About Me
A remarkable blind musician who could play fiddle, banjo, guitar, jaw harp, piano, organ, quills, and cane fife, Sid Hemphill, Grandfather of Jesse Mae Hemphill was born around 1876/78 in Como, Panola County, MS. Sid had his musical roots sown by his father, Doc Hemphill, a Choctaw Indian and famed fiddler. Sid was the master of nine instruments, but was primarily known locally as a hot fiddle player. He recorded 22 tracks (plus an interview) with famed musicologist Alan Lomax in Sledge, MS, in 1942, followed by two more tracks recorded 17 years later in Senatobia, MS, when Lomax revisited Hemphill in 1959. He played ballads, break-downs, and fife and drum music, a cross section of 19th century black folk music pre-dating the blues. Most surprising was Hemphill’s performances on the "quills," an ancient instrument heretofore unknown in black folk music with ties, according to Lomax, to Romania, ancient Greece, South America the Pygmies of Africa.
Working with a loosely shifting group of local musicians, including banjo player Lucius Smith and guitarist Alex Askew, Hemphill recorded music featuring a merging of West African rhythms with European sensibilities, leading to a wild, loose, and archaic sound that is part Appalachian string band and part fife and drum marching band; there is really nothing quite like it in American music with the possible exception of Othar Turner, who comes from the same Mississippi tradition.
Sid was the father of Rose Hemphill who recorded for Lomax in 1959 [whose singing guitar and anguished vocals were a match for many bluesmen of the time] and Grandfather to the Legendary Blues Women Jesse Mae Hemphill
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