The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #26938 Message #3058494
Posted By: GUEST,Neil D
21-Dec-10 - 08:57 AM
Thread Name: Folklore: Railroad Nicknames
Subject: RE: Folklore: Railroad Nicknames
Like many other towns in the Mississippi Delta, Tutwiler stakes a claim to being the "birthplace of the blues". This is the site where W. C. Handy reportedly "discovered" the blues in 1903, on a train platform in the town. Handy had heard something akin to the blues as early as 1892, but it was while waiting for an overdue train to Memphis that he heard an itinerant bluesman (legend says it was a local field hand named Henry Sloan) playing slide guitar and singing about "goin' where the Southern cross the Dog," referring to the junction of the Southern Railway and Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad farther south. (The Y&D railroad was locally called the "Yellow Dog".) Handy called it "the weirdest music I had ever heard."