Instagram story viewer> @missippivibes> Posts

missippivibes

@missippivibes

190.4K

followers

233

following

A Love Letter to God and Mississippi

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Introducing Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience - officially released today, an album celebrating the rich, 100-year history of the Mississippi Delta Blues. The Oscar winning actor has been captivated by this music since childhood, and now collaborates with a remarkable group of artists who share that same passion. The first single from the collection - Death Letter Blues - features five-time GRAMMY-winner Taj Mahal, the Ground Zero Blues Band and Chineke! Orchestra. Originally recorded in 1965 by the Delta Blues legend Son House, Death Letter Blues is one of the most viscerally powerful laments in Blues history. A raw, grief-stricken narrative of loss, driven by slide guitar and gospel inflected vocals. Recorded between the world-class recording studios of Royal Studios in Memphis and Abbey Road Studios in London, this new recording brings that foundation into conversation with the help of producer and engineer Boo Mitchell and Music Director and Conductor Martin Gellner. It is a collaboration that preserves the raw emotional core of Son House’s original, while expanding its symphonic scale.

“Rooted in stories carried from West Africa to the American South, the Blues became a testament to the unbroken human spirit, the sound of America’s past and present, and the heartbeat of a culture that refused to be forgotten.” — Morgan Freeman by @missippivibes

16k

226

2 months ago

On August 31, 1970, Aretha Franklin, (daughter of parents both born and raised in Shelby Mississippi) delivered a powerhouse live performance of “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)” on The Cliff Richard Show for BBC television. Seated at the piano and backed by the BBC Orchestra plus the Sweet Inspirations, the Queen of Soul turned Ben E. King’s 1962 hit into a raw, gospel-infused statement of heartbreak and defiance.
Recorded just as her studio version (from the album Spirit in the Dark) was climbing the charts—hitting No. 1 R&B and No. 11 pop—the performance captured Franklin at a peak. This song is a perfect 10. by @missippivibes

16k

518

2 months ago

Centreville, Ms, found footage 😍

Grits and Gospel.
The Chapman Family performs a song they remember singing as children under the moonlight. From the 1975 film “Fannie Bell Chapman: Gospel Singer” included in the forthcoming box set, “Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris.”

I do believe this is the Promised Land

Video credit @_tyyrenn on ⏰ taken in Centreville, Mississippi by @missippivibes

36k

879

10 months ago

326

8

20 hours ago

Big Joe Williams (1903–1982) holds a distinctive place in blues history as an archetypal itinerant Delta bluesman. Born near Crawford, Mississippi, he left home young, playing levee camps, juke joints, and minstrel shows while developing a raw, rhythmic style on his trademark nine-string guitar. He recorded the enduring standard “Baby, Please Don’t Go” for Bluebird in 1935 (later covered by Muddy Waters, Them, and many others) and “Crawlin’ King Snake.” A mentor to young Muddy Waters and Honeyboy Edwards, he collaborated with Sonny Boy Williamson and others, remaining active through the postwar era and the 1960s folk-blues revival. Inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1992, Williams embodied the restless, propulsive spirit of prewar country blues while bridging it to later audiences.
In Manchester on 22 October 1963, during the American Folk Blues Festival, Williams delivered a heartfelt performance of “Baby Please Don’t Go” for Granada TV’s I Hear the Blues. Captured in Studio 6, it showcased his driving nine-string guitar and powerful vocals, preserving a vital live document of classic Delta blues for British audiences at the height of the blues revival. by @missippivibes

798

12

3 days ago

“The Thrill Is Gone” was not written by B.B. King. West Coast bluesman Roy Hawkins and Rick Darnell composed it in 1951; Hawkins’s original reached No. 6 on the Billboard R&B chart that year. King, then a Memphis radio DJ, played the record and never forgot it. “Something about the song haunted me,” he later recalled. “It was a different kind of blues ballad, and I carried it around in my head for many years. I’d been arranging it in my brain and even tried a couple of different versions that didn’t work.”
In June 1969, during sessions for the album Completely Well, the pieces finally locked. Working with producer Bill Szymczyk and a New York studio band, King reshaped the tune into a slow 12-bar blues in B minor. Szymczyk later suggested string overdubs (arranged by Bert de Coteaux); King agreed, even after a late-night call. The polished yet aching result became his signature song: a No. 3 R&B and No. 15 Hot 100 hit, a Grammy winner, and the recording that introduced his sound to a far wider audience.
The lyric is pure heartbreak—acceptance that love has cooled and the only remaining step is to walk away. King made the song his own through restrained vocal delivery, Lucille’s soaring bends, and that late-night studio alchemy. By the time he performed it in Paris four years later, it was already a blues standard, and he had turned another man’s 1951 hit into one of the most enduring statements in the genre.

In November 1973 at Paris’s Palais des Sports, B.B. King performed “The Thrill Is Gone” with his full touring band: Ron Levy (piano), Milton Hopkins (guitar), Wilbert Freeman (bass), Sonny Freeman (drums), Eddie Rourke (trumpet), Kato Walker III (alto sax), Bobby Forte (tenor sax), and Louis Hubert (baritone sax).
At this stage of his career, four years after the song’s breakthrough hit, King stood as an international blues icon, riding peak popularity with polished, horn-driven shows that filled European halls. by @missippivibes

1k

28

4 days ago

The amazing story, told by the straight shooter himself; Walter Brown tells the story of a particular payday in the Greenville levee camp when he was compelled to demand the pay that was owed to him.

Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long on the levee in Greenville, Mississippi, August 22, 1978.

This is an edited version of this story told by Walter Brown. For the full story and many more like it head to Alan Lomax Film Collection on YT. by @missippivibes

2k

44

7 days ago

In an intimate live performance, Fred Knobloch delivers “Used to Blue” alongside his S-K-O bandmates Paul Overstreet and Thom Schuyler. The song, co-written by Knobloch and Bill LaBounty and a 1985 Top 3 country hit (and Canadian No. 1) for Sawyer Brown, gains extra emotional weight in this setting.
Two of the three share deep Mississippi roots. Knobloch was born in Jackson in 1953 and later inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame; Overstreet was born in Newton (or nearby Vancleave) in 1955 and raised in the state before heading to Nashville. Their shared Southern foundation helped shape the group’s blend of country, folk, and pop sensibilities during S-K-O’s brief but successful mid-1980s run. Schuyler, by contrast, hails from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Together they embodied the Nashville songwriter tradition while two of them carried authentic Mississippi DNA into the Music City scene. by @missippivibes

88

4

8 days ago

On September 3, 1969, at the Thunderbird Motel on South Shore Drive in Chicago, Johnny Shines, David “Honeyboy” Edwards, and Big Walter Horton gathered for a memorable blues session. Filmed and recorded by Adelphi Records under producer Gene Rosenthal, the informal setting captured raw Delta-rooted Chicago blues at its finest.
Shines, the powerful slide guitarist and singer who had once traveled with Robert Johnson, called Horton in for the date. Adelphi sent a taxi; Horton arrived apologizing for his appearance—he had just returned from the emergency room after a fight the previous night, medical tape still wrapped around his hand. Edwards, another close associate of Johnson and a living link to the pre-war Delta, sat in on guitar.
Together they performed “Love of Mine” a soulful, mid-tempo number driven by Shines’s vocal and slide work, Edwards’s steady rhythm, and Horton’s expressive harmonica. The performance, later released on the Adelphi album Really Chicago Blues, stands as a rare documented collaboration among three masters who had absorbed the music of the Mississippi Delta and reshaped it on Chicago’s South Side. The motel room session remains a vivid snapshot of blues history in transition.
Again it cannot be overstated that Mississippi sounds shaped the Chicago sound that shaped the sound of the whole world’s music even to this day. Honeyboy Edwards was born in Shaw, Mississippi, deep in the Delta, absorbing the raw country blues of Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson. Big Walter Horton hailed from Horn Lake, Mississippi, near Memphis, learning harmonica amid Delta traditions. Johnny Shines, though born in Tennessee, forged his style traveling the Mississippi Delta with Robert Johnson, embodying its intense slide and vocal intensity. by @missippivibes

1k

26

9 days ago

Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in a two-room shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi, during the Great Depression. His parents, Vernon and Gladys, struggled with severe poverty. Vernon built their tiny home himself and worked irregular odd jobs as a laborer and milkman, while Gladys took in sewing and laundry. The family often lacked basic necessities; Elvis’s stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon, added to their hardships. Vernon was briefly imprisoned for forging a check, forcing Gladys and young Elvis to rely on relatives and public assistance. They lived simply in East Tupelo’s working-class neighborhoods until moving to Memphis in 1948.

In the 1970 documentary Elvis: That’s the Way It Is, Elvis Presley’s performance of “Suspicious Minds” captures him at the peak of his Las Vegas resurgence. Filmed during his August shows at the International Hotel, the sequence showcases Elvis in a striking white jumpsuit, commanding the stage with magnetic energy. His powerful, emotional vocals drive the song’s dramatic build, while he moves fluidly—shivering, shaking, and delivering sharp karate kicks that electrify the audience. Backed by a full orchestra, the TCB Band, and vocal groups, the arrangement swells with intensity, turning the hit into a thrilling live spectacle. The footage highlights Elvis’s charisma, vocal strength, and showmanship during this triumphant return to the stage, making it one of the film’s most memorable moments. by @missippivibes

435

9

10 days ago

The Band stands as the most Mississippi-sounding group never to claim a single native Mississippian. With Levon Helm’s Arkansas Delta roots and Robbie Robertson’s deep immersion in the region’s blues, their music channels the soul, soil, and spirit of the Magnolia State more authentically than many who were born there.
Levon Helm was born in Elaine, Arkansas, and raised in Turkey Scratch/Marvell in Phillips County—cotton-farm country in the Arkansas portion of the Mississippi Delta, just west of the Mississippi River near Helena. He described the region’s “fertile crescent” of American music running from Memphis through Helena, Arkansas, to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and absorbed Delta blues, gospel, country, and early rock ’n’ roll (including radio from Jackson, Mississippi, and shows by figures like Sonny Boy Williamson II).
Robbie Robertson, as a teenager from Canada, traveled south to the Mississippi Delta—the “holy land” or fountainhead of the music that shaped him—drawn by artists such as Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and Bo Diddley. This experience, along with Helm’s stories of tent shows and Southern life, informed The Band’s rootsy Americana sound.
The Band played Reed Green Coliseum in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on September 12, 1976 (during their final original-lineup tour period).
Their catalog draws heavily on Mississippi Delta blues, Southern rural life, and Civil War-era Southern imagery (e.g., “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”), channeling the region’s musical heritage, about as Mississippi as a band could be without any members actually being Mississippi natives. by @missippivibes

6k

69

11 days ago

Elvis at age 20 vacationing in Biloxi, Mississippi by @missippivibes

646

20

12 days ago