Lonnie Pitchford (October 8, 1955 – November 8, 1998) was an American

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

musician and instrument maker from Lexington,

Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...

, United States. He was one of only a handful of young African American musicians from Mississippi who had learned and was continuing the

Delta blues Delta blues is one of the earliest-known styles of blues. It originated in the Mississippi Delta and is regarded as a regional variant of country blues. Guitar and harmonica are its dominant instruments; slide guitar is a hallmark of the s ...

and

country blues Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in t ...

traditions of the older generations. In addition to the acoustic and electric guitar, Pitchford was skilled at the one-string guitar and

diddley bow The diddley bow is a single-stringed American instrument which influenced the development of the blues sound. It consists of a single string of baling wire tensioned between two nails on a board over a glass bottle, which is used both as a brid ...

, a one-string instrument of African origin, as well as the double bass, piano and harmonica. He was a protégé of

Robert Lockwood Jr. Robert Lockwood Jr., a.k.a. Robert Jr. Lockwood, (March 27, 1915 – November 21, 2006) was an American Delta blues guitarist, who recorded for Chess Records and other Chicago labels in the 1950s and 1960s. He was the only guitarist to hav ...

, from whom he learned the style of

Robert Johnson Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His singing, guitar playing and songwriting on his landmark 1936 and 1937 recordings have influenced later generations of musicians. Although his r ...

. For a while, Pitchford performed accompanied by

Johnny Shines John Ned Shines (April 26, 1915 – April 20, 1992) was an American blues singer and guitarist. Biography Shines was born in Frayser, Tennessee, today a neighborhood of Memphis. He was taught to play the guitar by his mother and spent m ...

and Lockwood. His own debut album, ''All Round Man'' was released on Rooster Blues Records in 1994. Pitchford performed at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, and at the 1984 Downhome Blues Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. In November 1998, Pitchford died at his home in Lexington, from AIDS. He was survived by a wife, Minnie Pitchford, along with a daughter from a previous relationship.Harper, Patrice (2000). "Lonnie Pitchford, Blues Musician from Mississippi." ''Mississippi Writers & Musicians''
Retrieved 25 June 2024. A diddley bow is featured on his

headstone A gravestone or tombstone is a marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. A marker set at the head of the grave may be called a headstone. An especially old or elaborate stone slab may be called a funeral stele, stela, or slab. The u ...

which was paid for by

John Fogerty John Cameron Fogerty (born May 28, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. Together with Doug Clifford, Stu Cook, and his brother Tom Fogerty, he founded the swamp rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), for which he was th ...

and Rooster Blues Records through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund. His

grave A grave is a location where a cadaver, dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is burial, buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of buria ...

is located near the grave of

Elmore James Elmore James ( Brooks; January 27, 1918 – May 24, 1963) was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter, and bandleader. Noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice, James was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ...

, in the New Port Baptist Church cemetery in

Holmes County, Mississippi Holmes County is a county in the U.S. state of Mississippi; its western border is formed by the Yazoo River and the eastern border by the Big Black River. The western part of the county is within the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. As of the 2020 c ...

Film

* ''American Patchwork: Songs and Stories of America'', part 3: "The Land Where the Blues Began" (1990). Written, directed, and produced by

Alan Lomax Alan Lomax (; January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music during the 20th century. He was a musician, folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activ ...

; developed by the Association for Cultural Equity at Columbia University and Hunter College. North Carolina Public TV; A Dibb Direction production for

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

. * '' Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads'' (1993). Directed by Robert Mugge.

References

External links

"Lonnie Pitchford"
from The Mississippi Writers and Musicians Project of Starkville High School

* Pitchford biographyat

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pitchford, Lonnie 1955 births 1998 deaths 20th-century African-American male singers 20th-century American male singers 20th-century American singers AIDS-related deaths in Mississippi American blues guitarists American male guitarists American blues singers 20th-century American guitarists People from Lexington, Mississippi African-American guitarists

Film

See also

References

External links