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Welcome to the Bukka White Blues Festival!
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Blues in Bukka White's home town . .
. authentic Mississippi Blues at its best, featuring some of the
most outstanding Blues artists of our time. The
 Bukka White
Blues Festival has developed into
a destination for those Blues artists - a place where they WANT to
perform, a place where one of their own was born and raised ... AND
received the influences that shaped his approach to the Blues.
Add these to the mix - arts and crafts, food concessions, kids'
activities, a desert animal show, antique and classic car display
and more.
A featured part of the 2009 Bukka White Blues Festival was the
unveiling of a Mississippi Blues Trail marker in downtown Aberdeen
at the
intersection of Commerce (the main street) and Meridian Streets. The
text on the marker reads, "ABERDEEN MISSISSIPPI BLUES - In 1940
singer-guitarist Booker "Bukka" White, who lived in Aberdeen during
the 1920s and '30s, recorded the blues classic, "Aberdeen
Mississippi Blues." Twenty-three years later the song's title
enabled blues researchers to relocate White, who subsequently
resumed his recording career. According to Social Security records
two of the most influential blues artists of all time, Chester
Arthur "Howlin' Wolf" Burnett and Albert King, claimed Aberdeen as
their birthplace."
Bukka White had the distinction of being a cousin of B.B.
King, another Blues giant. It was Bukka who gave B.B. his first
guitar, a Stella. Born
 Booker T. Washington White, he first recorded for the RCA
Victor label in 1930. His recordings for Victor, like those of many
other bluesmen, fluctuated between country blues and gospel
numbers. His gospel songs were done in the style of Blind
Willie Johnson with a female singer accentuating the last
phrase in each line.
Nine years later, while serving time at Parchman, Bukka recorded for
folklorist John Lomax. The few songs he recorded around this time
became his most well known: "Shake 'Em On Down" and "Po Boy."
When he was 9, his father John White bought him a
guitar. His father was a railroad man and many of Bukka's best tunes
emulate the driving rhythm of trains and their mournful whistles.
After hearing Charley Patton, Young Booker decided that he too would
be a "great man like Charley Patton". Bukka's
first recordings were 14 songs done in Memphis in May 1930. One of
those songs, The Panama Limited was a featured part of Bukka's
repetoire until his death and is is probably one of the best "train"
songs ever recorded. His driving alternating bass evokes the engines
and his slide creates the sound of airbrakes and trainwhistle.
The Panama Limited, The New Frisco Train, I am the Heavenly
Way and Promise True and Grand were
released on Victor (one secular 78, one Gospel 78) and can be found
on the Fabulous CD Panama Limited
along with most of his other prewar recordings (Sic
'Em Dogs On and Po' Boy are not on this CD. If you can find the
Travelin' Man CD The Complete Recordings 1930-1940, it includes
these two tunes.). The remainder were never released.
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