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sk bob 10 years, 6 months ago.
Hey Tiki,
Nice to meet you! Sounds very cool… If I can work it out I will come for the last two days. The Friday of Labor Day weekend is the Howlin Wolf fest in West Point Mississippi and I am obliged to be there. Cool festival. I brought Sam Phillips and his family there in 2000. But I would love to include your festival in that weekend. Sounds incredible and exactly my kind of event. And then some. I have a hunch we know lots of the same people! Maybe send me a private message and we can exchange info and talk! Blues and roadfood and more! be well.
Yeah, Its true. Howlin’ Wolf’s surviving musicians are getting up there. Hubert Sumlin, Matt Murphy, James Cotton, Henry Gray, Sam Lay, and a few more are still around. My film “Smokestack Lightning: The Legendary Howlin’ Wolf will celebrate Wolf and his band and will be released in 2011. Wolf was born near West Point, Mississippi in 1910. By the way, the town of West Point has a great blues festival every Labor Day weekend. Called, fittingly, the Howlin Wolf Memorial Blues Festival. There is also a Howlin Wolf statue in West Point. The area produced some other great bluesmen including Bukka White from Aberdeen and Big Joe Williams from Crawford. There is good roadfood in the area as well including Anthony’s in West Point for excellent upscale southern food, the Tin Lizzy for great breakfasts and biscuits to die for, Daves BBQ, etc. There is even a Wolf story about pies. His neighbor and friend RL Larry’s wife made great sweet potato pies. Wolf would come every other year to visit and hunt with relatives and friends. One year, Mrs. Larry sent him home with 2 pies for his wife, Lillie Burnett. Wolf started driving north and began snacking on the pies. By the time he got to Tupelo, about a 50 mile drive, he discovered that he had finished both pies!
It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. He’ll be 81 in December.
He played with Howling Wolf in 1948.
the Daytona blues fest is in town & one of the headliners is Matt “Guitar” Murphy.
in the local paper it said he was 80 years old.
I haven’t reseached it but that doesn’t sound right.
I know he’s been around for a loooong time, but that doesn’t sound right.
Hery Smokeate Lightning—what can this old California blues lover do to talk you into making the trip to Oklahoma next year at Labor Day for a Blues fest like no other you have been to?—promise–you will love it—three nights—3 stages–30 bands–music from 6pm till 6am and all set on an old cotton farm in a tiny traditionally black community of less then one hundred folks!!!—AND a real honest to God surving 1930’s juke joint that house the Oklahioma Blues Hall of Fame?—wwwdcminnerblues.com
Matt “Guitar” Murphy is 80?
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