As Michael Flanagan noted in this week’s edition of the Memphis Flyer, one of the Mid-South’s most unique traditions, the Turner Family Picnic, is slated for Gravel Springs, a rural outpost near Senatobia, Miss., this weekend.
And at 11 a.m. on Saturday in nearby Como, Turner family patriarch Otha Turner will be posthumously honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail.
Admission to blues guitarist Kenny Brown’s Hill Country Picnic, held in July, provided funds to help erect the marker for Turner, who died in 2003. “I listened to Otha from the time I was six years old, so it was nice to be able to help him out,” says Brown, who considers part of his mission to be a living link to the late fife-and-drum musician and other gone-but-not-forgotten performers like R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough.
Fife-and-drum music isn’t exactly analogous with most Mississippi blues music.