“And now Mama doesn’t seem to wanna do much of anything…”– Bobbie Gentry As Cherry’s cab followed...
Rafael Alvarez
Rafael Alvarez is a reporter, short story writer & screenwriter based in Baltimore. He has been visiting & writing about Mississippi since 1984. A former staff writer for HBO's "The Wire," his new book is a collection of short fiction called "Tales From the Holy Land."
“Don’t fall or trip on things, stay away from happenings…”– Nancy Sinatra By the time the hearse...
“The blues will always be around… people need it…” – Johnny Winter Cherry awoke less than...
Flying through the night and deep into the following day on beer and reefer and Charlene’s diet...
“I got womens in Vicksburg, clean on into Tennessee, but my Friar’s Point rider now, she hops...
“It’s a kind of jazz-rhythm music peculiar to the American Negro …” – Long John Baldry ...
BLUES FOR BALTIMORE Notes from the Most Northern Southern City in America The 2015 Freddie Gray Riots...
Cadillacs For Literacy: Chunky Blues Festival 1988 In July of 1988, I put my wife and our...
by Rafael Alvarez Margo Cooper is the latest in generations of photographers to be seduced by the...
Is Memphis the westernmost city in Tennessee? Or, with all respect to the suburb of Southaven, is...
While preparing last issue’s column on Eudora Welty (Local Voice #223), I cast a wide net for...
Today we honor Eudora Alice Welty (1909–2001), the sheltered girl from Jackson who grew into one of...
About a year ago, late February 2014, I was driving north through Mississippi from New Orleans to visit artist friends Pati D’Mico and...
Like thousands of others around the world, I recently finished reading The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt of...
I spent New Year’s Eve 2006 in a small motel in West Point, Mississippi, some 50 miles...