Please help buy a gravestone for Charlie Burse, the long-time member of the Memphis Jug Band who sang "Stealin' Stealin'," "Bottle It Up and Go," "Fishing in the Dark" and "Insane Crazy Blues."
In February 2017, after contributing to our campaign to mark the grave of Bo Carter, a former teacher at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music named Arlo Leach asked the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund if we knew where to find the grave of Charlie Burse. MZMF consultant Mark Blasinghame found the grave location and we began our research into the records of the burial ground. We learned that his remains were interred at Rose Hill Cemetery in Memphis, and project investigator Bill Pichette located the Burse family plot, which contains the grave of Emma Burse, the mother of Charlie. We are in contact with the granddaughter of Charlie Burse, and we are now soliciting funds to erect a memorial near his mother's grave for Charlie Burse. Your donation will help install a memorial at the cemetery to give Burse some long overdue recognition as one Memphis badass and a helluva model American.
I organized a Charlie Burse tribute concert here in Portland last weekend. Four bands played, and we raised more than enough money to finish off the fundraiser. Here are some selections from the show:
We did it! The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund organized a great dedication ceremony that included the pastor of the neighborhood church, the director of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, several blues scholars, a half-dozen jug bands and two grandchildren of Burse.
Pictured below are myself with T. Dewayne Moore of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, Bill Pichette of the MZMF and the Little Pitcher Project, and granddaughter Cynthia Burse Wesson.
If you ever make it to Memphis, check it out my listing of the blues and jug band gravesites I've visited, with maps and location tips: