Mississippi Fred McDowell — Como, Mississippi

Mississippi Fred McDowell lived and played in Como, Panola County, Mississippi, from the 1940s until his death in 1972 — farming during the week and playing at local dances and picnics on weekends, entirely unknown outside his immediate community. In 1959, folklorist Alan Lomax recorded McDowell at his home in Como for the Library of Congress, capturing a slide guitar style of striking purity and power. Those recordings, and subsequent albums recorded for Atlantic and other labels following McDowell's 'rediscovery' by the folk revival, introduced his music to a new generation of listeners and musicians.

McDowell played an open-tuned bottleneck slide style — using the neck of a glass bottle rather than a metal slide — that was rooted in the same Hill Country blues tradition as Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside. His playing was less hypnotic-repetitive than theirs and more melodically developed, but it shared the same quality of directness and intensity. His recordings of 'Write Me a Few Lines,' 'Shake 'Em On Down,' and 'You Gotta Move' introduced these songs to white audiences; the Rolling Stones recorded 'You Gotta Move' on Sticky Fingers (1971) after hearing McDowell perform it. He reportedly told them: 'I do not play no rock and roll.' McDowell was also a deacon of his church and maintained that his sacred and secular music were expressions of the same spirit.

A Mississippi Blues Trail marker in Como acknowledges McDowell's life and music. He is buried at Hammond Hill M.B. Church Cemetery in Como. The town is in the Hill Country of north Mississippi, approximately 60 miles south of Memphis on Highway 51. The Como area, like nearby Senatobia and Hernando, was part of the Hill Country blues ecosystem rather than the Delta blues world to the west, and the difference in landscape — wooded hills rather than flat fields — corresponds to a difference in musical style.