EARL POOLE BALL (JR) (March 12, 1941) is a pianist, singer-songwriter, music producer and actor. His musical work spans the Americana, Country, Gospel, and Rockabilly genres.

He has recorded and/or performed with Buck Owens & the Buckaroos, Gram Parsons’ International Submarine Band, Merle Haggard, Carl Perkins, Marty Stuart, Freddie Hart, Phil Ochs, Michael Nesmith, Marty Robbins, Wynn Stewart, the Flying Burrito Brothers and on the Byrds iconic album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. He is best known for the 20 years spent touring and recording with Johnny Cash.

Ball hails from Foxworth Mississippi where his aunt Kathryn Ball taught him how to play the piano at the Foxworth First Baptist Church. Later he learned how to play the popular country and early rockabilly songs on the radio and was a part of a local Columbia band called the Hill Cats. Ball Auditioned for JIMMY SWAN’s country dance band and got the job hitch-hiking back and forth to Hattiesburg to play on television, the McCaffrey Supermarket sponsored JIMMY SWAN SHOW where he met a young EDDIE HODGES and family. He performed in the local bars while in high school and afterward and supplemented his music career by selling Fuller Brushes door to door.

At age 20 his father gave him a bus ticket to his chosen destination of Houston Texas where he honed his craft after meeting MICKEY GILLEY who showed him the ropes of survival in the world of honky-tonk piano players. Gilley remained a lifelong friend until his recent passing.

While spending 3 years in Houston where a young GLEN CAMPBELL sat in with his band the Shades, Ball worked 4 or 5 nights in the bars and sold sewing machines in the day and finally bought a car. Ball then he traveled to Southern California where he looked up his pal EDDIE HODGES and another friend from Texas DICK STUBBS and found work in the lively country music scene in clubs and on local television. Studio work soon followed, and he was called for many recording sessions at Columbia, RCA, and Capitol records. The newly founded ACADEMY of COUNTRY MUSIC named Ball PIANO PLAYER of the YEAR in 1967 and 1968.

While working for Cliffie Stone’s Central Songs Music, Ball placed the song his friends had written TRY A LITTLE KINDNESS with his old friend GLEN CAMPBELL for a number #1 hit.

In 1969 Ball was offered an executive position with Capitol records as assistant to the vice-president in charge of country music the legendary KEN NELSON In addition to his other duties –filling in for Nelson he produced the most memorable “TRIBUTE TO THE WORLD’S BEST DAMN FIDDLE PLAYER” album (MY SALUTE TO BOB WILLS) by the great MERLE HAGGARD!

In 1972 Ball was made a full producer and transferred to the Nashville office where he took over the responsibility of producing the hottest act in country music at that time –FREDDIE HART. He was able to follow up Hart’s smash EASY LOVING with a #1 hit for 6 weeks MY HANG-UP IS YOU—followed by 2 more #1 singles and albums.
Ball continued to play recording sessions as a pianist and was referred to JOHNNY CASH by the great songwriter HARLAN HOWARD via one of the songs Ball played on.
Cash liked what he heard on the session and offered Ball a position in his traveling show just as Ball was finding that the corporate life was not the joy he had hoped for, and he missed the thrill of performing for live audiences. So, a deal was struck, and Ball traveled with the CASH show doing traveling, recordings and television for the next 20 years—also producing the remarkable CASH album ROCKABILLY BLUES in 1980.

When asked to contribute a song to the famed movie director PETER BOGDANOVICH’S latest film in 1980 —THEY ALL LAUGHED starring AUDREY HEPBURN and BEN GAZZARA, Ball was hired on as the band leader in the film and a musical friendship was formed. BOGDANOVICH and BALL would write several songs for subsequent films such as The THING CALLED LOVE with RIVER PHOENIX and TEXASVILLE where Ball also had role as an actor appearing as Junior Nolan–JEFF BRIDGES’ pal. Ball also acted with ANDY GRIFFITH and CASH in the made for TV movie MURDER IN COWETA COUNTY directed by GARY NELSON who also became a very close friend.

Since 1999, Ball continues to do studio work, and to make music with his band EARL POOLE BALL & THE FANTABULOUS FRIENDS. He also performs with the HEYBALE band and is working on his autobiography. He currently resides in Austin Texas.

North Mississippi Hill Country blues musician Cedric Burnside was born in Memphis on August 26, 1978. For three decades, Burnside gained rich experience performing in the Hill Country blues tradition, notably playing drums for many years with his grandfather, Hill Country blues legend R.L. Burnside (1926-2005). Cedric later became active as a vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter for work that both honored local traditions and broke new ground musically.

