In Case You Missed it (Museum and King of the Blues Edition)

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Mississippi Music Museum in Hazlehurst, MS with my friend and fellow retiree Michael Thompson.  The museum, located at the town's old railroad depot, had actually been around for a while, but closed sometime in the last year or two and the depot was remodeled.  It was reopened around the first of September.  I had not been able to visit previously because it was not always open during the week and was closed on the weekends.  The new hours for the museum are Wednesday through Friday from 10 am to 4 pm.

If you're a blues fan living in the Jackson, MS area, or traveling I-55 toward New Orleans or Baton Rouge, this is a great stop.  There are lots of cool displays that track not just the blues genre, but every other genre of music and it's really impressive when you see how many Mississippi natives were involved in the development of blues, rock n' roll, country,  jazz, and gospel music.  It's also the location for the Mississippi Music Hall of Fame as many award plaques are here and there's also a list of members to  view.

A walk-through takes about an hour, and the museum is still a work in progress....we were told that there are other displays in the works.  Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, so there are a couple of nice displays about him, as well as another local resident - Crystal Springs native Tommy Johnson.  There are also a couple of guitars made by Super Chikan, plus a display of cigar box guitars and sections on Elvis Presley and Jimmie Rodgers.  The museum is free admission, but donations are welcome.  It's a great place for any music fan, but especially blues fans.

The museum also has a collection of used albums, cassettes, and CDs for sale that have been donated.  Anyone who knows me knows I'm a sucker for checking out a bin of used CDs, so I had to thumb through them.  I found two B.B. King CDs, one that I'd previously owned in cassette form and one that I'd never actually seen before.  They were basically a steal, and in great condition, so I picked them up and wanted to share them with fellow blues fans in case you missed them....after all, he just turned 100.

The first one was a set I picked up in the late 80's on cassette.  In the pre-internet days, I was wondering what would be a great B.B. King album to pick up.  I had picked up a couple of his latter-day releases up to that point and they were not particularly memorable to me in that they didn't really sound like the B.B. King I had heard on TV on numerous shows.  I saw Great Moments With B.B. King (MCA Records) at a record store and noticed it had a lot of music (23 tracks) at a very nice price, so I picked it up.

I was familiar with a few of the songs on the set, which was released originally in 1981.....probably about a third of them.  There was also a mix of live and studio recordings, which was pretty cool.  I found out much later that this was a compilation of some of King's "Great Moments" taken from some of his mid to late 60's recordings with ABC and BluesWay.  

I have to agree with the "Great Moments" assessment because it's an excellent summation of B.B. King' musical career up until around 1970.  That was actually a portion of his career that I was not as familiar with.  The live tracks are particularly good, and you may remember some of them from other great King albums (such as Blues Is King), but it's a great capsule summary of B.B. King's music at a great period in his career. 

The other CD I grabbed was a unique album in the B.B. King catalog.  Spotlight on Lucille (Flair Records) was released in 1991, and it collects twelve instrumentals recorded between late 1960 and late 1961 with the focus completely on Lucille in a variety of settings.  Four of the tracks had never been released prior to this collection and the other eight tracks had only been recently heard on the UK label Ace Records.

Lucille sounds fantastic on these tracks, which drift from downhome gritty blues to classy soul and jazz.  I had never even heard of this release, not sure how it slipped through my fingers the first time around, but I'm glad I happened to run across it in this used CD collection.  This is a great set to just plug into your stereo and just go about your day.  Anytime you get a chance to put the spotlight on B.B. King's guitar is an opportunity you need to seize upon.