“Star-struck” by the life and music of Brownsville’s Blues Harmonica Pioneer - Hammie Nixon

Hammie Nixon was born on January 22, 1908 in Brownsville, Tennessee. He and his family knew poverty and understood want. At times he hobo’d and used his skills as a harmonica player to eat. For Hammie music really was life — through his music, he met talented musicians including Sleepy John Estes who became his collaborator, father-in-law, and trusted friend. They traveled across the globe and inspired audiences from Memphis to Chicago—Germany to Japan. Hammie sang, played the harmonica, kazoo, washboard, and the jug. He was a multi-talented musician who helped to give the harmonica its well-deserved props.

Dr. Zanice Bond speaking at the Tennessee Music Pathways marker unveiling at the gravesite of Brownsville Bluesman Hammie Nixon.

Hammie died the summer of 1984, just months after finishing his last album. I was home from college that year, and because I am from a funeral home family, I knew that a late night/early morning phone call could be, what we referred to as, a death call. Our home phone rang on August 17, and as my father prepared to leave the house, I immediately began preparing as well. I had become an unofficial apprentice. I accompanied my father to the hospital morgue in Jackson, where I first met Hammie Nixon. I remember standing silently in the cold white room next to my father as he said with a bit of awe—‘This is Hammie Nixon”— Even in death—We were both a little star-struck.

Hammie Nixon always ended his shows with a spiritual, “Holy Spirit, Don’t Leave Me.” The epitaph is etched in his tombstone. His final resting place is located in Rosenwald Cemetery, Brownsville TN.

The next year I studied in Florence, Italy. Over dinner an instructor at my school began discussing jazz and blue and the amazing recordings he had collected during his last trip to London. I blurted out—Well, have you heard of Sleepy John Estes? Not only had he heard of Sleepy John Estes, he knew Hammie Nixon, and a few days later, he showed me an album of theirs that he owned. I was again in awe.

As Tennesseans celebrating Black History Month, we should all be in awe and a little star-struck with Brownsville’s native son, internationally renowned recording artist, and Tennessee Music Pathways honoree, Mr. Hammie Nixon.