Sunday, June 29, 2008

Fifty States: Mississippi



Ted Hawkins: Missin' Mississippi

[purchase]

I will not spend time repeating myself, because I have just written a long piece about Ted Hawkins over at my own music blog. If you are not familiar with Hawkins, you really should be, and seriously won't regret looking further into his music - there are a couple more tunes to get you started in my Ted Hawkins post. Hawkins was raised in Biloxi, Mississippi (in fact, he also has a great song called 'Biloxi') but, after wandering the United States as a young man, eventually became a Venice Beach, California mainstay, busking on the boardwalk there 8-10 hours per day. The raw emotion in his beautifully natural and unpolished voice blows me away every time. Feels like coming home!

Bonus tracks:

Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam [purchase]

Jimmie Rodgers: Miss the Mississippi [purchase]

Sammy Walker: And the Mississippi Delta Cried
[no purchase link available]

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice tie-in, Di!
I read your Hawkins post, from your home-blog, but haven't DL's anything yet (It's been a strange connectivity-issue week for me). I'm looking forwards to all of these (and them), though.

Divinyl said...

Thanks Matt. My computer's also on a bit of a go-slow...took about half an hour just to upload these tracks! Make sure you do check out the Hawkins tracks when you get a chance...he's fantastic!

(P.s. I didn't just post it to point to my own blog...it's genuinely a great song!)

boyhowdy said...

I had Sammie Walker songs for both Indiana and New Jersey! That guy's a state theme's dream!

Divinyl said...

As is Johnny Cash!

I only have one Indiana track and it's good, but not superb, so I don't see why you shouldn't post more Walker...mine was just a 'supplementary' track, after all :o)

Unknown said...

p.s.
don't center your pics

left justify.

to keep in style of all us else.

psst...