Mississippi Cultural Crossroads to Celebrate Lil Green this Evening

PORT GIBSON, MS. – Mississippi Cultural Crossroads in Port Gibson is hosting their annual Lil Green Day Celebration on Friday, September 13th starting at 5 p.m. Ballou and the Bears and the Nellie MAck Project will perform.

Now in its fifth year, this annual celebration of MS Blues Heritage commemorates the life of Lil Green, Queen of the Blues, who was born in Claiborne County, moved with her family to Chicago, and went on to have quite a storied career. There is a MS Blues Trail Marker in downtown Port Gibson in her honor. Another marker downtown honors the Rabbit Foot Minstrels Show, once headquartered in Port Gibson.

After the early deaths of her parents, Lil Green began performing in her teens and, having honed her craft in the church performing gospel, she sang in Mississippi jukes, before heading to Chicago, Illinois, in 1929, where she would make all of her recordings.

Green was noted for superb timing and a distinctively sinuous voice. In the 1930s, she and Big Bill Broonzy had a nightclub act together. In 1940, she recorded her first session for the Bluebird budget subsidiary label of RCA Victor. Her two biggest hits were her own composition “Romance in the Dark” (1940), which was later covered by many artists, such as Dinah Washington and Nina Simone (in 1967) (Billie Holiday recorded a different song with the same title), and Green’s 1941 version of Kansas Joe McCoy’s minor-key blues- and jazz-influenced song “Why Don’t You Do Right?”