Album – Good Morning Little School Girl This CD Version was released on 1994. Fred McDowell (January 12, 1904 — July 3, 1972) known by his stage name; Mississippi Fred McDowell, was a blues singer and guitar player in the North Mississippi style. McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee, near Memphis. His parents, who were farmers, died when McDowell was a youth. He started playing guitar at the age of 14 and played at dances around Rossville. Wanting a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926 where he started to work in the Buck-Eye feed mill where they processed cotton into oil and other products.He also had a number of other jobs and played music for tips. Later in 1928 he moved south into Mississippi to pick cotton.He settled in Como, Mississippi, about 40 miles south of Memphis, in 1940 or 1941, and worked steadily as a farmer, continuing to perform music at dances and picnics. Initially he played slide guitar using a pocket knife and then a slide made from a beef rib bone, later switching to a glass slide for its clearer sound. He played with the slide on his ring finger. While commonly lumped together with Delta Blues singers, McDowell actually may be considered the first of the bluesmen from the ‘North Mississippi’ region – parallel to, but somewhat east of the Delta region – to achieve widespread recognition for his work. A version of the state’s signature musical form somewhat closer in structure to its African roots (often eschewing the chord …

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