Lady Trucker at The Jessie Mae Hemphill Festival...

 I don't think I should write about the Jessie Mae Hemphill Festival without talking about Lady Trucker. 

Apparently there is a core group involved in many of the little festivals that take place in and around Clarksdale and Lady Trucker is at the center of this. We met her the night before the festival at Red's in downtown Clarksdale when she was selling Red's t-shirts and offering a VIP festival pass of you bought one. I bought a shirt.  

Next afternoon we arrived at the festival and Lady Trucker was everywhere. She was directing the bands where to go and between bands she would sing a song. Here's Lady Trucker on the left and that's the late R.L. Boyce's daughter laying down the groove on tambourine. R. L. played drums for Jessie Mae before his debut album in 2013. One of Lady Trucker's helpers, Jankey is on guitar on the far right.   

Later that night Lady Trucker served me a bowl of spicy gumbo and fixed Cathy a pulled pork sandwich. When I say she did everything I'm not kidding. 

When we visited the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic earlier this summer there was some restrictions on photos. Only photos during the first two songs were allowed and no videos. Sometimes in the press area some performers had asked that only certain photographers have this prime viewing spot and there were people at the stage to enforce these rules. Because of this I asked Lady Trucker if it was ok to bring my 35mm camera in. She said, "this is tourism. You can do what you want."

At the end of the evening Jankey showed me the back of his guitar which was signed by many of the Mississippi greats.