Contribution to Book
The Old Time, Hill Country Sounds of Sidney Hemphill Sr.
Mississippi Fiddle Tunes, Commercial and Informal Recordings, 1920-2018
(2021)
Abstract
“He was a music man. Then he learnt all of us. He learned us. Good as ever been through here, Panola County,” declared Lucius Smith, talking about his longtime playing partner and musical mentor, Sid Hemphill. “He’d play down to an organ, down to a piano, down to a Jew’s harp.” Alan Lomax exclaimed that his blindness was “the last thing you’d recall about him. His face blazed with inner light. He ran rather than walked everywhere. He could never wait for his wife to bring something, but always darted up to find it himself. His speech, which could not keep pace with his thoughts and designs, had become telegraphic and brusque.” Hemphill was central to the music community in northern Mississippi during his lifetime, coming from a family of musicians and leaving a family of musicians in his wake. Sid Hemphill is perhaps the best example of an African American musician from Mississippi, because he refutes the stereotypes that define the contemporary concept of the hill country blues musician popularized by Fat Possum Records, whose policies extend from the segregation of sound during the early days of the recording industry.
Keywords
- Sidney Hemphill,
- Mississippi,
- Quills,
- Fiddler,
- Segregation of Sound
Disciplines
Publication Date
Winter November, 2021
Editor
Harry Bolick and Tony Russell
Publisher
University Press of Mississippi
Series
American Made Music Series
Citation Information
T. DeWayne Moore, "The Old Time, Hill Country Sounds of Sidney Hemphill Sr.," in Mississippi Fiddle Tunes, Commercial and Informal Recordings, 1920-2018, eds. Harry Bolick and Tony Russell (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2021), 152-172.
Creative Commons License
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