Mayor Toby Barker, a musician himself, wanted to honor Graves and others with direct ties to the city at the Hattiesburg Community Arts Center, illustrating the role the Hub City has played in developing quintessential American musical styles like rock and roll, blues, jazz and country.
Alongside Graves, whose likeness sits front and center, are fellow bluesmen Tommie “T-Bone” Pruitt, “Mississippi” Matilda Powell and Vasti Jackson, flanked by country music songwriter and impresario Craig Wiseman, jazz artist Tom “Bones” Malone, harmonica player Greg “Fingers” Taylor and Jimmy Buffett, the late singer-songwriter and leader of his vast, global “Parrotheads” fanbase.
“They're all very special in their own way,” Barker says. “I think part of the charm of Hattiesburg is that it's a collision of backgrounds and worldviews and talent. I don't think you see that sort of beautiful, messy tapestry in many cities in Mississippi.”
Buffett and Taylor are particularly celebrated members of Hattiesburg’s musical legacy. The duo famously met at The University of Southern Mississippi in the late 60s and became fast friends and collaborators as Buffett began his ascent as a songwriter and performer. Taylor blew harp with Buffett for more than two decades, appearing on all his classic-era albums and performing as an inaugural member of the Coral Reefer Band. He also played with artists like Bonnie Raitt, Bo Diddley and Jerry Jeff Walker.
As Buffett’s legacy solidified around signature hits like “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and “Margaritaville,” which married Caribbean flavors to essentially country music songs, another local was beginning his own country music career in Nashville. Craig Wiseman, who signed his first publishing deal in 1990 and went on to write 29 No. 1 hits, started his own publishing company on Music Row in 2003, where a marker for the Mississippi Country Music Trail stands today. Big Loud has grown into the management, recording and publishing powerhouse behind megastars Miranda Lambert, Morgan Wallen, and Hardy, a Philadelphia, Miss. native.
The same year Graves made his recordings in Hattiesburg, Mississippi Matilda, who was born and spent part of her childhood here, traveled to New Orleans to record four sides of her own. Her falsetto singing on “Hard Working Woman” was a watershed moment in the evolution of the blues into rock and roll.
A decade and a half later, entrepreneur Milton Barnes opened the Hi Hat Club, where Black revelers watched B. B. King, James Brown, Otis Redding and Ike and Tina Turner perform in their element. One of the largest and most important clubs on the chitlin’ circuit, an informal network of Black music venues and jukes that prospered during the segregation era, the club remained a hub of music and culture through the 1980s, when Vasti Jackson played it with artists like Z.Z. Hill and Bobby Rush. Today, the club’s former site is commemorated by Hattiesburg’s second official Mississippi Blues Trail Marker.
