Mississippi

Mississippi ⁱ/ˌmɪsᵻˈsɪpi/ is a state located in the southern region of the United States.

Jackson is the state capital and largest city, with a population of around 175,000 people. The state overall has a population of around 3 million people. Mississippi is the 32nd most extensive and the 32nd most populous of the 50 United States.

The state is heavily forested outside of the Mississippi Delta area. Its riverfront areas were cleared for slave-cultivated cotton production before the American Civil War, but after the war, the bottomlands were cleared mostly by freedmen. African Americans made up two-thirds of the property owners in the Delta by the end of the 19th century, but timber and railroad companies acquired much of the land. Clearing altered the ecology of the Delta, increasing the severity of flooding along the Mississippi. Much land is now held by agribusinesses. A largely rural state with agricultural areas dominated by industrial farms, Mississippi is ranked low or last among the states in such measures as health, educational attainment, and median household income. The state's catfish aquaculture farms produce the majority of farm-raised catfish consumed in the United States.

Clarksdale, Mississippi

Clarksdale is a city in Coahoma County, Mississippi, and seat of the county. The western boundary of the county is formed by the Mississippi River. Located in the Mississippi Delta region, Clarksdale is an agricultural and trading center. It has been home to many blues musicians. Clarksdale is named after John Clark, who founded the city in the mid-19th century.

History

Early history

Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians occupied the Delta region prior to the arrival of European settlers. Clarksdale was developed at the former intersection of two important Indian routes: the Lower Creek Trade Paths, which extended westward from Augusta, Georgia, to New Mexico; and the Chakchiuma Trade Trail, which ran northeastward to the former village at present-day Pontotoc, Mississippi. The first removal treaty carried out under the Indian Removal Act was the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, by which the Choctaw people ceded about 11 million acres in exchange for about 15 million acres in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). A similar forced removal of the Chickasaw Nation began in 1837; once in Indian Territory, they paid the Choctaw $530,000 for the westernmost part of their land.

Charlie Musselwhite

Charles Douglas "Charlie" Musselwhite (born January 31, 1944) is an American electric blues harmonica player and bandleader, one of the non-black bluesmen who came to prominence in the early 1960s, along with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. Though he has often been identified as a "white bluesman", he claims Native American heritage. Musselwhite was reportedly the inspiration for Dan Aykroyd's character in the Blues Brothers.

Biography

Musselwhite was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, United States. He has said that he is of Choctaw descent, born in a region originally inhabited by the Choctaw. In a 2005 interview, he said his mother had told him he was actually Cherokee.

Musselwhite's family considered it natural to play music, with his father playing guitar and harmonica, his mother playing piano, and a relative who was a one-man band.

At the age of three, Musselwhite moved to Memphis, Tennessee. When he was a teenager, Memphis experienced the period when rockabilly, western swing, and electric blues and other forms of African American music were combining to give birth to rock and roll. That period featured Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, as well as lesser known musicians such as Gus Cannon, Furry Lewis, Will Shade, and Johnny Burnette. Musselwhite supported himself by digging ditches, laying concrete and running moonshine in a 1950 Lincoln automobile. This environment was a school for music as well as life for Musselwhite, who eventually acquired the nickname "Memphis Charlie."

Riverside Hotel

Riverside Hotel may refer to:

See also