Delta Magazine May/June 2018 Complimentary Issue

Delta

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SHOPPING LOCAL GIFT GUIDE

48 HRS. Die Hard.

Field of Dreams.

Larry Gordon’s journey from Belzoni to Hollywood

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HE WAN ANTS T GROW TO W UP TO BE EA SUPERH HERO

Cayson - Mathiston, ston, MS

WE’R RE HERE T TO MAKE E SURE HE E CAN. At Children’ n’s of Mississippi, we wantt every child to grow up p strong and healthy so their heir biggest dreams can an come true. We e’re expanding anding and modernizing d i ing i the h state’’s only l children’ hildren’ en’’s h hospital i l and pediatric atric specialty clinics. Every very inch of

our ne ew facility will be designed gned with kids in mind, d, including a pediatric surgical wing, child-friendly riendly imaging, and private vate rooms for NICU and d PICU patients. Help us make k sure our patients’ tients’ big dreams can come me true.

Architectural rendering of the he new Children’s building

HELP US G GROW

SO O THEY CAN N GROW W..

Learrn more at growc childrens.org

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Don t le Don’t et heartbu urn ruin your life.

Acid reflux disease affects ap pproximately 30% of the American population, causiing daily heartburn symptoms – but heartburn is only one sign that you may have gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, a serious condition that has been linked d to esophageal cancer. Bap ptist Heartburn Treatment Center at Baptist North Mississippi can diagnose GERD and offers minimally invasive treatment that can help stop reflux. Please go to ba aptistonline.org/heartburn to learn more and take our short online quiz to find out if you might have GERD.

Get Betterr. baptistonline.org/heartburn

662-6 6 36-2120

A Legato Heartburn H Treatment Centerr

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DELTA M

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Publisher: J. Scott Coopwood Editor: Cindy Coopwood Managing Editor: Pam Parker Contributing Editors: Hank Burdine, Maude Schuyler Clay, Noel Workman, Roger Stolle Digital Editor: Phil Schank Graphic Designers: Sandra K. Goff, Cailee Conrad, Holly Ray Consultant: Samir Husni, Ph.D. Special Projects Coordinator: Stacye Trout Contributing Writers: Angela Rogalski, Madge Howell, Aimee Robinette, Liza Jones, Hank Burdine, Clint Kimberling, Brantley Snipes, P. Allen Smith, Jessica Milam, Jim Dees, Sherry Lucas, Gene Dattel Photography: Sandi Ward, Austin Britt, Tom Beck, Greg Campbell, Emily Ballard, Caroline Stuckey, Randall Haley, Roy Meeks, Johnny Jennings, Sandi Burt Circulation: Holly Tharp Accounting Manager: Emma Jean Thompson Account Executives: Cristen Hemmins, Kristy Kitchings, Wendy Mize, Ann Nestler, Cadey True POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to Delta Magazine P.O. Box 117, Cleveland, MS 38732 ADVERTISING: For advertising information, please call (662) 843-2700 or email Delta Magazine accepts no responsibility for unsolicited materials or photos and in general does not return them to sender. Photography obtained for editorial usage is owned

by Delta Magazine and may not be released for commercial use such as in advertisements and may not be purchased from the magazine for any reason. All editorial and advertising information is taken from sources considered to be authoritative, but the publication cannot guarantee their accuracy. Neither that information nor any opinion expressed on the pages of Delta Magazine in any way constitutes a solicitation for the sale or purchase of securities mentioned.

No material in Delta Magazine may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publication. Delta Magazine is published bi-monthly by Coopwood Magazines, Inc., 125 South Court St., Cleveland, MS 38732-2626.

Periodicals postage paid at Cleveland, MS and additional mailing office. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Delta Magazine, P.O. Box 117, Cleveland, MS 38732-0117.

Delta Magazine (USPS#022-954)

Delta Magazine is published six times a year by Coopwood Magazines, Inc. EDITORIAL & BUSINESS OFFICE ADDRESSES:

T H E A L L U VI A N H O T E L • T H E AL L U V I AN SP A VI K I N G C O O K I N G S C H O O L • GI ARDI NA’ S 325D Howard Street Greenwood, Mississippi 662.451.6700 thealluvian.com

Mailing Address: P.O. Box 117, Cleveland, MS 38732 Shipping Address: 125 South Court Street, Cleveland, MS 38732 Phone (662) 843-2700 • Fax (662) 843-0505 deltamagazine.com E-mail: publisher@deltamagazine.com editor@deltamagazine.com Subscriptions: $28 per year

6 | MAY/JUNE 2018

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A LIFETIME OF CARE Our expert team provides specialized care to patients throughout every stage of life. Call the doctors you trust.

A Lifetime of Care

1401 River Road • Greenwood, MS • 662-459-7000 • www.glh.org

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Spice up your kitchen - Bulldog style!

Bring Mississippi flavor into your kitchen with the special Mississippi State University limited edition of A Mississippi Palate – the coffee-table cookbook with 105 Mississippi heritage recipes by acclaimed chef Robert St. John and 66 beautiful watercolors by Wyatt Waters, with his home state as the subject.

This special edition features exclusive back cover art of one of the Bully statues in The Junction, with Davis Wade Stadium in the background. Each book is autographed by both chef and artist and accompanied by a signed and numbered print of the Bully statue.

Collectively, the chef and artist are commentators and chroniclers of Mississippi culture – one using a cast iron skillet, the other using a #42 da Vinci brush – both armed with a deep love for the beautiful state of Mississippi.

MSU is an AA/EEO university.

Order yours today at msufoundation.com/cookbook or call 662-325-7000.

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Every.

The dance world

Four. comes to Jackson.

Top dancers from around the globe obe take the stage of Thalia Mara Hallll for two weeks of thrilling competition. on.

They’ve trained a lifetime for thiss moment. Don’t miss it.

Get details and tickets at usaibc.com/attend

Yea e rs.

June 10-23, 2018 8

Gertrude C.. Ford Foundation

The official international ballet competition for the United Sates by Joint oint Resolution R of Congress. Held under the auspices of the International Theatre InstitutetuteInternational Dance Committee, UNESCO. Member of the Internationall Dance Danc Council and International Federation of Ballet Competitions. Funded in part byy grants from the Mississippi Development Authority, Visit Jackson, the Nationall Endowment for f the Arts, a federal agency, and Mississippi Arts Commission, a state agency gency.

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from the publisher

Making movies n the cover of this edition of Delta Magazine, we feature Belzoni native, Larry Gordon, one of Hollywood’s most prolific film and tele- Old photo of Prospect Hill Plantation in vision movie producers. Larry has given us the Jefferson County. Photo courtesy of the Mississippi block buster films Field of Dreams, Predator, Department of Archives and History. the Die Hard films, Waterworld, Xanadu, 48 Hours, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The Devil’s Own and many more.

I first heard about Larry years ago from the late Ed Kossman. Ed told me about his friend from Tulane who was a big film producer out in Hollywood. On a trip to Los Angeles four years ago, I called ahead and made an appointment to meet Larry. I arrived at his office at the designated time and I immediately noticed the framed movie posters on the walls in the lobby and the vast number of major awards he had been given. We met and immediately hit it off talking about the Delta and everything else. That 3 o’clock meeting lasted late into the evening as we shifted locations from his home to a restaurant for dinner. We’ve been good friends ever since.

Six months ago, fellow Shelby native and veteran writer Bill Rose, along with one of Austin’s most noted photographers, Sandie Ward, journeyed with me to Los Angeles. We spent two days with Larry in his office and his beautiful home interviewing him and taking photos for the story you’ll read on page 74. The take away? Larry is one of the finest individuals I’ve ever met. He has remained humble inspite of his incredible career and Hollywood power broker status.

Another article I’d like to point out in this edition is on page 68. Jessica Crawford of Marks is one of the region’s archeologists and she works for the ArWith Hollywood producer, Larry Gordon at his home with chaeological Conservancy (see The Delta’s First Families, January/February, 2017 the Los Angeles skyline behind us. edition). In 2011, the grounds and home of the Prospect Hill Plantation in Jefferson County were acquired by the Archeological Conservancy and Jessica has made it her mission to maintain this historic property. Prospect Hill was a 5,000acre plantation that was owned by Isaac Ross, a Revolutionary War veteran from South Carolina.When he died in 1836 his will stated that his slaves were to be freed and he paid for them to relocate to Africa to a colony called Mississippi-in-Africa on the coast of Liberia. A few years ago, some of the descendants from Africa visited Prospect Hill for the first time to see the home and grounds where their ancestors lived. There is far more to the story than this and Alan Huffman’s book, Mississippi In Africa lays it out in an incredible way.

In closing, Delta Magazine will turn fifteen years old with the next edition. We The late Duff Dorrough was a founding member of The have several things in store to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary. Stay tuned! DM Tangents and one of the Delta’s most noted musicians.

O

Above is his Fender Stratocaster guitar. Read about The Tangents on page 122.

Scott Coopwood

I recently attended the Silver Em award ceremony in Oxford that was presented to my longtime friend, Newell Turner, who grew up in Belzoni. The Silver Em is the highest award given in the journalism field by Ole Miss. Newell lives in New York where he oversees editorial direction for Elle Decor, House Beautiful, and Veranda magazines. For five years he also served as editorin-chief of House Beautiful. With us is Dr. Samir Husni, director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media at Ole Miss. Samir has been a consultant to Delta Magazine since day one!

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from the editor The azaleas that flank our front porch really showed out this spring. Turn to page 100 to read how to care for these Southern beauties!

blooms abound quick trip to Covington, Louisiana over spring break gave me azalea envy. The flowering shrub was already in full bloom in the tropical clime and I began to worry about my azaleas back up in the Delta and whether they would prove to have survived the abnormally frigid temps we experienced over the winter. I am happy to report that they did not disappoint.

And apparently I did something right last year when, truth be told, I just never got around to pruning (hatcheting) them. They had more blooms this spring than I’ve seen in years!

This issue is packed with yard and garden tips for early summer in the Delta. You will want to keep it handy whether you are planting containers, growing herbs, or caring for our favorite I couldn’t resist these palm leaf earrings from Kut Works Boutique featured in our Shop Local landscape staples. Landscape architect Brantley Snipes of Greenwood, explains that there is Gift Guide! definitely a method to the madness as we prune and care for our beloved azaleas and hydrangeas. We are also thrilled to collaborate with P. Allen Smith of Moss Mountain Farm as he explains how to plant and care for some of our favorite herbs.

Speaking of herbs—when those first tasty leaves are harvested, what would most Deltans do?Mix a drink of course! We are obsessed with herb-infused cocktails, so try our recipes on page 114. My personal favorite is the grapefruit with rosemary—delicious! Serve these with our fresh, colorful and veggie-loaded appetizers to help kick off your summer entertaining.

We hope to encourage you to shop locally wherever you live. Our small towns depend on your investment. Spend some time studying Chris Heaton with Garden District’s Greg Campbell, preparing for a photo shoot in the Heaton’s Clarksdale our Shop Local/Shop Small gift guide which includes summer styles pecan orchard for the new book, Florists to the Field. for men, women and children, home accessories and outdoor and gardening items, all from independently owned businesses. Small retailers offer more personal service, they know the needs of their customers and often have a more unique selection. Love where you live by supporting your local shops!

On that note I want to thank our subscribers and advertisers for supporting our small business. Delta Magazine would not exist without your investment in us.

Here’s to gardening, shopping and kicking off summer! DM

A

Cindy Coopwood 5 cups sweet tea 15 ounces bourbon Ice 10 lemon wedges 10 fresh mint sprigs (optional)

Mix bourbon and sweet tea in a pitcher and stir to combine.

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⤴

BOURBON SWEET TEA

We love this easy large batch libation (and our new signature cups!) so much, we’ve decided to make it our official Delta festival cocktail of 2018.

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contents Volume 15 No. 6

MAY/JUNE

88 40 departments

34 BOOKS Reviews of new releases and what Deltans are reading now

108

56 ART Puddin’ Moore

60 MUSIC Delta Music rambler

Man of steel, heart of vision

returns with new album

88 HOMES Updated Jackson home is light, bright and livable

112 FOOD

Fresh appetizers for warmer temps Herb-infused cocktails

114

122 RECOLLECTIONS A Joyful Noise Rememberg the Tangents

features

36 64 68

SHOP LOCAL—SHOP SMALL

Our annual shop local feature promoting independently owned stores with an extensive gift and shopping guide

USA INTERNATIONAL BALLET COMPETITION

PROSPECT HILL

Leaders have Delta roots

The story behind an archeological and architectural treasure

in every issue 16 Letters 24 On the Road Where we’ve been, where we’re going next

28 Off the Beaten Path Roaming the Real and Rustic Delta

74

LARRY GORDON

32 Hot Topics 126 Events

99

YARDS & GARDENS

130 Delta Seen

116

From the Mississippi Delta to a Field of Dreams— How a Belzoni boy made it in Hollywood Tips from the pros to keep your yard and garden beautiful

IN THE FIELD

Floral artistry abounds in new book by Garden District owners Greg Campbell and Erick New

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A listing of events including concerts, festivals, book signing Pages of snapshots from area fundraisers, art openings and social events

ON THE COVER: Larry Gordon at home in Los Angeles. Photo by Sandi Ward.

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Completing the circuit.

At Entergy Mississippi, the circuit means more than electricity. It means connection and potential. Families. Neighborhoods.

Businesses. We’re all part of a circuit. So we invest in industry. Inspire education.

Nurture community. We empower each other. And together, we power life. entergymississippi.com

A message from Entergy Mississippi, Inc. ©2018 Entergy Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

11:32 AM

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www.planters-bank.com DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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LETTERS D

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RECOLLECTIONS

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here is a falling down remnant of a wall in Greenville, a dilapidated and curved portion of a walled garden, that holds the key to the literary and arts explosion in the Delta which blossomed in the 1930s and was felt throughout the country and beyond. Within these walls ideas were nurtured and thoughts bred from world travels and philosophical discussions, musical interludes, poetic dissertations and even some drunken exhortations. William Alexander Percy’s garden harbored various and quite appealing people, among them, free thinkers, poets, writers, bohemians, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners, world renowned artists and sculptors, inventors, traveling guests and a few vagabonds. Some visited briefly, while others remained for an extended stay. Inside those brick walls passed a generation of literary and artistic greats.

TIMOTHY IVY

a remnant of a wall Mortar and bricks could not hold the greatness that dwelt within these walls.

Literary and artistic largesse bubbled and blossomed here among the flowers and fountains to emerge and permeate the souls and hearts of many.

William Alexander Percy was raised under the veil of several diverse personalities. His mother was a stanch Catholic New Orleanian with all the social graces and trappings that went along with that. His father, Senator Leroy Percy was a lawyer, planter, businessman, United States Senator and friend to extremely important and powerful men, President Theodore Roosevelt among them. His grandfather was a decorated Civil War veteran, a legendary figure in the Delta and also a planter and lawyer. He was attuned to literature and the arts and quite prominent, and was known as the “Grey Eagle of the Delta.” His great-grandfather, according to the book William Alexander Percy, by Benjamin Wise, was a man who “loved beauty and looked beyond mere profit seeking for the better things in life.”

William was a small framed man and more attracted to the arts, literature, poetry and travel than his forebears who relished in the chase of wild game while pursuing business and community leadership endeavors. Will Percy once stated, “You had to be a hero or a villain or a weakling, you couldn’t just be middling ordinary.”

Raised in Greenville and

William Alexander Percy pictured here at his retreat on the mountain at Sewanee where he spent many peaceful and contemplative days after graduating from the University of the South.

educated by a cadre of extremely adept educators, Will Percy learned quickly and was sent to prep school at Sewanee.

However, when he realized that the prep school was a military school, he enrolled in the college and was accepted at fifteen years old. He blended right in at the University of the South at Sewanee and was a founding member of the bohemian literary club called Sopnerim and became an editor of the school magazine. He was devoted to music, literature, poetry and the arts.

him by Malvina Hoffman so many years earlier.

Let us hope the crumbling wall around Mr. Will Percy’s rich garden is not symbolic of the aesthetic future of Greenville and the Delta.

The efforts of Delta Magazine to shore up that wall are important and appreciated.

My sincere thanks to Mr. Will Percy, Ms. Malvina Hoffman and Mr. Leon Koury for giving me a career and a life.

William N. Beckwith Taylor, MS

BY HANK BURDINE • PHOTOS COURTESY OF WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY LIBRARY AND THE MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY

Sketch of The Percy Wall by Leon Koury, 1987.

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DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

Many thanks to Mr. Hank Burdine and DM for the article on Mr. William Alexander Percy.

As one whose life’s path was positively affected by Mr. Percy, it was an honor due.

Leon Koury’s story of being influenced and encouraged by Will Percy is well known. It was through Will, that Leon was introduced to the sculptor, Malvina Hoffman.

Malvina had returned from a Paris apprenticeship (and friendship) to the great Auguste Rodin, and was visiting the Percy home in Greenville, where she would meet a young Leon Koury. Leon would go to New York and work with Miss Hoffman in her studio.

I remember walking into Leon’s studio one day in 1966 and finding him unusually quiet and despondant. He informed me of Malvina’s death. Not knowing who she was, he pulled a couple of books from the shelf and sat me down with them to learn. The books were, Heads and Tales, the story of her heroic trip around the world in the early thirties to produce a sculptural example of

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each racial type (105 pieces) for the “Hall of Man” in the Field Museum in Chicago; and Sculpture Inside and Out, an important text on the nuts and bolts of making sculpture. I quietly studied Ms. Hoffman’s books for a while, then rose to hand them back to Leon. He stated that we would not be working that day.

Mrs. Didi Hoffman has just published a book on Malvina Hoffman called, Beautiful Bodies, which I highly reccomend to anyone interested. Malvina’s Paris days with Rodin are well covered.

I have no idea how many art students Leon taught for the Greenville Art Association in the Old Levee Board Building, or later, in his studio on Nelson Street, but dare to say it was in the hundreds. I have no idea how many students I taught for the University of Mississippi Art Deptartment, but it was also in the hundreds. Many of them are now teaching. Mr. Will Percy’s ripples are still moving outward.

When Leon died, he requested that he be buried with a modeling tool gifted to

Thank you for featuring my family’s heirloom veil. Maudie did wonderful research, and I must say, I learned some historical facts. How fun seeing the brides through the decades! Our daughter, Florie is so looking forward to wearing the veil this summer. She knew it was special, but reading your article really brought it to life for her. Many people have told me how much they enjoyed the article. You cannot imagine how much it meant to us.

Katherine Crump Rosedale, MS What a treasury of recipes in the Jan/Feb 2018 issue! I have tried almost every one. The bacon and scallion quesadillas have become a week-night favorite with us. Both the black bean and the tomato soups are great. The grilled cheese on rye is over the top in the category of sandwiches. The sausages with carrots, apples and onions dish is quick, easy and tasty. I give a five-star rating to the lentil and ham soup. My son, who enjoys cooking and entertaining, is

Like our official Delta Magazine Page

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Twitter @Delta_Mag

Instagram @deltamagazine

Find nostalgia in every item of the Delta Magazine Gift Collection

We’re “buzzed” about our exclusive linen cocktail napkins, set of four for $40

Shop our gift collection in our office at 125 South Court Street or Cleveland Commons in downtown Cleveland, Montage Marketplace in Greenville, Downtown Marketplace in Yazoo City, and Forty-Nine Commissary in Belzoni. Shop online at deltamagazine.com

To subscribe, call (662) 843-2700 or visit deltamagazine.com

16 | MAY/JUNE 2018

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Page A1

MARCH/APRIL 2018

The Spring Issue Wedding Showcase

$5.95US

7

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25274 24724

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especially fond of that one—great with cornbread!

