Marcus Bottom

Little Brother Montgomery's road to Marcus Bottom began in a Louisiana sawmill town. Born in Kentwood in 1906, the self-taught pianist played lumber camps and barrelhouses, lived in Chicago from 1928, where he made his first recordings, led a jazz band in Jackson from 1931 to 1938 and went back to Chicago in 1941 for good. One of his compositions, Crescent City Blues, became the basis of a Gordon Jenkins song that Johnny Cash adapted as Folsom Prison Blues.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Court House Museum — 1.2 mi
  Vicksburg's Greek Revival courthouse of 1860, raised on a hilltop with the labor of enslaved artisans and now a private local-history museum heavy on Confederate relics.
• Vicksburg National Military Park — 1.7 mi
  A 16-mile tour road through the trenches of the 47-day siege of 1863, with a national cemetery and the story of the thousands of enslaved people who reached freedom behind Union lines.
• USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum — 2.9 mi
  The raised hull of a Union river ironclad sunk by a mine in the Yazoo in 1862, displayed at Vicksburg National Military Park with the artifacts the river mud preserved.

More markers nearby

• Bowmar Avenue Elementary School — 0.3 mi
• Magnolia High School — 0.4 mi
• Alpha Kappa Alpha National Presidents — 0.4 mi
• Rosa A. Temple High School — 0.8 mi