Good Shepherd Church
Prichard, Tunica County, Mississippi
Legendary guitarist and singer Willie Brown (August
6, 1900-December 30, 1952) is buried in an unmarked grave in this small
cemetery in Tunica County, Mississippi. Robert Johnson name drops Brown
in "Crossroads Blues," the song most central to the Johnson mythology.
Though Brown failed to attain his partner's legendary status, he cut a
handful of spectacular sides as part of the greatest recording session
in Delta blues history, when Brown, Charlie Patton, Son House, and
pianist Louise Johnson drove to Grafton, Wisconsin in 1930 and cut
records solo and in various groupings for Paramount Records.
Brown
recorded "M&O Blues" and the visionary "Future Blues," which
features lyric poetry like no other record of this time and place.
The shot at right is looking from the front right of the cemetery toward the back left.
There are several unmarked graves in the clear area toward the center
of the photograph and to the right leading out of the photograph. It is
clear that Brown is buried in one of these unmarked graves because an
exhaustive search of the area revealed no other graves but these. The
cemetery boundary is pretty hard and fast and as was the case in most
small country churches, they tended to bury starting closest to the
church and moving back farther away with subsequent burials.
Although his name is legendary in blues and rock
circles,he lies unmarked in a rundown, deserted churchyard in the most
obscure place imaginable.
Robert Johnson considered Willie Brown to be one of
his closest friends and even had Brown listed as the person to contact
in the event of his death, according to a former employer of Johnson.
Pictured below you can see the sunken impressions of the unmarked
graves, one of which is the final resting place of Johnson's friend boy Willie Brown.
