Junior Kimbrough's Juke Joint — Chulahoma, Mississippi

Junior Kimbrough's juke joint in the community of Chulahoma in Marshall County, Mississippi, was one of the last and most celebrated authentic juke joints in the American South before it was destroyed by fire in 2000. Kimbrough — David Kimbrough Sr. — operated the club from a converted church building on the back roads of Hill Country Mississippi, running all-night Sunday sessions that drew locals and, eventually, music journalists and enthusiasts from around the world who had heard about the hypnotic, trance-like style he played. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker acknowledges the site as one of the defining locations of Hill Country blues.

Junior Kimbrough played a style distinct from Delta blues — what has come to be called 'Hill Country blues,' a more repetitive, drone-based approach rooted in African musical traditions that differed from the 12-bar structure of the Delta. His Sunday-night sessions at the Chulahoma juke joint were religious in their intensity: Kimbrough playing the same one-chord or two-chord patterns for hours, dancing and playing simultaneously, the room packed with dancers and drinkers responding to the hypnotic repetition. The filmmaker Robert Mugge documented the juke joint in a film; the Chulahoma recordings Kimbrough made for Fat Possum Records introduced his music to a wider audience. R.L. Burnside, another Hill Country blues master, was a regular at Kimbrough's sessions.

Kimbrough died on 17 January 1998 and the juke joint burned down two years later. The site in Chulahoma is now marked with a Blues Trail marker identifying it as a key location in Hill Country blues history. Chulahoma is approximately 15 miles from Holly Springs in the hilly, forested terrain of north Mississippi — a landscape quite different from the flat cotton fields of the Delta, and home to a blues tradition that is similarly distinct.