Fred was born in Tennessee, presumably near Memphis and the Mississippi "Delta" region, but lived most of his adult life in Como, Mississippi. Hence the name Mississippi Fred....

Having spent a few years (including a few hard winters) in Indiana, I have a passing acquaintance with Kokomo, IN, home to a large US military base (Air Force, I think). Even as recently as the 1960s, there were 'way too many traffic lights there, slowing down north-south travel on the old "Dixie Highway." (US31, if I remember correctly.) So, "eleven-light city" (probably pronounced "'lebben-lite") makes sense of a line that had NEVER made sense to me before.

And as far as the Beach Boys song is concerned ~ anyone who's ever been to the real Kokomo, especially in wintertime, would know that it should NEVER be confused with any kind of tropical paradise. When I first heard the song, I found it to be incredibly dumb, and assumed that it must be the work of some wannabee Beach-Boys imitators. I didn't want to believe that the real Beach Boys would stoop to such stupidity.

Of course, the song came out many years after the BBs' original 1960s heyday, so it could be argued that those latter-day Beach Boys were not the original or "real" group, anyway.