Aberdeen Mississippi Blues

Two of the blues' biggest names put Aberdeen on their paperwork, and the records do not quite agree. Howlin' Wolf often said he was born in Aberdeen in 1910, but the 1920 census lists him at White Station in Clay County, and his parents married in Monroe County in 1909. Albert King, whose birth name may have been Nelson, Blevins or Gilmore, entered his birthplace on his 1942 Social Security application as Aboden, Miss., probably his pronunciation of Aberdeen. Both men left for the Delta or Arkansas young.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Howlin' Wolf Memorial and Blues Trail Marker — 16 mi
  A Mississippi Blues Trail marker and granite memorial on East Broad Street honoring Chester Burnett, who was born nearby in 1910 and became the Chicago blues giant Howlin' Wolf.
• Waverley Mansion — 18 mi
  A National Historic Landmark mansion above the Tombigbee River, home of a plantation family that enslaved more than a hundred people, left empty for half a century before a family restored it.
• Tennessee Williams Welcome Center — 24 mi
  The 1875 Episcopal rectory where Tennessee Williams was born in 1911, moved to Main Street in the 1990s and now Columbus's welcome center and a National Literary Landmark.
• Chickasaw Council House — 27 mi
  A roadside exhibit on the Natchez Trace Parkway marking the Chickasaw capital of the 1820s and the council house where the 1832 treaty of Pontotoc Creek ended Chickasaw title to Mississippi.

More markers nearby

• DeSoto Expedition — steps away
• Dr. W.A. Evans — 0.3 mi
• Aberdeen — 0.4 mi
• Reuben Davis — 0.7 mi