{"id":41496,"date":"2017-09-05T11:31:17","date_gmt":"2017-09-05T17:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=41496"},"modified":"2026-02-25T17:49:01","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T23:49:01","slug":"bluesman-graces-new-mississippi-bicentennial-statehood-stamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/bluesman-graces-new-mississippi-bicentennial-statehood-stamp\/","title":{"rendered":"Rafael Alvarez: “Bluesman Graces New Mississippi Bicentennial Statehood Stamp”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cSmell that sweet magnolia blooming\u2026.\u201d<\/span> \u2014Bob Dylan<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The last time the United States Postal Service<\/strong> honored Mississippi<\/strong> statehood with a stamp\u2014back in 1967 when \u201cOde to Billy Joe\u201d hit number one on the charts\u2014it cost a nickel to mail a first-class letter.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifty years later, Mississippi is celebrating the 200th anniversary of statehood and now\u2014if your baby wants to write you a letter\u2014all she\u2019ll get back from a Kennedy half-dollar is a penny. The post office has once again honored the Great Magnolia State with a commemorative stamp and this one features a black man in overalls picking an acoustic guitar.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The musician is Jimmy \u201cDuck\u201d Holmes<\/strong>, born in 1947 in Bentonia, Mississippi\u2014the Yazoo County home to Skip James<\/strong> and an area known for a hypnotic, mournful rendering of the blues. The stamp was created from a photograph of Holmes taken in June 2009 by Lou Bopp. It was designed by USPS art director Greg Breeding<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI took the photo in front of Duck\u2019s juke joint in Bentonia during a blues festival,\u201d said Bopp, who works out of New York and St. Louis and has photographed much of the Mississippi Blues Trail. \u201cAnytime I shoot a real-deal blues musician on stage it feels historic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the 1967 stamp, which features a magnolia blossom against a teal background, there have been four other U.S. postage stamps honoring the 20th state.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The others honor the bicentennial of the \u201cMississippi Territory,\u201d (3 cents, 1948); \u201cMagnolia and Mockingbird\u201d (20 cents, 1983); \u201cGreetings from Mississippi,\u201d (34 cents, 2002); and \u201cState Flag,\u201d (44 cents, 2009.)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[While not specifically a \u201cMississippi\u201d stamp, the postal service honored \u201cFather of the Blues,\u201d and Hazelhurst native Robert Johnson with a 29-cent stamp in 1994.]<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bicentennial statehood stamp was officially released in early March at a ceremony in Gulfport<\/strong>\u2014at which Duck Holmes performed\u2014and selected with the help of the Mississippi Statehood Commission<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe image [a close-up of Holmes\u2019 hands] stood out both because of its strength and because it spoke to the rich musical heritage of Mississippi,\u201d said William Gicker, manager of stamp development for the postal service in Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they have appeared on most of the old-fashioned mail that Lou Bopp has sent out this year.<\/span>
\u201cFriends and family have been letting me know when they see the stamps in post offices around the country,\u201d said Bopp. \u201cIt\u2019s always a surprise.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A former staff writer for the HBO drama, The Wire, Rafael Alvarez writes often about the blues. He can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail.com.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSmell that sweet magnolia blooming\u2026.\u201d \u2014Bob Dylan The last time the United States Postal Service honored Mississippi statehood<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"featured_media":41497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33745],"tags":[3112,9835,208,5,642,4,3819,10887,10888,3,753],"class_list":["post-41496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rafael-alvarez","tag-alvarez","tag-bicentennial","tag-blues","tag-mississippi","tag-ms","tag-oxford","tag-rafael-alvarez","tag-stamps","tag-state-stamp","tag-the-local-voice","tag-tlv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/2017-09-05-blues-stamp.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41496"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155996,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41496\/revisions\/155996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}