Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation

Offbeat Magazine, New Orleans October 2003

JESSE MAE HEMPHILL, HIGH PRIESTESS OF HILL COUNTRY
by Cree McCree

The She-Wolf of Como and a cast of dozens came together in a Como barn to record Dare You to Do It Again, a benefit project to provide financial assistance to hill country artists and preserve the unique musical traditions of North Mississippi.

Jesse Mae Hemphill don’t sing the blues no more. (Or so she claims). Just spiritual songs like she learned at her mama’s knee. And since a stroke left her partially paralyzed a decade ago, she can no longer play her propulsive open-tuned guitar. But when the spirit moves her, she can still “Boogie All Night Long,” like she sang on her first record, She-Wolf. Jesse Mae jammed till 5 a.m. making Dare You to Do It Again, a two-CD benefit album recorded live with a cast of dozens at Sherman Cooper’s farm in Como, MS, which was recently released on New Orleans’ 219 Records. And right now in her trailer in nearby Senatobia, she starts to boogie in her wheelchair listening to “Porch Logic Remix,” the album’s last track.

“I kinda like this,” she says, warming up to DJ Logic’s deep house spin on the clamorous fife & drum and droning guitars of the Mississippi session, remixed in a New York studio. Then her own voice loops into the mix – complete with samples of her pealing cackle, which ricochet off the walls as the drums dive deeper. “Oh lord, we’re gettin’ down now!” she hoots, lifting her lapdog Pookie on her hind legs to shake a tailfeather. “That be good for dancin, chile!” It also be good for the future of the distinctive musical styles born in the hill country of North Mississippi, where Jesse Mae Hemphill is royalty.

Jesse Mae’s grandfather was the great Sid Hemphill, who played over a dozen instruments – many of them homemade – and led a seminal fife & drum corps, as well as a popular string band, for over half a century. Though Alan Lomax recorded Sid Hemphill and his neighbor, Fred McDowell, back in the 1950s, hill country music remained well outside the mainstream Delta-Chicago blues loop. And despite the recent success of R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and other aging Fat Possum blues artists – and young jam-band the North Mississippi Allstars – many of the traditions Jesse Mae embodies are in danger of dying out.

To keep the spirit alive, singer-songwriter Olga Wilhelmine and her business partner, Tyler Austin, conceived and produced Dare You to Do It Again and a companion DVD to benefit the newly-created Jesse Mae Hemphill Foundation. Their immediate goal is to provide longterm financial assistance to Jesse Mae and other hard-up hill country musicians, who subsist on welfare with scant access to adequate healthcare. Ultimately, they hope to open a museum that celebrates the singular contributions of North Mississippi artists to American music.

“What really brought it to a head was when Otha Turner died,” says Wilhelmine, who splits her time between New Orleans and Clarksdale, MS. “I remember sitting at his funeral and thinking that whole style is getting lost.” At the time of Turner’s passing in 2002 at the age of 94, he was the last remaining old master of fife & drum, which predates the blues and has West African roots nurtured in Native American soil. To help pass the torch, Wilhelmine asked the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band, now comprised of Turner’s grandkids, to participate in the CD session and play with Jesse Mae. “The fact that that even happened was spine-tingling,” says Wilhelmine.

The younger generation was also represented by Junior Kimbrough’s boy, drummer Kent Kimbrough, and R.L. Burnside’s sons Cedric (drums) and Garry (bass). Joining them was old school guitarist and Fat Possum artist Robert Belfour, who plays classic hill country modal riffs. Jesse Mae nailed exactly what the style sounds like when she still had two good hands: “I play all six of them strings, when I’m playin’ like that. And every one of them be havin’ chillun.”

Back in her heyday, Jesse Mae traveled the world, and Dare You to Do It Again wasn’t just a local project. Musicians from around the country answered the call put out by Wilhelmine and her boyfriend, Jimbo Mathus, who fronted the Squirrel Nut Zippers before settling in Clarksdale and getting deep into the blues. All the players were longtime fans who jumped at the chance to jam with Jesse Mae, the legendary She-Wolf of Como and winner of 5 W.C. Handy awards.

