In the late 1920’s Ralph Lembo ran a music store at 114 Humphries Street in Itta Bena, Leflore County, Mississippi. We have a page about Ralph Lembo’s store in Itta Bena on this site.
Until now blues historians have only written about one Ralph Lembo Music Store, i,e, the one at 114 Humphries Street in Itta Bena. The Ralph Lembo store in Itta Bena was the only Ralph Lembo store that Mississippi Blues Travellers was aware of prior to today.
But new research by T. DeWayne Moore of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund shows that Ralph Lembo actually had three separate music stores in Leflore County, Mississippi in 1928.
T. DeWayne Moore of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund has contacted us today and told us about his latest research on Ralph Lembo. The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund has located an advertisement for the Ralph Lembo Music Store in a December 1928 issue of the Greenwood Commonwealth newspaper which shows that Ralph Lembo actually had three music stores in Leflore County at that time, rather than just this one store in Itta Bena which blues historians had previously identified.
Here is a copy of the December 1928 advertisement T. DeWayne Moore found in the Greenwood Commonwealth newspaper:
As shown in this newspaper advertisement, the Ralph Lembo Music Store No. 2 was in Swiftown, Mississippi and the Ralph Lembo Music Store No. 3 was at 315 Carrollton Avenue in Greenwood, Mississippi.
Here is a Google Maps image of 315 Carrollton Avenue, Greenwood, Mississippi taken in June 2016. It appears the original building facade is still in place but the interior was undergoing a major renovation in the summer of 2016.
Our thanks to T. DeWayne Moore of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund for contacting us and providing us with a copy of the 1928 Ralph Lembo Music Store advertisement from Greenwood Constitution (shown above) and a heads up about this new historical research on Ralph Lembo.
For those unfamiliar with the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, it a very worthwhile organization which blues fans should be aware of. Here is a link to its website and its Facebook page.
The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund has raised funds to place grave markers on the graves of blues musicians whose graves were either unmarked or whose original gravestones had been removed or seriously damaged.
Some examples of the grave markers the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund has erected are:
Mississippi Fred McDowell grave at Hammond Hill Baptist Church cemetery near Como, Mississippi
Memphis Minnie grave in New Hope Missionary Baptist Church cemetery, Walls, Mississippi
Robert Johnson reputed grave (one of three reputed grave sites for Robert Johnson in Leflore County), Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Morgan City, Leflore County, Mississippi
There are other blues musicians’ grave markers placed by the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund and we encourage our readers to visit the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund website and Facebook page for more information.
Would you like to leave a comment or question about anything on this page?
The MZMF never attempted to mark the grave of Robert Johnson. The obelisk contains no birth or death dates–a salient feature of grave markers. For more evidence, see my article on it at http://www.mtzionmemorialfund.org/p/the-original-memorial-in-honor-of.html
Fair enough. We will make that clear in future posts and on our page about Mt. Zion Church in Morgan City, Leflore County.