The Commercial Appeal, April 13, 2003

LADY SINGS THE NORTH MISSISSIPPI BLUES - JESSIE MAE HEMPHILL WRAPS HERSELF IN THE SPIRIT FOR 219 RECORDS
by Michael Donahue

Wearing a black cowboy hat instead of a crown, Jessie Mae Hemphill, the Delta Queen, held court.

Hemphill, 71, a veteran blues singer and W. C. Handy Blues Award winner, traveled this month from her home in Senatobia to record an album with blues musicians from around the country at a farm in Como owned by blues fan Sherman Cooper.

Hemphill sang on Richard Johnston's CD, "Foot Hill Stomp," released last year, but the new CD, which features spirituals, is her first full-length album since 1998's re-release of "She-Wolf."

Olga Wilhelmine, 29, a blues singer who lives in New Orleans, conceived the project. She met Hemphill three years ago. "I thought she was dead," Wilhelmine said. "Then I found out she was alive, but she had a stroke. I found a P.O. Box address and sent her some money. I wrote her a letter and she wrote me back. We started talking on the phone and it was like we immediately just clicked."

Wilhelmine wanted to do something for Hemphill, whose left arm and leg were paralyzed by a stroke in 1994. Hemphill still sings and plays tambourine, but no longer can play the guitar.

Wilhelmine and her friend Tyler Austin, 32, who also lives in New Orleans, began a nonprofit organization called the Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation. In addition to giving money to Hemphill, the women who are producing the album on their record label, 219 Records, would like to open a foundation office and blues museum in Como and archive photos, stories and footage of blues performers. They'd also like to perform other services, including buying headstones for deceased blues performers.

"I'm passionate about the blues, especially in North Mississippi," Wilhelmine said. "And Jessie Mae is family to me. There is really nothing in Como about the music. Nothing that says anything about Fred McDowell, Napolean Strickland or Sid Hemphill (Jessie Mae's grandfather) and the legacy (they) left behind. Nothing about Junior Kimbrough. These are all heroes to me. These are all people I love."

A native of San Francisco, Wilhelmine, whose parents are Austrian, began listening to jazz and blues in her teens. "My grandmother used to listen to big bands on the radio. I always felt comforted by it. When I heard old jazz and blues stuff, it was very comforting to me."

Wilhelmine discovered Hemphill's music when she got a job as a radio deejay in Boulder, Colo. "She was female and her blues really struck me. It had this melancholiness to it and this real familiarity. It was very comfortable for me. It wasn't like anything I had heard. It was like hearing your mother sing a lullaby."

Around that time, she met Luther and Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars. "They were the first kids my age who played blues who were white who made me feel it was OK to do that. I remember Luther saying to me, 'You should really be doing this. You're really good.' I said, 'You know what? You're right.' "

She moved to New Orleans in 1999, and supports herself performing in clubs and coffee houses.

Wilhelmine is fascinated with blues traditions, including the fife and drum playing popularized by the late Otha Turner of the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band. "I'd like to be a caretaker of that knowledge," she said. "All you need is a couple of fires and a couple of people dying and a couple of people moving away, and it's gone.

"I realized this at Otha's funeral. (Otha Turner died in February at age 94.) Who knows how to make these fifes? That's gotta be kept because this is essential to the history of music in this country."

Hemphill's blues style is North Mississippian. "People know about Clarksdale, the Delta blues, but they don't know anything about North Mississippi blues, which is different. It's usually just one chord, very droning, kind of hypnotic in many ways. A lot of that stems from the tradition of the fife and drum corps and that's definitely very African in nature."

Hemphill's CD will consist of public domain spirituals, which anybody can record without permission because the songs no longer are copyrighted.

Wilhelmine knew the recording project would be loose. "She (Hemphill) will be halfway through a song and start laughing and start talking to somebody and start another song. But that's her. And that's what's going to be on the record. 'Cause that is the blues. A lot of people don't know that. They think the blues is about, 'Oh, I lost all my money and I drank too much last night and I'm lying in a ditch.' That does not make a blues song. That's just kind of cliche. It can be anything. It encompasses the lifestyle, the vibe, the feeling."

