Sid Hemphill

Alan Lomax found Sid Hemphill by following a recommendation. In 1942 a blind street singer, Turner Junior Johnson, called him the best musician he knew, and Lomax recorded him for the Library of Congress playing ballads, dance tunes and spirituals on cane fife, quills, banjo, drums and fiddle. Hemphill made instruments as well as played them. He died in Holly Springs in 1961 and was buried in Senatobia. His granddaughter Jessie Mae carried the family tradition forward. The marker stands behind the Senatobia library in Gabbert Park.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sardis Lake and Dam — 17 mi
  A flood-control lake on the Little Tallahatchie, built from 1930s labor and a dredge named Pontotoc, with a dam that for years was the largest earth-filled dam in the world.
• The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi — 30 mi
  The 1848 Greek Revival building at the center of the Ole Miss campus, where federal marshals held off a mob on 30 September 1962 and James Meredith registered the next morning.
• Rowan Oak — 31 mi
  William Faulkner's Greek Revival house in Oxford, bought in 1930 and kept by the University of Mississippi, with the outline of A Fable still written on his study wall.
• Oxford Square — 31 mi
  The courthouse square laid out in 1837 on land bought from a Chickasaw woman, rebuilt after the 1864 burning and home to Square Books and a memorial to Lafayette County's lynching victims.

More markers nearby

• O. B. McClinton — steps away
• Senatobia — steps away
• Jessie Mae Hemphill — 1.6 mi
• Coldwater — 5.3 mi