The heritage of both the Air Force and blues music run deep in the Golden Triangle, and Saturday night both will be celebrated.
At Columbus Air Force Base, the Air Force Birthday Ball will be held, and in West Point the Black Prairie Blues Festival will be held at the Black Prairie Blues Museum.
This year marks the 81st anniversary of the opening of Columbus Air Force Base in 1942. It is also the 76th anniversary of the creation of the Air Force as a separate branch military service and the 105th anniversary of there being a military aviation ball in the Golden Triangle.
It was in 1918, only 10 years after receiving its first airplane, that the Army Air Service opened Payne Aviation Field about four miles north of West Point. The field in its short two-year existence trained about 1,500 pilots in its Curtis JN-4 “Jenny” aircraft. Airplanes were new to the townspeople, who were said to have called them “buzz wagons” and the pilots “birdmen.” The base closed in March 1920.
During its short life, Payne Field played an important role in an aviation milestone. In January 1919, Maj. Theodore Macauley made the first transcontinental round-trip flight. His airplane was a De Havilland DH-4. Its propeller was damaged flying through a thunderstorm in Alabama, and it landed at Payne Field where the field’s “propeller shop” fabricated a new propeller, enabling the flight to continue to its completion. In August 1918, my grandparents received a pass to attend a dance to be held at the base Officers Club. That tradition of an Air Service/Air Force dance or ball continues.
The Golden Triangle was home to a number of World War I pilots. Among them was Capt. Sam Kaye of Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker’s famous 94th “Hat in the Ring” Squadron. Kaye’s Spad airplane became known as his “Acrobatic Easter Egg,” as he had painted it light blue with white and red polka dots.
Another early aviator of note was Col. Wilfred Beaver. He was a World War I British pilot turned World War II American pilot who settled in Columbus after World War II. As a British pilot he was credited with 19 confirmed victories over German aircraft. In 1918 he was awarded the “British Military Cross” at Buckingham Palace by King George V. The citation called him “a patrol leader of great dash and ability.” He received the award not long after he had survived being shot down over his own airfield by one Freiherr von Richthofen, the “Red Baron.”
On Oct. 8, 1924, the first transcontinental airship flight passed over Columbus. It was the silver, 2 1/2 city-block long navy Zeppelin, the USS Shenandoah. Just west of Columbus, the airship passed over Crawford.
A reporter for National Geographic was on board and wrote about the warm greeting the Shenandoah received there with people even waving white banners of greeting at them. The older citizens of Crawford recall the day when never having seen an airship, they thought they were being attacked by a craft from outer space, and white sheets and tablecloths were waved as signs of surrender.
Construction of what is now Columbus Air Force Base began in 1941, and the base opened as Kaye Field in spring 1942. It was named in honor of Capt. Sam Kaye, but the name was soon changed to Columbus Army Flying School because of confusion with Key Field in Meridian.
During World War II, nearly 8,000 aviation cadets received pilot training at the base. During the Korean War, the base was a contract flying school, and in 1955 it became a Strategic Air Command base with a B-52 and a KC-135 squadron placed there in 1958. The base again became a pilot training base in 1969. Today Columbus AFB is the home of the 14th Flying Training Wing.
Saturday’s ball will begin with the posting of colors, the singing of “The Star Spangled Banner” and a standing toast to the flag of the United States. It will be a wonderful mixture of patriotism, fellowship and good fun that celebrates both our nation’s and the Air Force’s heritage and future.
In West Point there will be a celebration of the heritage of blues music with the Black Prairie Blues Festival. The blues is Mississippi’s music, and though African American in origin, it transcends race and culture. 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. It was the Black Prairie that produced such blues legends as Howlin’ Wolf, Big Joe Williams, Bukka White, Lucille Bogan and Willie King.
In Columbus the blues flourished. Some of the early 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. 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.
Space does not allow the full story of the blues of the Black Prairie. 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) is thought of as a bluesman, but he 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, and his song “Fixin’ to Die” was a 2012 Grammy Hall of Fame Selection; 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 music heritage of the Black Prairie is amazing.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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