Last night I dropped by the annual fife and drum picnic at Otha Turner’s home in Senatobia for some goat BBQ and blues. Otha passed away in 2003 at age 93, but the tradition is in good hands, as his granddaughter Sharde Thomas now leads the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band. I arrived during one of the group’s several performances of the evening during which they travel through the crowd of revelers.
There’s no schedule for the event, but there’s never a shortage of musicians to perform (getting them up on stage can be another issue!). In the recent past guests have included T-Model Ford and Bobby Rush, and on Friday night the band of Duwayne Burnside performed. Last night guests included Luther and Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars, who grew up in nearby Coldwater, and R.L. Boyce, who played drums for Otha Turner for many years. Recently R.L. has been singing and playing guitar more, and recently recorded an album that should be released on Dave Katznelson’s Birdman label next year. Birdman released the two albums that Othar Turner recorded as a leader, Everybody Hollerin’ Goat and Senegal to Senatobia.
One of the highlights of last night was a jam with Luther, Cody, R.L., Rising Star drummers Rodney and Bill Thomas, harmonica player/vocalist Dan Coburn from Cody’s group Hill Country Revue, and vocalist Maryann Moss. A native of Senatobia, Moss now lives in Memphis, but comes back every year for the picnic. She led the band in a spirited version of My Babe, a favorite of Otha’s, that sampled songs including Big Boss Man, Wang Dang Doodle, Hi Heel Sneakers, and, appropriately, Charles Wilson’s recent chitlin circuit hit Mississippi Woman.

From left: Rodney Thomas, Maryann Moss, Luther Dickinson, R.L. Boyce, Cody Dickinson
Here’s a video from circa the late ’90s, when Otha was still presiding over the picnic and Sharde was probably eight or nine. She recently began her first year of college, and is still as enthusiastic as ever about keeping the tradition going.
Here’s the text of an interview I did with Sharde last year for a special North Mississippi Hill Country Blues issue of Living Blues:
“I seen my grandfather doing it [playing the fife] and it was something that I wanted to do, so I just picked it up one day and started practicing on it and got better and better.
“He liked it, he enjoyed it. He was kind of excited, because of all his grandkids I was like the only one, and the littlest one, trying to play a fife. He would push me out there in the crowd and let me do what I had to do.
“He would show me things about the fife and tell how he started. He was young when he started too. I don’t know how old he was. They did things totally different from what we do now. He said they was good kids, They didn’t do nothing wrong, or they’d get a whooping.
“He wouldn’t tell me [when I played correctly] he would just make a smile and I knew then I was doing something right. And sometimes I’d be wanting to do my moves too soon and he’d be like, “No, I didn’t tell you to do that.”
“Right now I’m just trying to have my own creative style of it. I don’t play that many of his songs, because I can’t play them like him.So I just have to do my own. I’m working on it, but I’ve got to get back to practicing.
“I like the fact that I’m the only one doing it, but I feel like someone else needs to kind pick it up, because what if I just stop playing the fife? Then there’ll be no one else to pick it up. So, maybe one day someone will learn how to play fife. Hopefully.
“A lot of people don’t know about [the tradition], but when they see me playing at a young age it makes them think and realize, ‘Well, I want to do that. I want to learn more about it.‘ It’s kind of shocking for them to see a 17 year old girl playing music like this, but once they hear it and realize where it came from they enjoy it.”
For more wonderful photos of Otha, Sharde and other North Mississippi artists, visit this site of photos by Bill Steber


Most of the members were African American, but the group earned the tag “international” due to the Mexican, Hawaiian and Chinese heritage of some of its members. The group became popular nationally, and in 1941 members decided to break ties with the school in order to get a bigger share of the money they were bringing in. The school replaced them on the road with the Sweethearts’ understudies, the Swinging Rays of Rhythm. The group broke attendance records at major theaters, and toured Europe with the USO in 1945. In 1947 they made an extended “music video” that captured their unique and exciting stage show.