He grew up in the Holly Springs area in a large household headed by R.L. Burnside and his wife Alice Mae, the parents of Cedric’s mother, Linda. His father, Calvin Jackson (1961-2015), began playing drums and recording with R.L. Burnside in his mid-teens.

Cedric Burnside’s first exposure to blues was via house parties hosted by his grandfather, including Jackson and Cedric Burnside’s uncles, Daniel and Joseph Burnside. Other family members, including his uncles Junior, Dexter, Duwayne, and Garry (who is close in age to Cedric), would also perform occasionally at the house parties. Cedric was also immersed in rural traditions, helping the family raise crops and tend to their animals.

In the early 1990s, the Burnside family moved to a home in Chulahoma, southwest of Holly Springs, next door to “Junior’s Place,” a juke joint run by Junior Kimbrough. Until this point, Burnside mainly had played drums on buckets, pans, and cans; he now took every opportunity to play the drum kit in the club. In the mid-1990s, Calvin Jackson moved to the Netherlands, and Cedric Burnside became the regular drummer for his grandfather’s band. In addition to playing at Junior Kimbrough’s, Cedric Burnside began touring nationally and internationally with his grandfather, who had gained fame via his recordings on Fat Possum Records. He appeared on multiple R.L. Burnside albums and played drums on the recordings of other artists from the region, including the North Mississippi Allstars, his uncle Duwayne, and Kenny Brown (R.L. Burnside’s guitarist); he also toured with Brown as a duo.

His first album was Burnside Exploration (2006), recorded with Garry, followed by two collaborations with Lightnin’ Malcolm. As the Cedric Burnside Project, he recorded The Way I Am (2012), featuring rap lyrics by his brother Cody (1982-2012), and the Grammy-nominated Descendants of Hill Country (2015), featuring Garry Burnside and Trenton Ayers, son of Hill Country blues veteran Earl “Little Joe” Ayers. His first solo album was the Grammy-nominated Benton County Relic (2018), followed by the critically acclaimed and GRAMMY-winning album I Be Trying (2021), which features him on guitar and mixes traditional hill country sounds with new compositions.

Burnside gained acclaim among blues fans for his powerful and enthusiastic drumming, as well as his off-stage charm and poise. He is the recipient of multiple Blues Music Awards and Living Blues Awards. Burnside was in his early 40s in 2021 when he was named a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) National Heritage Fellow. Shortly after receiving the NEA National Heritage Fellowship, he began appearing in the touring musical Voices of Mississippi, based on the fieldwork of folklorist William Ferris. The musical, staged at Lincoln Center in early 2022, celebrates Burnside’s and other younger artists’ deep roots in Hill Country traditions.

Brent Funderburk is a William L. Giles Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Mississippi State University where he served as Art Department head and taught for 36 years. He has been recognized with the University’s highest academic, teaching and research honors, including the Southeastern Conference Faculty Excellence Award (2016), the John Grisham Teaching Award, the Ralph E. Powe Faculty Research Award, and the Burlington Northern Faculty Excellence Award, among others.

An artist known for his exuberantly-hued watermedia paintings as well as energetic teaching and lectures, Brent Funderburk is a Charlotte, North Carolina native who has worked as a teacher/administrator for three universities in three states over 40 years. From a robust life of art practice and travel, Funderburk has researched, produced, exhibited and lectured passionately, working from life and in the studio in Starkville, Mississippi. He has presented 34 one-person exhibitions across the U.S, and has been represented by galleries in Jackson, Atlanta, Charlotte, New Orleans and Memphis (etc.), with work in public and private collections across the U.S. and abroad, such as the Mississippi Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and Memphis-Brooks Museum of Art.

Funderburk’s artwork has been juried into over 100 regional, national and international shows, with numerous awards, such as the International Society of Experimental Artists Award, the Holbein Artist Award, and Isabey-Savoir Faire Award, at the National Watercolor Society 100th International Open Exhibition (San Pedro, CA, 2020), the Artistic Excellence Special Award I at the Missouri International Exhibition (Barcelona, Spain, St, Louis, MO, 2020), the Juror’s Special Award and Certificate of Merit at the 6th Fabriano International Prize (Fabriano, Italy, 2020), and had work that toured seven Chinese museums in the Shenzhen International Watercolour Biennial (2015-16).

Brent Funderburk’s work has been published widely, in national/international periodicals such as American Artist, Artists Magazine, Creative Quarterly: The Journal of Art and Design, Studio Visit, Watercolor Artist Magazine, Southwest Art and Splash: The Best of Watercolor. Funderburk’s painting “One to One” was the chosen as cover art for the 2022 Splash annual publication.

In 2010, Funderburk was named the Official Artist of the USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, MS.

