"Mississippi" Fred McDowell was born and grew up in Rossville, Tennessee (pop. 291), a small farming community just east of Memphis and just north of the Mississippi border. The "Mississippi" designation came later in life, after he moved down to Como, Mississippi, about 40 miles south of Memphis on the 51 Highway, in his late thirties. McDowell was born about 1904 or 1905, and worked most of his life as a farm laborer, mill worker, and tractor driver. He played music at country dances and juke joints, though as he says, "I wasn't making money from music... sometimes they'd pay me, and sometimes they wouldn't." In his late 50s he was 'discovered' and recorded by folklorists Shirley Collins and Alan Lomax, who wrote:
"Fred was surprised when I admired his music sufficiently to visit him for several evenings and record everything he knew. In true country fashion he kept telling me that he couldn't play nearly as well as other men he knew. In my estimation he is simply a modest man, for in him the great tradition of the blues runs pure and deep."

Sessions for Atlantic and Prestige confirmed the artist as one of the last great exponents of the traditional bottleneck style and McDowell became a leading light of the 60s blues renaissance. He undertook several recordings with his wife, Annie Mae and, in 1964, appeared at the Newport Folk Festival alongside other major 'rediscoveries' Mississippi John Hurt and Sleepy John Estes; part of his performance was captured on the attendant film.

He was a stunning master of the bottleneck guitar style, playing in open-chord country tunings. Ed Denson wrote, "Fred has a style which sounds quite modern, although it was unmistakably developed in the 1920s and '30s. It is much more like the electric 'down-home' sound of Muddy Waters or Elmore James than the older, more melodic style associated with Charlie Patton or other first-generation bluesmen.

The following year he completed the first of several releases for the California-based Arhoolie Records. These recordings introduced a consistency to his work which deftly combined blues and spiritual material. McDowell also became a frequent visitor to Europe, touring with the American Folk Blues Festival and later appearing in concert in London, where he was supported by Jo Ann Kelly. He appeared on several Dutch television programmes and in two documentary films, The Blues Maker (1968) and Fred McDowell (1969). The artist was then signed to Capitol Records, for whom he recorded I Don't Play No Rock 'N' Roll. Arguably one of the finest releases of its genre, its intimate charm belied the intensity the performer still brought to his work. Despite ailing health McDowell continued to follow a punishing schedule with performances at festivals throughout the USA, but by the end of 1971, such work had lessened dramatically. He died of cancer in July 1972. Although his compositions were not widely covered, the Rolling Stones recorded a haunting version of 'You've Got To Move' on Sticky Fingers (1971). McDowell's influence is also apparent in the approach of several artists, notably that of Bonnie Raitt. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1991.

McDowell spoke about his own life in interviews:
"I couldn't tell you exactly the date I was born. I was born in Rossville, Tennessee... I was about 21 when I left Rossville. There I was plowing with a mule. My father was a farmer and I worked with him. We were working twelve acres, growing cotton, peas and corn. I went to Memphis from there. I just got tired of plowing. I went there to look around, and after I got there I started working the Buckeye Oil Mill, sacking corn. Yellow corn, oats, sweet peas, and all like that. They had a great big plant out there. I stayed there about three years, I think. Then I loafed around, stayed with different people, friends. I worked for the Dixon brothers hooking logs on the track."

"I was just a young man when I started playing guitar. In my teens, I was. I used to go to dances. I used to sing to the music whilst others was playing.
"When they'd quit, I'd always grab the guitar, go to doing something with it. I was watching them pretty close to see what they were doing. My older sister-- I nearly forgot-- played a little guitar, but she didn't teach me anything. I didn't get a guitar of mine until 1941. When I was learning, when I was young, I was playing other people's guitars...The way I got my first guitar-- Mr. Taylor, a white man from Texas, he gave me a guitar. I was working in a milk dairy in White Station, near Memphis. This was right before I'd moved to Mississippi. I wasn't making money from music. Just playing around for dances and like that..."

"I learned a lot from one fellow, Raymond Payne, in Rossville. He was really good. Played regular style, not bottleneck. I got that bottleneck style from my uncle. He was an old man, the first person I ever saw play with that. He didn't play with a bottleneck, though. You know this big bone you get out of a steak? Well, he done let it dry and smoothed it off and it sounded just like that bottleneck. That's the first somebody I saw play like that. This was in Rossville. I was a little bitty boy when I heard him do that, and after I learned how to play I made me one and tried it too. Started off playing with a pocketknife. I just remembered him doing it. He didn't show me. Nothing. I never could hardly learn no music by nobody trying to show me.
"Like, I hear you play tonight. Well, next week sometime it would come to me... what you was playing. I'd get the sound of it in my head, then I'd do it my way from what I remembered..."

"I made up a lot of the songs I sing. It's like you hear a record or something or other. Well, you pick out some words out of that record that you like. You sing that and add something else onto it. It's just like if you're going to pray, and mean it, things will be in your mind. As fast as you get one word out, something else will come in there. Songs should tell the truth... When I play-- if you pay attention, what I sing the guitar sings, too. And what the guitar say, I say."

Albums
1 Levee Camp Blues
2 Shake 'Em on Down
3 First Recordings
4 Standing at the Burying Ground
5 Steakbone Slide Guitar
6 I Do Not Play No Rock 'n' Roll: Complete Sessions
7 Live at the Mayfair Hotel
8 Mississippi Fred McDowell
9 This Ain't No Rock N' Roll
10 Ain't Gonna Worry
11 Fred McDowell, Furry Lewis, Robert Wilkins
12 Good Morning Little School Girl
13 Train I Ride
14 You Gotta Move
15 Shake 'Em Down
16 When I Lay My Burden Down
17 Keep Your Lamp Trimmed
18 Mississippi Fred McDowell and Johnny Woods
19 Somebody Keeps Callin' Me
20 1904 72
21 Eight Years Ramblin'
22 Live in New York
23 Mississippi Fred McDowell
24 Going Down South
25 Mississippi Fred McDowell & Furry Lewis
26 Mississippi Fred McDowell in London
27 I Don't Play No Rock 'N' Roll
28 In London 2
29 Mississippi Fred McDowell & His Blues Boys
30 Blues Roll on [2 tracks]
31 Roots of the Blues [3 tracks]
32 Amazing Grace
33 Fred McDowell
34 Long Way from Home
35 Mississippi Delta Blues 2
36 Mississippi Blues
37 Mississippi Delta Blues
38 My Home Is in the Delta