Mississippi

Mississippi does not have an official state waltz but it does have a waltz which is well known to bluegrass fans - Mississippi Waltz written by Bill Monroe, the same man who wrote the better known Kentucky Waltz.  The tune was first recorded in March of 1976, on an album on County label, Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe. Kenny Baker (1926-2011) played fiddle with Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys for twenty-five years and recorded many albums with the group but he also recorded on his own.  According to the Rosenberg and Wolfe book, The Music of Bill Monroe, Monroe gave Baker three tunes he had written but never recorded for that 1976 album - Mississippi Waltz was one of them.  When Baker went to the studio to make the record, Monroe happened to drop by.  When Baker asked him if he wanted to play a bit, Monroe picked up a mandolin and played for the entire recording session so it is Monroe you hear on the mandolin in the video below.

There are literally hundreds of covers of Monroe's Mississippi Waltz in recordings and YouTube videos, too many to review here but, if you have a sense of humor you might enjoy Ahren Buchheister's highly unusual cover of Mississippi Waltz here.

There are Mississippi waltzes which were created both before and after Monroe's classic.  One of the earliest noted was composed in 1883 by Howard Harris and published by Armand E. Blackmar.  Blackmar's publishing company was founded in 1860 in New Orleans and was the most successful music publisher in the Confederacy during the American Civil War. A copy of piano sheet music for the Harris Mississippi Waltz is available in the Notated Music collection of the U.S. Library of Congress.  A computer generated rendition of the waltz is available below.

There are other Mississippi waltzes in sheet music form from the era including:

• An even earlier waltz titled Rose of Mississippi Waltz composed by S. Markstein, published by Horace Waters in New York in 1856.  A copy can be viewed here.
• References are found to sheet music for piano of a Mississippi Waltz written by B.R. Lignowski, and published by A.E. Blackmar (see above) in 1869.
• In 1921, piano sheet music for a waltz titled Mississippi Cradle Waltz was published by Forster Music Publisher in Chicago, Illinois.  Music for the waltz was written by Abe Olman with lyrics by Jack Yellen.  A copy of the sheet music is available on-line from the Vocal Popular Sheet Music collection of the University of Maine.

In 1926, a group of musicians from Sebastopol, Mississippi formed a band and called themselves the Leake County Revelers (a portion of Sebastopol is in Leake County).  The Revelers were  one of the most popular string band in the South in the 1920's and 1930's. They had a Saturday night radio show broadcast from Jackson, Mississippi and recorded more than forty records, most of them on the Columbia label.  One of those records, recorded in 1929, featured Mississippi Moon Waltz, probably composed by Nat Goldstein:

Vassar Clements makes his second visit to this blog (his first was for the Florida Waltz) with a second cut from his 1970 album, Twenty Country Waltzes. That album was reissued in 1998 as a CD with the title 20 Fiddle Tunes & Waltzes. There is no indication on the record of who composed the Mississippi Waltz he plays here - it is probably traditional.

In 1977, Joel Mabus started his long recording career in a studio in Potterville, Michigan. The resulting record, Grassroots, contained Mississippi Waltz which he wrote, sang and self-accompanied on his Martin D-21.  You can read more about the background of that first recording and listen to five additional tracks on Joel's website. Since this first album, Joel has recorded an additional 27 albums and written (at least) three more waltzes but to this listener's ear, none surpasses the gentle story telling of his Mississippi Waltz:

In dramatic contrast to Joel Mabus's gentle sound, our last Mississippi Waltz, composed by sax player Chris Potter, is a modern jazz piece played by Alex Sipiagin and his combo.  It is to be found on the album, Overlooking Moments, on the CrissCrossJazz label.

Audio files are not currently available but there is evidence of at least three more recordings of Mississippi waltzes:

• Hal McCoy recorded Donald Duffy's Mississippi Waltz on the Imperial label (8052) in 1949.
• The August 7, 1948 issue of Billboard Mazine reported that the Skytoppers recorded Mississippi Waltz on the Victor label (20-3056)
• The June 2, 1947 Cash Box magazine reported that the Dixie Revelers had released Mississippi Waltz on Eagle Records (No. 753).

