North Mississippi fife and drums

Othar Turner and the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band - Granny, Will Your Dog Bite ? (buy) (1980)


In 1942, while traveling in North Mississippi, Alan Lomax discovered a community of musicians who played the most African-like (and I would add : with a little Indian influence too) music played in the USA (see my "Fifes and quills" post).
He recorded Sid Hemphill in 1942 with his band (snare drum, fiddle, guitar, quills), then in 1959 the Young brothers, the first real Mississippi fife and drums band ever recorded. Unfortunately I don't have these tracks, they are on a compilation called "Sounds of the South".

North Mississippi fife and drum bands generally feature a bass drum, a snare drum and a home made fife. They played at picnics, gatherings and celebrations. On Memorial day week end there was always a big fife and drum party just outside of Como, which underlines the military origins of this tradition. Fife and drums is a soldier's music, widespread in the British colonies and in the US Army.
Black recreational fife and drum music is very rare in the USA, but is common in the West Indies (check that Jamaician field recording released by Folkways in 1975), which were an important transit point for slaves shipped from Africa. In the USA drums were generally banned during slavery. So we can assume that this special, and very local tradition originated after the Civil War. But Mississippi fife and drum music is much more festive, as the descriptions made by Lomax in "Land Where The Blues Began" of picnics and dances suggests. There is a constant interaction between musicians and dancers, and very suggestive and sexual dance postures.

About Mississippi fife and drums, check out this great article by David Evans (1972), and watch this 10 minute-movie by Evans.

If this music may sound a little repetitive, you have to hear (and watch) it live. I saw a Brazilian batucada band in my hometown festival a few weeks ago, and this polyrythmic beat really puts you in a trance.

Napoleon Strickland - Black Water Rising (buy) (1969)

Fife and drums is a family and a community affair. Two of the most recorded performers, Othar Turner and Napoleon Strickland, said they learned how to play and make fifes from Sid Hemphill, who also taught his granddaughter, Jessie Mae, who was a great bass drum player. And Othar Turner taught his children and grandchildren.
Here are 2 videos of Sharde Thomas, Othar's granddaughter who keeps the tradition alive.
Check out this article about her.

First video with her grandfather (aged 94 at that time). You'll notice that she's learning to play in rhythm first, rather than melodically.



A few years later :



Looking for more ? Pay a visit to the folkstreams site, there are plenty of articles about fife and drum music and Othar Turner.

Fifes and quills

Flutes or pipes are not very common in blues recordings, because in the 1920s they were already part of the past, and had been replaced by the harmonica. In the blues, there are of two sorts :

The quills

Everybody with an interest in music should read Land Where The Blues Began by Alan Lomax.
When Alan Lomax came first to the hill country near Senatobian, in northern Misssissippi, in 1942, he met Sid Hemphill, a multi-instrumentist, born around 1876. Hemphill showed him the quills, "a set of hollow canes of varying lengths, bound together with the tops even". They are the same instrument as the Greek or Romanian panpipes, or the Inca's rondador. The quills were of various sizes, 4-tube to 10-tube for Sid.

In my first post about Indians and the blues, I'd put a recording of Sid Hemphill playing the quills in a fashion that called back to his African and Indian roots.

"Them's the quills...that's old folks' music. Music of olden time. Back yonder almost everybody used to play on quills. Now, ain't hardly common no more."

Henry Thomas : Old Country Stomp (buy) (Chicago, june 1928)

Another great quills player was Henry Thomas, who recorded 25 sides for Columbia in 1928. Being born in the 1870s, like Sid Hemphill, he was one of the oldest blues musicians ever recorded. The song above is an old square dance tune from the 19th century.

Read more about the quills here in this great Web page by a guy named Norm Sohl.
Ed at the great blog The Blue bus made also a great post about the quills.

The fife or fice



In Land Where The Blues Began there is this great description of Napoleon Strickland making his fife :

Majesterially, he draws the red-hot poker out of the coals and, holding up a section of cane, says, " Now this is something you go fishing with, but I'm gonna fix it so it will make music." He puts the cane down on the floor and, holding it steady with his foot, burns the first finger hole into the barrel, then puts the poker into the coals again. " Now I'm gonna show you how I make it sing."
He holds the flute uo to his lips and licks the place where he will blow it. Then he burns in that hole. Next he licks his other fingers and spreads them along the barrel, locating the other finger holes in accordance with his normal way of spreading his hand along the barrel when he plays. These tuning points are marked with spit. He nicks the chosen witted points with his big clasp knife - "See, I takes my knife and I swings each one of them out."
"How far apart do you put the holes ?"
"About half an inch, I think"
Here we witness black magic. No micrometer, not even a ruler or a pattern, has controlled the tuning of his fife. The finger holes are simply set a comfortable and familiar distance apart, where his fingers naturally fall when he's playing. He carefully burns out and enlarges these holes, one after another. He delicately touches the end of the cane. "When the sound come out this end, you got it made." Napoleon opines. "Now I'm gonna burn the jintes out of the cane." So saying, he pushes the red-hot poker up the barrel of the new fife, and as he burns through each joint of the cane, delicate notes of smoke rise in the kitchen air. Withdrawing the poker, he blows the barrel of the fife clear of smoke, shavings, and cinders. He rubs the cane to cool it off. "Now," he says proudly and with his widest grin, "here's the fice, and i'll do it like this."

Of course, fife is often accompanied with drums (and I soon will post about that style).
Ed Young was another fife player that Lomax met on his hill country trips. Here is a improvised version of "Joe Turner" he recorded with white banjo player Hobart Smith.

Ed Young & Hobarth Smith : Joe Turner (buy)



(this photo and the first one were taken by Alan Lomax).