Musicians and technicians began setting up equipment for the recording session early April 1.

Jimbo Mathus of Squirrel Nut Zippers fame and now the Knock-Down Society, was music director. Like just about everyone there, Mathus is a Hemphill fan. "She's the only woman that's got that North Mississippi style," he said. "Just that two-fingered boogie like R. L. (Burnside) and Mississippi Fred (McDowell)."

Describing her voice, Mathus said, "It's real sexy. It's hot. So, that adds a whole dimension to it, which I really dig."

Garry Burnside, one of R. L. Burnside's sons and a member of The Burnside Exploration band, said, "To me, the older she gets, the younger her voice sounds. Like a little kid or something. She's always gonna seem young when she sings no matter how old she is 'cause she's got a young voice."

R. L. Boyce, who played drums on Hemphill's "Feelin' Good" CD, said Hemphill's voice "has a sweet sound. She break my heart when she sings."

Papa Mali, a guitarist from Austin, Texas, met Hemphill for the first time the day of the recording. "Her choice of songs and the way she delivers them is very uplifting," he said. "She has a great light that seems to emanate from her."

Tramp, a fiddle player in a Nashville-based band, Bonepony, said, "Whatever she's singing, whether she wrote it or not, she sells it. You believe it."

Cyd Cassone and Ruthie Foster, who live in College Station, Texas, also showed up to perform with Hemphill. Cassone, who plays percussion and drums, described the singer as "a trailblazer for women in the blues."

Steve Gardner, who lives in Tokyo, went to the session to take advantage of the opportunity to perform with Hemphill. Gardner, who plays harmonica, is a photographer and included his photo of Hemphill carrying two guns - a .38 special and a 9 mm - in his book of photos, Rambling Mind.

Gardner is impressed with Hemphill's strength after her stroke. "A lot of people give up and that's it. She didn't give up. She's maybe too mean to give up. And she might tell you that, right? That's just such an inspiration to me."

Gardner's dad, "Big Steve" Gardner, and mother, Sally, also attended the recording session. "Mother went out and got her some clothes. She (Hemphill) doesn't call her 'Sally,' she calls her 'Steve's Mama.' 'Steve's Mama, I need something shiny to wear.' So, my mother went out and got her some shiny stuff to wear."

Performing in Winnipeg, Canada, in the 1980s was another high point, Hemphill said. "When I got to Canada, there were 35,000 people there. And I was so excited. Ooh, there were 5 or 6 acres of cars and I don't know how many acres of folk. And that was the manyest people that ever stood in front of me in my life."

Asked to describe her voice, Hemphill said, "I think I sing more in D flat. I can't sing way up high like that. I go to coughing or my throat go to hurting."

She was helped into a wheel chair and rolled to the farm's "potato house," where the recording took place. She sat in a chair with Pookie on her lap as musicians bustled about her. She sang When the Saints go Marchin' in and other familiar spirituals.

Musicians and guests wandered in and out. Darnell Lewis and Alvin Allen from the Como Steak House barbecued 30 pounds of chicken and 10 Boston butts on an outdoor grill. Beer flowed.

Hemphill seemed to be having a good time. "God bless us all to see another pretty day," she said.

When Hemphill is recording, it's good reason for blues musicians from around the country to gather, among them (from left) fiddle player Tramp, guitarist Jimbo Mathus and bassist Chris Chew. Says Mathus: "She's the only woman that's got that North Mississippi style . . . that two-fingered boogie . . ." The label 219 Records is producing Hemphill's new CD of spirituals, recorded in Como, Miss.

When 71-year-old Hemphill sings, all the generations get in the act. Helping out at the April recording session were drummers (from left) Otha Andre Evans, Bill Turner and Sharde Thomas.

Some hear melancholy in Jessie Mae Hemphill's voice; others a sexy, even youthful quality. Hemphill describes her voice this way: "I think I sing more in D flat. I can't sing way up high."

"I'm passionate about the blues, especially in North Mississippi," says Olga Wilhelmine of New Orleans, who, with a friend, launched the 219 Records label.

Copyright 2003 The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN