We are starting our day off in the mid to upper 70s, under partly cloudy skies across North Mississippi. Sunny skies, with a high near 95 is expected. Heat index values as high as 103. Calm wind becoming south southwest around 5 mph. There is a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms this afternoon. Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low around 76.
The chance of showers and thunderstorms increases during our work week with temperatures in the mid 90s and heat index values exceeding 100 degrees!
Well-known in the blues scene in the U.S. and abroad, these Mississippi bluesmen have a lot more in common than just guitars.
Growing up playing music in the Church of God in Christ isn’t the only thing Clinton, Mississippi-bred bluesmen Eddie Cotton Jr. and Jarekus Singleton have in common, but it might be the most significant.
“When other churches were conservative, not letting people bring in drums, not letting people bring in guitars, at the COGIC church the lid has always been off,” says Cotton, whose father was a preacher at Christ Chapel Church of God in Clinton.
The weekly free-form church services were a training camp for both musicians — Singleton’s grandfather led the True Gospel Church of God in Christ in Jackson — challenging them to keep up with all manner of instrumentation and tempos while honing their improvisational chops.
“Anybody could get up and start to singing,” he says. “If people wanted to shout, they shouted. And being a musician, you had to put music behind what they were doing. If you couldn’t catch them, you were accused of not being able to play.”
After church services, though, Cotton turned his attention to the blues in the historic Sarah Dickey neighborhood where he grew up. That was the music he heard on 90.1 FM while riding around in his uncle’s car, from old schoolers like Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King and Albert King to “southern soul” blues artists Tyrone Davis, Elmore James and Little Milton, who recorded for Jackson’s Malaco Records.
“Blues was played all the time around the neighborhoods, and the music fascinated me,” says Cotton. “It had a certain feel to it that I just loved even as a youngster.”
Vicksburg Blues Society/Jesse Worley
Eddie Cotton Jr.
Cotton understood how the music of his church related to the music on the block. Even though the songs played in the Church of God in Christ were gospel, he says, they still used blues-based chord progressions and scales, which gave him a feel for the blues. At Jackson State University, he expanded his knowledge base and began experimenting with other kinds of music, but blues was always his foundation, and he sought out likeminded artists.
“King Edward was the first that I ever saw, that I could put my hand on, that was playing the blues like I’d never seen it before,” he recalls. “That encouraged me more than anything, because it was like I found a new home.”
Cotton struck up a friendship with Edward and began sitting in with him on guitar at live performances. “Hearing blues on a radio is one thing,” he says, “but to see somebody play it live is another. I’ve heard guitar players all my life, but they didn’t play with the mastery of lead that I saw King Edward play with. And he was doing it for a living.”
Despite being born half a generation apart, the lives of 50-year-old Cotton and 35-year-old Singleton intertwined through church, music and familial bonds.
Photo by Mikel Samel
Jarekus Singleton
As leaders of neighboring churches of the same faith, Eddie Cotton Sr. and Jimmy Lee Shearry, Singleton’s grandfather, preached and led revivals together. That’s how Honey Emmett Shearry, Jimmy’s brother, came to teach Cotton how to play guitar. Later, as Cotton’s popularity grew, he paid that mentorship forward by teaching Singleton’s uncle, Tony Shearry, who then opened his world to the blues.
“We all looked up to Eddie coming up,” says Singleton, who remembers seeing Cotton perform at the Alamo in Jackson while in high school. His uncle Tony would bring him to hear music at the old 930 Blue Café on North Congress Street, too, even though he was underage. “I couldn’t get in, but I’d sit outside and listen to the bands.”
Cotton and Singleton share an independent streak, and not just in their commitment to the blues. Both artists put in the work to have it their way, building their audiences and running their own businesses while continually investing back into it and becoming savvy marketers.
Although they’ve both recorded for prominent record labels, they currently maintain control over their own recording and performing careers, while others choose to work within the traditional network of booking agents, managers and publicists. Their method is becoming more common in the age of streaming, where consumers listen to music through platforms like Spotify and Apple Music instead of owning physical CDs distributed by a label.
“I wanted to do it a certain way,” Cotton explains. “I wanted to make a certain amount [of money].
Vicksburg Blues Society/Jesse Worley
Eddie Cotton Jr.
And you’ve got these people, the movers and the shakers so they think, and if you don’t do it they way, they try to make it hard on you. So, I always was, ‘If you can’t get in the niche, you have to create your own.’”
As Cotton and Singleton have established themselves as popular blues musicians on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean through touring clubs and the European and U.S. festival circuit, their friendship and mutual respect endures.
“I go to his house every now and then,” Singleton says. “He’ll just grab a guitar, he’ll tell me to pick one up. He’s a phenomenal musician. He plays organ, drums — and he might can play more instruments than that.”
The artists were scheduled to perform together at the city of Clinton’s 31st July 4th Family Fireworks Extravaganza until the continued spread of COVID-19 led the city to cancel the event. Instead, Singleton has been working on his fourth album at Brudog Studios in Pelahatchie.
“The pandemic is holding us up for sure, as far as playing live,” Singleton says. But considering more recent events, he has heavier things on his mind these days.
“This racial issue we really have to address, and it’s getting out of hand. I’m just thinking about how we have to speak to this racism and this police brutality, and this unwarranted behavior toward blacks and other minorities,” he says.
The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of policemen or private citizens acting in that capacity this spring have made those issues a global conversation once again.
“A policeman should be a friend of the people,” says Cotton. “He should be someone who I can trust to uphold the law. If you check history, that kind of authority is always being abused. What I think is going on now is with social media, you can’t get away with stuff you used to get away with.”
As statues and symbols honoring the Confederacy began to come down around the United States, Mississippi legislators voted to remove the state flag, which flew for 126 years with the Confederate battle emblem in the upper left corner. Gov. Tate Reeves signed the legislation to retire the flag on June 30.
“[The flag] shouldn’t even be an issue,” Cotton says. “I hear people talk about their heritage. I can understand that, but on my side, being an African American, it didn’t work for me. I don’t need to be reminded that this is what it’s about — white supremacy. That part I don’t agree with. That’s what it means.”
Two Mississippi icons: Jack Cristil, right, interviewed Elvis Presley at a 1956 fair in Tupelo.
Sixty-four years ago, someone snapped a photograph of two Mississippi icons. The moment is preserved for the ages: Jack Cristil, who died in 2014, interviewing Elvis Presley, who died in 1977. Cristil was 30 years young, Presley 21, when the photo was taken.
When I first saw the photo, years and years ago, I could not wait to ask Cristil about it. As always, he was candid.
“Worst damned interview I ever had,” Cristil said in that clipped baritone of his. “I don’t think Presley much wanted to be there, and I know I didn’t. It was terrible, just terrible.”
Rick Cleveland
Perfect, I thought. Vintage Jack Cristil. All you ever got from Cristil was the truth. He didn’t embellish. He gave you the facts whether you wanted them or not. He was clear, concise. And he was, for sixty years, Mississippi State. Over his 58-year tenure as State’s play-by-plan radio announcer, Cristil called 636 football games and 1,538 basketball games.
“Some of my fondest childhood memories are of sitting at the kitchen table with my daddy, listening to Jack Cristil describe Mississippi State football games. He made the games come alive for me. I loved his voice and the way he described the games. It was like he put you in the stadium. He was, in many ways, my introduction to college football. And, still, when I hear his voice I think about those afternoons with my daddy. Jack Cristil’s voice, to me, is college football.”
That was Archie Manning speaking. I would say the same.
Mississippi State athletics
Jack Cristil, near the end of his career.
Cristil’s voice was so distinct you could almost taste the cigarettes he was smoking and the coffee he was drinking as he told about the games. It might be a Saturday afternoon in October or a Wednesday night in February. You could be driving the back roads between Sumrall and Bassfield or Corinth and Kossuth. You would fumble with the radio dial, trying to hear through that interminable static. And then you’d hear it — that voice, that unmistakable voice, talking about 6-tall halfbacks or point guards.
When Cristil was in the midst of his 50th season of broadcasting Mississippi State football, I went to Tupelo to spend a day with him. It is a day I will always cherish.
He told me about growing up in Memphis, the son of Jewish immigrants from Latvia and Russia. He told me about the family’s first radio, which introduced him to American sports.
Cristil: “Here I was in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was absolutely enthralled with the idea that a man could be sitting in some stadium in New York or Chicago or Boston, telling me about a ballgame. It was like magic. I was enchanted by it. It captured my imagination to the extent that I knew right then and there that’s what I was going to do. I was 6 years old, but I knew what I was going to do for a living, and I never changed my mind.”
The first Mississippi State game he ever saw was the first one he ever called. He was hired by the legendary MSU athletic director Dudy Noble, who gave him advice he never forgot.
Cristil, again, repeating Noble: “You tell that radio audience what the score is and who’s got the ball and how much time is left and you cut out the bull.”
