American in origin, it transcends race and culture.

That will be apparent at the Black Prairie Blues Museum in West Point at 6:30 p.m. Sunday when students of the Mississippi State University Opera Department will sing the blues at a free public performance. The students will focus on the blues songs of female musicians.

When most people think of the blues, they think of the Delta blues, the Memphis blues, the St. Louis blues or the Hill Country blues. Though not so well known, there is also the Black Prairie blues. The old Black Prairie of Mississippi and Alabama has blues roots as deep, if not deeper, than anywhere else. Blues is a music with a foundation in the work chants and hard times experienced by laborers on plantations and steamboats, and the Black Prairie was the antebellum cotton and corn belt of the South.

The Black Prairie was named after its fertile black soil. It runs in a narrow crescent shape from northeast Mississippi into south central Alabama. It was settled by Euro-Americans between 1816 and 1835. The enslaved people that were brought to farm the rich, dark land carried with them their musical heritage from Africa. After emancipation, the former slaves mostly became tenant farmers and their hard life and music continued. The field work chants, steamboat chants and mournful ballads merged into the blues.

Among the notable musicians of the prairie are Blind Ben Covington, who first recorded in 1929 and was not blind. Lucille Bogan (1897-1948) is considered to have, with Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, one of the greatest female blues voices of all time. Howlin’ Wolf (1910-1976), though a bluesman, is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Big Joe Williams (1903-1982) was born in Crawford and has been called “king of the nine-string guitar.” Bukka White’s (1906/09-1977) music influenced both Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin. Willie King (1943-2009) also was an internationally known bluesman, who won many national awards and was even the subject of a Dutch documentary. The musical heritage of the Black Prairie is the blues, and that heritage is amazing.

Though most of the old blues joints and clubs have disappeared, the blues still surround us.The popularity of the blues was carried in the early 1900s first by minstrel shows and then by the W.C. Handy Orchestra. In a 1924 interview, W.C. Handy commented on the music that was popular, such as in the minstrel shows, “They (the blues) are essentially racial, the ones that are genuine – though since they became the fashion many blues have been written that are not Negro in character …” The minstrel shows often presented the ragtime and blues in a demeaning racist manner but did give Black musicians a chance to advance in the field of music.

In the Nov. 14, 1915, Columbus Commercial it was reported that “Joe Coburn and his big minstrel blues (would) make their annual parade down Main Street” in Columbus. Their blues was said to be newer and bluer than the “Memphis Blues.” There is a circa. 1910 photo at the Billups Garth Archives that the late Sam Kaye made a pastel drawing of. We thought it was an “Eight of May” parade, but it may well have been Joe Coburn’s blues parade.

The result of the early popularity of blues and the spreading use of the phonograph is evident in local advertising. In 1917 the Hale Music House in Aberdeen was doing a mail order business and featured “Paradise Blues” in an ad in the Macon Beacon. Newspapers advertisements for Victor Records and blues music at Divelbiss bookstore in Columbus and Maier Jewelry Store in Aberdeen appeared between 1919 and 1921.

Some of the Black bluesmen traveled about singing for food and lodging at area farms. One such musician was Big Joe Gray who traveled through the prairie west of Columbus around 1930.

In Columbus the blues flourished. The Seventh Avenue North neighborhood of Columbus was the center of a bustling African American community and a regional entertainment center. The heart of the neighborhood was the Queen City Hotel, which opened in 1909. By 1911 it had become a venue for concerts and dances. It was a hotel that in the days of segregation hosted some of the most famous names in sports and entertainment. The list of entertainers and guests reads like a who’s who: Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, Little Richard, B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown and Duke Ellington to name only a few.

In 2014 the Prairie Belt Blues Foundation which operates the museum was founded as a 501(c)3 nonprofit foundation through the leadership and generosity of Milton Sundbeck, its first president. In furtherance of its mission to celebrate and promote the heritage of the blues of the old Black Prairie Region of Mississippi and Alabama, the foundation has used the museum as a venue for exhibits, performances of blues music and for blues related educational activities for young people.

For those who appreciate great music and an enjoyable evening, the MSU Opera Department’s program of “Women In Blues” will be a music event not just to hear but to experience. The performance will begin at 6:30 at the Black Prairie Blues Museum at 640 Commerce St. in downtown West Point. The event is made possible by a grant from The Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area and will be a most enjoyable evening of classic music. See you there.

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].