“Mississippi” Fred Mc Dowell

“Mississippi” Fred McDowell was born and grew up in Rossville, Tennessee a small farming town just 38 miles east of Memphis on U.S Highway 78 and just north of the Mississippi border. The “Mississippi” designation came later in life, after he moved down to Como, Mississippi, about 40 miles south of Memphis on the 51 Highway, in his late thirties. McDowell was born about 1904 or 1905, and worked most of his life as a farm laborer, mill worker, and tractor driver. He played music at country dances and juke joints, though as he says, “I wasn’t making money from music, sometimes they’d pay me, and sometimes they wouldn’t.” In his late 50s he was ‘discovered’ and recorded by folklorists Shirley Collins and Alan Lomax, (January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) one of the great American field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, who wrote:

“Fred was surprised when I admired his music sufficiently to visit him for several evenings and record everything he knew. In true blues fashion he kept telling me that he couldn’t play nearly as well as other men he knew. In my estimation he is simply a modest man, for in him the great tradition of the blues runs pure and deep.”

Mini documentary: Blues Maker 1969, 12 Bar blues, Acoustic Blues, Acoustic guitar, Blues Trail, Delta Blues, Delta Blues Museum, Delta Mississippi, Memphis, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Nashville, Tennessee.

McDowell died of cancer in 1972, and is buried at the Hammond Hill Baptist church outside of Como, Mississippi.