John Cofield’s Photo of the Week: “Live Music on The Square in 1979”

Those never-to-be-forgotten Oxford 80s days were hosted by a cast of characters we’re not likely to ever see pass this way again. —John Cofield

“Buried deep in my album is a photograph from the hot summer of 1979, of the boys playing music on a flatbed trailer. We appear to be laying down some pretty hot licks, going for the big $100 purse in the band contest on the Oxford square. Old John Bradley is thumping the stand-up bass; Mr. Cragin Knox frails the banjo. Randy Cross, staring off into the flawless summer sky, is on rhythm guitar; the immortal L. W. Thomas is playing lead, and I am sawing on the fiddle. Our faces are solemn masks, the de rigueur expression of the old-time string band. WOOR Radio is flashing us out over the airwaves; the shirt-sleeved judges lean on their elbows; and in the foreground, Mr. Jack Cofield himself is snapping our picture as if we were very big dogs indeed.” —Howard Bahr, Southern Living

Tags: Cragin Knox, Howard Bahr, Jack Cofield, John Bradley, L. W. Thomas, Mississippi, Oxford, Randy Cross, Southern Living, WOOR Radio

About the Author

John Cofield John Cofield grew up in Oxford. He is a local historian and author. John is the son of renowned University photographer, Jack Cofield. His grandfather, J. R. "Colonel" Cofield, was William Faulkner's personal photographer, and for decades was Ole Miss annual photographer. Four generations of the Cofield family have contributed to Oxford's pictorial history.