Oktibbeha County Blues

In 1941 Big Joe Williams and guitarist Tony Hollins, whose family lived in Osborn in 1910, became the first to record Crawlin' King Snake, later covered by John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan and the Doors. Hollins also made the earliest recording of the standard Cross Cut Saw. Lou Thomas Watts, who recorded as Kid Thomas, left Sturgis for Chicago as a child and died in 1970, shot by a father whose son Watts had struck and killed in a car accident.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge — 13 mi
  A 48,000-acre refuge of bottomland forest and lakes in Noxubee, Oktibbeha and Winston counties, rebuilt from worn-out farmland, with red-cockaded woodpeckers, alligators and winter eagles.
• Howlin' Wolf Memorial and Blues Trail Marker — 14 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 — 19 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 — 22 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.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church — 0.4 mi
• Starkville — 0.5 mi
• Johnny Cash "Starkville City Jail" — 0.6 mi
• Grierson's Raid — 0.9 mi