“She’s an inspiration,” says Papa Mali of Austin’s Papa Mali and the Instigators, whose funky slide guitar earned high marks from Jesse Mae. “She seems to just emanate this grace and beauty, this warmth and humor, that’s just timeless.” So when tape started rolling in the old potato barn on Sherman Cooper’s farm, the large supporting cast let Jesse Mae lead them wherever the spirit moved her. Keeping time with her tambourine, she put an improvisatory spin on old standards like “Lay My Burden Down,” “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” and “This Little Light of Mine.” Some of the results are a little ragged. “My favorite part about the session was all the instruments were in different tunings,” quips guitarist Steve Gardner. But it’s as real and downhome as a Mississippi yard party gets.

“I felt like my mama was right there with me that night,” says Jesse Mae, whose mother, Virgie Lee Hemphill, taught her many of the old church songs. “My granddaddy too. My granddaddy could make a song out of anything. I started playin’ tambourine with him before I could even stand, chile! And I was keepin’ time! He told mama, this child ain’t missed a beat, she gonna be a musician. And sure enough, I growed up to be that.”

Jessie Mae was 9 when she first started playing drum with Grandpa Sid’s fife & drum band. “The big [bass] drum, too,” she recalls. “Always be some man to hold the drum for me while I stand up on the Coca Cola box. I made more money than my grandaddy did. People just be hollerin!” She also picked up the guitar, and was already winning prizes onstage when she was 8. Later, as a young woman, she headed up to Memphis, where she plied her trade on Beale St. and drifted in and out several bands. But it was only in the mid-‘70s, when she moved back to Como and started to take the guitar seriously, that she really came into her own.

She-Wolf, her 1981 debut on the small French label Venus, announced her transformation into one of the fiercest – and most glamorous – blues women ever. Flashing sequins and rhinestones, her high heel driving a foot-powered tambourine beneath the pulsing thrum of her big hollow body Gibson, Jesse Mae Hemphill mesmerized audiences at festivals throughout Europe. Hair-raising live performance tracks on Mississippi Blues Festival 1986, released on France’s Black and Blue label, helped seal her stateside reputation. In 1987 and 1988, she earned two back-to-back W.C. Handy Awards for Best Traditional Female Blues Artist – a phenomenal achievement for an artist who had never released a full-length album in the States. When she finally came out with one – Feelin’ Good, issued by High Water in 1991 – it promptly won the Handy Award for Best Acoustic Album of the year.

The bright promise of Jesse Mae’s future dimmed abruptly in 1993, when a stroke partially paralyzed her left side and put an end to her guitar-playing days. But instead of making her sing the blues, that nasty turn of luck brought her back to the spirituals of childhood.

“I’m testifyin’ to the world how good God been to me,” says Jessie Mae, whose trailer is lined with her colorful paintings of the Apostles and guardian angels. But don’t take the sweetness and light at face value. It’s been years since she shot her pistol in the air and yelled “I’m home!” when she returned from gigs, to warn off any thieves who might be lurking near her trailer. (A legend she now disputes). But Jessie Mae Hemphill is still one tough cookie. “I may be laughing but you don’t know what’s on my mind,” she notes, darkly. And she’s not at all pleased with the photo of her as a pistol-packin’ mama that adorns the cover of Dare You to Do It Again.

“It look like I’m some kind of outlaw woman!” she fumes. “If it’d been the blues, might have been all right. But not for the spiritual songs. Anybody got any kind of religion don’t want that picture on it.” She’s probably right. But the folks who fill the pews of the sanctified churches in and around Como aren’t really the target demo. For the CD to serve its fund-raising purpose, it needs to reach a much wider audience. Old blues cats and young hipsters will doubtless be drawn to the “outlaw woman,” who stares at the camera with just a hint of laughter in her eyes, like she was in on the joke.

And, truth be told, the album cover is not entirely a case of false advertising.

The second CD, recorded well into the session when spirits were starting to fly, opens with “God Is Good to Me,” a 12-minute incantation channeled straight from Jesse Mae’s heart. From there, she segues into “Treat Me Right,” a 23-minute deep drone epic that could almost be an outtake from the Velvet Undergound’s infamous Austin sessions. About ten minutes into her stream of consciousness vocalizing, which makes no mention of the Lord and sounds suspiciously like the blues, she brings in the tambourine, driving the band to dig deeper.

“That was no blues,” retorts Jesse Mae, scratching Pookie behind the ears as she flashes a sly grin. “That was just somethin’ I was doin’. Whatever jumped outta my mouth that’s what I done. That’s the way I do all of them. When somethin’ come up, I just let it roll out.”

To order the double CD ($19.99) and companion DVD ($24.99), and get more information about the Jesse Mae Hemphill Foundation, visit the website: www.jmhemphill.org