Travel Guide Tutwiler

It was in 1903, pending a train for Memphis in this village lost 12 miles southeast of Clarksdale, that William Christopher (W.C.) Hardy (1873-1958), nicknamed the Father of the Blues, discovered this musical style. He would have heard a musician sing and play his guitar by together the strings with an old knife, the ancestor of the modern slide, a air named Goin'where the Southern cross'the Dog. In 1912 Hardy recorded the great success Yellow Dog Blues from the air in this station. One marker at the Mississippi Blues Trail marks the scene. 2 miles northwest, near Old Whitfield M.B. Church, is the tomb of Sonny Boy Williamson II (1912-1965).