📍Avalon, MS 38912, USA
1893 – 1963“I was born in Teoc, Mississippi, in the hill country at the edge of the Delta, around 1893, and when I was small my family moved to Avalon, a tiny farming community nearby in Carroll County, among the cotton fields and wooded hills. I lived there nearly all my life, farming and working on the railroad, and I loved it; I never wanted to be anywhere else. When I was about nine, my mother bought me a second-hand guitar for a dollar and a half, and I taught myself to play, picking with my thumb and fingers in a gentle, rolling style, with the bass and the melody going at the same time. I played at dances and parties around Avalon, for both Black and white folks, and I sang soft and sweet, never loud. In 1928, a man from Okeh Records heard about me through a fiddler I played with, and they took me to Memphis and then to New York to record, and I sang Avalon Blues about my home: Avalon, my home town. The records didn't sell much in the Depression, and I went back to farming and played for friends and neighbours for thirty-five years. In 1963 a young blues fan, Tom Hoskins, heard my old record of Avalon Blues, followed the song to Avalon and found me there. I couldn't believe that people still wanted to hear me. I moved to Washington, recorded for the Library of Congress and Vanguard Records, and played at the Newport Folk Festival, delighting a new generation. Avalon remembers me with a museum and a Mississippi Blues Trail marker near my old home.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today