Please keep these delicious and easyto-follow recipes coming.

Nancy McKnight Cleveland, MS As a writer working on a novel based on the life of William Alexander Percy, I was delighted to see Hank Burdine’s sympathetic and well-researched piece, “A Remnant of a Wall,” about the Percy home in Greenville and Will Percy’s literary—and personal—influence on some of the South’s greatest authors.

I’ve perused all sorts of Percy materials, but some of the photos accompanying this article were new to me, which was a pleasure.

Thanks for your help in preserving the memory of this remarkable individual.

Sylvia Wendel Santa Clarita, CA Thank you so much for the wonderful story and pictures of my son Greg Crowe (March/April 2018). Your magazine always does a great job keeping us Mississippians up to date. I lived in Cleveland many years and raised my boys there. I still come “home” when I can.

Thanks again from this “proud mama.”

Jackie Crowe Morris, Alabama

SEND COMMENTS AND LETTERS TO editor@deltamagazine.com or Delta Magazine PO Box 117 Cleveland, MS 38732 DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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Pecking Order

PHOTO BY AUSTIN BRITT

These free-ranging, backyard chickens work out the social hierarchy at this Indianola homestead the old-fashioned way—doing what chickens do best—scratching and pecking their days away. DM

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DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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ON THE ROAD

where we’ve been, where to go next

TALLAHATCHIE COUNTY

big sky in the Delta GREENWOOD

Sunset at the Tallahatchie Flats. – JOE SEAWRIGHT

PHOTO OPS &

A bridge over Cassidy Bayou. – FRANK MELTON

GREENVILLE

historic building

curiously strong CLEVELAND

The Washington County Courthouse.

– BRUCE BARTLEY

GUNNISON

Altoid mania at the Senator’s Place. – DELTA MAGAZINE

Iron gate, circa 1881, Blanchard Cemetery. – DELTA MAGAZINE

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Instagram users, follow @deltamagazine and see #DMphotoops

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JACKSON

BOLIVAR COUNTY

if these walls could talk

The sun shining through bullet holes in grain bin. – TYLER CHRISTMAS The old Sun-n-Sand Hotel in downtown Jackson has been closed for a long time, but for many years it was the headquarters of Mississippi’s political power brokers. – MALCOLM WHITE

FUNKY STOPS

significant town lore SATARTIA

Roaming the real and rustic Delta

Welcoming sign on the edge of the Delta. – BRUCE BARTLEY

GREENWOOD

ISSAQUENA COUNTY

up and away Festival time in Greenwood.

– JOHNNY JENNINGS

Driving down Highway 61 between rain soaked fields. – BRUCE BARTLEY

DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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OFF THE BEATEN PATH roaming the real and rustic Delta

BENTONIA BUGS & END OF ALL MUSIC Crawfish and a whole lot more and a fab record store in Oxford

BY ANGELA ROGALSKI AND MADGE HOWELL

I

n Bentonia, there’s a small seafood restaurant that serves up crawfish and all

the fixin's to locals and surrounding travelers alike. Bentonia Bugs certainly lives up to its name with some of the tastiest Louisianabred crawfish around, but the eatery also offers customers steaks, shrimp, oysters, and other delicious dishes. Owners Adam and Emily Brooks have been in the crawfish business for a while, with Emily’s husband starting out selling crawfish straight off the truck.

Today the Brooks’s have a small, casual place where you can have a great dinner in a hangout-with-friends, on-the-deck-gettogether type atmosphere. They’re open Friday and Saturday evenings from 5 p.m.

– 10 p.m. and serve up some of the tastiest food around.

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amed one of the ten best record stores in the U.S. by USA Today in July 2016,

End of All Music reigns supreme in Oxford when it comes to purchasing vinyl. Owner David Swider opened the shop in 2012 and has watched his business grow and develop a strong customer base in those six years as the interest in vinyl is on the rise.

“I opened End of All Music basically because Oxford didn’t have a record store,” Swider says. “I’m a big record store person.

I thought the town needed a vinyl shop and could support one, and so far I have been proven right.” Swider says that End of All Music stocks new and used vinyl and has a great selection of both.

“The used records I get from many sources and the new vinyl comes to me straight from the record labels and distributors, much as it did in the heyday of records.” He adds, “With our recent move to the Oxford Square, were reaching more people than every before.”

103 Courthouse Square A, Oxford (662) 281-1909 24 | MAY/JUNE 2018

DAWN DAVIS

203 Pritchard Ave, Bentonia (662) 571-4342 From fun times to great food, Bentonia Bugs pleases the locals and travelers alike. Below, one of Oxford’s most unique businesses, End of All Music, located on the square, where vinyl rules the day.

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OFF THE BEATEN PATH

roaming the real and rustic Delta

HOUSE OF PANCAKES & THE ARTISAN BAKER Pancakes Abound in Clarksdale and Homemade Granola in Yazoo City

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ur Gramdma’s House of Pancakes feels like home. After opening the screen door, the aromas, visuals, and sounds

AUSTIN BRITT

immediately flood the senses.

“When you go to your grandmother’s house, nothing has to really match. You don’t have to worry about matching anything. Just put it in there and come on in and eat,” says Archie Buford, a Clarksdale native who left over twenty years ago, and worked his way up from part-time cook, during his years at Jackson State, to managing and opening IHOPs and Huddle Houses. Buford came back home five years ago and opened up his own restaurant and sports bar with his friend Carl Perkins Davis, calling it Our Grandma’s House of Pancakes and Sports Bar. The House of Pancakes operates seven days a week, from 7 a.m.-1 p.m.

Pancakes, eggs any style, bacon, patty sausage, hashbrowns, grits, hamburgers, grilled ham and cheese, and fries are always on the menu.

Above, for those with large breakfast taste buds, Our Grandma’s House of Pancakes in Clarksdale is a must stop experience. Below, homemade granola in Yazoo City that is second to none.

115 Third Street, Clarksdale (662) 592-5290

Aand it is probably one of the only bakeries

unique shop is tucked away in Yazoo City

DAWN DAVIS

that exclusively makes their own homemade granola and pizza dough balls. Owners Lane and Allan Ewing of The Artisan Baker say the difference in their products is that everything is made from scratch.

“We have three different types of granola: Urban Hippie Granola, Plain Jane Granola and Blues Trail Granola, each with its own unique flavor,” says Lane.

As for the pizza dough balls, Ewing adds that the technique used to make the dough and how they let it ferment, makes The Artisan Baker’s dough balls special. “We hand cut and roll each dough ball,” she says.

Angelo’s in Gluckstadt uses the dough for their pizzas. “They add there own excellent toppings and the combination is great. It makes a terrific pizza.”

408 Jerry Clower Blvd N, Yazoo City (662) 590-7138

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With the right local team, building the future is easily within your reach.

If you’re ready to build, our financing specialists are ready to work.

• Excellent options for purchasing and refinancing traditional mortgages.

• Low fixed interest rates during the construction period up to 12 months.

• The convenience of construction and mortgage at the same local bank.

147 HWY 82 E INDIANOLA / 662-887-4513

• COMMUNITYBANK.NET • MEMBER FDIC

26 | MAY/JUNE 2018

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Mag gnolil ia Lighting h

Residential Lighting ·

Hernando Oxford Tupelo Ridgeland

There’s a good reason why MILLS SAP APS COLLEGE is one of only 12 colleges or universities in the nation with a RHODES SCHOLAR in two of the last three years. years “TELL YO OUR FAMIL FAMIL LY, FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS: MILLSAPS IS THE PLACE TO BE! I DO NOT THINK I COULD HA AVE VE DONE IT AT AT ANY Y OTHER OTHER PLACE PLA IN THE WORLD.” – Noah Barbieri, Class of 2018 Truman Scholar, Rhodes Scholar

After he completes his education, ion, Noah ultimately wants to return to Mississippi and drive e progress pr in his home state.

WORLD CLASS. HERE AT AT HO HOME. OME. | MILLSAPS COLLEGE MILLSAP PS.EDU

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HOT TOPICS IF YOU CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT TV Show Features Delta Restaurant Tempestuous, celebrity TV chef Gordon Ramsey made an exciting restaurant call this past November in the Delta.

His challenge was to give business owners Allison and Peter Nimrod, owners of Sherman’s Restaurant in Greenville, a fresh twist while maintaining its legacy of dining excellence.

After applying online for a chance to be involved in an “unnamed restaurant renovation series,” Ramsey came calling, armed with plenty of restaurant expertise and attitude.

“Gordon Ramsay loved our restaurant for the same reasons that led me here,” said Allison. “We are a ‘constant’ in a very changing community. He loved the history of Sherman’s as well as our commitment to the future of Greenville.” One of Ramsey’s first orders of business was to change the restaurant’s décor. It was completely revamped to include a better lighting concept. Allison noted that Sherman’s is now “beautiful and bright.” In addition, the restaurant was also fitted with new seating and floors, given a fresh coat of paint, table toppers, plants and exterior improvements.

“He also helped us acquire repaired and renewed kitchen equipment. He taught our staff so much about food management, ordering and handling products, inventory and loss critiquing and fantastic recipe development. My staff was shown and taught quite a few fantastic Ramsay recipes that we have since added to our menu,” Allison said, while adding they still prepare most of their customer’s favorites.

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“One thing he must have told me twenty times was, ‘Do not be afraid of change Allison!’”

Sherman’s Restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and nightly from 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday. On Friday and Saturday nights, the restaurant is open from 5 to 9:30 p.m.

1400 S Main St, Greenville, (662) 332-6924

LEGENDS OF MOTOWN: CELEBRATING THE SUPREMES A Unique Look at One of America’s Most Successful Groups GRAMMY Museum® Mississippi is currently presenting the Legends Of Motown: Celebrating The Supremes, an exhibit that celebrates and explores the influence and incredible journey of these premier Motown artists. The exhibit features rare photographs from the personal collection of Greenville native Mary Wilson, one of the original members of the Supremes. Other memorabilia included are concert posters; tour books, fan memorabilia; and perhaps most notably, an assortment of Ms. Wilson’s performance gowns.

"The Mary Wilson 'Supreme' gown collection is a dream come true for me," said Wilson. "This collection is a gift that I give to all of those who have ever loved music and glamour. As you look at all of these wonderful treasures, please be reminded that three little black girls' dared to dream, and made their dreams come true. Thank you, Motown, and the thousands of fans all over the world.”

The Supremes became Motown's most consistent hitmakers and the most popular female group of the '60s, bridging the worlds of

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pop and soul with their polished singing style. Featuring original members Mary Wilson, Diana Ross and Florence Ballard, much of their success was a result of the tailor-made songs for them by Motown's in-house writing and production team comprising Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland. At the height of the British Invasion in June 1965, the group set a record for the most consecutive No. 1 hits by an American group when "Back in My Arms Again," "Baby Love," "Come See About Me," "Stop! In The Name Of Love" and "Where Did Our Love Go?" rose to the top of the Billboard singles chart.

"We are so honored to showcase some of Mary Wilson’s treasured memorabilia from her time with The Supremes.

Celebrating the history of Mississippi artists is a necessary and important part of GRAMMY Museum® Mississippi," said Executive Director, Emily Havens.

The exhibit, curated by the GRAMMY Museum® in Los Angeles, will be on display through Sept. 3, 2018.

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HOT TOPICS THE DELTA DOUGH Clarksdale’s Hometown Cookiery The Delta Dough in Clarksdale is defined by its owner, Emily Sandusky, as a “cookiery” rather than a bakery, as the at-home business and its head cookiemaster designs, makes and sells only cookies.

Sandusky started the business about six months ago when she realized she often needed cookies for her children’s birthday parties and other events, but couldn’t find any locally.

“I have three sons, aged four and under,” Sandusky says. “So, we have lots of birthday parties and events at our house. And I was traveling to Oxford to buy sugar cookies for all of these parties and events, because I just think they’re so cute. I was spending a lot of money for cookies and for traveling, and I knew there had to be a better way.”

And there was. She started making them herself. Self-taught, Sandusky’s idea was to just make the cookies for her boys, but as she started creating them people noticed the pictures of her baked cookies on social media and began asking her about ordering some.

The rest, as they say, is history. Now, Sandusky takes orders through her Facebook page for her fresh-baked, ornately-designed custom-made cookies. Her business has steadily grown and today she takes orders for everything from birthday parties and weddings, to retirement parties and other events.

“It’s so much fun and I love doing it,” Sandusky says. “People place their orders through The Delta Dough’s Facebook page, and I

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custom-design them for their specific event. The average order is one to two dozen cookies. But of course, I have filled much larger orders, and usually about two to three weeks’ advanced notice is enough.”

Visit The Delta Dough’s Facebook page: facebook.com/thedeltadough

THE NEW SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS’ ALBUM BEASTS OF BURGUNDY Debuted at #4 On The Billboard Traditional Jazz Album Chart

LUKE AWTRY PHOTOGRAPHY

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Headed by sometimes Mississippi Delta resident and musician extraordinaire, Jimbo Mathus, Beasts Of Burgundy is the first Squirrel Nut Zippers studio album in seventeen years. The includes twelve new songs written by Mathus and the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Taking great inspiration from the city and music of New Orleans, the album is being released on the Southern Broadcasting label.

And as another nod to New Orleans, the album was recorded in an abandoned wine cellar underneath the French Quarter rumored to be one of the last hang outs of the famed pirate, Jean Pierre Laffite, the main character in the Pirate’s of the Caribbean movies. The Squirrel Nut Zippers began their musical journey in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the mid 1990s, as a musician’s escape from the world of modern rock radio.

Between 1995-2000 the Squirrel Nut Zippers sold over

three million albums. Their watershed album, Hot (1996) was recorded in New Orleans, "fueled by a smoldering mix of booze and a youthful hunger to unlock the secrets of old world jazz” according to their website. This passion mixed with blues and random portions of contemporary musical leanings became the bands signature style.

At the time, there were few other bands inhabiting this space. The album would eventually break free of any “jazz” stereotypes and land on commercial radio, taking the band to remarkable heights for what was essentially an anti-establishment sound.

Fast forward many years later and the band has emerged from a lengthy recording hiatus, invigorated, invested, and rejuvenated. “It’s not a reunion, it’s a revival” has been the battle cry for Mathus since reforming the group in 2016. With an all star cast of New Orleans musicians, the band breathed new life in to the old material, and inspired Mathus to return to the studio to reignite the band’s unique, enigmatic sound.

Available online and at record stores. Visit: snzippers.com DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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TEENS CRAVE FREEDOM. PARENTS CRAVE FREE. Bank Freely with Squad Student Banking.

It comes with no monthly fe ee, a free app, free low balance alerts, free on nline banking and more. Partner with Trustmark k to begin teaching your kids the ins and outs of handling h money.

SQUADBANKING.COM |

MEMBER F FDIC

30 | MAY/JUNE 2018

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New from University Press of Mississippi

A playful look at one of Mississippi’s iconic landmarks

A stunning photographic tour of Cat Island and its many historical sites

Malcolm White Illustrated by Ginger Williams Cook Foreword by Robert St. John

John Cuevas Photographs by Jason Taylor Foreword by Delbert Hosemann

Available at your local bookseller.

Incredible photos documenting the struggle for social change in Mississippi Photographs by Jim Lucas Edited by Jane Hearn

upress.state.ms.us | 800.737.7788

10:56 AM

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BOOKS

Buzzworthy Comments

The Fighter by Michael Farris Smith ( Little, Brown and Company) In The Fighter by Michael Farris Smith, Jack is on the brink of losing the only home he’s ever known: an antebellum house on vast, fertile farmland in the Delta. He is also on the brink of losing the only person who ever loved him: his foster mother who gave him the place.

He has been bare-knuckle fighting for decades, with little to show for it but a rough reputation and severe head trauma. And a lifethreatening debt to a dark, unforgettable character named Big Momma Sweet.

Jack is on his way to get the home place back and clear the debt when a heart-pounding chain of events causes him to lose the money, but also puts a young woman, who could save him, in his path. To get back the farm, to honor his dying foster mother, he must fight one last time, though he is in no shape to be doing such a thing. (Liza Jones) Anatomy of a Miracle by Jonathan Miles (Barcharts Publishing Inc.) An Afghanistan war veteran named Cameron is paralyzed and living a humble life in Biloxi. Until he gets up from his wheelchair and walks in the parking lot of a convenience store. What follows, as the miracle becomes famous all over the world, is a documentary-like account of how everyone from Cameron himself to a medical doctor to a Vatican investigator try to make sense of the miracle.

Presented as a journalistic dissection of a true story, Anatomy of a Miracle is engrossing and asks some major life questions. Miles is such a talented writer that while reading this novel, it may be easy to actually believe that the characters and story are all true, as he is so adept at placing the reader right in the thick of the action, anyway. (Liza Jones)

We asked Facebook friends and Delta Magazine Fan Page Group members what is the most influential book they have read and why.

Michael Farris Smith

Employer Relations Specialist Birmingham, Alabama

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Its relevance is timeless and I always discover some new fascinating angle to the story each time I revisit Maycomb. o Kim Rhodes, Artist Hernando, Mississippi

Hissy Fit by Mary Kay Andrews. I love all her books but this one is my favorite so far. It is a good southern humorous novel with a little romance. o Kay Howe Allen, Retired

Jonathan Miles

Florida by Lauren Groff (Penguin Random House) This collection of stories is intelligent and diverse with two central, reoccurring characters that weave them together: Florida and women who are torn between the devotion of family and their own needs.

Florida is the main character with her snakes, swamps, Spanish moss, hurricanes, sinkholes, old houses and beaches. The wildness of Florida seems to almost devour all of the characters in one way or another— whether from up close or from afar.

Groff’s writing is truly charged and exact in all of these stories, but a few of them do stand out. In Dogs Go Wolf, two little girls are abandoned on a deserted island and many dangers abound. This one is so gripping and striking that it will be hard to forget. Eyewall is about a woman who chooses to stay in her home during a perilous hurricane and is visited by the ghosts of the men in her life who have died—beautifully heartbreaking, surprisingly humorous, and utterly hopeful. (Liza Jones)

For the Record

o Carlisle Parsons Wood o Elizabeth Odom Carr

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist

by Balko and Carrington

o Cindy Hayes Smartt Natchez Burning

by Greg Isles

o Marsha Wooten A Dog Steals Home

by Kathleen Schrenk

o Tina Taylor Robbins Endurance: A Year In Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly 32 | MAY/JUNE 2018

Clarksdale, Mississippi

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate.

It represents how one woman’s greed could impact so may lives. o Beth Ferretti McCarville Personal Assistant Casa Grande, Arizona

Lauren Groff

Books Delta Magazine fans are currently reading

Water Tossing Boulders

by Adrienne Berard

o Libby Jones

Midnight Without a Moon

by Linda Williams Jackson

o Benita Pretti

Memphis Rent Party

by Robert Gordon

o Patti Snipes

Lincoln in the Bardo

by George Saunders

o Andrea Gray News of the World

by Paulette Files

o Margaret Shelton I’ll be Gone in the Dark

by Michele McNamara

o Laura Catherine Mason

Beach Music by Pat Conroy. The sensory imagery in Conroy’s writing allows you to experience the passions and joys of this hilariously dysfunctional Southern family’s journey as if you are part of the McCalls.

Extra bonus: the delectable passages about his meeals that leave every foodie racing for recipes to share with loved ones.

o Mary Branch Make Your Bed

by Admiral William H. McRaven

o Beth Henderson Stevens The Rules of Magic

by Alice Hoffman

o Lanny Greenberg

Bowling Green Stock Car Racing

by Larry Upton and Jonathan Jeffrey

o Ruth Owens

Murder in the Grove

by Michael Henry

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Panorama by Steve Kistulentz (Little, Brown and Company) Richard MacMurray, a cable news talking head, is paid handsomely to pontificate on the issues of the moment. On New Year’s Day he is scheduled to be a guest on a prominent morning talk show. As he awaits the broadcast, the network interrupts with news that a jet airliner has crashed in Dallas and that everyone aboard has perished.

Within an hour, amateur videotape surfaces of the plane’s last moments, transforming the crash into a living image: familiar, constant, and horrifying. Richard learns that his sister, Mary Beth, was aboard the doomed flight, leaving behind her six-year-old son, Gabriel. Richard is the boy’s only living relative. When he is given an opportunity to bring Gabriel home, it may be that the loss of his sister will provide him with the second chapter he never knew he wanted. (Special/DM Staff) Southern Splendor: Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South

by Marc R. Matrana, Robin S. Lattimore, and Michael W. Kitchens (University Press of Mississippi) Few things evoke thoughts and memories of the past more than a house from a bygone era, and few places are identified and symbolized more by historic dwellings than the American South. Despite their commanding appearance, the region’s plantation houses have proven to be fragile relics of history, vulnerable to decay, neglect, and loss. Today, only a small percentage of the South’s antebellum treasures survive.

In Southern Splendor: Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South, historians Marc R. Matrana, Robin S. Lattimore, and Michael W. Kitchens explore almost fifty houses built before the Civil War that have been authentically restored or preserved. Featuring over 275 stunning photographs, as well as dozens of firsthand accounts and interviews with those involved in the preservation of these historic properties, Southern Splendor describes the leading role the South has played, since the nineteenth century, in the historic preservation movement in this country. (Special/DM Staff) The Man Who Caught the Storm by Brantley Hargrove (Simon & Schuster) At the turn of the twenty-first century, the tornado was one of the last true mysteries of the modern world. It was a monster that ravaged the American heartland a thousand times each year, yet science’s every effort to divine its inner workings had ended in failure. Researchers all but gave up, until the arrival of an outsider.

In a field of PhDs, Tim Samaras didn’t attend a day of college in his life. He chased storms with brilliant tools of his own invention and pushed closer to the tornado than anyone else ever dared. When he achieved what meteorologists had deemed impossible, it was as if he had snatched the fire of the gods. Yet even as he transformed the field, Samaras kept on pushing. As his ambitions grew, so did the risks. And when he finally met his match—in a faceoff against the largest tornado ever recorded—it upended everything he thought he knew. (Special/DM Staff) DM

R E H E A R S A L D I N N E R S ŭ P R I VAT E P A R T I E S ŭ M O N T H LY W I N E D I N N E R S T W O F O R T U E S D AY ŭ W I L D G A M E S E L E C T I O N 5960 Getwell Road 3165 Forest Hill Irene Road 88 Union AAvvenue 1001 E. Jackson Avenue Southaven, MS Germantown, TN Memphis, TN Oxford, MS 38655 662.232.8855 662 .890.2467 90011.249.5661 901.5277.5337

www.mesquitechophouse.com

DONNA AND JIM BARKSDALE

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Shop Local,

SHOP SMALL

WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME, AND THEY’RE ALWAYS GLAD YOU CAME

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on’t you love it when you walk in a store and someone calls you by name and knows exactly what you will love. And that your child is graduating from

high school. Or that your anniversary is coming up and they jot down a wish-list just in case your husband comes by for a gift—This is what makes independently-owned shops special. When you buy from local stores, significantly more of that money, your investment, stays in the community than dollars spent at chain stores. You will also find better customer service and quite often a more unique selection of goods. On the following pages we highlight independently-owned stores and businesses. Study the shopping guide full of editor’s and buyer’s picks for gift ideas for Mother’s and Father’s Day ideas, graduation gifts or something special for your home. You’ll see these amazing stores have incredible selections. I recently heard it said and think you’ll agree— Local is the new black!

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1 Wooden, starburst mirror.

Cypress Design Studio, Greenville, 662-335-7226.

2 Antique St. Theresa coin on oval link brass chain. Gilbow’s, Cleveland, 662-843-1151.

3 Classic Vahan bracelets.

LynBar Jewelers, Greenwood, 662-453-2741.

4 Hand-painted Cameo Jar Candle in Coconut Milk & Mango. Howard and Marsh, Greenwood, 662-219-0756.

5 Johnston & Murphy waterproof shoes. Kinkade’s Fine Clothing, Ridgeland, 601898-0513.

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ACE HARDWARE CYPRESS DESIGN STUDIO & FRAMING D E LTA O U T D O O R S DOWNTOWN MARKETPLACE ELLEADORN DESIGNS FLOWER BOUQUET + INTERIORS F O U N TA I N S G R E E N G R O W - C E R Y FORTYFOUR FIFTY GARDEN DISTRICT GILBOW’S GOOD HOPE GENERAL MERCHANDISE G R E AT S C O T T H SQUARED HAIR TENDERS HOWARD & MARSH EXCHANGE INDIANOLA PECAN HOUSE KINKADE’S FINE CLOTHING KUT WORKS BOUTIQUE LULU’S SHOES & ACCESSORIES LY N B A R J E W E L E R S M C C A L L & C O M PA N Y P U N K I N PAT C H R E B E K A H C A R A W AY D E S I G N A N D PA P E R ROSSON CO. SAINT BOUTIQUE SHIRLEY’S CONSIGNMENT & RESALE SMITH & CO. SUGAR MAGNOLIA ANTIQUE MALL THE ROGUE WHITNEY’S BOUTIQUE THE WISHING WELL YA Z O O D R U G C O .

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denim & embroidery 1 Show Me Your MuMu, embroidered dress. H Squared, Cleveland, 662-843-4504.

2 Billy Reid denim shirt with brass closures. The Rogue, Jackson, 601-362-6383.

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3 Seven For All Mankind denim dress, embroidered cross-body purse, and Vince Camuto leather studded sandals.

Punkin Patch, Cleveland, 662-843-0434.

4 Tortoise-shell hoop earrings.

Lulu’s Shoes + Accessories, Oxford, 662-234-4111.

5 Frame denim skirts.

FortyFour Fifty, Jackson, 601-366-3687.

6 Dolce Vita denim wedge sandal. H Squared, Cleveland, 662-843-4504.

7 Hudson embroidered, distressed jeans. The Wishing Well, Cleveland, 662-843-7881.

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home embellishments

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1 Lucite, tabletop accessory.

Flower Bouquet + Interiors, Clarksdale, 662-627-5213.

2 Brushed gold and marble statues. FortyFour Fifty, Jackson, 601-366-3687

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3 Marble and gold decorative box. Cypress Design Studio, Greenville, 662-335-7226.

5 Aspen Bay Wave bowl candle in Mosaic Marine.

Cypress Design Studio, Greenville, 662-335-7226.

4 Astier de Villatte bottles.

Garden District, Memphis, 901-761-3277.

6 Handmade Octagonal Intaglia Boiserie. Rosson Co., Cleveland, 662-843-3986.

7 Etched, monogrammed, stemless wine glasses.

Rebekah Caraway Design and Paper, 662-335-7226.

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1 Pave diamond feather pendant on moonstone bezel chain. Elleadorn Designs, @elleadorndesigns 3 Zenzii beaded necklace. Good Hope General Merchandise, Yazoo City, 662-746-7776.

3 Painted leather feather earrings.

Kut Works Boutique, 662-846-1818.

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1 Big Green Egg. Ace Hardware, Cleveland, 662-843-8200.

2 Red watering can. Ace Hardware, Cleveland, 662-843-8200.

3 Melamine, dishwasher safe picnic plates. Downtown Marketplace, Yazoo City, 662-746-5031.

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4 Home furnishings and accessories for indoors and out. Sugar Magnolia, Oxford, 662–234–6330.

5 YETI DuraCoat Rambler mug. Delta Outdoors, Cleveland, 662-843-9109.

6 Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey Pecans.

Indianola Pecan House, Indianola, 662-887-5420.

7 Rubberized Gardening gloves and potting tray. Fountains Green Grow-Cery, Greenville, 662-335-7960.

picnics & patios

8 Buddy Bounce Outdoor Play Balls (BBOP), set of two. Punkin Patch, Cleveland, 662-843-0434.

9 Be in a Good Mood scents and products. McCall and Company, Greenville, 662-743-9813.

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resale Major ag! shop sw

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small shop style

1 First Love dress, versatile and perfect in pink. Kut Works Boutique, Cleveland, 662-846-1818.

4 Ink + Alloy Palm leaf earrings. Kut Works Boutique, Cleveland, 662-846-1818.

7 Gray Fog Silver O-Ring leather clutch.

Howard & Marsh Exchange, Greenwood, 662-219-0756.

2 RS Bamboo reading sunnies. The Wishing Well, Cleveland, 662-843-7881.

5 Rebecca Minkoff small crossbody purse in blush. H Squared, Cleveland, 662-843-4504.

8 Kate Spade large satchel with dust bag. Shirley’s Consignment, Cleveland, 662-719-6932.

6 White gold and diamond oval halo ring. Rosson Co., Cleveland, 663-843-3986.

9 Casual summer wedges. Lulu’s Shoes and Accessories, Oxford, 662-234-4111.

3 Peter Millar, Bills Khakis and Billy Reid casual shirts. The Rogue, Jackson, 601-362-6383.

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FLOWERS

GIFTS

INTERIORS

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REBEKAH CARAWAY located inside of CYPRESS Design Studio and Framing

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wet & wild 1 Waterproof loafers by SWIMS. Great Scott, Jackson, 601-984-3500.

2 Bling 2 O swim goggles.

Punkin Patch, Cleveland, 662-843-0434.

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3 Toes On The Nose swimwear. Kinkade’s Fine Clothing, Ridgeland, 601-898-0513.

4 Handcrafted American eyewear and SWIM flip flops. Great Scott, Jackson, 601-984-3500.

5 Bohemian summer tote and clutch with pom-poms.

Hair Tenders, Greenville, 662-820-9368.

6 2

6 Body Glove swimwear.

H Squared, Cleveland, 662-843-4504.

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GIFTS GALORE We’re the place for food gifts and so much more.

With Mother’s Day coming up, what better idea than something yours can use and enjoy. And because we carry a wide variety of collegiate items, we’re also a great shopping spot for graduation gifts.

Whether you need a hostess gift, bunco prizes, or nuts, sauces and dips for entertaining, come see us.

Highway 82, Indianola • 662-887-5420 Market Street, Flowood • 601-992-9338 pecanhouse.com ©2018, IPH

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2

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summer fun 1 Halsey 44 swim trunks.

The Rogue, Jackson, 601-362-6383.

2 Greetings from Mississippi pillow. The Mississippi Gift Company, Greenwood, 662-455-6961.

3 Pink velvet pouch and Cool Aviators. Yazoo Drug Co., Yazoo City, 662-746-7423.

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4 Black Bamboo clutch.

Saint Boutique, Hernando, 662-469-4650.

5 Boutique by Corky’s slides.

Whitney’s Boutique, Vaiden, 662-464-7742.

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6 “Welcome to the Delta” and “It’s Always Cocktail Hour in the Delta” beverage napkins.

Delta Magazine Gift Collection, 662-843-2700.

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7 Straw beach tote with leather straps by Echo. The Wishing Well, Cleveland, 662-843-7881.

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ART

PUDDIN’ MOORE Man of steel, heart of vision PUDDIN’ may not fit the moniker of a MAN OF STEEL, but, Puddin’ is a master at his art, and his art is steel. From dancing alligators to ornate circular staircases, he can't be beat at what he does.

BY HANK BURDINE • PHOTOGRAPHY BY AUSTIN BRITT

I

’ve known Puddin’ Moore all my life. I’ve never known to call him anything else. It wasn’t until recently that I heard his given name was John.

A man of many talents, Puddin’ is most happy, and almost always found, in his spacious, airy and well-lit (naturally) welding shop...or out on a sandbar in the Mississippi River walking miles on end while searching for prehistoric relics.

Puddin’s shop is a virtual museum where dancing steel alligator musicians share counter-space with thirty-million-year-old dinosaur eggs and prehistoric wooly mammoth teeth. It is the envy of many, and the door is always open whenever he is there, waiting to set down his cutting torch to visit and show you around.

Dubbed his unlikely name by a doting uncle upon seeing the four-day old baby, “why, he is just sweet as pudding,” it has never changed. Growing up around three brothers, Puddin’ was always helping his dad around the yard with chores and other 56 | MAY/JUNE 2018

duties. His daddy was a jack of all trades and could do most anything with his hands. He remembers as a young boy being told, “Son, if you are out looking for a job and someone asks if you can you do something, always say yes you can. And then you can learn to do that job the best you can, because if you say no, you won’t get the job.” Puddin’ started working with metal in 1958 while in the 9th grade in an industrial arts class under Bob Kaiser. “We had six projects to build that semester and I completed mine in the first week. It just came easy to me. After that, Mr. Kaiser asked me if I would go around helping the other students with their projects which I did.” Realizing I did not have much interest in woodworking, I skipped the 10th grade wood class and went straight to the 11th12th grade machine shop.” While working for the Greenville Park Commission on various playground equipment jobs he was paid sixty cents an hour student pay. “That was pretty good money for a teenager back in those days and I got to work on a lot of different jobs.”

A master metal artist and his work.

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Always with a smile and a desire to show his work, Puddin' Moore can be found most times in his shop creating pieces that make people happy.

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Alligator Blues Band from a private collection.

Bas relief chandeliers and intricate light sconces, designed and built by Puddin', adorn the walls of the South Delta Planning and Development District offices in Greenville.

As a child, Puddin’ was always drawing the only job I have ever had where I worked sketches and figurines. While in junior high for someone else. I’ve been on my own now school at E.E. Bass, he submitted some of for fifty-three years. I wouldn’t have it any his work to an art institute in New England. other way.”

The program was voluntary and would During the 1970s, the towboating send pictures and ask you to draw what you business was booming and it was very costly saw. Then came more requirements with to tie a boat up for mechanical repairs. questions pertaining to art and requests to Puddin’ became well known in the towing draw out what you were feeling during the industry as a metal and welding expert that discussions. One day Puddin’ came home from school to find a man in a suit in his living room talking to his mother. “This man from the art institute just showed up with a scholarship in his hand for me to come up to the East Coast and go to school and study art. I, of course couldn’t go, I had lost my daddy in an offshore oil Turtles of steel. well accident and I had to stay home and help my mom and young could do in-boat engine repairs while the brother.” He worked for a metal awning boat was still working with only one engine. shop after school and on weekends. Soon, Many times, he was called and flown in to Puddin’ took a job with Carrick Car Tool be put on a moving boat to do engine Company brazing and welding after school repairs on a cracked block while underway. and working with the awning company on He was possibly the only outside technician weekends. His pay rate went up to $1.15 an certified by General Motors to weld on their hour at the awning shop and he stayed there big 8-cylinder 645 GM Diesel engines. for seven years until going out on his own Cutting his way into a cast steel engine and opening up his own welding shop on block to repair a crack, and then welding his North Broadway. “That awning shop was way back out, was a very tedious, boring, 58 | MAY/JUNE 2018

tiring, hot and uncomfortable job.

“Sometimes, I was welding upside down in very cramped quarters. It was hot as hell with the non-synchronized boat vibrating like a bear’s cage while being run on one engine only. I had to weld that metal so slowly and so cool you could lick the weld with your tongue. The boat couldn’t afford to stop and it would take several days of non-stop welding to repair some of those big engines.” Needless to say, Puddin’ was well known up and down the river and his legacy is such that Howard Brent of Brent Towing has stated, “Puddin’ Moore could weld anything from a broken heart to the crack of dawn.”

About 1970, during his off time, Puddin’ started relic hunting, digging around in cotton fields looking for arrow heads and pottery. He would find old cisterns and crawl down into them collecting bottles and artifacts. For eighteen years he attended bottle shows buying and trading relics he had found.

One day he stopped by an old store in Skene and saw a collection of dinosaur bones and fossils found on the river. His passion exploded for finding old things.

Today his discerning eye can find objects

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other well-heeled treasure hunters walk right over, while Puddin’ stoops down and picks up a dinosaur tooth. He has found wooly mastodon teeth, bones and tusks, vertebrae, and on one occasion two dinosaur eggs very close together. One egg broke open and after looking at the contents through his microscope and discussing what he saw with a paleontologist—he described the sea shell type structure of the very small contents found inside the yolk—it was determined they were one-celled organisms thought to be 30 million years old. At one location he found three mastodon teeth close together and only wished he could have dug deeper in hopes of finding the entire skull or jawbone. He donated an extremely rare stag moose bone to the Natural Science Museum in Jackson. His entire collection of natural artifacts has now been catalogued by two certified paleontologists. All items are thought to be over ten thousand years old.

About twenty-five years ago, Puddin’ started envisioning pieces of art in his mind.

Once he saw a figurine in his head, he would build it. Drawing, cutting, heating, hammering and bending, Puddin’ the artist, would then weld the intricate pieces into true works of art. His most recent, and hilarious, trilogy is of a standing alligator beginning to hit a golf ball as a golfer emerges from a small waterhole with his mouth agape. All this is shaded by an elaborate tree of ornate limbs and variegated leaves. His artwork can be found in most of the contiguous states and Hawaii as well as in almost twenty other countries. Puddin’ has built over three hundred and fifty circular staircases only needing to know the diameter and height before he starts to cut and fabricate. His work is well known and sought after.

Puddin’ is as excited about his art and work today as he has ever been. His cobalt blue eyes shine and twinkle as he beckons you to come over to his welding table and look at the figurine he is building. “I thought about this last night. I couldn’t wait to get in here and start building it this morning. Just look at how the gator’s fingers wrap around that guitar neck. How you like that?” Into his seventies, Puddin’ Moore has no wish at all to retire. “Why would I want to retire? I’m doing what I love to do. And my pieces make people happy, what else can a man ask for?” DM

Stan Spealman

662-887-4700

Indianola, MS

Keith Spealman

662-207-2298

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MUSIC

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JOHN MOHEAD After a ten-year hiatus from music, buying a restaurant and learning to balance it all— including a gig at the Fed Ex Forum—this Delta music rambler is back with a new album titled Pronounced Mo-head

BY CLINT KIMBERLING • PHOTOGRAPHY BY AUSTIN BRITT

J

ohn Mohead is a veteran of the music industry.

He's worked as a songwriter and session musician in Nashville and has released four albums with his name on the front cover. But, in March, when he received an invitation to play at the FedEx Forum during halftime of the Memphis Grizzlies game, he admitted he was nervous about the upcoming gig.

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John Mohead in his home studio.

Over the years, Mohead’s music has received accolades from many prominent musicians including Bob Dylan.

“An arena is a different animal; the sound is very different. Not to mention there’s going to be thousands of people,” he says. It was also going to be his first big gig in about ten years, and he was scrambling to find bandmates.

Despite the nerves, the concert was a warm welcome back to live music. He explains, saying, “After you play the first few notes, you start to remember how to do it and it’s the same as it ever was. I did catch myself looking at the jumbotron—seeing myself live was a strange experience.”

Interestingly, Mohead’s path to a music career started with a high school football injury. After a broken ankle sidelined him, he began staying back in the locker room during practices with the team manager. A guitar player, the manager gave John some simple lessons and taught him a few chords. According to Mohead, that was all it took to set him down the path of a musical life. “I got the bug. The 62 | MAY/JUNE 2018

illness,” as he calls it. “I started playing more and writing songs and knew this was something I wanted to do.”

Mohead eventually moved to Nashville and worked as a staff songwriter with Patrick Joseph Music. He stayed in Nashville for about six years and went through what he calls a natural musical progression. He began writing his own songs, which led to performing by himself. Eventually he put a band together, and they played around town. And ultimately he landed a label deal.

Jim O’Neal, cofounder of Living Blues magazine, recorded Mohead for a new label, Okra-Tone, in Clarksdale. Mohead jokes, “I think I’m the only white guy O’Neal ever recorded. He definitely took a chance on me with the first album.” That album, Lula City Limits, was successful and propelled Mohead’s career for several years. Off the strength of the album and the others that followed, he toured the world and landed gigs with legends like Bob Dylan and Greg Allman.

The Dylan connection, which happened somewhat by chance, Mohead rates as a career-making moment. Bob Dylan was visiting the Delta Blues Museum around 2001, where he happened to pick up a copy of Lula City Limits. Apparently, he was a fan of what he heard because Mohead received a phone call from Dylan’s agent, who very simply asked if he was interested in “opening for Bob.” Mohead remembers being confused, and asking, “Bob who? And he told me ‘Bob Dylan.’ I thought it was a joke, that someone was pranking me.”

But it was very real. Bob Dylan wanted Mohead to do a few opening shows, joining his tour in the Southeast. Eventually, they settled on Mohead doing a solo acoustic act for a show in Memphis.

Mohead got to meet Dylan backstage and heard the story about how he found the record and enjoyed it. “I just felt like, okay, I can retire now. I’m opening for Bob Dylan, and he’s a fan of my work.”

Mohead’s musical style is an updated version of Delta blues, with clear Southern rock and country influences. When pressed to describe his own music, the label Mohead usually affixes to his work is what he calls soulful Americana. He stops short of classifying himself as a country musician because he says it can carry some negative connotations within the industry. Stylistically, he makes an effort to de-emphasize the guitar on his records, letting the vocals take the lead. “I don’t want instrumentation gunking up the sound.”

Mohead says the music of the Delta has had a tremendous impact on his sound. Although, he feels that the blues in his music is more rooted in the songwriting, not the sound. “I don’t think about it; it’s not conscious. It just comes out. Just the way I sound.”

He goes on saying, “Music is organic. It comes from your surroundings, influences, what you eat and drink. That’s why the music from here sounds the way it does. You can’t say that about other parts of the country. You can’t work on it, you can’t teach it.

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Mohead in concert.

You have to absorb it. To live it. It’s not a tangible thing.”

Today, Mohead finds himself at an interesting crossroads in his musical career. He’s coming back from a ten-year hiatus from touring and making music. The self-imposed break came after experiencing an overwhelming burned out feeling that came from playing over two hundred dates a year. He remembers the moment he decided to step back incredibly clearly. It was in the middle of a gig in Sarasota, Florida, and he caught himself looking at the audience but did not see or feel any appreciation from them. And he walked off the stage.

“It’s a stressful way to live, and it really took its toll, emotionally and physically.”

Because music is a bug that he caught a long time ago, he couldn’t stay away forever, and he’s recently returned. He’s started taking gigs such as the FedEx Forum, and last year he played at the Telluride Blues Festival. He’s also working on a new album that he hopes to have out this summer. “I’m a right-brain thinker,” he says about his need to make music. “I have to create. And it’s not enough just to create, I want people to hear it. I want to throw it out there and see what the feedback is.”

During his hiatus from music, Mohead bought a restaurant, Kathryn’s on Moon Lake. He’s the chef de cuisine of the steak and seafood restaurant, which he says keeps him busy while adding balance to his life. “When I was thirty, my focus was all me, me, me.

Now I have to find time for music, the restaurant, and my family.

It’s a better balance now; it’s part of who I am.

He sees many similarities between music and food. He believes the food is bad at McDonalds is because it’s not made with love or passion. “But,” he says, “If you cook food or play music with passion, it’s going to show. My music comes from a soulful place; I think people will get that.”

Mohead’s compares his forthcoming album, titled Pronounced Mo-head, to a painting, and like any artist he wants to exhibit it, to show it off. But he’s more at peace with the potential feedback than he was earlier in his career. “If it hits, that’s great. If not, I still have a great family. And I’ll still enjoy serving and meeting the people in my restaurant.”

His future plans are simple but open-ended. He wants to “keep feeding the beast,” as he puts it. Meaning he’ll keep making music and continue creating in some form or other, no matter the project.

For more information on the new album or tour dates, visit www.moheadmusic.com. DM DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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USA International LEADERS HAVE DELTA Ballet Competition ROOTS

BY SHERRY LUCAS • PHOTOS COURTESY OF USA INTERNATIONAL BALLET COMPETITION

M

ona Nicholas’s start in dance came in the arms of her babysitter, Shorty, on her parents’ Greenville living room floor.

“He taught me to do the boogaloo, and from that moment on, I thought of myself as a dancer.” She was around four then, the daughter of parents with a skill set so sharp they could clear a nightspot dance floor with enough verve to embarrass her decades later as a coed.

“It’s in my family, in my blood,” Nicholas says. As executive director of the USA International Ballet Competition (IBC), dance is at the center of her daily world now as she manages the quadrennial contest that’s among the world’s oldest and most prestigious.

The official international ballet competition of the United States, it has been held in Jackson since 1979. This year’s

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event will be June 10-23, bringing approximately one hundred competitors from twenty countries to vie for medals, scholarships, cash awards and company contracts over three rounds of classical and contemporary ballet.

Nicholas’s early love of dance was channeled toward ballet lessons in Vicksburg with Debra Franco, who danced in USA IBC founder Thalia Mara’s Jackson

company. During college, Nicholas taught dance for Franco in Rolling Fork in a makeshift studio at the National Guard Armory with portable ballet barres made by her dad. Through Franco she even met Mara once over a lunch in Vicksburg in the mid-1980s. “I was in awe. I wish that it would be now—I’d have a lot more questions for her!” says Nicholas.

Nicholas, who is looking forward to her first time at the competition’s helm this summer is among several USA IBC leaders whose Delta roots tap into the unique blend of arts and culture, Mississippi hospitality and competitive fervor that makes the Jackson event such a magnet.

Carol Puckett, USA IBC board chairman, traces her Delta love to summers with her aunt Mary Lane in Greenville and her USA IBC love to that first night she

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Mona Nicholas

Carol Puckett

Frank and Ivy Alley Stephen Smith and Mary Schiele Scanlon

bought a ticket in 1979; she says, “it just changed my world.” She joined the board in the late 80s and hasn’t missed a competition performance since 1982.

An early and passionate advocate for Delta cultural tourism, Puckett’s work with the Viking Hospitality Group in Greenwood, the B.B. King Museum in Indianola and Grammy Museum Mississippi in Cleveland, meant inviting the world to share in the best of arts and culture. That’s the USA IBC’s calling card too.

That like-minded interest has flowered over the years, Puckett says, in Delta folks’ immersion in the two-week competition and more. In 2017, the IBC co-sponsored

Peyton Prospere and Amanda Turner

a performance by the Alonzo King LINES Ballet, a contemporary San Francisco company, at the Bologna Performing Arts Center in Cleveland. “The USA IBC is something that all Mississippians should be proud of,” Puckett says, “and the Delta has always had a rich artistic heritage.” This summer, the USA IBC finds a way to show off the Mississippi Delta as well by organizing a day’s excursion so travelers can experience the distinctive region firsthand.

Peyton Prospere, now USA IBC board president, has been part of the event since its 1979 debut. Then with the law firm Watkins Ludlam Winter & Stennis, his early interest followed Warren Ludlam’s involvement. “I was fascinated with the

international atmosphere that came to town with these dancers from all over,” says Prospere, whose Greenville upbringing included support of the arts. At the 1982 USA IBC, that worldly air was heightened with Jackson dancer Kathy Thibodeaux’s silver-medal win and the drama surrounding a Chinese dancer’s defection.

“By the time it rolled back to town in ’86, I had tickets for the entire two weeks, and that was the year that the Soviets sent dancers,” he says.

Resources usually pegged for his Ole Miss football season package were redirected to the USA IBC full-ticket package. He still managed to catch some games that fall; he chuckles, “but in my mind it was a

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The 2018 International Ballet Competition will be held in Jackson at Thalia Mara Hall, June 10-23. For details and ticket information for the go to usaibc.com/attend

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commitment in a slightly different direction because the USA IBC had demonstrated it was compelling entertainment, theater and high art and well worth my full support.”

And Prospere, who grew up playing ball, adds the athletic aspect of the IBC “was no small part of its appeal."

Photos of USA IBC juries fill the stair hallway at Frank and Ivy Alley’s home— mementoes of their roles as jury coordinators since the 1980s. After the Cleveland natives settled in Jackson, Ivy Alley’s curiosity wrapped them into the IBC’s orbit. In the summer of 1979, with her twin boys at summer camp, Alley wondered, “What is this dance thing?” She says, “I’ve always loved dance. I think that’s a big Delta trait.” Wandering into the midst of the competition’s transportation hub at the auditorium, all she had to say was, “I want to help.”

She pulled her husband in too and for the next competition, that enthusiasm warranted a bigger role. Frank Alley was invited onto its board, “and we have just done something every single, solitary time.”

USA IBC founding jury chairman Robert Joffrey invited them to work with the jury. “I loved meeting all those different people and being able to sort of guide them through the competition and the judging part of it—we both do,” Frank Alley says.

They’ve been a key part of outreach too, spreading engagements to Delta home turf.

And now they’ve brought Stephen Smith of Merigold and Amanda Turner of Cleveland onto the board as Delta representatives.

For Smith, godson of McCarty Pottery founders Lee and Pup McCarty, appreciation of dance and the competition’s cultural and economic importance to Mississippi are key factors.

“It’s certainly a very worthwhile event for not only the dancers but also for our state, for our reputation and, of course, for our enjoyment,” he says. “I would certainly encourage everyone to attend, regardless of their knowledge of dance—try it, and I think people would be amazed at how much they enjoy it.”

“What we know as a board is what it takes to put this on—what an immense effort” for so many Mississippians, Turner says. “It brings so many people to the state that would never ever come—and it gives so many local people a chance to see an event they would never see” otherwise. In

reference to a Grammy Museum party she hosted prior to the Bologna Center ballet performance, she says, “I was surprised to see, and I was happy to see, there was a lot more interest in the Delta than I would have imagined for ballet, for dance, and people that were connected to the USA IBC.” Mary Schiele Scanlon took lessons

The 2014 IBC generated a $12.1 million economic impact for Mississippi and pulled in 40,000 to the performances, USA IBC Dance School and other events. learned at Minnie Simpson’s tiny dance studio in Belzoni to heart and into her future. Her roles as a USA IBC volunteer coordinator and board member are a chance to be close to world-class dance and to stay involved with the art form she loves.

“I like to think of myself as a patron of the arts because I enjoy dance so much. It helps feed a hobby. It helps me to give back to the art world and continue to foster dance in Mississippi and the Southeast and also to give back to the community, to help see the USA IBC maintain its stature in Mississippi.”

Scanlon thinks back on the things that classical ballet and Simpson’s mentorship gave her—the drive to work at something and not give up, the confidence to perform in front of people, that wonderful posture.

“I hear this from parents, ‘She’ll never be a professional dancer, so we’re not going to continue [with lessons],’” she says. “Ballet, especially classical ballet, is very hard. But most people will never be a professional athlete either. Dance gives you, gosh, so much—things you can use all throughout life.”

For those involved, the IBC satisfies civic pride and personal passion, delivers home state hospitality and worldly reach and hits the highest level of art with an element of sport. DM

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S AV O R E V E R Y

MOMENT

Authentic culinary experiences are on the menu across Mississippi’s cultural regions. Sit down to fresh, sautéed Gulf seafood or a stack of Delta hot tamales, and finish it with a refreshing round from a local brewery.

There’s no wrong way to savor the many flavors of Mississippi.

VISITMISSISSIPPI.ORG/FOOD

PA R L O R M A R K E T – J A C K S O N , M I S S I S S I P P I

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PROSPECT An archeological and architectural treasure, what remains of Prospect Hill and the amazing story it tells is full of history and compassion

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Old photo of Prospect Hill Plantation in Jefferson County. Photo courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

J

ESSICA CRAWFORD cannot get any more speeding tickets.

The emphasis is hers. The Archaeological Conservancy’s Southeast regional director lives in Marks, and apparently the magnet of Prospect Hill near Lorman has, at times, pulled her south faster than the law allows.

HILL

BY SHERRY LUCAS • PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM BECK

It’s easy to see why on a spring day that catches south Mississippi at its best. A breeze teases Spanish moss into motion and blue phlox into friendly waves at the site, tucked deep in rural Jefferson County off a gravel road still rutted from recent rains. A line of cedars flanks the knoll where the raised cottage perches, and gray, gnarled branches of a dead one reach out like an ashen angel’s arms. On a less lovely day, the effect would be haunting.

Since 2010, a fraction of the former plantation has been the property of the private nonprofit Archaeological Conservancy, which acquires and preserves America’s most important archaeological sites.

Prospect Hill’s history at the nexus of slavery and freedom, revolt and retribution, Mississippi and West Africa, qualifies.

This is where Captain Isaac Ross, a Revolutionary War veteran and Prospect Hill founder, arrived in 1808 with a large contingent of slaves as well as free blacks. His will left instructions that upon his death, his slaves would be emancipated, the plantation sold. It also stated that the proceeds of the sale was to be used to pay the passage, for those

Jessica Crawford

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who chose, to Liberia in West Africa and the colony of freed slaves established by the American Colonization Society.

A grandson, Isaac Ross Wade, contested the will. In an alleged uprising and attempt on his life, the original mansion burned, claiming the life of a young girl. The uprising’s participants were reportedly lynched or burned alive by vigilantes in its wake. In 1845, the court upheld the will and more than 200 slaves emigrated to Africa.

Alan Huffman’s 2004 book “Mississippi in Africa” tells the saga of Prospect Hill’s freed slave settlers, and the legacy of conflict with indigenous people that contributed to civil war in Liberia.

Prospect Hill’s current 1854 house stayed in the Wade family until the early 1970s. When subsequent owners weren’t able to fully keep it up, time and the elements took a toll. A removed brick pier (for tractor parking), a fallen tree and abandonment escalated the decline.

Crawford’s Prospect Hill interest began with Huffman’s book, a Father’s Day gift she and her dad both loved. “I came out here and just fell in love with it. I see a lot of places that I think, ‘Oh, I wish I could save that.’ I see them all the time. But this one was just like, I have to!”

The Archaeological Conservancy preserves archaeological sites for research and pubic education. Restoring old houses isn’t part of its mission. “We manage what’s under the ground,” says Crawford, who oversees seventy-one archeological sites (nineteen in Mississippi) and is in charge of buying new ones.

Plantation archaeology is a growing field, “and this place was so pristine...archeologically” with foundations of outbuildings still visible, a yard undisturbed by modern-day plumbing and fascinating historical and international ties. The hope is to sell the house at a reduction and retain an archaeological easement for research on the more than twenty-three acres.

A new $114,000 roof, completed in summer 2016, should help—funded by a $50,000 emergency stabilization grant from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, $30,000 donation from a private individual, a gofundme campaign, half a dozen openhouse fundraisers onsite and other random donations.

In her work boots, jeans, paisley blouse and ponytail, Crawford covers the grounds like a tour guide, revealing history, offering opinions, introducing tombstones and identifying plants. The cedar trees were planted by Captain Ross; their bases are brightened by lavender tulips—Crawford’s touch more than two centuries later.

“Every time I put a shovel in the ground, I dig up a bulb or a brick,” she says. Clearing privet and overgrowth revealed the jonquils, daffodils, camellias and more that add dashes of color and care to the grounds.

Crawford won’t be digging today, but that doesn’t stop stories from turning up on this soil—of champagne and oysters arriving by riverboat to Rodney in the past, and of kiddie pools catching leaks in recent times. Of cleanup involving 184 contractor bags of garbage and a father/son team who “weren’t afraid of anything.” Of the time she had to inform a relative, some thirteen years hence, about a former co-owner’s car accident death

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Items that have been found in the house and on the grounds of Prospect Hill.

and onsite burial in an unmarked grave (since marked with a headstone).

“Nothing surprises me out here anymore,” she says. “The paths it leads me down are not always fun, but things always turn out for the best somehow.

“Guardian angels must be working overtime out here.”

A higher level Crawford herself was pretty high up—30-something feet from the ground—when Huffman first met her at Prospect Hill. She was on the roof when he walked up.

She waved, came down and led him up to the widow’s walk that he didn’t even know existed.

He was impressed. “This was the first time she had ever been there. She had found her way through the wormhole of this little trapdoor on the back porch, on this rickety 18-foot-long wooden homemade ladder and had gotten up all the way to the absolute, as far as you could get, top in that house,” he says.

“Looking back, it’s just so typical of Jessica.”

She’s taken other things to a higher level, too.

Huffman found and brought people under the umbrella of his “Mississippi in Africa” story, he says, “but Jessica created a way for all those people to actually come together physically and exchange ideas in a way I could have never envisioned when I was writing the book.”

Open-houses at Prospect Hill since 2011 have drawn together descendants of the slaveowners and of the enslaved people, including some from Liberia, as well as preservationists, for gatherings described as surreal, enlightening and touching to the point of tears. People fill in gaps of ancestors’ stories and explore shared history on common ground.

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“She has really breathed life into the story—in a way that you could only dream of, as a writer.

“It kept the whole story alive and dynamic and continuing to unfold.”

Work continues “I have worked like a dog out here, and I don’t mind saying that,” says Crawford, a slim and steely 5-foot-4. “I can’t tell you how many tarps I nailed down—before we got the roof on it.

“But I’ve had a lot of help, too,” she says, saluting preservation-passionate volunteers and entities, descendants and neighbors who’ve pitched in. Tasks have ranged from chainsawing fallen trees to dragging out rotten freezers to salvaging architectural details. “Sometimes it just seems insurmountable.”

Crawford makes the 3½-hour drive to Prospect Hill nearly weekly this time of year, when people want to visit and work needs to be done. Local historian Ann Brown meets visitors when she can’t.

For years, an onsite friend greeted her—the peacock she dubbed Isaac, Prospect Hill’s sole resident. The old bird disappeared after the new roof went on; though presumed dead, Crawford prefers the “just gone” description. Peacock decor dots the property now, and a stone from Natchez Monuments will honor Isaac’s “Beauty in Ruins” role.

Prospect Hill’s cemetery is dominated by a marble monument over the graves of Captain Ross, his wife and daughter, erected in 1838 by the American Colonization Society. In the 1940s, family members put concrete inside its gates, to cut down on upkeep. “Now, it’s not doing the monuments any favors,” says Crawford, a member of the Association for Gravestone Studies. Restorers told her she really needed to get a jackhammer in there and get the concrete up. “OK, I’ll put that on

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Many of the early residents are interred at Prospect Hill Cemetery.

Photo above shows axe marks in wooden beams cut by slaves at Prospect Hill.

my list,” she deadpans.“Way down” on her list.

What’s higher? Putting siding back on the house, plus box gutters.

Architectural elements of the Mississippi Landmark, such as columns and dental molding, are stored in lower back rooms to await reuse or replication. Fire ant poison and weed control —“upsides of being married to a farmer,” she quips—are stashed there, too.

Out back, brick foundations where outbuildings once stood are ripe for study, says Crawford. She hoped to snag a student’s interest when a crew from the Center for Archaeological Research at Ole Miss came by, and get help mapping the site with ground-penetrating radar.

Prospect Hill’s social calendar includes a visit from Friends of the Raymond Battlefield in late April and a sleepover with the Slave Dwelling Project in May. “If you’re going to come out here and you’re going to look at this house, you have to talk about the people that built it,” Crawford says.

That’s why a brick she found, finger marks embedded in its surface, has an honored place inside.

A garden spot ringed by crepe myrtles and boxwoods has brick pathways Crawford is still uncovering. An angel stands sentry in a shady corner. “Slaves are buried out here somewhere. I don’t know where,” she says, hoping that spot can serve as their memorial. DM DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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From Belzoni to

HOLLYWOOD How a son of the Delta made some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters

‫ﱬﱫ‬ Hollywood producer LARRY GORDON walked onto the vast London set of the original Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and immediately realized something was missing. Puzzled, he asked, “Where’s Angie?” A stuntman pointed up. Suddenly, a black-clad woman with raven hair dropped like a rock from the rafters. “Right here,” yelled Angelina Jolie, grinning as she jumped and ended up dangling from a bungee cord, her face suspended a death-defying one foot from the stage floor. “Don’t ever do that again!” a startled Gordon replied, thinking how quickly his $50 plus million movie would evaporate if Jolie’s famously stunning features slammed into the polished hardwood floor. “I love her. She worked like a dog on that movie. She was the first female lead in a big action movie,” Gordon said.

T

BY BILL ROSE

his is what can pass for a day at the office for Larry Gordon, a Belzoni boy who has made some of Hollywood’s most memorable movies.

Field of Dreams. Die Hard. 48 Hours. Boogie Nights.

Waterworld. Hooper. The Watchmen. The Warriors.

Point Break. The Rocketeer. Predator. Hellboy. The TV movie Brian’s Song. The long-running Matt Houston series on ABC-TV. The list goes on and on.

He rubs shoulders with Oprah Winfrey, Dustin Hoffman, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Costner, Bruce Willis, Larry Gordon on the set of Hooper with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds.

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Posters from some of the movies Larry has produced.

Brad Pitt. He lives five minutes from his producer brother Chuck in a spacious hillside home above Los Angeles in Brentwood (Dustin Hoffman is a neighbor as is Lindsey Buckingham, a member of the rock band Fleetwood Mac, and until recently, Harrison Ford lived across the street) with commanding views of the twinkling lights of Century City far below and, beyond, Beverly Hills.

And with more than sixty movies and TV shows to his credit, Larry has built a reputation as a man with a golden touch, one of the most prolific, most successful film and television producers in America.

With Angelina Jolie of the Tomb Raider movies.

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How he did it is the stuff movies are made of.

I

t all started with Larry desperate to avoid getting stuck in his father’s Belzoni furniture store.

“I would have done anything to stay away from the store where some days there would be no customers and you could stand around bored to death all day,” he says, his face turning sour half a century later at the thought of it.

He wanted to go to Ole Miss, but his father sent him to Tulane. His senior year, Larry and three fellow students shared an

apartment in the French Quarter, a place of notable distractions. “I barely graduated,” Larry says. Legendary stripper Blaze Starr was a neighbor. They cared for her pet lion cubs when she was away.

After Tulane, Larry tried anything and everything to make it on his own to avoid going back to the Easy Pay store in Belzoni.

He briefly tried law school at Ole Miss, then ran a nightclub in Houston, worked as an assistant maitre’d, and considered becoming a pit boss in Las Vegas.

Finally, he took one last desperate shot.

“Stone broke,” he went out to Hollywood in the early 1960s.

He called up an old friend he used to date in high school, the former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley from Brandon.

She happened to be dating Aaron Spelling, the most prolific television producer ever.

Spelling needed an assistant. Mary Ann introduced them and Spelling was going to let Larry know right away if he got the job.

So Larry waited. And waited. Down to his last $400, he sat by the phone for what seemed like forever in his $170-a-month apartment, surviving on hot dogs and Cokes from the Pronto Pup on Sunset Strip.

Finally, he gave up. Bags packed, he was headed to the airport when the phone rang.

It was Spelling. He was hired.

Before he knew it, Larry was living in the

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maestro’s mansion. “I was making $50 a week, plus room and board,” Larry said.

“He had this great house with a lot of household help and a big black El Dorado Cadillac,” Larry said. “I drove him to work every day ... At five o’clock he’d say, ‘tini time’ and that meant it was time for me to make his martinis. He had me tag along with him every place he went which was fine with me because we went to Frank Sinatra’s, Mickey Rooney, Dean Martin, Judy Garland, and he’d say, ‘Sit on the set with Betty Davis and make sure there are no problems.’”

Larry was allowed to attend meetings with Spelling, “absorbing everything.” He even watched Spelling write. After a while, Larry figured he could write too.

“So, I sat down and wrote a script for one of his shows. Aaron was out of scripts at the time and he bought it. It was for a TV series, Burke’s Law,” he said.

Before he knew it, he had become a writer and associate producer of many Spelling shows.

Suddenly, Larry Gordon was on his way.

Never again would he worry about having to sell furniture for a living back in Belzoni.

“With my deficiencies (Larry laughs and says he may have invented ADD), I lucked into the only business I could be a success at,” he said.

Hollywood loves a success story. Larry moved quickly up the ranks of the movie business.

In 1965, he left Spelling for a stint as head of West Coast talent development for ABC Television, then became an executive with Bob Banner Associates. He quickly

He rubs shoulders with Oprah Winfrey, Dustin Hoffman, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Costner, Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt. moved to American International Pictures (AIP), where he rose to vice president in charge of development. In 1971, he landed a job as vice president of Screen Gems, the television division of Columbia Pictures, where he helped put together the classic TV movie Brian’s Song, as well as the first “novel for television,” the adaptation of Leon Uris’ QB VII. Larry soon returned to AIP to become the first executive in the history of the

company to be in charge of worldwide production. AIP was known for producing B movies, including beach party films. But Larry started breaking the mold and producing some higher quality movies that caught the eye of major studios.

For example, he was executive producer of John Milius’ acclaimed Dillinger.

“That’s the one that really turned things around for me,” Larry said.

The industry gossip columns were buzzing about Dillinger and the head of Columbia Pictures took note. Columbia offered Larry a three-year deal as a producer.

So Larry formed his own production company, churning out hit after hit— Hard Times, starring Charles Bronson, the cult classic The Warriors, the memorable 48 Hours.

He produced the comedy hit The End, starring Burt Reynolds; the Reynolds hit Hooper; Rolling Thunder, starring William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones; and the now cult movie musical Xanadu, starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly.

Larry also found time to reunite with his old boss, Spelling in 1982 to create and executive produce the long-running television series, Matt Houston.

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With entertainment icon Frank Sinatra.

Chuck Gordon 78 | MAY/JUNE 2018

something that can thrill millions in darkened movie theaters in every corner of America.

He liked the high wire act of producing.

It was exhilarating to bring everything together on a project with a million moving parts, to be in charge of the script, the talent, the director, the budget, the sets, the shooting, the music, distribution, marketing and more. Larry was the man.

Stars and directors get the publicity. But it’s the producer who sells the studio on a movie, gets their financing and makes it happen. He also deals with egos and pesky headaches like trailers and chefs and private planes for big stars and their entourages.

“You deal with good and bad people, just like in the Easy Pay store in Belzoni,” Larry said.

Sometimes, luck helped. When he was trying to put together 48 Hours, a procession of big stars passed on it—Clint Eastwood, Sly Stallone, Gene Hackman, Burt Reynolds, Richard Pryor, Gregory Hines, Bill Cosby.

“Then someone said at a casting meeting, ‘Have you seen the funny black comedian on Saturday Night Live?’ So the director and I flew to New York and saw him at a comedy club and signed him,” Larry said.

It was Eddie Murphy.

His hilarious debut as a con sprung from prison to help a cop (Nick Nolte) solve a case launched Murphy’s movie career.

When it hit theaters in 1982, 48 Hours quickly became the stuff of legend, the ultimate buddy picture.

The boy from Belzoni had made himself into a bona fide Hollywood heavyweight, someone studios could depend upon to deliver box office gold.

Thus it was no great surprise that in 1984 he became president of 20th Century Fox. “What a power trip that is,” Larry said.

“You have a worldwide army at your disposal.”

At Fox, Larry oversaw such smash hits as James Cameron’s Aliens, Broadcast News, Commando starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jewel of the Nile starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito, and Cocoon. During his tenure, Fox gave birth to The Simpsons, the longest running and most lucrative TV series of all time as well as launching the Fox Network.

Fox attempted to take out a $50 million insurance policy on him, but an angiogram revealed his left anterior descending artery, the one known as “the widow maker,” was one-hundred percent blocked. Another artery was sixty percent blocked.

“Normally, in that situation you can have a massive heart attack and die. I had a miracle,” said Larry. Amazingly, his body had performed its own bypass, growing collaterals around the deadly blockage.

He avoided surgery by adopting the Pritikin Diet and a strict exercise regimen.

On doctors’ orders, he quit his stressful “eighteen hours a day” Fox dream job. He stopped smoking, lost weight, got in shape.

And went back to producing, this time for himself.

What he couldn’t know was that his biggest hits were ahead of him.

With fellow Mississippian Oprah Winfrey.

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Chuck Gordon, Kevin Costner, and Larry.

On the set of 48 Hours with Eddie Murphy.

With former Beatle, Paul McCartney.

Larry and his wife, Deedee with Bruce Springsteen.

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O.J. “Bubba” Turner, Jack Turner, Larry, Tom Turner, Jerry Sklar, Preston Turner, Jon Turner, Spencer Turner, and Dr. Mack Gorton in Oxford.

I

n 1988, Larry did something that changed the action movie business. He produced Die Hard, which packed movie theaters and became Hollywood’s defining template for big action films, in which an outnumbered wisecracking hero defeats the bad guys against all odds. The iconic blockbuster made Bruce Willis a major movie star, spawned four hit sequels and became a spectacularly lucrative Fox franchise.

“Die Hard has been copied ten different ways,” according to Larry. “They said it changed the genre. It’s own genre!”

Only a year later, he and his younger brother Chuck rocked the film world again by producing together the wildly popular Field of Dreams, nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It was edged out by Driving Miss Daisy. But it was Field of Dreams that introduced an oft-quoted new phrase to the American lexicon: “If you build it—he will come.” An American Film Institute poll ranked it one of the most memorable movie quotations of all time and the film itself has become an American classic.

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career with Aaron Spelling. The elder Gordon wanted his son back in Belzoni where he knew he could make a safe and secure living from the family business.

When his father died suddenly in 1965, Larry was left with a load of regret.

With television producer Aaron Spelling.

“He didn’t live to see any of my success or meet any of my family,” Larry said.

“So that movie in which Kevin Costner plays catch with the ghost of his baseball playing father was cathartic for me,” Larry said.

It took years to get the movie off the ground. But Larry wouldn’t give up. “I had to make Field of Dreams because to me, it

was about me and my daddy,” he said. “My biggest regret is that I didn’t dedicate that movie to him.”

The movie grew from a book called Shoeless Joe that Larry had read and acquired the rights. Brother Chuck said, “There’s a line in the movie about how it’s almost like all the tumblers in the universe are falling into place. And the movie really happened that way.”

Larry and Chuck thought it would be great to get Kevin Costner, but he had just finished a baseball movie and didn’t want to follow up with another one. The Gordons would not take no for an answer. They begged Costner to read the script, he did and loved it. That was the first tumbler.

“Then we went to scout locations (in Iowa) and we looked and looked and finally we gave up and were driving back to the airport when we saw this farm and said, ‘Wow, this is it,’” Chuck said. Click.

Another tumbler.

A drought was plaguing corn country.

But a little stream ran through the farm, providing enough water for irrigation to grow the thick forest of corn stalks from which the ghosts of ballplayers past would emerge. Click. Click. Click.

“Everything just fell into place,” Chuck said.

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Larry, George, Natalie, Chuck, and David Gordon at home in Belzoni in 1950.

In 2002, three years after Field of Dreams hit theaters, Larry was awarded the prestigious David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award from the Producers Guild of America. To make it even sweeter, his brother presented him with the award.

For Ward Emling, who directed Mississippi’s film office for 30 years, the recognition made perfect sense.

Larry, he said, is a true giant of the film industry.

“Larry Gordon is the preeminent Mississippi movie maker,” Emling said. “He started a lot of careers for producers, directors and actors and made some of the biggest movies we’ve seen.”

And he’s not finished yet. He’s producing a movie shot in, of all places, Bulgaria.

and I sat down and ate all those things in one night,” Larry grinned.

Back home, his closest playmates were the three older Turner brothers—O.J. (Bubba), Tab, and Jack. They lived across the street and played all day—football,

tubes, carved wood into the shape of a gun and used a clothespin to secure the rubber.

“It would fire those rubber strips thirty to forty yards and if it hit you in the back, it could leave a nice welt, a figure eight that would last three or four days,” recalls Tab Turner, 83.

Larry remembers himself as a small, skinny bespectacled boy trying to keep up with bigger, stronger friends.

“If I had to psychoanalyze it,” Larry said, “I’d say my imagination probably came from being a little guy who wanted to be one of those tough guys (back in Belzoni) and couldn’t be.

Once I was being interviewed in Hollywood and the reporter said to me, ‘you have a very tough reputation in this business’ and I said that’s interesting because I grew up my whole life in Belzoni pretty damn scared. But ven after half a century of when I got in the movie business, I success in Hollywood, Larry Deedee, former Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat, and Larry. realized the worst thing they could do cherishes his Delta roots. He to me was ‘throw me off the lot’. And, recalls his childhood in Belzoni as a sort of baseball and any other sport in season. that would simply mean driving away in my Happy Days existence and returns every big shiny car. In Mississippi, they might Larry, the Turners and many other boys chance he gets. Sometimes the Mississippi pick you up and throw you out of a from the Oak Street neighborhood would Delta comes to him. organize themselves into teams, sometimes window.”

The late Cleveland automobile dealer Ed “twenty on a side,” and wage “rubber gun” What Larry learned in Mississippi, he Kossman and his wife, Kitty, once shipped wars. said, helped him make it in Hollywood. him three dozen Doe’s hot tamales. “Chuck They cut strips of rubber from inner “One of the things that helped me in my

E

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With actress Sharon Stone.

Larry and his mother Natalie with Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly.

career, is in a small town like Belzoni, you grow up knowing everybody in the community and all that goes on in it. You can’t afford to be snooty with anyone. So I get along with everybody on my movies from the guy who sweeps at night to the giant star.

“I had no training to do this, but I had a great experience where I grew up. I give Mississippi most of the credit for my success. It’s a different world. Oprah Winfrey (from Kosciusko) and I talk about this all of the time,” Larry said. After all, making movies is about story telling and in Belzoni, there were stories at every turn— stories about someone spotting a black panther in our backyard, stories about the tough guy who beat up six people at a Redtop dance, stories about the cannonball on top of a hunchback Indian’s grave in the local cemetery.”

With all that and more for fodder, Larry

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Sean Connery

said, “I became a pretty good story teller.”

In fact, Larry grew up in the Delta at the same time as another great story teller, the late Willie Morris of Yazoo City, author of North Toward Home and former editor of Harper’s. They grew up knowing the same people, going to the same dances and playing high school sports against each other.

“The last time I saw Willie was at Universal Studios,” Larry recalled. “An hour lunch turned into half of a day laughing and telling stories about the Delta.”

As Jack Turner tells it, Larry had a creative mind, a devilish sense of humor and a remarkable gift for gab. All of that came into play in Larry’s junior year of football, at a game between Belzoni and Indianola.

“Larry was a guard and weighed maybe 155 or 160,” says Turner. “He was shocked to find himself lined up across from the fearsome 230 pound, ‘Baby’ Louis Labella,

an All-Delta Valley Conference lineman.

He and Larry were friends, but Larry knew he was no match for this giant. Labella laughed and bulldozed right over Larry.

When we came off the field, Larry went up to our other guard and told him, ‘Coach wants us to swap sides’ and he did! That’s just the kind of stuff Larry would pull. He was shrewd and always up to something.”

“When Larry was writing episodes of Burke’s Law, he delighted in naming minor characters for someone in Belzoni,” says O.J. “Bubba” Turner. “Everyone in town would be glued to the TV, waiting to see who would be next.”

Jon Turner of Belzoni, O.J.’s son, said the two families are almost like one. And their friendship didn’t miss a beat when the Gordons moved out to California. They have all stayed in touch “via Turner visits to California and Gordon visits home, as well as the traditional and boisterous holiday

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“I had no training to do this, but I had a great experience where I grew up. I give Mississippi most of the credit for my success.”

Above, with Sally Field. Below, goofing around with Brad Pitt!

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Larry and Arnold Schwarzenegger filming the movie, Predator.

family group phone calls.”

When the New York Giants briefly benched quarterback Eli Manning, Larry got on the phone commiserating with Indianola attorney and Manning family friend Frank Crosthwait and his wife Sandra, who he calls after every Ole Miss and Giants’ game.

Larry was so outraged at how the twotime Super Bowl MVP was treated that he took his complaints to his good friend Steve Tisch, the Giants co-owner and producer of the Academy Award-winning, Forrest Gump.

Tisch got tired of Larry bugging him about Eli. So when Eli was returned to his role as starting quarterback, Tisch phoned Larry and said, “You happy now?” and then hung up!

Clarksdale CPA George Hirschberg, Larry’s old roommate at Tulane, heard his old pal had hit it big in Hollywood, but had trouble visualizing it. “I couldn’t believe it until I went out there,” he said.

The next thing he knew, Larry, then president of 20th Century Fox, was escorting him onto a movie set where Burt Reynolds was filming a scene. When Reynolds saw them, he dropped what he was doing, walked over and said with a grin,

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“This has got to be one of your hick friends from Mississippi!”

Larry took Hirschberg to a birthday party for Delta bluesman B.B. King. “He treated us like royalty,” Hirschberg said.

When Hirschberg was recently treated for lymphoma, Larry, a prostate cancer survivor himself, called George or his wife, Goldie every few days to check on him.

When Robert Khayat was the chancellor at Ole Miss, he and former Athletic Director Warner Alford stopped in to see Larry on a fundraising trip to the west coast and they became great friends. To this day, Khayat good naturedly calls Larry “my producer.” Larry, in turn, calls him “my chancellor.”

“He’s a top Hollywood producer and yet he was just so gracious to us,” Khayat recalled. Larry loves Ole Miss so much that Khayat tried to talk him into moving to Oxford. The former chancellor even found him a house, but Larry, although truly tempted, had been ensconced in Hollywood too long to pull up stakes this late in life.

Even after all those years in Hollywood, Larry still loves those visits back home.

Whenever he returns to Belzoni, he stops by to see Winkie Allen (93). “She makes the

best caramel cake and pimiento cheese sandwiches in the world.” He still tries to call her “at least every two weeks.”

Allen, who occasionally babysat Chuck, has fond memories of the Gordons and Turners running roughshod through the Oak Street neighborhood. “They’d play all day then run home to eat supper and then run back outside to play in the streets,” she said. “The 9 o’clock compress whistle would blow and that was the signal for all of the kids to go home for the night.”

Allen said Hollywood never went to the Gordons’ heads. “After they made Field of Dreams, Larry returned to Belzoni for a high school reunion and he was so glad to see everybody. There is nothing of the big shot in him.” At that reunion, Mayor Tom Turner presented Larry with the key to the city. “It’s one of my prized possessions,” Larry said.

After all these years in Hollywood, Larry still faithfully subscribes to The Belzoni Banner. He reads it every week “so I know what’s going on in Belzoni.”

“To tell you the truth, when anyone asks me where I’m from, I’ll say Los Angeles.

But, I really feel like I still live in the Delta.”

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light, bright

HOME

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LIVABLE Outwardly mannered and formal, this family home in Jackson holds many cool, contemporary surprises inside

BY BRENDA WARE JONES • PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREG CAMPBELL

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The spacious central den provides a light-filled hub of activity for family and friends.

A

pproaching this imposing brick Georgian Colonial Revival residence from the graceful curved drive, a visitor could be excused for assuming that the owners are strict period traditionalists. The stately dwelling is stylistically reminiscent of the grand eighteenth- and nineteenth-century plantation mansions that dotted the region back when cotton was king.

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The refurbished powder room was given a touch of Hollywood Regency elegance and drama.

An antique painted/patinated French buffet and a gilt-and-crystal chandelier lend vintage charm in the sleekly modern dining room.

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Highlighting the breakfast area of the kitchen is a bold abstract canvas by Dawn Thomas.

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Airy and understated, the kitchen combines function with aesthetics. Glassless carriage-lamp fixtures provide contrast with the industrial-mod island seating.

But the family of five who enjoy the airy rooms and sweeping views of the Jackson Country Club golf-course have definite modern proclivities. With the expert help of interior designer Dawn Thomas, the young professional couple transformed the formal, symmetrical, center-hall interior into a series of open, light-filled living spaces that is the perfect place to raise their three small children.

“We almost didn’t even look at this house when we were shopping for a new place to live, closer in,” says the wife. “But, on a whim, we came to the realtor’s open house, saw the wonderful vista out the back, and just said—wow!” She goes on to say that their former home, several miles north in Madison County was “just too far” from schools and her husband’s office. “I started feeling like I was living in my car, driving kids daily to school and their activities.”

“We were attracted to all the amenities, with golf, tennis, and swimming just down the street. It’s a golf cart kind of life, with several other families with young kids nearby,” she adds.

The wet bar is a dramatic focal point, with antiqued mirror-front cabinetry.

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An old painted Scandinavian cabinet is topped with a bright sunburst mirror and family photos.

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The designer and her clients love the pleasing balance of perfect mirror-image symmetry, best illustrated in the sun-washed master bedroom.

The couple, who have family ties in old Mississippi towns with lots of grand houses (Yazoo City and Vicksburg) fell instantly in love with the feeling of solidity and history usually found only in centuryold architecture. “Things like the deep seven-step crown molding, the high ceilings, the mature landscape surrounding the house— something only an older home can give,” she notes. And yet, this 6,500-square foot house was built relatively recently—1989. James Vinson of Design Professionals, P.A., had paid careful attention to period details and scale.

Working with Thomas, they began to make changes better suited to their style. “The kitchen had an island that really boxed in the area, and a wall between it and the family den,” she recalls. They hired architect Janet Holmes to draw up a more open plan, and called on Scott Rhodes Construction to do the tear-out and installation. Without tampering with the footpath as originally designed, they knocked out two walls to better frame the exquisite golf-course view. Beautiful new cabinetry and sleek brushed hardware were added, and a wet bar/serving area was topped with custom doors with half-fishtail mullions, backed in antiqued mirror glass. “This kitchen reno took longer than we hoped,” she confesses, “but that was because we kept adding new projects.” It was well worth the effort, as it turned out.

Removing the wall and door to the den made them realize that the stairwell was a hindrance to flow; it turned a corner and came out in the den. This was straightened, and works much better trafficwise, especially when entertaining, which the couple loves to do. All along the rear, from breakfast area to the far end of the den, a wall of French doors opens onto a sweeping covered porch, which the owners say is the ideal venue for an evening cocktail with friends, looking out onto the gently rolling greens beyond the back garden and patio. Another project they tackled right away was the formal downstairs powder room, a strangely large space that Thomas recommended improving by adding a wall to form a water closet.

“This is the one we want guests to use,” says the homeowner, “but there is a smaller one off the kitchen area that everyone seems to find first! So, we gave in and gave that one a face-lift as well.”

Every room was given a fresh coat of paint, working from a basic palette of whites, off-whites, and the palest of pastels. Similarly, the new window treatments and mostly contemporary furnishings are distinctly light in hue, giving an almost sun-bleached, Mediterranean feel. With so much white, the inevitable query from a curious visitor is, “With three active little ones, how does all this stay so pristinely clean?” Their mom laughs and replies, “Well, we have a good furniture cleaner on speed-dial! But really, they just know there are

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Airy and spacious, the baby’s ice-pink nursery is a perfect place for sweet dreams.

The older daughter’s bedroom, with fresh aqua accents, is an eight-year-old’s haven, complete with unicorn.

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While continuing the theme of palest pastels, the son’s bedroom is given masculine pops of color.

some areas they have to respect. And their playroom is really where they hang out the most.”

This upstairs playroom is every kid’s dream, by the way. Accessible via a secret crawlspace passageway from—well, if we told you, it would no longer be a secret, would it? But the children and all their friends would call this the best part of the house. The little ones rule the upstairs, a welcome flight of stairs apart from their parents’ main-level suite. Up here, three large bedrooms, plus a charming knee-walled nursery for their newest addition, continue the pale, creamy palette.

A large Jack-and-Jill bath joins the older daughter and son’s light-filled chambers, and an elegant guest room occupies a corner just off the stair landing. “We have plans to renovate the upstairs bathrooms, as well as our master downstairs,” she says, although they are so attractive and accommodating already that it is hard to imagine what lovely surprises are in store. But Dawn Thomas and her client have ideas in mind, no doubt. “Dawn is an amazing

decorator and artist,” enthuses her client, pointing to several abstract canvases the designer painted, that grace the walls downstairs. “She definitely brought our ideas to life, adding her own inspirations to the table. I always said it felt like Christmas morning, when she and her crew arrived!”

Also displayed around the house are works by two other modernists, Susan House and Meg Ivey, among others. All the canvases were carefully chosen to enhance the rooms in which they hang, providing subtle pops of color and form. And everywhere possible, cheerful photos of the three children add happy notes.

She sums it up this way: “When we saw it, we knew this was a house we could grow old in.

A house that we could fill full of memories.”

And, whether piling into a golf cart to watch the kids scamper barefoot on the golf course at twilight, or gathering for a family dinner, or relaxing in one of the many intimate areas downstairs, this family is busy accumulating plenty of those daily. DM

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s summer L UN U CH T OURS

Gather friends and family to visit Mo oss Mountain Farm. Tour Tour the abundant gardens and Allen’ss private home, then sit down n to a garden-to-table dining experience featuring recipess selected from Allen’s best-sselling cookbook, Seasonal Reccipes from the Garden.

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Thursdays TTh d & Fridays F id M - June May $ $96.75 PER PERSON ( All applicable taxes included)

Space is limited. Visit www.P PAllen AlleenSmith.com, email gardenhome@pallensmith.c @pallensmith.com or call 501.519 9.5793 to make yourr reservation!

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yards

& gardens

Tips from the pros to keep your yard and garden beautiful ● ● ●

Raising Herbs Pruning Tips Creative Containers

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hydrangeas & azaleas Show these southern landscape staples a little love for the best blooms

BY BRANTLEY SNIPES • PHOTOGRAPHY BY EMILY BALLARD

I

am not biased when it comes to selecting the best bloom season in our Delta Landscapes, as I believe that all our seasons are the best season. Yet, there is

something magical about early summers in the Delta. We’ve just experienced our landscapes spring back to life, and we watch in awe as they transition into full bloom throughout the summer. This transformation is best represented by two of our most common Southern landscape staples, the azalea and the hydrangea. However, often these beloved shrubs are not pruned correctly and therefore, fail to achieve peak bloom or growth habit. Here are some tips to ensure you are pruning your azaleas and hydrangeas correctly.

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Brantley Snipes, PLA, MLA, MHS: owner of Brantley Snipes Landscape & Design, Inc.

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HYDRANGEAS Hydrangeas have mystified Delta gardeners for decades and now that the market is full of different varieties, I’m afraid the equation has not gotten any simpler. Hydrangeas are just starting to hit their bloom stride in May and June in the Delta. If planted in the correct location, hydrangeas really don’t need much pruning.

Old wood hydrangeas The first ones we will see bloom are our mophead/bigleaf/lacecap and oakleaf hydrangeas. These belong in the Hydrangea macrophylla and Hydrangea quercifolia family, which is important to note as these are pruned differently from other hydrangeas.

These hydrangeas create blooms on old wood early in the summer. If you prune them in the fall or spring, you will remove the future blooms. Our old wood hydrangeas should be pruned immediately after they bloom. To reduce height and encourage stem vitality, remove the oldest and largest canes at ground level. Always use your hand snips to gently remove the old blooms.

New wood hydrangeas Other hydrangeas that are popular in the Delta can be pruned during the spring and winter, as they bloom on new wood. These hydrangeas include: H. paniculata (our common Limelight Hydrangea), H. arborescens and H. serrata. The blooms on these hydrangea varieties are white and appear later in the summer; therefore, they can be pruned in late fall or early spring. In fact, light pruning of these hydrangeas can increase vigor and produce more blooms.

To recap, if your hydrangea blooms early in the summer, prune immediately after it blooms and do not prune in the fall or spring. If your hydrangea blooms later in the summer, prune in the fall or early spring to aid in performance. If you are pruning correctly and still not enjoying any blooms, check to make sure your hydrangea is receiving enough sunlight.

Bigleaf hydrangeas, an old wood variety, should be pruned immediately after they bloom.

Lacecap hydrangeas, are also pruned immediately after they bloom.

Limelight hydrangeas produce on new wood and should be pruned in late fall or early spring.

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AZALEAS By now, our azaleas have finished blooming and are settling into their role as a beautiful evergreen shrub in your landscape. May and June are the ideal months to prune them.

There are three levels of azalea pruning: deadheading, light trimming, and renewal pruning. All levels should be done with hand snips or hand loppers. You should never take power shears to your azaleas.

And, azaleas should never be pruned in a box!

When you finish pruning, apply an azalea/camellia fertilizer, which can be found at our local garden and nursery centers. Avoid fertilizing and pruning your azaleas in the fall. The Delta grows our Southern Indica Azaleas the best.

Remember that azaleas like filtered shade and acidic soils and do not like wet feet (or root systems).

Beautiful examples of azaleas that have been pruned correctly, allowing for a canopy of abundant blooms and a natural shape.

These photos show examples of incorrect pruning. At left they were trimmed with power shears into a box that fights the natural growth pattern.

The azaleas on the right were trimmed the wrong time of year (fall or winter) preventing them from producing many blooms.

Deadheading Removing the dead blooms off your shrub to generate some more height and increase bloom production on your azaleas.

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Light trimming This is all that’s needed when you want to remove some height and/or reshape it.

The best way is to visualize the height and shape of your azalea, draw an imaginary line in your visualization and then get to snipping. Your imaginary line should follow the natural growth habit of your azalea and the main branches within the canopy.

Renewal pruning Save this for azaleas that have been left alone for several seasons and have become leggy, displaying an incomplete canopy. Remove the top third of the plant, again following the natural growth pattern. This should remove most of the existing leaf canopy and allow light to reach into the branch structure, so the new growth can begin and fill in a full canopy from ground to bloom.

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Look for our new book Florists to the Field in your local gift and bookstore.

Contact us to book your event.

gardendistrictmemphis.com

(662) 234-3031 info@graduateoxford.com

5040 Sanderlin Avenue Suite 109 Memphis, TN 38117 901-761-3277

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Growing Herbs

Follow these steps for a successful herb garden

BY P. ALLEN SMITH

MARK FONVILLE

P. Allen Smith of Moss Mountain Farm in Roland, Arkansas is a garden design expert, horticulturalist and author.

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FUNCTIONAL. FRAGRANT. FLAVORFUL.

I

MARK FONVILLE

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have herbs planted everywhere throughout Moss Mountain farm because not only are they incredibly useful, but also beautiful and fragrant. You’ll find them in the

Note: For fabulous herb-infused cocktail recipes turn to page 114!

JANE COLCLASURE

vegetable garden, in containers by themselves, and mixed in with flowers for a decorative element that’s also functional.

If you’re just getting into growing your own food, herbs are a great place to start. You’ll need to keep a few rules in mind, but otherwise, growing herbs is a cinch.

You’ll need to have your bed or containers in full sun or at least halfday sun. Plant the herbs in soil that drains well and is consistently moist but not soggy. Placing a saucer under the containers will help the soil stay moist. I also keep the tags from the plants and stick them in the soil near the plant to keep track of what I have planted where.

I like to keep containers with herbs close to the kitchen so that it’s easy to use the fresh leaves throughout the growing season. The following are some of my favorite herbs to grow.

ONION CHIVES are a grassy looking perennial with onion-flavored leaves and purple blooms. The mild onion flavor is a tasty addition to any savory dish. Use the flowers in salads. These plants are perfect for containers!

In the spring, plant chives about four weeks before the last frost; or plant in fall in mild climates. They need well-drained soil amended with compost. Chives are not finicky and tolerate neglect, but will do best if you don’t completely ignore them.

Water and fertilize occasionally with an all-purpose liquid plant food and divide crowded clumps every two to three years. If you harvest the leaves often, fertilize every few weeks.

After the first killing frost in autumn, cut the plants back to ground level. They will return the following spring. In sub-tropical climates they are evergreen, but I recommend cutting them back anyway to refresh the foliage.

ROSEMARY is an aromatic evergreen and has become an indispensable kitchen herb. It is a tender perennial evergreen with a shrubby form that hails from the Mediterranean region, so it prefers a warm, sunny and dry environment.

It is not cold hardy throughout the country; most varieties will not survive below 15 to 20°F, but don’t let this keep you from growing rosemary. This herb is ideally suited for container gardening. Keep a pot outside your kitchen door or plant it, container and all, in the garden. Just lift it out of the ground when temperatures begin to drop in autumn and bring it indoors.

When you bring rosemary inside for winter, put it in a sunny window (south facing is ideal) and take care not to overwater it. The roots can easily rot. An occasional misting helps if it gets too dry indoors.

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there are several varieties. If you like to cook, you’ll want to grow an assortment, from the tiny-leafed spicy globe and boxwood types to the cinnamon-spiced Thai, to the big leaves of Italian classic sweet basil.

Set your plants out about two weeks after the last frost when the days are warm; basil can’t stand cold weather. When planting, add plenty of organic nutrients from compost, blood meal or cottonseed meal to the soil. Basil is not a heavy feeder, but because you’ll harvest often and it is continuously replacing the harvested leaves, feed every couple of weeks with an allpurpose, liquid plant food. Most grow about two feet tall, but the little-leafed ones are shorter.

Basil needs well-drained soil and full sun, but appreciates afternoon shade in the hottest climates. Water deeply during dry spells. Plants in pots dry out faster so water them more often. Watering is very important because drying stunts growth. Avoid splashing water on the leaves to prevent leaf spots and sunburn. In fall you can bring potted basil inside. It is quickly killed by the first cold. Keep plants pinched and they will stay fresh and productive until fall.

THYME is easy to grow in the garden or a container. I recommend starting with a planting or a cutting from a friend. It should go into the ground a couple of weeks before the last frost, when the soil is around 70˚F. Thyme thrives in the sun and requires little water after the initial watering. You may want to place thyme next to rosemary since their needs are the same.

Growing thyme in containers allows you to reproduce the well-drained soil conditions of the Mediterranean slopes where it grows wild. Since the soil in my garden is largely heavy clay I have to use caution when planting anything that requires good drainage. Even a plant as durable as thyme can be a total bust if I don’t set the plant up for success by amending the soil with plenty of sand and pea gravel to minimize the effects of excessive moisture.

Thyme is evergreen in most zones, but when it really gets cold I try to cover the plants with frost blankets to preserve the foliage and help the plant in winter.

The more thyme you use, the more it grows. When cutting it, be sure to leave at least five inches of growth so the plant can flourish.

I think you’ll find growing herbs to be very rewarding. And, the main thing to remember about herbs is the more you clip them back and use them, the more of these delicious leaves that they’ll produce.

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MINT requires absolutely the least

JANE COLCLASURE

KELLY QUINN

BASIL is a favorite annual for summer and

amount of care of the herbs I grow.

In fact, it grows so prolifically, it could overrun the garden!

I grow two main varieties, spearmint and peppermint. You can easily tell them apart by their distinct aromas and by their stems and leaves. Spearmint has a broader leaf, its stem tends to be a bit greener and the leaves are more crinkled. Peppermint on the other hand has a narrower leaf and its stems are a bit redder.

Over time, you may find that your plants can become tall and spindly. If this happens, just cut them back. I use scissors, but if you have a larger plot you can mow it with a lawn mower. This will cause the plants to produce lots of new tender shoots, where you’ll find the best flavor.

To keep peppermint from invading your garden, keep in containers or plant in a bottomless plastic nursery pot that is at least ten inches tall. The aggressive underground stems will be confined within the container, and you’ll have plenty of fresh mint for tea, lotions and infusions.

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Container Gardening 101 Add color and texture to your landscape—without the work of maintaining flower beds (think, no weeds!)

BY JESSICA MILAM, OWNER FOUNTAIN’S GREEN GROW-CERY • PHOTOGRAPHY BY AUSTIN BRITT

Choose your pot Whether you want concrete or glazed pottery, choosing the right pot is all about style. Looking for something classic? Concrete might be more your style. If you are looking for color or something bolder, glazed pots can give you just that. Beyond aesthetics, the main difference is price and durability. Glazed pots do cost more, however they are far more durable than a concrete pot which is prone to cracking in very cold temps.

• •

Create and maintain beautiful combination pots all summer long by following these basic steps

Select plants There are four things to keep in mind when selecting your plants: color, light, styling and watering needs.

COLOR: What colors do you love/hate?

What colors will look good with the pot you have selected? Ask yourself these questions before you start looking.

LIGHT: This is probably the most important factor to consider, because there are plants that need bright sunshine and those that will only tolerate shade. So you must know your plants! Some great sun options are wave petunias, periwinkles, superbells and lantana.

Lantana is a great example of a heat 108 | MAY/JUNE 2018

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tolerant plant that needs bright sunshine to thrive. Without it, you will not get many blooms. Some great shade options are caladiums, impatiens, begonias and torenia.

STYLING: When styling your pot, your

•

plants should fall into three basic categories; thriller, filler and spiller.

The thriller will be something tall that is either in the middle or to the back of the pot. These could be grasses such as a purple fountain or king tut grass, geraniums (for smaller pots), or an evergreen like a blue point juniper or a shaped boxwood. A spiller is any plant that will “spill” over the edge of the pots as it grows.

Some of my favorites are petunias, superbells, ivy and creeping jenny.

And lastly, you will need your filler.

These are plants that fill in the spaces that are left such as periwinkles, euphorbia, chartreuse or an herb.

WATERING NEEDS: Every plant has specific watering needs, and this must be considered when selecting plants. Some are more drought and heat tolerant, like portulaca and lantana. Others need watering everyday, for example, a wave petunia. So these would not pair well in the same container. Overwatering leads to root rot which is pretty much a death sentence for a plant.

Arrange your plants Follow these simple steps when planting your containers.

•

Arrange plants while they are still potted so they may be easily moved around to see what looks best.

•

Fill pot about ¾ of the way with soil and start arranging with thriller first, then spiller and finally fill in with the filler.

•

Check for spaces that need some extra soil and fill in as needed. Be sure you keep the soil level 1 to 2 inches from the rim of the pot.

Sun Plants: Pink geranium, dreamsicle Shade Plants: Huechera surrounded by trailing Sun Plants: Calliope white geranium, ivy, superbells, Anne Marie lantana and begonias, ivy and Joseph’s coat. yellow superbells and Anne Marie lantana. diamond delight euphorbia.

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Potting and soil tips FILLING THE POT: It is widely debated on whether or not you need rocks or other fillers for drainage in the pot. Unless I have a really large pot, I only use soil. On my larger pots I sometimes use mulch instead of gravel because it is lighter and so I am not wasting soil. Most important to proper drainage is to be sure your pot has a good size drainage hole, at least ½ inch to an inch. Not having a draining hole is a sure way to set up the container for failure.

•

SOIL: This is the foundation of your plants and what will help them thrive. We mix our own soil onsite with heat activated, slow release fertilizer. We recommend this because it automatically helps feed your plants throughout the heat of the summer.

Water and Display Once you’ve finished potting your plants, give them a good drench so they can settle in the pot. This also allows the soil to settle so that you can see if any spots still need to be filled with extra soil. My favorite watering tip came from Mr. Fountain—treat your plants like you treat your kids—put them to bed dry! Watering in the morning is best for your plants.

A few random notes: • Have fun with your pots, mixing in herbs or mosquito fighting plants like citronella or lavender (they smell so good!).

• Limit to three to five varieties of plants per container. Any more and your pots might look confused!

• Don’t be afraid to try something new. Even the most seasoned gardeners kill plants. Sometimes it takes a little trial and error to see what works best in your yard.

Perfect for shade: Boston fern caladiums and snow princess lobularia.

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• Seek out your local garden center or nursery—they have knowledgeable staffs that want to help you create something beautiful and they can give you all the tips and tricks you need to succeed.

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FOOD

It’s SUMMER! Warmer temps and gorgeous sunsets call for early evening celebrations—so invite the neighborhood over and kick off summer with an updated entertaining menu. These crisp, colorful appetizers will lighten things up a bit and are a salute the season. Be sure to greet guests with the unexpected, bright flavors in our herb-infused cocktails and your party will be off to a great start!

BY CINDY COOPWOOD AND CORDELIA CAPPS • PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM BECK

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TIME TO THROW A PARTY

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MASHED PEA CROSTINI Colorful and fresh. This is your new go-to app of the season.

1 garlic clove, rough chopped ¼ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided, plus more for toast 2 cups frozen peas, thawed 2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives 1 tablespoon grated lemon peel, divided 1 tablespoon (or more) fresh lemon juice ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes plus more for serving salt and freshly ground black pepper 12 baguette slices, toasted and drizzle with oil

In a small saucepan, combine garlic, parsley, 1 tablespoon oil, a pinch of salt, and ½ cup water. Add peas and cook over medium heat, until peas are tender, about 2 minutes. Drain, reserving cooking liquid.

Transfer to a medium bowl. Using the back of a fork, mash mixture until it is the desired consistency. Mix in chives, ½ tablespoon lemon peel, lemon juice, pepper flakes, and 2 tablespoons oil. Stir in the reserved cooking liquid by tablespoonfuls until mixture is still thick but spreadable. Season with salt, black pepper, and more lemon juice, to taste.

Spread crostini with mixture. Sprinkle with remaining lemon peel and more pepper. Drizzle with extra olive oil to finish.

6 servings

STUFFED SNOW PEAS We can’t say enough good things about these! Tasty. Colorful. Healthy. No cooking. And the humble radish is having a moment. So many variations come to mind, feel free to adjust ingredients to your liking.

4 2 ½ ½ ½

ounces whipped cream cheese, softened ½ teaspoon fresh ground pepper tablespoons fresh dill, finely chopped 24 snow peas teaspoon celery salt 6 radishes, thinly sliced teaspoon garlic powder Fresh dill teaspoon onion powder

In a small bowl stir together cream cheese, dill, celery salt, garlic powder, onion powder and pepper.Transfer mixture to a plastic bag and cut a small corner from the bag for piping. Gently cut along the top edge of each pea with a small, knife, to open them up. Pipe a small amount of cream cheese mixture into each pea and slip a radish slice into each pea pod.

Garnish with an extra sprinkle of dill, a drizzle of olive oil (optional) and cracked pepper.

DECONSTRUCTED WHITE BEAN AND AVOCADO DIP No pureeing or mashing needed. These simple flavors with the added tanginess of feta cheese are an update to your standard guacamole.

1 3 ¼ 2 2 2 2 2

can white beans, drained and rinsed ounces crumbled feta cheese red onion, diced ripe avocados, rough chopped tablespoons fresh lime juice tablespoons olive oil tablespoons wine vinegar tablespoons chopped cilantro, or to taste salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Transfer to serving platter or bowl and garnish with fresh cilantro.

Serve immediately with tortilla or pita chips.

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Muddle & Mix

Perk up your summer cocktails with fresh herbs GRAPEFRUIT ROSEMARY COCKTAIL So pretty, so refreshing!

1.5 ounces vodka ½ cup pink grapefruit juice 1 ounce rosemary syrup Ice Fresh rosemary sprig and pink grapefruit slice to garnish

Pour vodka, grapefruit juice and rosemary syrup into a shaker. Add a scoop of ice and shake vigorously until drink is icy. Strain into a cocktail glass filled with ice and garnish with fresh rosemary and grapefruit slices. Yield: 1 cocktail Rosemary syrup: ½ cup sugar ½ cup water 2 sprigs rosemary

LEMON BASIL GIN & TONIC The classic G&T gets a fresh twist. ½ ounce fresh lemon juice 4 basil leaves 2 ounces gin Tonic Garnish: lemon twist

Lightly muddle basil leaves and lemon juice in the bottom of a rocks glass. Add gin and stir.

Fill glass with ice and top with tonic water. Stir one final time and garnish with a twist of lemon. Yield: 1 cocktail 114 | MAY/JUNE 2018

In a small saucepan, combine the water, sugar and rosemary.

Simmer for 3 minutes with lid on then steep for about 5 minutes before straining. Allow to cool.

Tip: To batch your cocktail recipe for a crowd, just do the math to multiply your ingredients, and pour them into a pitcher, leaving out ice until time to serve, so it won’t dilute the mix. We also suggest leaving out carbonated ingredients until the last minute so mixture doesn’t go flat. When cocktail is premixed, cover your pitcher with plastic wrap and keep chilled.

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PINEAPPLE AND SAGE GIMLET This large format cocktail serves up to ten people. Perfect for an early summer celebration!

16 8 6 to 8 16

ounces gin ounces simple syrup sage leaves, slightly muddled ounces pineapple juice

Combine all ingredients with ice in a pitcher and garnish with additional sage leaves, strawberries and pineapple slices, or fruit of your choice. Enjoy!

SIMPLE SYRUP Handy for mixing cocktails, simple syrup may also be drizzled over fruit or cake for a quick dessert or stirred into iced coffee.

1 cup water 1 cup sugar

Bring sugar and water to a boil in a small saucepan; simmer until sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool.

For herb-flavored syrup: Simply add sprigs of desired herb to saucepan while simmering and strain when finished.

Sprigs may also be added when syrup is removed from heat and allowed to steep for a couple of hours before removing.

Tip: Syrup may be refrigerated in a glass jar for up to 1 month.

CILANTRO COOLER A good aperitif often hints at the meal that will follow. This light, summery cilantro-spiked drink would be a great lead-up to Mexican food. ½ cup chopped cucumber 5 cilantro leaves Ice 2 ounces vodka ¾ ounce fresh lime juice ¾ ounce simple syrup 1 ounce chilled club soda

In a cocktail shaker, muddle the cucumber and cilantro leaves.

Add ice, vodka, lime juice and the simple syrup. Shake well. Pour into an ice-filled glass, stir in the club soda and garnish with lime.

(Strain through a fine strainer to remove herb bits if desired.)

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IN THE FIELD Floral artistry abounds in new book by Garden District owners Greg Campbell and Erick New

Co-owners of the renowned Memphis floral boutique since 2002, their incredible designs have added that certain je ne sais quoi to every occasion of which they have been a part. From sky-scraping installations to an unobtrusive centerpiece, their unique skills complement each other beautifully. You might say Greg is the architect—a persistent, alert perfectionist, while Erick is the engineer—a methodical strategist always prepping for the next step. Their individual interests and skills add to the mix as well—Greg being a master chef and avid gardener; Erick, a former Eagle Scout and keen outdoorsman.

Perhaps their most ambitious undertaking to date is their new book Florists to the Field.

Shot in stunning settings from the Deep South to the West Coast, to the Midwest and across the ocean to Holland, this is a must for anyone interested in floriculture.

When I asked what inspired this type of book, with so many locations far and wide, wouldn’t you know it all came back to a Delta girl. “We had been tossing around the idea of doing a book but we could never settle on a subject or theme. Elizabeth Heiskell approached us about doing a photo shoot at The 116 | MAY/JUNE 2018

SARAH BELL-SÉLAVIE PHOTOGRAPHY

T

O SAY GREG CAMPBELL AND ERICK NEW, owners of Garden District in Memphis have had some big ideas over the years would be an understatement at best. In fact, Greg and Erick have never let reality get in the way of a great idea.

Delta Sol Farm, Proctor, Arkansas

Heaton Pecan Grove, Clarksdale, Mississippi

Wilson Gardens, Wilson, Arkansas

SARAH BELL-SÉLAVIE PHOTOGRAPHY

JULIE WAGE ROSE

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SARAH BELL-SÉLAVIE PHOTOGRAPHY

Farmstead on Woodson Ridge because their florals manager, Katherine Sharp had tons of flowers during a slow time of the year. We thought we would go down there and make arrangements and photograph them for Katherine to use for her emerging flower business. Elizabeth then had the idea of turning it into a dinner and then titled it "The Florists to the Farm" on the invitation. When we saw the invitation, Greg and I looked at each other and said ‘This is it! This is our book,’” said New. Hammelman Farms, Mt. Angel, Oregon “We then decided to contact family farms around the country and in Holland that we do business with and pitch the concept of us coming and doing a farm dinner for them. And that’s how we came to have such diverse locations.”

And the Delta pecan grove shoot? “Since we carry Heaton pecans in the shop it was just fitting that they be a chapter in the book. They were so excited to host a dinner in their orchard, and the addition of Chef Walt Norwood, who I've known for twenty-five years made it even more special. We couldn’t have had a more perfect evening. A slight breeze kept the pesky mosquitoes at bay and the sunset through the pecan trees added to the magic of the evening.”– CC Selected photos from Greg Campbell and Erick New’s new book Florists to the Field. DM Wigchert Delphinium Farm, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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RECOLLECTIONS

A Joyful Noise Remembering the Tangents

BY JIM DEES • PHOTOS COURTESY OF FISH MICHIE

Duff Dorrough, Ken Shaw, Steve Morrison, Fish Michie, and Charlie Jacobs

THE TANGENTS, A ROCKING RHYTHM AND BLUES SOUL BAND (1981-1995) WERE AS DELTA AS THE SUNFLOWER RIVER. Hailing from down home locales such as Ruleville, Merigold, Lula and Cleveland, the “Bad Boys of the Delta” were led by their core nucleus of Jerry “Duff” Dorrough, (guitar, vocals), Jim “Fish” Michie, (piano) and Charlie “Love” Jacobs (sax, harp, vocals).

Rhythm players included drummers Bob Barbee and Ken Shaw and bassists Kevin Mills, Steve Vines, Steve Morrison and Dave “Groovy” Parker. The Tangents never released an album, never made a video, and never had a song on the radio. And yet, they were unforgettable. If you saw them, you remember. If not, this story is for you: The best band you never heard.

122 | MAY/JUNE 2018

Pianist Michie recalls early gigs before the band was even a band. “Duff and I played some gigs with (saxophonist) Grover Duke and the Cavaliers in the late 70s. We also played in a disco band together. We hated it. One night Groove had enough and set fire to his tuxedo.”

Rising from the ashes of a burning tux, Michie says they took it to the river. “We had a full band gig every Sunday at the Tunica Cut-Off, out on the boat landing. We had a guest house and a key to the ski boat.”

Drummer Barbee says it was all pretty casual—in fact, that was one suggested band name, The Casuals. “It got to be a thing but we didn’t really have a name. We rode around one day trying to think of a

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Early Tangents promotional photo taken at Morrison Brother’s Music, Cleveland 1983.

Duff with The Tangents playing George Street Grocery, in Jackson.

Fish Michie at the Mangy Moose, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

band name and nobody could come up with one.”

By 1981 the Band With No Name booked an out-of-town gig in Oxford at the Hoka and the Gin (a converted warehouse/movie theatre and cotton gin/tavern, respectively). Barbee continues, “I think Charlie got there first that afternoon. The Hoka owner, Ronzo Shapiro, would write the night’s line-up on butcher paper with a magic marker and then staple it up outside. That was the “marquee.”

Charlie told him to call us, “The Tangents” and that was our first official gig.

“We made $14 that night,” Michie recalls. “They quit selling tickets.”

Shapiro offers his defense. “Charlie

Duff, Fish, Raphael Semmes rehearse songs for the graveside service for Willie Morris, Glenwood Cemetary, Yazoo City, August 1999.

Photo of a different version of The Tangents, 1980s.

The Tangents playing in Memphis, 1988.

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RORY DOYLE

Duff’s Fender Stratocaster guitar he used in The Tangents.

jumped off the stage and confronted me right in the The last photo Fish took with Duff. middle of a song. “Why aren’t you selling tickets?!” I said, Duff at Charlie Jacobs’ “Sorry man, I just had to grave at Clark Mound, dance.”

D’oro Plantation, A partial set list from 1985 2002. This photo was inspiration for the reveals 50 songs going all over song “Beulah” on Fish the musical map like, well, a Fish and Duff during the heyday of Michie/Kristian tangent: Buddy Holly, Louis The Tangents.

Dambrino album “Bluer Than This.”

Jordan, Marvin Gaye, Ricky Skaggs, Beatles, George Jones, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, King Curtis, Booker T and the MGs. Elvis.

“Duff never used a prompter or had three nights in a row. I booked them at the Throughout the 1980s, a band’s sign of words in front of him,” Michie marvels. “As Maple Leaf in New Orleans and Harbor success was big hair and big suits. The many different songs as we did, he knew the Docks in Destin.

Tangents wore their street clothes onstage words to every one of them. Without ever “It was a joyful noise,” he says in wonder. which in Duff ’s case could include a feed having an iPad or scratch paper.”

“From the first lick, it was infectious. Their store cap and cowboy boots with shorts. (Do When asked if they rehearsed, Michie repertoire! I couldn’t believe they knew all not try this at home). Columnist Raad chuckles. “It was pretty much a ‘radar band’ these tunes. I knew good country bands, Cawthon, writing in the Jackson Clarion as far as who’s soloing when. You know, just and rock bands and good jazz bands, but I Ledger in 1983, took note: “Duff doesn’t when you looked at each other, you knew didn’t know any band that could play all of look much like a musician. If you were to who was gonna take the next solo. those genres—and NAIL it!” see him standing in a room full of cotton “We’d get together and have a party and Barbee says the band’s approach was choppers, John Deere mechanics, and then play and call it rehearsal.” simple. “Our job was to make people move. stump jumpers, you would just naturally Music promoter/restauranteur Malcolm Whatever Duff and Charlie did, the rhythm assume he was one of them.

White recalls the early reaction when he section was 100% behind them. We really “There’s something about The Tangents booked The Tangents in the Jackson area. enjoyed each other and it could get a little and their music that exudes the easy grace “I booked them into George Street wild. I think some people came night after and good-time charm that seems to be a Grocery (Jackson night club) and they were night just to see what we were gonna do part of the Delta’s air.” an immediate hit. They packed the place for next.”

And it wasn’t just the Delta or 124 | MAY/JUNE 2018

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Mississippi. The Tangents also made their way out west playing Colorado (Aspen, Telluride, Crested Butte) and Jackson Hole, Wyoming where they had a residency twice a year during the mid-1980s. No matter the audience, they created the same stir.

Shannon McCormick was manager of the much beloved and still extant, Mangy Moose Restaurant and Saloon in Jackson Hole. He recalls booking The Tangents and how his clientele responded. “Mountain people hadn’t heard that kind of music very often,” he enthuses. “Our folks were absolutely taken with them. After the first time they played, we were sold-out every time, with over-flow.

“The guys would drive all the way and stay and play for a week. I kinda figured they would make my job harder and ask me to book them gigs along the way in Kansas City or Denver but they never did. We had Bo Diddley booked solo one night and they opened up for him and he liked them so much he had them back him up during his set.”

Michie recalls playing with Diddley.

“Rehearsal consisted of eating chicken wings and talking about Mississippi an hour before the show,” he laughs. “Bo wouldn’t let Charlie solo because he knew he’d steal the show.”

Even a hall of famer like Bo Diddley was right to fear The Tangents’ onstage presence.

They were ferocious and played not only like their hair was on fire but the whole world was on fire. The group had a batch of soulful originals like Charlie’s ‘Love and Pain” and “Business Man” and Duff,’s “Memphis Moon” and the driving rocker, “Peace in the Lily,” among others. For their many covers, they put their Delta groove on classic tunes from an amazing swath of the American Songbook. Onstage they were funny and kept up a friendly banter with audiences, in a sense, letting everyone in on the joke.

“They weren’t aloof,” White says dryly.

“We were a pretty friendly band,” Michie agrees. “We were at one with the audience no matter where we were playing. Didn’t matter if was an American Legion or a backyard wedding or a black-tie debutante party.”

And yet, there was something more; something undeniable and readily apparent to at least half the crowd: The Tangents were sexy.

“They were so soulful and radiant,” White says. “They had sexual appeal.

Especially Duff and Charlie.”

