Stovall Plantation : Background, Blues Musicians and Photo Gallery
Background
Stovall
Stovall is an unincorporated community in Coahoma County, Mississippi, United States, along Mississippi Highway 1, 8 miles (12.7km) north west of Clarksdale and approximately 6 miles (9.7 km) south of Friars Point.
Source: Wikipedia
Stovall Plantation
Stovall Plantation, now known as Stovall Farms, is a private family run working farm, primarily operating in the cotton business. Stovall Plantation is of course famous for being the home of Muddy Waters for some 30 years before he went north to Chicago. Muddy was actually born in or near Rolling Fork, some 105 miles (169km) south of Stovall Plantation. He moved with his Grandma to live at Stovall at the age of 3. In 1996 the sharecropper’s shack which was Muddy’s home was restored and moved to a permanent display at The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, MS. Here are the details of the display in the museum:
“The remains of the cabin from Stovall Farms where Muddy Waters lived during his days as a sharecropper and tractor driver are displayed in the gallery. Musicologist Alan Lomax recorded Muddy on the front porch of this shack for the Library of Congress in 1941. Best known for electrifying the blues in Chicago, Muddy is represented by posters, photographs, and a life-size wax statue, displayed along with one of his electric guitars and ZZ Top’s “Muddywood” guitar, crafted from one of the cabin’s timbers”.
Drawing of Muddy’s cabin on the display in the Delta Blues Museum
William Howard Stovall
William Howard Stovall was born on his family’s cotton plantation in Stovall, Mississippi on 18 February 1895. He was the son of Civil War Confederate colonel William Howard Stovall. He graduated from Lawrenceville School in 1913, then attended Yale and graduated in 1916.
He reported to the 13th Aero Squadron in July 1918. On 1 August, in company with Charles Biddle and two other American pilots, he shot down two German Albatros D.V fighters over Viéville-en-Haye. Then, from 15 September to 23 October 1918, he downed four of the new Fokker D.VII fighters. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
He returned to the plantation after the war. During World War II, he served once again, joining the U.S. Army Air Forces as a major on 12 December 1941. After helping bring over the first 180 airplanes for the 8th AAF, 1st FG, 97th BG, 60th TCG in the BOLERO Movement, he became the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, A-1, for the Eighth Air Force in Britain under a World War I comrade, Brigadier General Frank O’Driscoll Hunter; the two of them worked for another World War I companion, General Carl Spaatz, who had flown in the 13th PS (WWI), and Stovall became DC/S for the USSTAFE under Spaatz. Stovall’s son, William Howard Stovall, also served in the Army Air Forces in the 56th FG/62nd FS; he saw his father in England during Christmas 1944 before the younger Stovall was killed in action on 12/31/1944 while engaging 7 enemy aircraft over Bergsteinfurt, Germany. He had to bail out of his battle damaged plane after a 50 mile running combat and he was too low and his chute did not deploy all the way. He downed 2 of the 7 in combat. Colonel Stovall met the pilot who thought he had accidentally killed his son. Colonel Stovall proved otherwise when he developed gun camera film that showed the pilot had not fired long enough and that the deflection angle of his guns were not anywhere near his son’s plane.
From this war, Colonel Stovall brought home the Legion of Merit w/OLC, Bronze Star, European, African, Middle Eastern Campaign Ribbon w/5 Bronze Stars, American Campaign Medal, D Day Campaign Medal, Army of the Occupation Medal, Military Order of the British Empire, French Legion d’Honneur and Croix de Guerre w/Palm, as well as campaign ribbons. Once again, he returned to the family cotton plantation. His stewardship of the land earned him the Delta Council Achievement Award for 1967-1968 as the pre-eminent conservationist among local farmers. He also served as president of Cotton Council International. The Federal Land Bank granted him a 50th anniversary medal for his contributions to the cause of American agriculture just prior to his death.
He died at home in his sleep on 11 May 1970. He was survived by his wife Eleanor, a daughter, and two sons.
Source: Wikipedia
Links to Further Information
Click here – for Muddy Waters’ official website
Click here – for the Blues Foundation’s details of the Muddy Waters Library of Congress recording of “Down on Stovall’s Plantation” (later issued on the Chess label as “The Complete Plantation Recordings”)
CD cover, Muddy Waters – The Complete Plantation Recordings contains all the Muddy Waters sides recorded by Alan Lomax at Stovall Farms in 1941-42.
“In 1941, the great musicologist Alan Lomax appeared at Muddy’s shack in Stovall, Mississippi, to record him. Two test pressings and a check for $20 arrived in the mail sometime later. The blues visionary noted in a Rolling Stone interview that after hearing his own voice on shellac he was convinced, “I can do it.” That was when he set his sights on the big city”.
Mississippi Blues Trail Marker ; Muddy Waters’ House
Full text:
In August 1941, on a field recording expedition sponsored by the Library of Congress and Fisk University, Alan Lomax and John Work set up portable equipment in Waters’ house to record Muddy and other local musicians, including fiddler Henry “Son” Simms. Lomax returned with Lewis Jones in 1942 for a second series of recordings. Two of Waters’ recordings, “Burr Clover Farm Blues” and “Burr Clover Blues,” paid tribute to plantation owner Colonel William Howard Stovall (1895-1970) and his crop. The Stovalls, one of the Delta’s most successful cotton-farming families, were pioneers of agricultural technology, and Colonel Stovall invented the burr clover seed harvester in 1935. Waters told Lomax that he wrote “Burr Clover Blues” at Stovall’s request. Waters entertained field hands at his house, which served as a juke joint, and also played at social functions for the Stovalls, as did the Mississippi Sheiks, a popular black string band that Waters admired.
Waters’ cousin, The Reverend Wilie Morganfield (1927-2003), was born on the Stovall plantation and turned down offers to sing the blues and devoted his talents to the church, becoming a popular gospel recording artist in the 1960s. He was pastor of the Bell Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Clarksdale. Blues singer-pianist Eddie Boyd (1914-1994), who wrote the classic “Five Long Years,” a No. 1 rhythm & blues hit in 1952, was also born on Stovall. Stovall resident and blues bassist David “Pecan” Porter (1943-2003) later lived in the house that Muddy Waters had earlier occupied. Porter was active on the Clarksdale blues scene from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Only in the 1980s, after the vacant house was in disrepair, did tourists begin visiting it as a Muddy Waters shrine. In 1987, guitarist Billy Gibbons of the rock group Z.Z. Top had “Muddywood” guitars crafted from the planks of the house. Z.Z. Top subsequently used the guitars to promote a fund-raising drive to benefit the Delta Blues Museum.
Photo Gallery
