Stoking a new style of music.
Guitar great Frank Stokes came to Hernando as a child in 1895, and within a few years, he was commuting to Memphis to perform on the streets, busking as it was called, developing a loyal following and a repertoire that included minstrel tunes, rags, country tunes and folk songs; today some actually consider his influence equal to W.C. Handy’s in the birth of the blues.
What’s more, when Stokes teamed up with Garfield Akers, who had been touring with the a traveling medicine show, and the pair set off playing the tent circuit, some believe Stokes’ style also influenced a young Jimmie Rogers, a fellow Mississippian who would go on to earn the title of “Father of Country Music.”
By the1920s, the infant
Memphis recording industry was drawing Mississippi Hills musicians with new opportunities: Gus Cannon’s “Jug Stompers” jug band began recording hits, and Stokes joined the Beale Street Sheiks, in 1928 recording “Tain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do,” a classic later famously covered by Bessie Smith.
In late 1929, lifelong Nesbit resident Mississippi Joe Callicot signed on as second guitarist to Garfield Akers; Callicot’s “Love Me Baby Blues” became another popular cover subject for later artists like Ry Cooder.
Mid-century, as Hernando was rocking the country as the national marriage capital (even
Life Magazine did a report), the newly minted art of rock and roll came to DeSoto County in up close and personal ways, when both Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis made homes here.
But it would be at the end of the twentieth century when rock and blues would form their own marriage in the unique sounds of the
North Mississippi All Stars, the award-winning blues-rock jam band, formed in Hernando.