This Week’s Featured Marker:
Johnny Winter {module_photogallery,15566,5,,5,80,,true}
On Sunday June 6, 2010 a Mississippi Blues Trail marker was installed at 302 Broad Street in Leland in honor of Johnny Winter. The significance of the location is that Winter’s grandfather, John Dawson Winter I, started a cotton brokerage firm in an adjacent building. The ceremony took place the day after Winter headlined the 11th annual Highway 61 Blues Festival in Leland.
At the ceremony festival founder Billy Johnson related that he had first met Winter in 2000, shortly before Johnson founded the Highway 61 Blues Museum, and that Winter both gave items to the museum and promised that he would eventually perform at the festival. The museum, which honors musicians from the mid-Delta region, contains a glass case with many items related to Winter and his brother Edgar. Winter spoke briefly at the ceremony about how glad he was to have his family honored in Leland.
Greenville’s T-Model Ford performed at the ceremony backed by the duo of Bill Abel of Duncan and Bert Seivert from Sweden, and local bluesman Eddie Cusic was also in attendance. At the reception following the ceremony inside the museum, music was provided by bluesman Pat Thomas, whose late father James “Son” Thomas is honored with his own Blues Marker just outside the museum. Following the reception many fans and musicians continued celebrating at a festival in nearby Holly Ridge, blues pioneer Charley Patton’s final resting place.
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