CLARKSDALE, MS – Every good trip writes a story, you don’t need a guidebook. Just let your trip unfold. Visit Mississippi and the Delta Blues Museum. Take a drive down the Great River Road in September and visit Delta Blues Museum–Mississippi’s first music museum–to see “Blues Portraits in Steel: Works by Scott Cawood” now through October 31. Don’t miss “Anthony Mostrom: Paramount Portraits” which opened September 24.
Mostrom’s exhibit is an opportunity to visually experience the Grammy award -winning collaboration between Jack White’s Third Man and John Fahey’s Revenant: The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records Volume 1, 1917-27, released in November 2013 and Volume 2, which was released in November 2014. The label, founded by the Wisconsin Chair company, amassed one of the most potent archives of American music.
Paramount Records was founded on a modest proposition: produce records as cheaply as possible, recording whatever talent was available. Over its lifetime, the label would become a “race records” powerhouse, its sound and fortunes directly linked to the Great Migration.
By the time Paramount ceased operations in 1932, it had compiled an outstanding array of performers still unrivaled to this day, spanning early jazz titans (Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller), blues masters (Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Skip James), American divas (Ma Rainey, Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters), gospel (Norfolk Jubilee Quartette), vaudeville (Papa Charlie Jackson), and the indefinable “other” (Geeshie Wiley, Elvie Thomas). Paramount would also directly influence the style of Robert Crumb and countless other 20th century artists and illustrators, through a series of hand-drawn ads promoting its releases in the pages of the Chicago Defender.
The Delta Blues Museum is featuring 26 of Mostrom’s illustrations of Delta Blues artists. Meet Mostrom at the opening reception on September 24th sponsored by the Coahoma County Tourism Commission. The exhibit is sponsored by Barnes Pettey Financial Advisors, this project is partly funded by a grant from Visit Mississippi, the Mississippi Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Delta Blues Museum is open from 9 am–5 pm Monday–Saturday. For more information visit our website.