Regarded for his depth of research and enthusiastic delivery, Funderburk has presented talks to over 100 museums, universities and to professional organizations across the country. He curated and lectured with the exhibition “Ecstasy- The Mystical Landscapes of Walter Anderson” that toured four U.S. museums (2008-2010), as well as has spoken about Anderson in association with the Smithsonian Institute exhibit “Everything I See is New and Strange” (2003). In addition to presenting his multi-media lectures, such as “A Halcyon Day! A Day in the Life of Walter Anderson”, “Deep Harvest”, and “The Beathing Eye”, he has presented illustrated lectures on 20th Century visionary modern American artists such as Will Henry Stevens, Robert Henri and Edward Reep, subjects such as American watercolor, art and architecture, and often about his own art.

Funderburk has taught courses dedicated to the vision of Walter Anderson; “Sea Earth Sky” (‘80s), “Encounters” (‘90s), and “Walter Inglis Anderson and American Art” (2018), has led field classes in U.S. national parks, and has taught semester courses in Vicenza (2007) and Rome (2016), Italy.

The artist is married to dancer/choreographer Deborah Wyatt Funderburk, a retired university professor in Dance at Mississippi State University. They have two adult sons, and reside in Starkville, Mississippi.

The Artistic Director for Puppet Arts Theatre, Peter Zapletal, grew up in former Czechoslovakia, recognized as the world center of modern puppetry. After graduating with a Master’s Degree in Puppetry from the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague, he joined the professional puppet theatre in Zilina, Slovakia. Soon afterwards, he and his family emigrated to New York, where he and his wife, Jarmila, immediately started to produce puppet performances.

By 1970 he was recognized in a New York Times article as a talent to watch. But his path took a turn south – literary – and he moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where he joined the local PBS station as a puppeteer in residence. During the next 32 years, he created many instructional and special programs with and without puppets. His instructional programs were seen in classrooms across the United States, and special programs, from Beauty and the Beast to Steadfast Tin Soldier with Burl Ives to Bolero (a ballet special), were broadcast by PBS stations.

Peter Zapletal garnered more than 50 national awards, among them five Emmy Awards for Ticktock Minutes, the Silver Circle Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for 25 years of excellence in television puppetry, and the Puppeteers of America Award for high standards and continued excellence in puppetry.

In addition to his television work, he and his wife, Jarmila, also produced many shows that Puppet Arts Theatre tours throughout the Southeast, offering magical and exciting theatrical experiences. As he likes to say, “without his wife’s help, their puppets would run around naked.” Those tours took him and the company from Southaven in the north Mississippi to Gulfport in the south, from Vicksburg in the west to Meridian in the east, and everywhere in between. In Tupelo, Oxford, Laurel, Hattiesburg, Biloxi, or Poplarville, where there were schools with an interest in bringing live performances, Puppet Arts Theatre was there.

Mr. Zapletal’s other professional activities include stage directing Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Telephone and The Medium, operas with Opera South at Jackson State University, directing Hansel & Gretel and The Golem with the Millsaps Players at Millsaps College, serving as President of Union Internationale de la Marionette – USA, Inc., Artistic Director for three National Festivals of the Puppeteers of America, and as Artistic Coordinator for the 1980 World Puppetry Festival at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C.

The 100 Men Hall was built by and for the African American community of Bay Saint Louis, MS. Until the 1960s, the African American population in Mississippi and other places in the South were denied access to burial and medical insurance. However, 12 civic-minded African American men in Bay Saint Louis came together to form a benevolent society (1894) to care for their community. From the nonprofit organization grew a desire for a place to gather and celebrate all life events, and the 100 Men Hall was built (1922). The Hall became the epicenter of Black life and culture for the MS Gulf Coast, allowing talented artists and musicians excluded from other venues an exhibition space while supporting cooperative economics. Over the decades, the Hall has attracted legendary musicians such as James Brown, Etta James, and Ray Charles as a stop on the “Chitlin’ Circuit.” Significantly, it is one of the few physical landmarks still standing on the Mississippi Blues Trail, a rare African American landmark in the South, and today operates as a living museum and testament to its past, present, and future.

Rachel Dangermond purchased the Hall in 2018 and resurrected the (1894) 501c3 nonprofit and was inspired to continue the tradition of using art to tell stories by showcasing a variety of performance, spoken, visual, and literary work while continuing the sacred act of presenting live music on its historic stage. The Hall celebrates and elevates cultural diversity throughout the year with events like A Soulful Christmas, Juneteenth Jubilees, Dia de los Muertos, The Matzo Ball, Drag Shows, and Happy & Gay Hour. Every Second Saturday, the 100 Men Hall transforms into a haven for writers: The Writing Room. It’s a unique assembly where writers convene to craft their tales within a place steeped in its own stories. At the helm of this creative vessel is author-in-residence Ellen Morris Prewitt.