Johnny Woods (November 19, 1917 – February 1, 1990) was an American blues singer and harmonica player in the north Mississippi hill country blues style.
Woods was born in Looxahoma, Mississippi, a small town just west of Mississippi Highway 35.His harmonica playing first gained attention in the 1960s, when he was a duet partner with the guitarist and singer Mississippi Fred McDowell. They recorded together for the music historian George Mitchell in 1967, for Chris Strachwitz's Arhoolie Records (King of the Country Blues Vol. 2), for Swingmaster (Blues of Johnny Woods) and as a solo for Tom Pomposello and Fred Seibert of Oblivion Records ("Mississippi Harmonica") in 1972.
Stylistically, Woods's music sprang from the same north Mississippi fife-and-drum blues tradition as McDowell's. However, personal problems kept him rooted in the Delta, primarily working as a farmhand and sharecropper.
After McDowell's death in July 1973, Woods faded into obscurity until George Mitchell paired him again with another Mitchell discovery from the Mississippi Delta, R. L. Burnside, himself a McDowell disciple. They recorded the Swingmaster album and video Going Down South.
Woods died in Olive Branch, Mississippi, in 1990.
Fred McDowell (January 12, 1906 – July 3, 1972), known by his stage name Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American hill country blues singer and guitar player.
McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee. His parents were farmers, but both died while Fred was in his youth. He took up the guitar at the age of 14 and was soon playing for tips at dances around Rossville. Seeking a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926, where he worked in the Buck-Eye feed mill, which processed cotton into oil and other products. In 1928, he moved to Mississippi to pick cotton.[5] He finally settled in Como, Mississippi, about 40 miles south of Memphis, in 1940 or 1941 (or maybe the late 1950s), where he worked as a full-time farmer for many years while continuing to play music on weekends at dances and picnics.
After decades of playing for small local gatherings, McDowell was recorded in 1959 by roving folklore musicologist Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins on their Southern Journey field-recording trip.With interest in blues and folk music rising in the United States at the time, McDowell's field recordings for Lomax caught the attention of blues aficionados and record producers, and within a couple of years, he had finally become a professional musician and recording artist in his own right. His LPs proved quite popular, and he performed at festivals and clubs all over the world.
McDowell died of cancer in 1972, aged 66, and was buried at Hammond Hill Baptist Church, between Como and Senatobia, Mississippi. On August 6, 1993, a memorial was placed on his grave by the Mount Zion Memorial Fund. The ceremony was presided over by the blues promoter Dick Waterman, and the memorial with McDowell's portrait on it was paid for by Bonnie Raitt. The memorial stone was a replacement for an inaccurate and damaged marker (McDowell's name was misspelled). The original stone was subsequently donated by McDowell's family to the Delta Blues Museum, in Clarksdale, Mississippi. McDowell was a Freemason and was associated with Prince Hall Freemasonry; he was buried in Masonic regalia
