Goin' Where the Southern Cross the Dog -- Mississippi Delta Blues

Where Southern Cross the Yellow Dog...Blues Photo by Susan Klopfer

I actually found this famous Mississippi Delta Blues spot one day while driving around the Mississippi Delta doing research for my book, WhereRebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.

The story goes that bandleader W. C. Handy was waiting for a train at the Tutwiler railway station around the year 1903 when he heard a man playing slide guitar with a knife and singing “Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.” Handy later published his version of this song as “Yellow Dog Blues,” and later became known as the “Father of the Blues” after he based many of his popular blues pieces on the sounds he heard in the Delta.

The little town Tutwiler, just a few miles from Parchman Penitentiary where I lived, has been christened “the birthplace of the blues” in honor of  Handy’s chance meeting with the unnamed guitarist who was performing one of the earliest documented blues songs.  

Handy went on to lead an orchestra in nearby Clarksdale from 1903 to 1905, traveling the Delta and beyond, stopping to play dances for both white and African American audiences with music that incorporatd blues into his repertoire, after  hearing the Tutwiler guitarist and a string band playing twangy Delta blues in Cleveland, Mississippi. Although Handy’s writings never gave a specific date for the Tutwiler event, the U. S. Senate accepted 1903 when it declared 2003 the centennial “Year of the Blues.”

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You are invited to read a free chapter from my book, Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited  -- just Click Here. Your reviews and comments are always welcome.

Thanks -- Susan