Death
He died of a heart attack after playing at a party in 1956. He is buried in the Warm Springs Methodist Church Cemetery outside of Crystal Springs, Mississippi. In 2001 a headstone was commissioned through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, a Mississippi non-profit corporation, by the family of Tommy Johnson and paid for by musician Bonnie Raitt. The large, granite memorial engraved with Johnson's portrait was not placed on Johnson's grave for several years afterward, however, due to an ongoing dispute between Tommy Johnson's family (led by his niece, Vera Johnson Collins), the owners of farm property encircling the cemetery, and the Copiah County Board of Supervisors in regard to a deteriorated road preventing access to the burial site. This issue was resolved in October 2012, when it was announced that the headstone would reach its final destination on October 26. The headstone had been on public display in the Crystal Springs, Mississippi Public Library since being unveiled on October 20, 2001.
An annual Tommy Johnson Blues Festival is now held in Crystal Springs, on every third weekend in October. The inaugural edition was held in Jackson and Crystal Springs in 2006.
Read more about this topic: Tommy Johnson (blues Musician)
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions
To keep mine honor from corruption,
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“‘Lay me a green sod under my head,
And another at my feet;
And lay my bent bow at my side,
Which was my music sweet;
And make my grave of gravel and green,
Which is most right and meet.”
—Unknown. Robin Hood’s Death (l. 65–70)