"Where's Marshall Dillon At?"

One of my favorite contemporary Mississippi bluesmen passed away a couple of years ago. His name was Paul "Wine" Jones. I saw him perform for the last time about a month before he lost a battle with liver cancer. I always thought of him as one of the younger ones. He was a part of the Fat Possum crowd that includes R. L. Burnside, T Model, Ford, Junior Kimbrough and numerous others. Paul was a very engaging performer who played using a incredibly aggressive right hand technique. He had only begun to travel outside of his home state of Mississippi a few years before he passed away.

I first met Paul Jones strangely enough in Sante Fe New Mexico in 2001. He was performing at a local roots music festival called the Thirsty Ear Festival which is held every Labor Day weekend. I think that this was his first trip outside of Mississippi. He was traveling with his fellow Mississippians, T Model Ford and Kenny Brown. The Thirsty Ear Festival is held on a old ranch six miles south of Sante Fe. It is used as a movie set for Westerns and so the effect is that you are in an old town in the west. A month or two prior to the festival the New York Times had done a feature article on the contemporary state of blues in Mississippi. Paul Jones was one of the artists that was featured. His story was accompanied by a photograph in which he was dressed in red and black outfit topped by a red bowler hat. He was wearing the same outfit when I saw him in Sante Fe. It was an interesting sight, Paul Jones in his bluesman outfit standing on a stage in the old west with the Rocky Mountains in the background. The crowd loved him and after his set he hung around the rest of the day enjoying the music and the beer from the local saloon.

I saw him two years later in Rosedale Mississippi. He was still wearing the same red and black outfit with the red hat. I asked him if he remembered playing in an town in the old west. He laughed and said: "Oh, man, I wasn't used to that dark beer. Man did I getted messed up." Later that night he said that he walked into the old jail and said: "Where's Marshall Dillon at? He better lock me up."

I saw Paul numerous times in Mississippi. His form of blues defines the terms primitive and raw. He recorded two records before he died. The first one "Mule" is my favorite. A third one has come out posthumously. You can also catch him on youtube.com videos. Although the quality is not great you can still get a feel for what is was like.