Not included in this review was a song titled Mississippi Waltz recorded in 2012 by Emanuele Dabbano under the pseudonym of Clark Kent Phone Booth on an album titled  Vonnegut, Andromeda & the Tube-Heart Geometry Just as curious as the pseudonym and the album title is the fact that the song is in duple time and is in no way a waltz. You can listen to the song on YouTube here.

Also not included are the many songs which refer to the Mississippi river rather than to the state of Mississippi.  There are some fine example of such songs on YouTube.  To mention a few:

• Mississippi River Waltz by the Memphis Jug Band.
• Waltz of the Mississippi by John Harford, performed by the Mississippi Sawyers.
• Mississippi Waves Waltz by William T. Narmour and S.W. Smith
• Mississippi Ripples Waltz by James F. Hanley.

A search of copyright listings available through the Internet Archives found many Mississippi waltzes.  Digital access to copyrights are limited and there are no doubt even more than shown here. No evidence was found that these were ever published or performed. Those copyrights include:

Missisippi Waltz, 1920 to G. Lustig
Mississippi Valse, 1920 to Michael Rapone
Mississippi Waltz, 1920 to Mrs. Z.P. Lusk
Mississippi, 1922 to Fred Godfrey
Mississippi Moon, 1922 to Nat Goldstein
Mary from Mississippi, 1923 words and music to Dorothy Darling
Mississippi Moonbeams, 1923 words to B. Hagner and music to Jack Vincent
Mississippi Moon, 1931 words to V. Fitzgerald and music to Eugene Platz??
Mississippi Skies, 1931 words to Jay Whidden and music to Jay Whidden, Sam Kern and Vic Ford
Mississippi Moon, 1931 words to V. Fitzgerald and music to Eugen Platzman
Somewhere Down in Mississippi, 1943 to Alirene McDonald Stribling
The Mississippi Waltz, 1948 to Erwin King
Mississippi, 1949 to Fred Godfrey
Mississippi Waltz, 1949 music to Robert Louis Carleton and words to U.G. Gargus
The Mississippi Waltz, 1949 music to Hal Chanslor and words to Dolly Odessa Bynum
Mississippi Waltz, 1951 words and music to Wiley Guyce Moore
Mississippi Waltz, 1952 to Bob Miller (this one was also registered with ASCAP, none of the others were)
Mississippi Waltz, 1952 words to Ralph Sones and music to James Charles McNeil
Mississippi Waltz, 1953 words and music to Jimmy Boyd
Mississippi Waltz, 1953 words to Floyd Elbert Watkins and music to Floyd Lane Crocker
The Mississippi Waltz, 1953 words to Gerald W. Ammons and music to Ronald Buck
Mississippi Waltz, 1953 to John Amodio
Mississippi Waltz, 1953 to Georgia Jane Crocker
Mississippi Waltz, 1953 to Ken Watkins
Mississippi Waltz, 1955 words and music to Buddy Bain
Mississippi Waltz, 1955 to Obie Lee Black
The Mississippi Waltz, 1955 words and music to Otis Youngren
Mississippi Waltz, 1955 to Peggy Black
The Mississippi Waltz, 1957 words to Mrs. A.C. Womack and music to Gene Brooks
Mississippi Waltz, 1957 to Travis Wommack
Mississippi Waltz, 1966 words and music to Will B. Stollby
The Mississippi Waltz, 1975 words and music to Erwin King
The Mississippi Waltz, 1976 words and music to Howard Chandler Franks, Sr.

As is traditional for this blog, a simplified score is to be found below - actually two scores this time.  The first is an approximation of Monroe's Mississippi Waltz and the second is of the Mississippi Waltz played by Vassar Clements.

Return to the Introduction and Index of Other States.