Noted Delta photographer Maude Schuyler Clay remembers the enchantment of a Tangents performance. “Going to a Tangents gig was like going to the high school dance of your dreams, where the music consisted of the most soulful songs you ever knew and you always felt like the coolest kid there.”

Cookbook author Martha Foose agrees the combination of musical chops and earnest appeal was combustible. “I think the magic is that everybody thought the Tangents loved them the most. I guess it was just their complete earnestness that made everybody think they belonged to them.

“Sincerity wins the day every time.” She pauses reflecting on the pulsing beats, sweaty venues, gyrating crowds and general musical mayhem that some nights raged until dawn: “I’m just glad the floors can’t talk.”

Indeed. Memories of The Tangents are just that—memories—residing in the longago era before all-knowing, all-seeing social media. There are bootleg CDs floating around (remember CDs?) and several songs on YouTube plus the occasional Facebook video snippet. Other than that, the place of The Tangents in Mississippi’s musical history is perhaps obscurely secure. They would certainly have to rank as their generation’s Red Tops, the Vicksburg combo of the 1960s-70s that sent Deltans driving long distances to revel at their dances.

Charlie Jacobs passed away in 1997 and Duff Dorrough in 2012, making any sort of genuine Tangents “reunion” impossible.

Parker and Michie still play professionally in Memphis and Nashville while Barbee lives

quietly in Madison, MS. Steve Morrison was a longtime musical instrument retailer.

Ken Shaw plays occasionally around the Gore Springs area. The loss of Dorrough and Jacobs shrouds the band in a tinge of tragedy.

“We’ve lost so many people from that era,” Foose laments, “including Duff and Charlie and some Delta hard rollers that didn’t make it out. Coupled with all the love and the good times there’s also mourning.”

Fish Michie remembers his departed comrades with pride. “What I’ve come to realize is, at the time, I didn’t realize how great Duff and Charlie were. Our great rhythm section really gave them a chance to shine. Those two guys, I mean, we all made the soup but those two guys really made it cook. You don’t get that same explosion very often playing music.”

Explosion. When was the last time you visited your neighborhood tavern and saw a band that blew your head off—like an explosion? And the band wasn’t high-dollar national headliners, it was your buddies from down the street. Neighborhood guys who just happened to have a passion they turned into greatness. So good that people are still loving them—and reading and writing about them—20 years later. God bless The Tangents.

“Unorthodox and untethered,” White muses. “They flew high and often too close to the sun. Like all things rare, they passed before us in the blink of an eye. They were my favorite band ever.” DM

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EVENTS

Justin Timberlake, May 30 in Memphis.

FESTIVALS, MUSIC & FUN THINGS TO DO May 3

Brandon

May 4-5

Greenwood

May 12

Brantley Gilbert Concert

Que on the Yazoo

Kris Kristofferson

Brandon Amphitheater, 6 pm brandonamphitheater.com

Downtown Greenwood BBQ competition, motorcycle ride and show, beer run, burger eating contest, live music, art & crafts, and more! queontheyazoo.com

Horseshoe Casino

May 5

May 12

May 3

Memphis

Foo Fighters “Concrete and Gold” Tour Fedex Forum, 7:30 pm

May 4-6

Memphis

Landers Center, 3-8 pm www.mississippimusicfoundation.org

Beale Street Music Festival Tom Lee Park

May 4

Southaven

Annual Mississippi Music Awards

Southaven

Mike Epps Platinum Comedy Tour

May 5-26

May 12

Tunica

Cleveland

Pour Mississippi Beer & Music Festival Downtown Cleveland

Southaven

Gospel Singing for a Cure Landers Center Theater, 11 am - 9 pm

Natchez

Natchez Festival of Music

May 13

Starkville

King Cotton Crawfish Boil

Various locations, numerous events and performances www.natchezfestivalofmusic.com

Cotton District, 6:30-8:30 pm Crawfish competition with unlimited beer, bevs and live music kingcottoncrawfishboil.com

Yazoo Arts Council presents “Oh Mr. Faulkner, Do You Write?” by John Maxwell

May 11-13

May 19

Reception at 6 pm, Program at 7 pm 662-746-7776

www.blues2rock.com

Landers Center, 8 pm

May 4

May 5

Yazoo City

Yazoo City

Jerry Clower Festival Main Street in Yazoo City, 10 am-5 pm Arts & crafts, car show, food, kids’ activities, silent auction, and more!

Clarksdale

Clarksdale Caravan Music Fest May 11-12

Tunica

Tracy Lawrence Concert Gold Strike Casino

Senatobia

Five Star City Fest Downtown Senatobia Enjoy activities and games, a 5K, cooking contest, live music, arts and crafts, a car show, BBQ, steak and crawfish, and more!

May 20

Tunica

Tyler Henry Horseshoe Casino

May 24-27

Oxford

World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest & Festival Nutt Auditorium oldtimepianocontest.com

May 26

Tunica

Dwight Yoakam Horsershoe Casino

May 29

Dave Matthews Band Brandon Amphitheater, 6:30 pm brandonamphitheater.com

126 | MAY/JUNE 2018

Brandon

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We aree... ...and we are committedd to finding, developing and suppporting the leaders it takes to end d educational d ineequity, right here iin the GGreater DDelta. l It’s a movement that will take all a of us from the 6,000 students we impact daily, to the 270 educatorrs l di Mississippi leading Mi i i i classrooms, l ooms, andd more through h hout the Delta Dl in business, policy li , and the arts, over 25 years of local scchool and donor partnershipps, andd countless tl inspiredd lleeaders like

Angela B Bass Tunica Native · 2008 Corps Meember · Deputy Direct D or off Policy l , Miss M sissippi FFirst

How will yoou join the movement? ? #IamTeachForAmerica · @TFA_MS @tfa_ms /TFAAMississippi (662) 234-6206 4 62066 · mississippi.t i i i i eacchforamerica.org i

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May 30

Memphis

Curtis Sittenfeld

Justin Timberlake “Man of the Woods” Tour

You Think It I’ll Say It May 10, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford

Fedex Forum, 7:30 pm

June 1-3

Walter Isaacson

Leonardo Da Vinci

Clarksdale

Goat Fest V

May 11, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford

Shack Up Inn, New Roxy Theater, Levon’s Heavy Blues and Roots music festival

George Malvaney

June 2

Tunica

Darren Knight

June 16

Horseshoe Casino

June 2

Indianola

B.B. King Homecoming Fletcher Park Featuring Tito Jackson and former members of BB King Blues Band, Grady Champion, and more!

June 2

Cleveland

A Night in the Arts, Summer Block Party Delta Arts Alliance

June 2

Cleveland

Greenville

Warfield Riverfest Warfield Point Park, 9:30 am-5:30 pm

June 6-10

Tupelo

20th Annual Tupelo Elvis Festival

Fast Track Summer Music Camp Grammy Museum www.grammymuseumms.org, Deadline to apply is May 21.

June 24

Tunica

Aaron Lewis June 28

Greenwood

Tunica

Horseshoe Casino

Tunica

Old Crow Medicine Show

BOOK SIGNINGS

Horseshoe Casino

Tunica

War concert Gold Strike Casino

Susan Cushman

Southern Writers on Writing May 2, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson

June 12-15

William Boyle

Pinetop Perkins Foundation Workshop

The Lonely Witness

Hopson Plantation, Shack Up Inn Masterclasses in piano, guitar, harmonica, bass pinetopperkinsfoundation.org

May 2, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford May 8, 5:30 pm: Turnrow Books, Greenwood Rick Bragg

Tunica

Gold Strike Casino

June 15

Jackson

MS Craft Beer Festival Duling Hall

June 16

Southaven

John Fogerty and ZZ Top “Blues and Bayous Tour” BankPlus Amphitheater at Snowden Grove, 7 pm 128 | MAY/JUNE 2018

May 29, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford May 31, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson Claire Legrand

Furyborn June 5, 5 pm: Sqaure Books, Oxford Joseph Crespino

Atticus Finch: Harper Lee, Her Father, and the Making of an American Icon June 6, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson June 7, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford

Visible Empire

Bentonia

Brian Seltzer’s Rockabilly Riot

May 21, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford

Hanna Pittard

Holmes Farm A full day of blues, drinks and food

June 15

A Shout In the Rain

Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi

46th Bentonia Blues Festival

Clarksdale

Kevin Powers

Ellen B. Meacham

May 1, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson

June 11-16

May 17, 6 pm: Graduare Rooftop Bar, Oxford

Empire of Light

Arboretum area between the two downtown bridges. Enjoy food, live entertainment, a veteran’s tribute, splash pad and activities, a boat parade, and a fireworks show.

June 29

Buttermilk Grafitti

Michael Bible

Theresa Caputo Long Island Medium

www.tupeloelvisfestival.com

June 9

Cleveland

Stars and Stripes Festival and Community Picnic

Downtown Cleveland, 12-3 pm

June 8

June 17-22

May 15, 5 pm: Lemuria Books Edward Lee

Horseshoe Casino

2nd Annual Bud & Burgers June 2

Memphis

Martin Lawrence Comedy Tour FedEx Forum, 7:30 pm

Cups Up: How I Organized a Klavern, Plotted a Coup, Survived Prison, Graduated College, Fought Polluters, and Started a Business

The Best Cook in the World: Tales From My Momma’s Table May 4, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson May 5, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford May 6, 12:30 pm: Turnrow Books, Greenwood Kaitlyn Sage Patterson

The Diminished May 8, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford

June 11, 5:30 pm: Turnrow Books, Greenwood June 12, 5 pm: Sqaure Books, Oxford Jon Meacham

The Soul of America June 13, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford Caleb Johnson

Treeborne June 15, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford June 18, 5:30 pm: Turnrow Books, Greenwood Silas House

Southernmost June 20, 5 pm: Square Books, Oxford

DM

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DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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DELTA SEEN

Cotton Ball at Leflore County Civic Center in Greenwood on February 24 Photos by Caroline Stuckey

Anna Butler, Maggie Lundberg, Baylor Pillow and Leslie and Mark Singleton Tarver Rollston

Spence Barrett and Shelbi Malouf

Shane and Mollie Malouf

Keith and Jill Upchurch

Johnny and Cathy Jennings

Dale Pillow and Merritt Belk

Steve and Beth Williams

Amy Smitherman, Amber Blaylock and Lasa Bennett

Mari Wilson Spruill, Olivia Crick, Pia Chawla, Elizabeth Powers, Anne Craig Melton, Mia Cole and Abby Upchurch

James Powers, Jackson Dunn, Yates Poe, John Roberts Smitherman, Jack Poe and Salter Melton 130 | MAY/JUNE 2018

Nathan and Meghan Peden with T.C. and Mary Kathryn Wilson

Anne Fair Lucas, Liza Self, Mary Laine Dyksterha, Annie Powers, Miriam Jane Rogers, Madeline Holland and Libby Powers

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Annual Member Reception and Gladys Knight Performance at the BPAC on March 22 Photos by Sandi Burt

Ann Marie Pate and Karen Myers

DELTA SEEN

Bill LaForge, Gladys Knight and Morgan Freeman

Bill Litton and Ann Litton with Jamie and Craig Brewer

Carol and Charles McAdams

Keith Fulcher, Donna Malone, Amy Johnson, Barbara Briscoe, Percy Malone, Mae Williams and William C. Bell

Jamie Davidson and Nancy LaForge

Dr. Vernell Bennett and Patric Fairs Docia England and Tracy Provenza

Laura Howell and Cheryl Comans

Mae Roise Williams and William C. Bell

Desira and Tom Janoush

Walt and Julie Starr, Kara Bosworth with Helen and John Lewis

Tommy Mills, Anita Bologna and Bob Ferguson

Cheryl Camons with Billy and Becky Nowell DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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DELTA SEEN

Bill and Francine Luckett with Scott Coopwood

Bill Luckett’s 70th Birthday Party at Ground Zero Blues Club on March 17 in Clarksdale

Bill Luckett and Morgan Freeman

Marilyn Trainor Storey, Olive Crotwell Kitchens Morgan Freeman and Eleanor Gill

Carmen Hines and Charles Gardner (from Chicago)

Bill’s birthday cake

Whitney Luckett Trimble and Bill Luckett

Vickie House and Linda Keena

Linda Keena, Morgan Freeman, Jerry Tankersley and Suzy Bergner

Whitney and Scott Trimble

Draper Mauldin and Dave Dunavent

Morgan Freeman, Linda Keena, Bill and Francine Luckett with Scott Coopwood

Linda Keen, Catfish Flautt, Scott Coopwood, Doug Mauldin, Bill Luckett, Draper Mauldin; kneeling, Douglas Mauldin 132 | MAY/JUNE 2018

Tom Davis, Morgan Freeman, Linda Keena and Bill Luckett

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Book Signing at Turnrow Books featuring Tiffany Quay Tyson and Michael Farris Smith on March 20 and 25 Photos by Johnny Jennings

DELTA SEEN

Byron Keys and Rachel Harvey

Billy Bowman and Michael Farris Smith

Cheryl Taylor and Kyle Thornhill

Brandi Pillow, Connie Black and Tiffany Quay Tyson

Lisa Manchester and Sebrea Smith

Susan Montgomery and Richard Jacobs

Mary Ashton, Courtney Myers, Kathy Hoana and Carol McMinn

Judy Tyson, Tiffany Quay Tyson and John Burshtan

Brandi Pillow, Derek Hinckley and Lisa Jones

Henry Flautt, Linda and Dr. Bruce Newell

Sharon Pielemeier and Bethy Foley Barnes

William Moore, Liz Howell and Chris Kalil

Arushi Thakur, Mary Grace Shiers and Tiffany Quay Tyson DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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DELTA SEEN

Camille Collins and Lisa Winters

Julia Bozier, Rebecca Goodman with Amanda and Jon Delperdang

Ashley Winters, Donna Adams and Pat Burton

Photos by Roy Meeks

Jan and Lee Engel with Gayden Metcalfe

Pat Koenig, Anita Minton and Jennifer Maugh

Annette Willis, Judy Long and Erin Sanders

Bubbles & Bonbons at Belmont Plantation on March 25

Rebecca Goodman, Greg Dickerson and Linda Doolittle

Katherine Brown, Evelyn Brown, George Brown, Leslie Davidson and Barry Piltz

Ned and Paula Kronfol with Kathy and Tommy Hart

Michael Oltremari, Rebecca Kellner, Anne Archer and Nephrew Dennington JoAnne Heisterkamp, Toni Gamberini, Pam Confer, Mary Spadini, Shirley Wuestenhofer, Gloria Hughes 134 | MAY/JUNE 2018

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Inaugural Oxford Bourbon Festival at King’s Steak House on March 30 Photos by Randall Haley

A selection of photos from Delta Magazine readers who attended the National Championship Basketball Game in Ohio

DELTA SEEN

Steve and Gay Case

Torrey and Kristy Henron David and Heather Gerson

Heath Goff and Catherine Johnson

Craig and Peppar Garvin, Kelly Anderson and Chad Kea

Maggie Lyon, Anne Boehringer and Lori Stitt

Lightnin' Malcolm and Angele Mueller

Emily Morris, Chad Moss and Laura Tackitt

Tom and Tina Pipkin

Dennis Raddle and Deb Jung

Mike and Cathy Stewart

Nelson and Anne Hernandez

Stefanie Walker Jones and Tammy Whalen

Jodie, Mary and Hartwell Huddleson

Front row: Jack (bulldog) and Lisa Pritchard; middle row: Julie Peyton Scott, Taylor Ann Bailey and Bishop, Audrey McBride, Jan Walton and Jan Copeland; back row: Leanne Flowers, Mary Madeline Timbs, Phyllis Timbs, Campbell Carlee McDonald Melton and Memorie Dixon DELTA MAGAZINE 2018

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Thefinalword

Delta memories and legacies

Gene Dattel was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta. He became a cultural and economic historian after a long career in finance.

His latest books are Reckoning with Race and Cotton and Race in the Making of America. He lives in NYC with his wife Licia.

ome was Sunflower County, Mississippi Delta. My grandfather— ”Big Papa,” the Jewish immigrant—settled in the town of Sunflower (population 500) at the turn of the century. Still with his Yiddish accent, Big Papa was elected an alderman. With an abundance of selfconfidence, a Dattel family trait, he nominated himself for vice-mayor and won by a unanimous vote. He bought the home of the Claiborne family on the banks of the Sunflower River.

When my six-year-old brother kept climbing out of the window of Sunflower’s one-room school house, it was time to move down the road to Ruleville (population 1500) in 1946. There I was raised and went to school.

Delta children were the original freerange kids. Life for me in the 1950s was defined by the freedom of small town existence. Afternoons adjusted to seasonal sports—touch football, basketball, and baseball—at a friend’s yard until we were old enough to play organized sports. (Even now, I remember those August football practices in ninety-degree heat.) At thirteen, my friends and I had a rock-androll band that progressed from a high

H

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school show to a TV contest in Memphis.

Delta dances featured live music by the legendary band the Red Tops.

The seasons themselves were delineated by their role in the Delta’s raison d’être— cotton. The stark muddy winter would give way to the tilled rows, and then to the green shoots bursting through the spring air, followed by the beautiful blooms of summer and finally to the autumn harvest.

Fall brought the humming sound and smell of the cotton gin. The sight of the trailers of cotton and the eternal talk of cotton are etched in my senses and memory: “Did you get a rain? How is your crop? Price talk? Government programs?”

There was no anonymity.

As an adult, my older brother Jerry once called the florist, Mrs. Rule, to order gardenias for Mother’s Day. “Boy,” Mrs. Rule replied, “I am not going to send gardenias to your momma. She has the town’s best gardenias in her yard.” I was often identified with reference to my father; I was Isadore’s boy. Familiarity reigned. You saw people often and adjusted seamlessly to everyone. The warm sociability and community closeness never leaves you. As my world expanded to other Delta towns, I experienced the easy kindred spirit with other Delta folks in Cleveland, Greenwood and Greenville.

Northerners are still surprised that Jews lived in the Mississippi Delta. Their amazement reaches a higher level when they hear about the degree of assimilation.

By way of one of my many examples, I respond that Ruleville’s high school football coach, Mr. Gunn, would contact Rabbi Landau in Cleveland to see if there was a

BY GENE DATTEL

Friday night conflict with the high holy days. If there was, Coach Gunn would reschedule games so that we could play.

Saturday nights often meant working, by choice, in our department store. The buzz on Saturday night was exciting and educational. Selling clothes and “working” the cash register taught me about relating to people, learning to listen and understanding that everyone has a story.

My small town Delta background prepared me well for a peripatetic career in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York. It is no coincidence that I became obsessed with learning about the international economics of the cotton world—from my college days to the present. And along came my book, Cotton and Race in the Making of America whose major muse was Delta writer David L. Cohn. The imbued sense of civility, humor, respect and ease in social situations within a multi-ethnic society helped me to acclimate to various cultures and places. From my family’s experience, especially that of my grandfather, I embraced and retain the importance of assimilation while retaining a sense of tradition.

I discovered that while I left the Delta, the Delta never left me. During my early days in New York’s financial world, Craig Claiborne, Sunflower native and food guru for the New York Times, welcomed me along for restaurant reviews, Delta talk and an education about food. Each time that I drive from Memphis to the Delta and the hills give way to the flat open landscape, I know that I am home. DM

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