Themed Photo Gallery and Information : Hollandale
Background
Hollandale is a city in Washington County, Mississippi, United States. Deer Creek flows through Hollandale, and the Leroy Percy State Park is west of the city along Mississippi Highway 12. The Hollandale Municipal Airport is northeast of the city.
A 2008 study by the University of North Carolina described Hollandale as “a small community that has been mired in poverty for decades.”
Hollandale was named for Dr. Holland, the original owner of the town site.
Hollandale was incorporated in 1890, and almost completely destroyed by fire in 1904.
A one-room school house in Hollandale was founded by Emory Peter “E.P.” Simmons in 1891. One of the first schools for African-American children in the area, it was used until 1923, when financial support from the Rosenwald Fund enabled the construction of a larger brick school. Simmons worked as an educator and administrator for 52 years, and Simmons High School in Hollandale is named in his honor.
Thomas Roosevelt “T.R.” Sanders was a noted community leader. Sanders was principal of Simmons High School for 33 years, and the first superintendent of the Hollandale Colored School District. Sanders developed ‘Sanders Estates’, the town’s first subdivision, and organized an association which provided running water to neighboring Sharkey County. Sanders was the first African-American in Mississippi to receive a master’s degree in educational administration.
During the Civil Rights Movement, Hollandale was noted for having passed an ordinance forbidding white civil rights workers from living with black citizens.
A marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail dedicated to musician Sam Chatmon is located in Hollandale, as is a marker on the Mississippi Country Music Trail dedicated to Ben Peters.
Sam Chatmon
Sam Chatmon (January 10, 1897 – February 2, 1983) was a Delta blues guitarist and singer. He was a member of the Mississippi Sheiks. He may have been Charlie Patton’s half-brother.
Chatmon was born in Bolton, Mississippi. His family was well known in Mississippi for their musical talents; he was a member of the family’s string band when he was young. In an interview he stated that he started playing the guitar at the age of 3, laying it flat on the floor and crawling under it. He regularly performed for white audiences in the 1900s.
The Chatmon band played rags, ballads, and popular dance tunes. Two of Sam’s brothers, the fiddler Lonnie Chatmon and the guitarist Bo Carter, performed with the guitarist Walter Vinson as the Mississippi Sheiks.
Chatmon played the banjo, mandolin, and harmonica in addition to the guitar. He performed at parties and on street corners throughout Mississippi for small pay and tips. In the 1930s he recorded with the Sheiks and also with his brother Lonnie as the Chatman Brothers.
Chatmon moved to Hollandale, Mississippi, in the early 1940s and worked on plantations there. He was rediscovered in 1960 and started a new chapter of his career as a folk-blues artist. In the same year he recorded for Arhoolie Records. He toured extensively during the 1960s and 1970s. While in California in 1970 he made several recordings with Sue Draheim, Kenny Hall, Ed Littlefield, Lou Curtiss, Kathy Hall, Will Scarlett and others at Sweet’s Mill Music Camp, forming a group he called “The California Sheiks”. He played many of the largest and best-known folk festivals, including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., in 1972, the Mariposa Folk Festival in Toronto in 1974, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 1976.
A headstone memorial to Chatmon with the inscription “Sitting on top of the World” was paid for by Bonnie Raitt through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund and placed in Sanders Memorial Cemetery, Hollandale, Mississippi, on March 14, 1998, in a ceremony held at the Hollandale Municipal Building, celebrated by the Mayor and members of the city council of Hollandale, with over 100 attendees.
Source: Wikipedia
Mississippi Blues Trail Marker : Sam Chatmon
Full text:
Sam Chatmon (c. 1899-1983), a celebrated singer and guitarist who spent most of his life in Hollandale, sometimes performed with his brothers in a renowned family string band billed as the Mississippi Sheiks. He embarked on a new solo career after coming out of musical retirement in the 1960s. Many local musicians have performed here on Simmons Street, known as “the Blue Front, ”once one of the most vibrant centers of blues activity in the Delta.
Hollandale Blues history dates back at least to the 1920s, when the Mississippi Sheiks, Sam Chatmon, Bo Chatmon (aka Bo Carter), Eugene Powell, Robert Nighthawk, and Houston Stackhouse performed at local drug stores, cafes, and other businesses, in addition to jukehouse parties and dances on nearby plantations. Most of the Mississippi Sheiks, a popular string band known for their hit recording “Sitting on Top of the World” (1930), were members of the Chatmon family, several of whom moved from their native Hinds County to the Hollandale area around 1928 and worked here as cotton farmers as well as musicians. In later years Sam Chatmon moved into town and took a job as a night watchman, while his brother Bo settled in Anguilla.
After blues enthusiasts began to seek Sam out in the 1960s, he traveled to play concerts and festivals around the country, most often in the San Diego area, and recorded several albums including Hollandale Blues and The Mississippi Sheik. He grew a long beard, as his fiddle-playing father had done, and endeared himself to new audiences who were entertained by his risqué double-entendre songs. In 2009 the city of Hollandale purchased Chatmon’s house at 818 Sherman Street to move it here to “Blue Front,” an area once famed for blues, liquor, and gambling. Chatmon sang about Blue Front in his song “Hollandale Blues,” but told friends he preferred less rowdy surroundings.
Author Kathy Starr, whose grandmother operated the Fair Deal café on Blue Front, wrote in The Soul of Southern Cooking: “Blue Front was a string of little cafes where everybody gathered on the weekend. It was the only place blacks had to go, to get rid of the blues after a week’s hard work in the cotton fields. Everybody lived for Saturday night to go to Blue Front. . . . if you wanted a half-pint or a pint of whiskey or corn liquor, you could get it at Fair Deal because Grandmama and the chief of police had an ‘understanding.’ . . . The Seabirds (Seeburg juke boxes) would be jammin’ all up and down Blue Front with Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and B. B. King. Sometimes they would be there in person over at the Day and Night Café. The great blues singer Sam Chatman [sic] came to Fair Deal often. People danced, ate, drank, and partied till the break of day. Saturday night without a fight was not known.”
Among other former Hollandale area residents, Eddie “Guitar Slim” Jones went on to the greatest fame in the 1950s after moving to New Orleans. Others include bluesmen William Warren, Willie Harris, Mott Willis, J. D. Short, James Earl “Blue” Franklin, and Joseph C. Moore (“J. C. Rico”); Eugene Powell’s wife Mississippi Matilda; the Buckhanna (Buchanan) Brothers string band; and soul singer Ruby Stackhouse, better known as Ruby Andrews.
Source: http://msbluestrail.org/
Photo Gallery
Entrance to Sanders Garden Memorial Cemetery
Sam Chatmon’s gravestone
