Mississippi 13

Listen to Mississippi 13, a 72-year-old man from Yazoo County, Mississippi, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 72

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/01/1944

PLACE OF BIRTH: Yazoo County

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: restaurant owner and cook

EDUCATION: BA/college

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS: N/A

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker was raised in Vaughan, an unincorporated community in Yazoo County.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Mendy McMasters

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 29/09/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Well, let me tell you a little bit about this restaurant? OK, uh, well, I was a, uh, uh, I was a farmer for 25 years: growing cotton, corn, soy beans, uh, here in Yazoo County, but I was always a foodie. You know, foodie. I just loved to cook, uh, read food magazines, an’, uh, all of those things, an’ so I decided — uh, I kind of got bored farming — and I decided to, uh … it started off first with a little takeout place while I was still farming. And then it kept growing, getting a little bigger, an’ I moved down here. I stayed in this other little location about eight years, uh, just trying different things, you know, uh, things that maybe not normal, quite so normal for this area. Uh, then I got an offer that I couldn’t refuse to come down here. You can see these pretty painted buildings that we have and the people who — it’s a couple who own all these buildings, and they wanted a restaurant down here, so they made me a good offer, and I moved down here about four years ago.

It’s been interesting, you know. I, I still enjoy trying different things an’ cooking a little of this, an’ a little that. I’ve kind of gotten to where I’ve learned that in this area you can’t very, very, to can’t stray too off the normal Southern food b- because, unfortunately, people here don’t travel that much, and if you don’t travel, you don’t get, you don’t get, uh, uh, interested in other, uh, ideas of food, and you kind of stick to what you know, you know, and that’s a shame ’cause a lot of interesting things we’d like to do, but we try ’em and people won’t take ’em because they’ve never heard of ’em, or people won’t — they just won’t take that chance. But it’s still fun. We like doing it.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Mendy McMasters

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/10/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

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• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.

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• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

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