New Orleans ‘mind magic’ plus funky rhythm and blues and gospel!

National Book Award nominee Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, R&B saxophonist Casey Lipe plus Memphis gospel singer Elizabeth King!

January 9, 2021 at 7 pm (CT) Mississippi Public Broadcasting; 9 pm (CT) Alabama Public Radio; 3 pm (ET) University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Thursdays 6 pm (CT) University of Mississippi; Fridays 9 am (CT) WYXR Memphis Community Radio

Join us Saturday, Jan. 9 for The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour. We’ll celebrate author Margaret Wilkerson Sexton and her novel, The Revisioners, which is nominated for The Willie Morris Awards. Musical guests will include saxophonist Casey Ray Lipe and the Scavengers and powerhouse gospel vocalist, Elizabeth King.

(NOTE: The winner of the Willie Morris Awards will be announced on March 12, 2021 in Oxford during the The Twenty-Seventh Oxford Conference for the Book. The other nominees are Chanelle Benz for “The Gone Dead” and De’Shawn Charles Winslow for “In West Mills”).

Guests: Author Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (“The Revisioners”), R&B saxophonist Casey Ray Lipe and the Scavengers plus Memphis gospel singer, Elizabeth King

Hosts: Jim Dees and our house band, the Yalobushwhackers

Air times:

Saturday, Jan. 9 – 7pm (CT) Mississippi Public Broadcasting

9pm (CT) Alabama Public Radio

3pm (ET) University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Thursdays 6pm (CT) WUMS – University of Mississippi

Fridays 9am (CT) WYXR Memphis Community Radio

Featuring

Author

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Following her National Book Award– nominated debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton returns with her new novel, The Revisioners (Counterpoint LLC). This is an elegant and historically-inspired story of survivors and healers, of black women and their black sons, set in the American South.

In 1925, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free her­self from slavery. Now, her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine’s family.

Nearly one hundred years later, Josephine’s descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother, Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman who pays her grandchild to be her companion. But Martha’s behavior soon becomes erratic, then even threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine’s converge.

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton was born and raised in New Orleans. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, and won the Crook’s Corner Book Prize. The novel also won the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Sexton lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

Music

Casey Lipe and The Scavengers

The Scavengers are a jazz-funk band conceived by Mississippi saxophonist, Casey Lipe. Members include Sam Brady (keyboards), Tony Bain (guitar), Michael Vaughn, (bass), and Larry Gooch, (drums).

A professional musician for over 40 years, Casey Lipe is a graduate of the Ole Miss School of Music and is a member of the Ole Miss Jazz Hall of Fame. Over his long career he has performed from New York to New Orleans.

His CDs include Down the River and The Scavengers.

Elizabeth King

Elizabeth King began singing with Memphis gospel group, the Gospel Souls, in 1969 and sang with them for 33 years. One of their albums has recently been reissued, Elizabeth King and the Gospel Souls – The D-Vine Spirituals (Bible and Tire) which includes the King original, “I Heard the Voice.” The song was inspired by a near fatal car accident the singer survived.

King went on to raise 15 children and still sings in church and can be heard most Saturday mornings at 10 am on WMQM- AM in Memphis.