Jessie Mae Hemphill

Jessie Mae Hemphill (October 18, 1923 – July 22, 2006) was an American electric guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist specializing in the North Mississippi hill country blues traditions of her family and regional heritage.

Life and career Hemphill was born near Como and Senatobia, Mississippi, in the northern Mississippi hill country, just east of the Mississippi Delta. She began playing the guitar at the age of seven. She also played drums in local fife-and-drum bands, In 1981, her first full-length album, She-Wolf, was licensed from High Water and released by the French label Disques Vogue. In the early 1980s, she performed in a Mississippi drum corps assembled by Evans; it included Hemphill, Abe Young, and Jim Harper (who also played on Tav Falco's Panther Burns's album Behind the Magnolia Curtain). Hemphill performed in another drum group with Young and fife-and-drum band veteran Othar Turner for the television program Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. The French label Black & Blue Records released other recordings by her. Hemphill played concerts across the United States and in other countries, including France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and Canada. In 1987 and 1988 she received the W. C. Handy Award for best traditional female blues artist. Her first American full-length album, Feelin' Good, released in 1990, won a Handy Award for best acoustic album.

In 1993, Hemphill had a stroke, which paralyzed her left side, preventing her from playing guitar; she retired from her blues career. She continued to play by accompanying her band on the tambourine.

In 2004, the Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation released Dare You to Do It Again, a double album and DVD of gospel standards, newly recorded by the ailing vocalist, singing and playing tambourine with accompaniment from Steve Gardner, DJ Logic, and descendants of the late musicians Junior Kimbrough, R. L. Burnside, and Otha Turner. They were her first recordings since her stroke in 1993. Marshall performed Hemphill's song "Lord, Help the Poor and Needy" on her album Jukebox without credit, to much controversy.

In 2003, Hemphill's protégé and collaborator, Olga Wilhelmine Munding, established the Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation to preserve and archive the African-American music of northern Mississippi and to provide assistance for regional musicians in need who could not survive on meager publishing royalties.

Discography She-Wolf (1981; reissued 1998) Swamp Surfing in Memphis, various artists (1986; reissued 1998) Mississippi Blues Festival, various artists (1986; reissued 2004) Giants of Country Blues Guitar (1967–1981), various artists (1988) Feelin' Good (1987; reissued 1997 with extra tracks) The Fabulous Low-Price HMG Blues Sampler, various artists (1997) Deep South Blues, various artists (1999) Heritage of the Blues: Shake It Baby (2003) Dare You to Do It Again (2004) Get Right Blues (2004) Mississippi Blues Festival, with tracks by Hezekiah & the House Rockers (2004) On Air: Live Music from the WEVL Archives, various artists (1996) Foot Hill Stomp, with Richard Johnston (2002)

Films Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads (1991), directed by Robert Mugge