Said Cristil: “I was aghast, but it turned out to be the best advice I ever got. Because that’s all the people want. They want the score, who’s got the ball and how much time is left. They don’t want the bull.”
With Cristil, you never got the bull: not about all things Mississippi State. Not about Elvis.
And for that reason, you trusted Cristil. He put you there, in the stadium with him. When Cristil did his last Mississippi State game, a basketball game at Tennessee, I listened and tried to think of the appropriate analogy for a column I would write the next day.
For me it was this: It was like listening to Frank Sinatra, whose permanence rivaled Cristil’s even though his voice became more gravelly with time, sing his last song.
Teachers gathered at the Capitol Friday to protest the reopening of schools in Mississippi due to the rising number of coronavirus cases in the state.
The protest was organized by Mississippi Teachers Unite. The group is demanding that the reopening of schools should be postponed until Sept. 1 for the safety for teachers and students. The group also wants schools to meet the current guidelines provided by the CDC before the start of in-person classes. Lastly, the group demands that schools to be fully funded so districts and teachers do not have to use their own funds for personal protective equipment.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Parchman prison. Jan. 15, 2020.
A prison-reform group founded by rappers JAY-Z and Meek Mill along with Patriots owner Robert Kraft is calling for Mississippi lawmakers to override Gov. Tate Reeves’ veto of a criminal justice bill that would have made thousands of inmates eligible for parole.
But it’s unclear whether lawmakers – particularly in the Senate – could muster the two-thirds vote to override Reeves’ veto of Senate Bill 2123. A Mississippi Legislature has not overridden a governor’s veto since 2002, when then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove vetoed budget bills.
“This veto serves as just the latest example of how Gov. Reeves has continued to fail the incarcerated population in the state,” the REFORM Alliance said in a statement. “… REFORM Alliance (is) urging the Legislature to override Reeves’ veto and enable thousands of people in Mississippi prisons to seek parole, reduce prison overcrowding amid the COVID-19 crisis and save taxpayers upwards of $45 million.”
Mississippi, with the second-highest incarceration rate in the nation, faces a prison crisis with overcrowding, high death rates, violence and deplorable conditions. It faces lawsuits and is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Much of the problem stems from Mississippi’s harsh sentencing laws passed in the mid-1990s and from lack of rehabilitation and reentry programs.
Reform legislation this year had broad bipartisan support, including from numerous conservative groups such as Empower Mississippi, American Conservative Union, Right on Crime and Americans for Prosperity.
Senate Bill 2123 was the centerpiece of this year’s reform. It would have created consistency in parole eligibility, allowing non-violent offenders eligibility after serving 25% of their sentences and some violent offenders eligibility after serving 50% of their sentences or serving 20 to 30 years, depending on what years they were sentenced.
The parole board would have final say, with supporters of the reform saying it would have restored parole board control over granting parole to levels similar to the early ‘90s, before prison population exploded from tough-on-crime laws created harsher sentences and clamped down on parole eligibility.
The legislation was expected to provide parole eligibility to around 2,000 inmates and to save the state about $45 million a year in corrections costs.
“There were lots of safeguards in place,” said House Judiciary B Chairman Nick Bain, R-Corinth, who helped pass the now-vetoed legislation. “This is just eligibility, yes, the parole board would have final say. I think that got lost in this.”
Senate Judiciary B Chairman Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, said the reform was “good, conservative legislation.”
“I have heard from people all across the political spectrum, particularly in Republican conservative circles on how they were disappointed (in the veto).”
But Reeves, echoing what some conservative lawmakers and groups opposed to the legislation argued, said the reforms were well intentioned but “went too far” and would result in dangerous criminals on the street.
Both Bain and Wiggins said they know of no concerted effort at the moment to whip votes for a veto override. The Legislature is currently in limbo with unfinished business from the 2020 session and multiple Reeves vetoes, because of a COVID-19 outbreak among lawmakers and Capitol staffers.
Senate Bill 2123 passed the House 78-29, with what appears to be a veto-proof majority. But in the Senate it fell short of a two-thirds majority, passing 25-17.
While most other groups advocating for Mississippi criminal justice reform have not joined the REFORM Alliance in calling directly for a veto override, they still urge state leaders to deal with the prison crisis. Some hope Reeves might call a special legislative session and help push for reform.
“Clearly we are in the middle of a prison crisis and it went unaddressed during the regular session,” said Empower Mississippi President Grant Callen. “We’ve heard there’s growing momentum for an override, but we think a special session would be the most productive way to address the issue.”
Reeves also vetoed another criminal justice reform measure, House Bill 658, aimed at helping convicts re-enter society and the workforce by increasing the number of expungements for felonies people could get after serving their sentences and a five-year wait from one to three.
Reeves said allowing people to erase multiple felonies from their records would result in “career criminals walking around with no records.”
But Wiggins, a former prosecutor, said, “People fail to realize that expungement is a valuable tool in the criminal justice system.
“It allows people to get back to work after they’ve served their sentences and not be hamstrung by something that happened years ago,” Wiggins said. “It is a tool that reasonable prosecutors and judges can use to hold people accountable – understanding non-adjudication is not allowed for violent offenses … If we are fully committed to allowing people to get back to work and not being a drain on society, this is a tool to do that.”
Esther Newell protests outside of the Capitol in Jackson on Friday, July 17, 2020.
The blunt question, posed by a public school teacher at a rally Friday morning, echoed outside the Mississippi Capitol on Friday morning: “How many children need to die before you take action?”
The group, called Mississippi Teachers Unite, asked leaders for several things on Friday: Postpone reopening schools until Sept. 1; ensure schools can meet current Centers for Disease Control safety guidelines and to disallow schools to conduct in-person classes until those needs are met; and fully fund public schools so districts can purchase the supplies needed to restart school safely.
The rally comes as coronavirus statistics in the state are spiking. This week provided Mississippi highest rolling average of new cases. Several days this week, the state broke single day records of confirmed positive cases. Coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations are spiking, as well.
The Department of Education has offered three options for school districts thus far: traditional in-person schooling, virtual learning, or a combination of the two. Districts must decide for themselves and post the information publicly by the end of the month.
Most, if not all, attendees at the rally wore masks and took turns chanting phrases like “Too soon for classrooms!” as they circled the Capitol and performed a demonstration of what a socially distant classroom would look like.
Chandler Rogers, a 17-year-old high school student from Rosedale, said the conditions at his school in the West Bolivar School District are not set up to ensure people can be safe and socially distant. He worries about returning to school and the responsibility he would bear if he caught the virus and infected people. His mother has late stage breast cancer, he said, and, “If I get it and take it to her, she could possibly die.”
“I’m not trying to worry about am I finna die, am I finna kill somebody, or is people that I love gonna make it?” Rogers said.
Lynne Schneider is a high school teacher who just started dialysis six weeks ago, and she worries what could happen once she’s back in the classroom with students again.
“I don’t want to die of a stupid reason, of a preventable reason,” Schneider said. “If there was ever a time for teachers to have a voice and not be afraid to use that voice, it’s now.”
Friday’s rally is just one instance in which educators are speaking up about their concerns. Mississippi Association of Educators President Erica Jones, who attended Friday’s rally, wrote a letter to the governor, state superintendent and state board of education members this week, requesting that the start of school be delayed and protocols put in place surrounding mask and safety requirements. She also advocated for waiving state testing and accountability requirements for the upcoming school year.
“While it has been our hope that school buildings could open in a few short weeks, it has become abundantly clear that we are in no position to proceed as planned,” Jones wrote. “We cannot, and should not, rush back into buildings simply to comply with the current calendared start date when students’ and educators’ health and safety are at risk.”
Separately, a group signed “Mississippi Teachers” wrote an open letter to the governor reiterating the rally demands, requesting that school opening be delayed until at least Labor Day and the Legislature fully fund schools.
The past several days, Mississippi Today has spoken with teachers across the state to learn more about their concerns with returning to the classroom.
Erica Scott is a Spanish teacher at Ocean Springs High School. She said she felt the district communicated effectively since schools physically closed in March, but she is concerned about the safety and health of her students, her colleagues and her own children when school returns.
“What about the teachers, you know? Students have an option for virtual academy, but I have four children. If I’m exposed to COVID-19 and I expose it to my four children … it puts us in a bad position because no one wants to get sick,” she said.
With the addition of masks and social distancing, Scott was unsure of how teaching and learning would look in a foreign language classroom.
“At the high school, we have 1,900 students,” she said. “My classes are filled with 30 students but its not a huge classroom like a lecture hall… it’s a lot of speaking, a lot of talking, a lot of rolling of the R that’s going on, and I want to make sure I hear them clearly, but that won’t be the main focus. I want them to get what they need.”
Alison Rausch, a middle school special education teacher in Prentiss County Schools, said whatever option is best for the students is best for her. However, she is uncertain on the district’s plan when the number of COVID-19 cases continue to rise.
“We’ve been told we will start back on our original schedule a couple of weeks ago, but if the numbers continue to increase, I do not know if that will be modified,” she said. “As we start to approach coming back in August, I’m a little anxious. My classroom is actually really small so I work with anywhere from 11 to 14 kids. We’re really waiting on general education teachers to finish their lesson plans and their things so we can prepare for our students. Just a lot of unknowns that always makes you anxious.”
Micalya Tatum, a middle school teacher in the Vicksburg-Warren School District, echoed the comments of Rausch and Scott, saying children or teachers getting sick or potentially dying is “unacceptable” and a “big risk.” Aside from health and safety concerns, Tatum said, more resources around distance learning, training, and PPE are needed from a federal and state level.
“All of these districts have plans to do X,Y,Z, but at the end of the day, we don’t know what is going to happen,” Tatum said. “We need that funding to make sure we’re safe, for internet resources… We need to make sure we have the money to be able to support families. I think Vicksburg did a great job of supporting families, but I know overall not everyone in the state has access to resources.”
Color your way through Mississippi with me! Click below to download a coloring sheet of Lux, Mississippi’s own Ensign Jesse L. Brown, the U.S. Navy’s first African American Naval Aviator.
Good Friday evening everyone!! It is currently 94°F in Tupelo with a heat index of 104, under partly cloudy skies. Tonight we will be clear, with a low in the 70s.
SATURDAY: Expect sunny skies with a high near 96. Heat index values as high as 103 Some areas could reach heat index values even higher! Satirday night will remain mostly clear, with a low around 75.
SUNDAY Will be sunny and hot, with a high near 97. Heat index values as high as 105! Calm wind becoming south southwest around 5 mph. Sunday night will remain mostly clear, with a low around 75.
Fire. Desire. Passion. It is what drives us to make crazy decisions in the spur of the moment. It is the adrenaline rush when you achieve what we set out to do. It is the push when others say you cannot possibly reach a goal causing you to push harder than you ever knew you could. It is what burns in your heart; gets you excited just talking about it. It is the flush in your face, the fast beat of your heart, and the realization that you have dreams bigger than this world. It is the desire for something more than what the world suggest you should settle for.
There are those of us who refuse to settle. Whenever we are in one spot for too long, we feel the urge to jump into something else or make an insane move to create a better opportunity. Sometimes the opportunity turns out to be everything we had planned. On the flip side, sometimes we fall flat on our face, we lose it all and only face the challenge of rebuilding from the ground up again. No fear. Those who have this perpetual drive to be more do not mind that rebuilding. As a matter of fact, it might frustrate us at first but we usually see it as a challenge to come back even better than before.
This drive often propels us to take chances others would deem risky. We are the ones who are looked down on because we “change jobs too often.” They say that we “do not know where our lives are headed” and that we “need to grow up” … but maybe those people actually envy us. Maybe they wish they had the guts to plunge into their dreams head first. To take the risk instead of playing it safe as society has taught us to do.
The world may judge our impetuous hearts, but we are just people who have no desire to ever settle.
We want to feel everything in life there is to feel. If there is an emotion to feel, we want to experience it at the highest point available to us on this human realm.
We will be the first to move across the world with only a couple dollars in our pocket and a dream bigger than our circumstances.
People think we are insane. They would wonder why we would quit a good paying job to go off and create our own dreams. Maybe they are the ones settling. They do not mind doing the mundane. Maybe they do not feel that it is necessary to go crazy but it is what feeds our souls. No amount of money in the world would make these people understand because they do not play with fire.
We who are eccentric, the wanderers of the world, the wild risk takers with untamed souls — we play with fire. We know that sometimes we will get burned, but if we never tried, we would never know the warmth of accomplishing our dreams on our own terms.
There is a feeling that comes over you when what was in your head as a dream is now something right in front of you. There is this amazing warmth that floods your soul. That desire burns. Nothing is ever enough. Once a feeling or goal is achieved, we want to reach another one. We want to feel something else on a whole new level. We want to create more. We want to create better.
The artists. The dreamers. The poets. The musicians. The writers. There are so many of us on this road of desire and we all play with fire.
I play with fire. I feel deeply. I create and want more each day. I ponder daily what my next leap of faith will be. Sometimes not knowing the answer until the split second I decide to follow the dream and not look back is the best part. I love. I hurt. I wander. I feel the warmth. I have been burned. A lot.
We know who we are. We do not deny it. We stick together. We fuel the fires created in one another. We encourage others to pursue their dreams. and to take a chance because there is something magical in it. in a way it is a never-ending addiction.
May those of us who understand this never lay down the matches because playing with fire is the only way we will carry on the warmth of this world.
